They gathered their Buddhist and set out. On the way out they noticed a crowd of commoners in front of the temple, speaking to the swami in pleading tones.
    "My friends, I will see what I can do about it, but with current events no one seems to care. I will try."
    "What is the problem?" Ashram asked.
    "My son! His family!" a man cried. "They were all ripped to shreds last night—by something! This has to stop! Six innocent people!"
    "We agree."
    "Where was your son's house?" Hari inquired.
    "It is on the outskirts of town, on other side of town." That would be the opposite side from the crematorium. "My son and his wife, and their four children, they are all dead now. Only parts of them were left...."
    "Could you sketch for me what the inside of the alcove looked like?" Ashram asked Hasin, switching mental trains. He was considering using a Stone Shape to change the shape of the floor and tip the stone Buddha out of the alcove. Hasin described the alcove on the way to the house where the people had been killed, which had aroused the interest of the holy travelers. That part of town was near the market, inhabited mostly by vaisyas. Some of the neighbors admitted to hearing screams but had been too frightened to do anything. All that remained of the victims were half a torso and a few scattered limbs. The Monkey Paladin's stern expression darkened further. There was a blood trail leading outside, but it disappeared in the direction of the river.
    "It seems that they happened—the pattern is very strange," the swami confessed when they returned to the temple. "In some of the murders, most of the bodies were taken. Sometimes most of them were left. They happened every few weeks, and started a few months ago."
    The ambassadors had been in the area for three months. The bolt had been missing for four.
    CRACK.
    The same sound they had heard the previous day; people shouted in alarm, looking around in vain for the source of the noise.
    "Have you ever heard anything like that before?" the anxious swami asked.
    "Yesterday," Ashram and Hari replied.
    "Before that!"
    "Not like that, so."
    "I don't know what's happening! I'm going in to pray," he decided, clearly rattled.
    "Good idea," Hasin said thoughtfully. There was shouting inside the palace; they could hear Utam's deep bass voice, almost certainly saying that this was a sign from the gods that the rajahstan must go to war immediately.
    "It sounds kind of like a firework," Mahabhodipani said uncertainly. None of them knew what he was talking about. "In my country, we have ways of mixing substances to make a powder that makes a great deal of noise and light when you burn it. We fire these off during our festivals. We didn't see anything, that's the odd thing, but it did sound like someone setting one off."
    "What sort of festivals?" Ashram asked.
    "Religious festivals. The birthday of the Buddha, the moon festival."
    "Are we near any of those now?"
    "No, not particularly."
    "Let us get to the city and see what you can read there. On our way by we'll just torch that old woman's hut."
    Hasin shrugged. "Not going to get any argument out of me. I mean, I'll be far away when she comes screaming out of the flames to turn you into something unmentionable...."
    Ashram hadn't been serious, of course; dealing with the old woman would require more than a torch. They passed the hut.
    "That's not good for you," Ashram muttered as the sound of chanting reached them from the distant house.
    "Hermit! Don't think I don't know what you say behind my back."
    "He says it when he's right here," Hasin noted.
    "Be nice now," she warned, and resumed her chanting.
    When the four of them of them reached Bharhut, "The first place we would like you to read is that building over there," Ashram pointed to the domed structure.
    "A stupa!" Mahabhodipani got down on the ground and made worshipful gestures, then confirmed, "Yes, there are many inscriptions here, and these are in Pali. Most of them are scriptural references."
    "Is there a theme?" Ashram asked.
    "No, these are what you'd expect to find on a building, and here on a stupa."
    They entered the building. The tree was still there, jamming the blade.
    "Here is the place of the Lotus Scepter, use it to defeat evil," the Buddhist read from the pit's edge.
    They stood around the edge, looking down, trying to figure out how to get the scepter out.
    "How does one use Buddhist holy items to defeat evil when they're guarded by overactive Buddha statues?" Hari wondered.
    "It was probably put here to protect it, and to protect the city," Mahabhodipani replied, "to an extent, or at least the stupa. Evil spirits cannot enter the stupa while the scepter was here. In previous time while there was a body of monks here, if a need arose they could have taken the scepter and carried out, and it undoubtedly has great power, which would interfere with evil forces."
    "You are a Buddhist monk, are you not?" Ashram asked pointedly.
    "Yes, but I don't know what they did here."
    "But if for example there were a moving Buddha statue down there, swinging at anyone who came too close, do you think that it would swing at a Buddhist monk?"
    "It... might not."
    "Do you want to bet his life on that?" Hasin inquired.
    "For all I know there are tales of statues that will only attack non-Buddhists. I don't know," the hermit shrugged.
    "Perhaps if I spoke to it in Pali?" the monk suggested. "Told it I was a friend. Very well, I'll try it," he decided, drawing himself up. "Who's going to go down to see if it worked?"
    "I suppose," Hari sighed.
