Temple trouble

Miracles to order was a fine way for the paratimers to get mining concessions-but Nature can sometimes pull counter-miracles. And so can men, for that matter…

Through a haze of incense and altar smoke, Yat-Zar looked down from his golden throne at the end of the dusky , many pillared temple . Yat-Zar was an  idol, of gigantic size and extraordinarily good workmanship ; he had three eyes , made of  turquoises as big as doorknobs , and six arms. In his three right hands , fron top to bottom , he held a sword with a flame – shaped blade , a jeweled object of  vaguely phallic appearance, and by the ears, a rabbit . In his left hands were a bronze torch with burnished copper flames , a big goblet , and a pair of scales with an egg in one pan balanced against a skull in the other . He had a long bifurcate beard made of gold wire, feet like a bird’s, and other rather startling anatomical features. His throne was set upon a stone plinth about twenty feet high, into the front of which a doorway opened; behind him was a wooden screen, elaborately
gilded and painted.

Directly in front of the idol, Ghullam the high priest knelt on a big blue and gold cushion. He wore a gold-fringed robe of dark blue, and a tall conical gold miter, and a bright blue false beard, forked like the idol’s golden one: he was intoning a prayer, and holding up, in both hands, for divine inspection and approval, a long curved knife Behind him, about thirty feel away, stood a square stone altar, around which four of the lesser priests, in light blue robes with less gold fringe and dark-blue false beards, were busy with the preliminaries to
the sacrifice.