Three hours passed. At long intervals, a guard appeared at the doorway, calling out a name, and that lucky petitioner rose to his feet and disappeared. But those hopeful moments were few and far between. Despite his anxiety, Nolan felt exhaustion, and the strain of the past few days begin to work their will. Like Kitrini, he closed his eyes and sagged back in his chair. Images flickered against his eyelids—gulden faces, gulden homes, gulden landscapes—in an exotic kaleidoscope. When he finally returned to Inrhio, would it look odd to him, stark and severe? It was hard now to call all its classic lines to mind, the clean blacks and whites he had lived with all his life, the lush in-country greens, the ordered homes and fields. Surely, once he stepped back inside those boundaries, they would become reassuringly familiar. He would not be in Geldricht that long.

“Nolan Adelpho and Kitrini Solvano,” the low, gravelly voice announced, in accents so distorted that Nolan did not even recognize his name. Not until Kitrini came to her feet did Nolan realize they had been called. Suddenly panicked, he leapt from his chair, started toward the door, turned back for his suitcase and hurried after Kitrini out the door.

The guard stopped them both in the hallway, gesturing at their luggage. “We can’t bring our bags into Chay’s presence,” Kitrini told Nolan. “In case we have weapons.”

“Understandable. Will he watch them for us?”

“I’m sure he will.”

There was another brief exchange of words, a young boy was called over to take charge of the baggage, and they were on their way. The inside of Chay’s residence was airy and light, built of high arching ceilings, long hallways with many windows, and unexpected nooks featuring small gardens and fountains. Despite his worries, Nolan found himself responding to the architecture, relaxing a little, believing that nothing too awful could happen in such a pretty place.

But he snapped back to dread the instant they were ushered into a wide, formal room, and Chay Zanlan turned to gaze at them. The guldman was just as Nolan remembered him from those brief glimpses from Melina’s window, only up close he was even more intimidating. He was more than six feet tall, broad-chested, stockily built, so leonine and so powerful that he appeared to radiate strength and energy. Even the faint sweep of white in the red hair, even the weathered lines around the intense gray eyes, did nothing to age or diminish him. He appeared to be a man in the prime of life, at the height of his physical and intellectual abilities, and for the first time Nolan wondered if he might be wrong.

If so, utter disaster. He was a fool beyond calculation. And he would deserve any scorn or punishment that could be meted out to him, either by this race or his own.