They passed through a door in the right-hand wall of the antechamber. To his relief, they did not go anywhere near the treatment areas. A dragon boy quickly developed a strong stomach, but Kiron had the uneasy feeling that his “strong stomach” would not be proof against some of the more unpleasant aspects of human illness and injury and its treatment. Instead, the slave led him through the sanctuary with its row upon row of statues and shrines, none very large, but all carefully tended and each with an offering of flowers or incense in front of it. It was a bit disconcerting to see all these statues together, and realize just how many gods the Altans worshiped. There were no windows here; the room was lit by oil-burning, alabaster lamps that gave off a warm glow. The ceiling was painted in the image of the night sky, and the columns as giant latas flowers. They passed down the main aisle and through a small door on the other side of the room. It hadn’t exactly been concealed, but unless you knew what to look for, it was rather hard to find, for it was in the midst of a wall painting of the door into the Judgment Chamber where the hearts of the dead were weighed. So, in fact, it looked like a door—a painted door.

His estimation of the cleverness of the Healers rose.

On the other side were what were clearly the Healers’ private quarters; quiet, dim corridors lined with closed doors, painted with a long, continuous river scene that showed no humans, only birds, animals, and fish. And finally, after much traversing of corridors, the slave brought him to a small room overlooking a courtyard with a latas pool in the midst of it. It had a wide door standing open and on the other side, a window through which the pool was visible through the curtains of rain. A chair stood beside the window, and that was all he could see of the room from where he stood.

And seated in the chair, reading a scroll (as he might have expected) was Aket-ten. How he knew it was her, he could not have said, because the lady in the chair was nothing like the girl he knew.