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First, she tried to slide the door to the side, the way normal doors worked, but it didn’t budge. Then she pushed the door at the handle, but still it did not move.

Pulling, however, seemed to work.

Winded after all the walking and the effort of pulling the door open, Ansed took a moment to compose herself before entering the temple.

“Is anyone here?”

Her words echoed throughout the temple, which was almost pitch-dark.

Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea , Ansed thought. She considered turning back and going home to try the holo again—but she didn’t fancy the idea of walking any more, and dammit, she needed to talk to the priests. At least one of them had to be here. . . .

Suddenly, the lights in the temple came on—at about twice their usual intensity. Ansed’s wide eyes were momentarily rendered useless by the sudden onslaught, and she blinked both her upper and lower eyelids furiously to clear the spots that now danced in front of her face.

When her vision cleared, she screamed. Ansed was the foremost political personage on all of Eerlik, and she’d been a respected scholar and politician for years prior to that. She hadn’t screamed since she was in her crèche.

But she screamed now.

Seventeen priests and twenty acolytes served in the temple. In addition to their other spiritual duties, the priests were tasked with guarding all the knowledge that related to Ganitriul. If anyone would be able to solve the current crisis, it would be them.

Right now, Ansed stared at a pile of corpses that seemed to number approximately thirty-seven, all wearing the robes of either priests or acolytes. They looked like they had been placed there in a semiorderly pile. Blue blood was splattered all over the bodies, and pooled on the floor around them.

A shiver passed through Ansed that had nothing to do with the unnatural chill in the air. The numerous malfunctions were bad; this was worse. Ganitriul could, in theory, be fixed. But to have all the clergy dead . . .

“Help me! Somebody, please, help me!”

The voice seemed to come from amid the corpses. Ansed felt as if her short legs had grown roots. She couldn’t move. Someone was obviously still alive in the midst of the carnage, but Ansed couldn’t bring herself to investigate further. This was a task for Enforcement, not the First Speaker.

“Help me, please,” the voice said, this time much smaller. Ansed saw someone crawling out from under the pile of bodies.

Somehow managing to overcome her fear and revulsion, Ansed made her feet move toward the voice and reached out one short arm to him.

With a grateful expression on his face—at least, Ansed assumed the expression was grateful; it was hard to tell under all the blood—the young man reached out to grab the offered arm. Now that she got a look at him, Ansed recognized the young man as Undlar, who had only just been ordained a month earlier.

And now it seemed he was the only priest left.

The recognition went both ways, as Undlar stumbled to his feet, gazed upon Ansed and said, “F-First Speaker? Is—is that you?” Ansed noticed that the young man had a very large gash all the way down his right arm, and dozens of cuts and abrasions all over his person.

“Yes, Reger Undlar,” she said. “I came to speak to the clergy.”

With a sardonic tone that impressed Ansed, given Undlar’s physical state, he said, “I—I’m afraid that w-won’t really be possible, First Speaker.”

“What happened?”

Undlar seemed to deflate. “I—I wish I knew. The—the power—it went out—obviously s-something has gone wrong with the Great One—and then—then we were all assaulted— brutally . We— we tried to fight back, but our guns wouldn’t— wouldn’t work. They had some—some kind of edged weapons.”

That edged weapons had been used was obvious, given the types of wounds, but Ansed said nothing.

“We need to get you to a hospital.” And hope their equipment is functioning , she did not say aloud. Undlar did not need to be reminded of that. “And then we need to call Enforcement. They probably have their hands full, but this is something