“No, no, no,” the Ila said, a light voice, like chimes. “Don’t harm him. You knew Tain’s son would have tried it.”

Marak could not get his breath past his tongue or move his chest beneath the living weight of the guards pressing down on him. He lay half-buried, on the hard edge of the steps, the object of every eye, and had time to realize the failure of his ambition, the shame of his father, and to know he had once and for all lost his mother’s life.

The gods struck down the hand that touched the Ila. Had he not heard that warning all his life? He had no gods, and the Tain had none… but he had incontrovertibly met a wall of force, and it had stolen all his breath, shaken his heart in his chest, made his limbs twitch. To make it even worse, the voices roared wildly in his ears, a deafening rush like the sound of waters.

The guards raised him up to his knees. He could not even manage to hold that position, once released, and slumped down onto his face on the floor, under the curious stares of the mad, in the spite of the Ila’s men.

“Marak Trin,” the Ila said.

He could lift his head, that much, enough to stare up at her. He moved an arm and, discovering that unthought movement under his command, attempted to draw it beneath him. It moved. He drew one and then the other knee across the cold, polished stone and heaved himself up, laughably like the beasts, rump first, then the forearms. The hands still would not move. He felt nothing but a tingling in his feet.

“Marak Trin Tain.”

The roaring in his ears went on, a torment in itself, making her voice distant. He had succeeded only in kneeling at this tyrant’s feet. There were deaths and deaths in the holy city. Men were impaled on hooks and flung from the walls or hung alive for the vermin of the air. He wondered which death was his, or if the lightning of her fingers would suffice, and burn him to a crisp.

“Are you mad?” the Ila asked. The room spun like the direction of the voices. The pain gathered in his bones and seemed to have found a home there, and in his silence an angry guard brought a length of chain down across his back. “Are you mad?” the Ila asked again, in that soft voice. “Or is this one of your father’s tricks?”