It rose a good sixty feet above the wall that surrounded it on three sides and had a distinctly Oriental flavor. It looked like a mass of heavily tiled overhanging roofs, heavy beams carved in elaborate floral designs, gilded dragons' heads, and small windows with even more elaborately carved shutters. The protecting wall was eight feet high, overgrown with thorny vines and creepers, and surmounted with a double row of foot-long iron spikes. On one side of the building a rather rickety-looking mass of scaffolding rose halfway to the top floor, but there was nobody on it.

In fact, there was nobody in sight around the entire building. The fourth side of the enclosure was wide open except for a solid wooden hut about twenty feet square blocking off part of it. Blade could see almost the entire space within the walls. Most of it was laid out with delicately pruned shrubs between white gravel paths and small pools, but there was nobody in it. The building-a temple, probably-seemed deserted.

That was obviously impossible. Behind the hut stood a bronze gong at least nine feet in diameter, hanging on a heavy frame of blackish brown wood. Somebody had been beating that gong not more than twenty minutes ago. Where had they gone? Perhaps there was only a caretaker in the hut, who beat the gong at regular intervals for some religious reason and had now gone back into the hut to get out of the weather.

That seemed likely enough. Blade decided to explore further. He was going to need to get out of the weather himself, sooner or later. So he headed straight in, walking carefully so that his bare feet made no sound on the gravel.