"You're a good companion to have at a time like this, Xax," he chuckled.
Xax clicked his needles. "We're coming to the Tower of Zut. A tumblie can't fight what dwells in there."
Kortha said, "No living thing dwells there, Xax. And the dead cannot harm you."
The glory that was Yassa burst on them as they rounded a corner and stood in the square of Zut. A massive building of translucent white jadestone loomed solitary in the square. The face of the temple, gleaming lucid in the sunlight, fronted toward them, broad and tall and tapering to a triangular crown far above. From its base four bulbous domes stretched backward, fanshaped, like blunted and misshapen fingers. The symmetry of the building was awesome. The ancient architect who designed it had been an artist as well as an engineer. It was a thing of beauty, as well as a place of terror.
Like a dark mouth set in the white face of the windowless tower gloomed a gate of shadows, open to the square. That yawning space was black with emptiness. There were no doors hung on hinges; only that sombre opening, silently menacing.
Kortha stood looking at it. The wind ruffled the white fur of his mantle. It stirred his amber hair and cooled the naked skin of arms and shoulders.
He lifted his hammer and shook it in the sunlight, and grinned.
He walked forward.
Xax spoke to him above the clicking of his needles on the broken flagging of the square, "Are you walking into that thing like a yavit to the trap?"