There was still fighting in the city, but it was far away now; he heard it with the back of his mind as he mounted the steps of the Temple.  Those were mop-up operations, clearing the streets of the last of the priest-king forces; he was not needed there.  He had, to all intents, controlled the city since the night before, and had slept in the palace itself.  Now it was time for the Temple.

He mounted the heavy, steep steps slowly, three guards at his back and three in front of him.  The priests would be gone from the Temple, but there might be one or two last-ditch defenders remaining, and they would be armed with the Weapons of Kor ... hand-weapons which shot dark beams that could disintegrate anything in their path.  They would be dangerous.  Well, there would be no temple-guards in the inner court; his own men could remain outside to take care of them while he went in.

He stopped halfway up the steps and lifted his head to gaze up at the Temple walls rising above him.  They were solid stone, built in the fashion of the Old Ones ... smooth-faced except for the carvings above the entrance itself.  They too were in the traditional style, copied exactly from the older buildings which had been built thousands of years ago, before the Hirlaji had even developed telepathy.  The symbols of Kor ... so now at last he saw them.

Tomorrow he would effect a mass-linkage of minds and broadcast his orders for reconstruction.  That would mean staying up all night preparing the communication, for it was impossible to maintain complete planet-wide linkage for too long and Tebron had many plans.  Perhaps it would be possible to find a way to extend the duration of mass-linkages if the science quest could be pushed forward fast enough.

But that was tomorrow’s problem—­today, right now, it was right that he enter the Temple.  It was not only symbolic of his assumption of power, but necessary religiously:  every new ruler leader within the memory of the race had received sanction from Kor first.

A momentary echo-whisper of another mind touched his, and he whirled to his right to see one of the temple-guards in the shadows; he had been unable to successfully shield his thoughts.  Tebron dropped to the ground and sent a quick, cool order to his own guards:  “Kill him.”  The heavy, dark warriors stepped forward as the guard tried to shrink back further into the shadows.  He was trapped.

But not unarmed.  As he dropped to the steps and rolled quickly to one side Tebron heard the low vibration of a disintegrator beam pass over his shoulder and the crack of the wall behind him as it struck.  And then the guards were on the warrior in the shadows.

They had brought down several of the temple-guards the night before, and commandeered their weapons.  In a matter of moments this one fell too, his head and most of his trunk gone.  One of the warriors shoved the half-carcass down the stairs, and bent forward at the knees to pick up his fallen weapon.