“Enough!” Tanaros raised his voice. “It is mine to do.” For a moment, he thought they would quarrel; then they settled, acceding to his command. He leaned over the map-table, resting his hands on the edges, the southwestern quadrant of Urulat framed between his braced arms. “Are we in accord?”

“We are, brother,” whispered the Grey Dam. “We are.”

No one disagreed.

HIS DREAMS, WHEN HE HAD them, were restless.

Tanaros slept, and awoke, restless, tossing in his bedsheets, and slept only to dream anew, and twist and wind himself into shrouds in his dreaming.

Blood.

He dreamed of blood.

An ocean of it.

It ran like a red skein through his dreams, wet and dripping. Red, like the Souma, like Godslayer, like the star that had arisen in the west and the one that adorned the Sorceress’ brow. It dripped like a veil over the features of his wife, long-slain, and over his own hands as he looked down in horror, seeing them relinquish the hilt of his sword, the blade protruding from his King’s chest.

Tanaros tossed, and groaned.

It went back, further back, the trail of blood; far, so far. All the way back through the ages of the Sundered World, blood, soaking into the earth of a thousand battlefields, clots of gore. Back and back and back, until the beginning, when a great cry rent the fabric of Urulat, a mighty blow parted the world, and the Sundering Seas rushed in to fill the void, warm and salty as blood.

Tanaros awoke, the mark of his brand aching in summons.

He dressed himself and went to answer it.

Downward he went, through one of the three-fold doors and down the spiraling stairs that led to the Chamber of the Font, down the winding way where the walls shone like onyx, and the veins of marrow-fire were buried deep and strong. At the base of the spiral stair a blast of heat greeted him.

“My Lord.”

Some distance from the center of the chamber, in a ringed pit, the marrow-fire rose from its unseen Source to surge like a fountain through a narrow aperture, blue-white fire rising up in a column, falling, coruscating. And in the heart of it—ah! Tanaros closed his eyes briefly. There in midair hung the dagger Godslayer, that burned and was not consumed, beating like a heart. Its edges were as sharp and jagged as the day it had been splintered from the Souma, reflecting and refracting the marrow-fire from its ruby facets.

“Tanaros.” The Shaper stood before the Font, a massive form, hands laced behind his back. The blazing light played over his calm features, the broad brow, the shadowed eyes that reflected the red gleam of the Souma in pinpricks. “Tomorrow it begin”

He knew not what to say. “Yes, my Lord.”