There are four rows of columns, a colonnade reaching like an arm to embrace the faithful. I am inside the arm, where it meets the shoulder of stone that leads on into the heart. The head itself rises unseen, many hundreds of yards behind us, above the heart, guarded by dozens of mute giants, white and unwavering, their gaze remaining fixed upon the distant clouds, awaiting the Day of Judgment.

It would take ten men with arms joined to enclose the circumference of the column I am standing beside. If I glanced over my right shoulder, which I dare not do, I would see shafts supporting the ceiling overhead for what would appear to be a mile, one beyond the other, curving into the distance so that one cannot see the end of them.

Usually between these shafts there is nothing but the open air, whose coolness I now feel stroking the bareness of my back. Usually one can see the immense, darkly paved square, its white designs, and the lonely obelisk sticking up out of the middle of it, as if some awesome creature of the underworld had shoved his sword up from Hell to pierce the loins of this sacred place.

But tonight is not usual. Tonight there are men lined up nearly shoulder-to-shoulder beside these columns. Columns of flesh standing with the primitive aspect of stone, bare but for a red cloth around their midriffs--several hundred of them in each of four columns--each and every one of them painted from head to foot with human blood, standing now a darkening purple where but a while before they had all stood in the bright red of their ritual bath. And I, too; the blood caked along the hair of my arms, my legs, my head, in my eyebrows, so that when I blink my eyes stick for a moment and sting with salt.

A white dove, unbelievably white, flutters in from the darkness behind, flamed dramatically for a brief moment in the purple of bodies, then settles to the stone floor, where it pecks at a deposit of grain placed there for it. There is a sharp crack. The dove leaps a little into the air, then falls to the cold stone, a black dart piercing its heart.

A blood-covered man moves into my line of vision wearing a black cloth around his midriff. He stoops down, picks up the dove, removes the dart from its breast, then drains its blood into a silver goblet brought forth by his twin. This done, the two of them stand at attention, solid as stone.

I can hear a man's footsteps echoing down the long colonnade. By the sound of it, he must be a giant shod in iron, half of a godly centaur. The sound gets louder and louder as he approaches, the same rhythm maintained for a small, bloodsoaked eternity until it stops and only the echoes continue on to beat against the stone walls beyond us.

He appears to be seven feet tall, blood fresh upon his titanic body. There is a simple gold helmet over this head, without ornament, which, if it could speak, might shake the foundation of mountains. It covers his entire face. Taking the silver goblet from the man standing at attention, the titan moves it to his mouth, tips it, and drains the blood into the gold of his face. Not a drop spills, not a drop runs down his golden chin. He hands the chalice back to the man, then turns around so that he looks down the length of the colonnade, down the long rows of blood-covered men.

As he turned, I dared to look into the golden face, through the almond slits of its eyes. But there were none beyond; only a vague hint of gray, glazed like clouds locked against a pale, lifeless sky. In that same moment, those clouds were gripped in an instant of darkness, squeezing two bolts of ivory lightning out the slits where they struck the gold rims and glowed.

I was terrified for fear he had actually seen me, actually become aware of my existence, that he had seen through to the quaking anvil of my soul, and that he might, if the notion appealed to him, strike the white-hot sword of those eyes through my body, through my flesh and bone, to cleave that anvil as if it were no more than a soft melon. But it had only been a fraction of an instant. He completed his turn, leveling his gaze down the colonnade, leveling his voice like a shaft of rock:

"DRAW KNIVES!"

The sound of knives clearing their sheaths cut the air until it died. All knives in the right hand, held blade-up, shoulder-high, gleaming. Again his voice fell like a column to the stone:

"SPEAK!"

Every man hurled the spear of his lungs at the ceiling:

''KILL!''

The ground seemed to tremble, the column to shake.

Two hands suddenly picked me up from behind, as if I were no more than a lamb, quickly and silently, locking me in their grip behind the column, one huge hand completely covering my face so that I could not see, nor speak. Beyond the column I heard the voice of the Golden One reverberating down the colonnade once more.

''STRIKE!"

Through the fingers of the hand over my face, I now saw every man in view make two quick, deep slashes across their chests, yelling savagely as the blood spurted forth from their bodies to splash on the stones before them. Then they all stood at attention once again.

Whoever had me in his grip, moved swiftly and silently into the darkness, holding me under one arm, his other hand over my face. We went up steps, through a door, another door, and another down what seemed to be a long hallway, and then more hallways, his feet echoing in the stillness. Then he put me down and stepped back.

All around me the air burst into brilliancy, filled with beautiful bare bodies and flowing robes, God separating the Day from Night, the Creation, Adam, the Prophets, the angels and the divine among men, all hovering in the space about me, speaking in a thousand jubilant voices, a thousand heavenly voices in holy song! I gasped, held my breath, and I turned with open mouth to look upon the man who had borne me into its presence, the presence of life.

And looking upon him I could not believe, so I looked above me once again, where his image repeated itself, where he sat holding a great book which a small angel supported with its shoulders, where his strong left arm rested on the pages and one could feel the righteousness running through it, the wild hair upon his head, friend of the winds, the troubled yet patient gaze--the gaze that had subdued lions! Daniel!

When I turned to him once more he was gone. As silent as the wind, as the ages, as the flame of the heart in the coldness of adversity.

I was all alone. Alone with the Creation in the Sistine Chapel.