for thousands of years.

Wearily, he pulled himself over the last barrier and fell numbly to the
floor, where he lay for long minutes fighting for breath. His lungs were
raw; the thin air of the planet caught and rasped in his throat. His
hands were torn and bleeding, and the knife-scar over his right eye had
begun to throb, but he ignored the pain. He had to clear his head....

Eventually he was able to stand, swaying beneath the dark sky. Below him
he saw the city, broken and dim, empty streets winding between fallen
walls and pillars. Mara's flyer lay shattered against one of those
broken walls; seeing it, he wondered how badly she had been hurt.

He moved toward the stairs, and descended them slowly. The stairs of the
city were as he had remembered them from Tebron's memories, and yet not
the same. To the Earthman they were steep: the steps were like separate
levels, three feet across and almost four feet deep. His legs ached at
each step as the shock of his weight fell on them.

He reached the bottom level and paused in the doorway onto the street.
It was empty, but he had to think a moment before he could remember his
bearings. Yes, the Temple was that way, somewhere down the dusty street.
He moved through the deeper shadows at the base of the buildings,
remembering.

Tebron had taken this city at the head of a force of warriors. To him it
had been large and majestic, a place of power and knowledge. But
Rynason, moving wearily through the dust of the ages which had fallen
upon the city since the ancient king, found it not merely large, but
huge; not majestic, but futile. And the power and knowledge which it
once had held was but a dusty shadow now. Somewhere ahead, in the
Temple, the survivors of that ages-old culture were trying to bring the
city to life again. With or without the Outsiders, he felt, they must
fail. They really wanted to bring themselves back to life, to reawaken
their minds, their dreams, their own power. But they tried to do it with
memories, and that was not the way.

No one was guarding the Temple. Rynason went up the steps as quickly as
he could, vaulting from level to level, trying to stay in the shadows,
listening for movement. But sounds did not carry far in the air of
Hirlaj; the aliens would not hear him approaching, but he might not hear
any of them either until he stumbled upon them.

At the top of the stairs he darted into the shadows of the colonnade
which surrounded the int