    "It sure as hell won't be me," Hasin declared.
    "You're the only one who hasn't gone down there yet," Ashram pointed out to the Monkey Paladin cheerfully.
    "I was hoping to keep it that way. So far people go into this pit, they become impure, they get beaten on by Buddha statues. I've decided that going into this pit is probably an unwise action. I'm a cunning monkey and can learn from others' mistakes."
    Grumbling aside, he was ready to go down. This meant dislodging the blade, since there was no room to get around it while wearing his armor, and he certainly wasn't going to take it off. They tied a rope around his waist and lowered him down to stand on the blade; it creaked and gave slightly under his weight. Ashram transformed himself into a massive gorilla to anchor the rope at the top.
    Mahabhodipani gave a surprised yelp. "Ashram?"
    "He does that all the time," Hasin assured him.
    "It's unnatural."
    The sudra shrugged.
    Hari started jumping up and down on the blade, and after a few times several things happened: the mechanism ripped free of the wall, taking a number of bricks with it; the tree missed his head by a half inch as it whipped free; and the rope gave way with snap that was entirely lost as blade, tree, and man hit the bottom of the pit. At least the blade apparatus meant he wasn't actually touching the bones.
    "Hi! How you doing?" Hasin yelled.
    He seemed to be mostly unhurt. The only problem being that they only had the one rope. Hasin trotted over to the construction site, waved at the guards. "No problem this time, just need some rope."
    They discussed for a moment. "All right. Stay there." They tossed him a coil rather than have him come any closer.
    "Thanks ever so kindly!" He jogged back. They lowered the rope to Hari to tie it around himself, and Mahabhodipani spoke to the Buddha in a language the rest of them did not understand. The statue showed no reaction. Everyone grabbed hold of the rope and heaved, pulling Hari up to the bottom of the alcove; a clay foot lashed out at him. Apparently talking didn't work on the thing. They kept pulling; it lashed out again. Hari struck back with his mace, knocking off small chunks of stone.
    "Give me some slack!" he yelled. They lowered him a bit again, and the statue and the man swung away at one another; blood and stone flew, bone cracked, and the clash of metal echoed up the narrow shaft, but the Monkey Paladin persevered until after a final exchange the golem crumbled.
    "Mind dragging me back up, please?" Hari requested weakly when it was done. "Large clay statues hit hard."
    "I could have told you that," Hasin muttered.
    Ashram and Hari both spent some time in prayer, which brought the paladin back from the brink of death, if not quite to perfect health.
    "We just need someone to go down there and get it," Ashram said,
    "This time, I will check for traps," Hasin promised. He climbed down—carefully. The scepter was of sandalwood with a multicolored wooden lotus blossom on the top, set in a block of wood. He hoped that its touch wasn't going to annihilate him or convert him to Buddhism or anything, and picked it up.
    "How you doing down there?"
    "Still alive." He climbed back up. "One rather pretty scepter." Pity he wasn't going to be able to keep it.
    Ashram checked to see if the bolt was anywhere nearby, but had no sense of its presence. "Let's carry this back to the town. I wish we had thought to check the ambassadors before they left."
    As long as they were there, Hasin wanted to take another look at the spot he had heard the slithery thing. He crept down the alley and listened intently; it was the second floor of the house next door.
    "There is something in there," he reported. Hari confirmed that whatever it was, it was evil. The place was a mostly-wooden building, and in very poor condition. Lighting it on fire would probably take out a large part of the fallen city, unfortunately. "I could try to climb up there and take a look." Try being the operative word. "Or maybe not. Perhaps there's some stairs intact inside...."
    "I could start smacking on a support beam and knock the house down," Hari offered. "I'd like to do this when I'm feeling a little better, though."
    They agreed that the evil would probably still be there when they got back.
    Ashram attempted another augury, to see what the gods thought of bringing the scepter back to Amirdata; they seemed to approve. Mahabhodipani insisted on being the one to carry it. Ashram was of the opinion that once the bolt had been restored there was no reason not to let the Buddhist take the relic with him, which seemed to please the little foreigner.
    "I wonder if there's a market for those things," Hasin mused.
    "You be quiet," the hermit snapped.
    Changing the subject, "Should we hang around in town tonight, look for things that eat people?" Hasin queried without much enthusiasm. "I could do some lurking, I suppose."
    "I'm with that," Ashram agreed.
    Hasin sighed. "If you hear a blood-curdling yell, it's me."
    The four set off once again toward Amirdata—carefully. There was no sign of the muttering old lady.
    "She knew that we were going to be walking past with the scepter," Ashram theorized. "I think it was probably her who you saw on the outskirts of town, when you saw the evil flitting around."
    "She doesn't look like she's in any shape to flit," Hasin noted dubiously.
    "Magically keeping an eye on us. Do I look like I'm in any shape to yank him up?" He nodded at Hari.
    "True."     

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