Sarah was hovering around me, a sylphlike presence, as I watched myself
drift up the steps of the pyramid there in the square, my senses waxing
and waning like the waves on a distant ocean shore. There seemed to be
rain, or fog, or smoke, but it had a luminous, purple cast one moment,
a Day-Glo orange the next. In fact, all the colors were swirling and
changing, shimmering from hue to hue. A pack of howler monkeys was
cavorting up and down the steps on my left, like circus Harlequins in
electric red-and-blue suits, doing pratfalls and huffing as they flew
through the air and tumbled one over another.
Sarah was floating silently beside me, but where was Steve? Had he
come? Were we escaping?
No. I sensed his face drifting across my sight like a cartoon cloud
before dissolving into nothingness. He wasn't here. I was having the
eeriest dream I'd ever had.
When I reached the stone-paved platform at the pinnacle, I felt Alex
Goddard clasp my arm and turn me around to face the plaza below.
"They are waiting," he said, pointing toward the hazy square.
I looked down, and at first I couldn't see anything except rain and
smoke, but then slowly a crowd materialized. The scattering of men I'd
seen earlier had become an undulating sea of upturned faces painted
with stripes and swirling circles of blue and white and red, a
torch-lit garden of brilliant blossoms. They all were looking up at us,
at Sarah and me.
Next he held out a mirror whose reflecting surface was a polished
silver metal.
"Behold yourself, Morgan. As befits a royal one, a special one, your
nose has been built up with clay and pierced with lustrous blue
feathers and a giant topaz. Your front teeth have been filed to a point
and inlaid with jewels, your royal skull has been shaped back and
flattened."