It was a struggle pulling the tapestry from the stack, and his efforts sent many rolls sliding and spilling out to unravel upon the floor. The dust stung his eyes, made his nose run. He felt more than saw moths fluttering about, brushing his skin when he dragged the tapestry clear. Finding a stretch of unobstructed floor, Herat unrolled his prize.

Lanterns were no longer necessary. Darkness failed in hiding a thing. More’s the pity. He stood and stared down at the vast scene stitched into the fabric. ‘The Battle of The Storm in the Founding Age’, artist unknown. He had last seen it more than thirty years ago, though he could barely recall the context. Perhaps it had been found in a storage cupboard, during one of the many refurbishings of rooms that had occurred as the Citadel’s population burgeoned with acolytes, priests and priestesses. Or upon a wall in some long-sealed chamber that had been reopened. The details hardly mattered, the title even less.

What battle? What storm? What Age of Founding?

He studied the swarm of figures upon the blasted landscape, the scores of flying dragons shredding the dark clouds hanging low over the battlefield. His eyes narrowed on the flanking hilltops, where stood the rival commanders of the two armies locked together between them. From one such figure, tall and martial, something like a stain, or scorching, marred the weave, blackening the air surrounding the man.

He’d thought it nothing more than damage, the bloom of rotting mould, perhaps, or where a torch had been held too close to the hanging. But now he saw, as he looked more closely, that the very threads were black.

It’s him. Draconus. The helm hides his face, but the manner of his stance betrays him. That, and the darkness, like smoke. I saw it today, as he strode across the Terondai.

Abyss below, what have we done?

A voice spoke behind him. ‘I sought you upon the tower.’

Herat closed his eyes, not yet turning to face her. ‘Yet you tracked me here.’

‘Your journey was reported,’ Emral Lanear replied. ‘This is my temple, after all.’

‘Yes,’ the historian replied, eyes opening again, gaze returning once more to the tapestry laid out on the floor before him. ‘There is honour,’ he said, ‘and then there is stupidity.’

‘What do you mean?’

Still he would not turn to face her. ‘If in the course of our lives, we find ourselves in the same place, again and again… what lesson is not being heeded? What wilful idiocy obtains, proof against any self-examination, any reflection or contemplation? How is it, High Priestess, that a single man or woman’s life can so bitterly match the history of an entire people?’

After a long moment, she moved up to stand beside him. Her attention fixed upon the tapestry.