“Isn’t it?” Ngurra’s eyes shone with sympathy in his wrinkled face. “And yet here you are at the choosing-place.” With a grunt he straightened his legs and rose, turning back toward the camp. “Think on it, Slayer,” he said over his shoulder. “We are ready. We have been waiting for you. You have a choice to make.”

He watched the old man’s steady progress across the sand. At the encampment, the Yarru elders hailed his return under the benign gaze of the Gulnagel Fjel on guard. He could hear white-haired Warabi, the old man’s wife, scolding him for his folly.

We have been expecting you.

If Ngurra had not greeted him with those words, he might have ordered them slain. Why not? It was true, they were the ones who had sent forth the Bearer to extinguish the marrow-fire. But instead, he had stayed his hand out of curiosity. He had ordered Speros and the Fjel to accept the Yarru’s hospitality. And a good thing, too. They would be half dead of thirst if the Yarru hadn’t shown them how to find water-holes in the Unknown Desert, how to catch basking lizards, how chewing gamal heightened the senses and moistened parched tissues. The Yarru had shown them kindness. Whatever they were, whatever strange beliefs they held, these Charred Ones were not foes.

Old men. Old women.

“I don’t want to kill them,” Tanaros whispered. Unaccountable tears stung his eyes, and he covered his face with both hands. “Oh, my Lord! Must it be so?”

Distant power flickered as if in answer, and pain seared his scarred breast, so acute it was almost unbearable. So. It had begun as his Lordship had said it would. In the west, in Darkhaven, Satoris was wielding Godslayer with the full might of a Shaper’s power, a thing he had not dared since Darkhaven was raised. Tanaros felt his teeth begin to chatter. He dropped to his knees in the sand and pressed his fingertips hard against his temples, willing his flesh to obedience. All across the world, it was as though a thousand doors had been slammed at once. Everywhere, light flared and died, a vast network of connections turning to ash.

The Marasoumië was closed.

That was that, then. The thing was done. His Lordship had no intention of changing his orders. Tanaros waited for his pounding heartbeat to subside, then climbed heavily to his feet and brushed the sand off his knees.

You have a choice to make.