“If God is merciful, there will be rain, and the sun will emerge from behind these damned clouds! How can you not weep?”

“Tell me my tears will build a palace, and I will weep. Let us build and plan our revenge, even if it is my nephew’s children who must lead our armies into war. We must act quickly in case any of my cousin’s partisans have escaped. We must take control of the city while there are none to resist us.”

This time the general almost did break down, but with an iron will he controlled his body, his expression, his voice, and his entire being. “That is not a city. That is a ruin. Ai, God. My dear wife.”

The words sparked connections in her mind. What had bewildered her came clear. The peninsula was covered not by rocky terrain and fallen stones but by a vast city so huge that she had not recognized it for what it was. Its walls ringed the shoreline. Double walls made a skirt across the headland. What splendor these ruins might once have possessed she could only guess at. They were too big to comprehend, and the extent of the destruction staggered her because it made no sense. She traced the distant lines that marked the ground but could not measure palaces, churches, houses, or stables in the jumble. From this distance she saw nothing she could recognize as rooftops, no spectacular domes, only stair steps of tumbled stone in heaps and mounds that she had at first mistaken for natural formations.

Surely this was an ancient ruin. Not even the gale wind could have destroyed so much and on such a scale. It was difficult to grasp, much less hold onto, their grief. It all seemed so remote, no more than an idea they had all long clung to.

“A wave drowned all, so we have been told,” said Lady Eudokia. “How can any wave be large enough to overwhelm the city? It must have been some other thing, a spell perhaps, rising out of Jinna lands. Rising off the sea.”

“Look there!” said Bysantius, pointing.

A gauzy mist was rising off the strait. Wisps of fog wafted up out of the ruins as the breeze blew in off the sea. Fog rose every place there was water. It seemed the ruins were awash, because the mist thickened, poured upward, and advanced inland toward their position as a wall of white like a towering wave off the sea. It swallowed the ground, the view, the sky.

“God save us,” muttered Bysantius, but he held his position.

General Lord Alexandras drew his sword.

“Leave off,” snapped Lady Eudokia. “Put me down, you fools. Bring me my chest. Let me see what I can do to dispel this unnatural mist.”

No natural mist moved in such a manner. Hanna twisted to look behind her. Men backed away, making signs against evil. Her ears popped, and the few dogs remaining among the army began barking. As the fog advanced on a strong wind off the sea, the beasts tucked tails between legs and ran. Their fear, like a shower of arrows, struck throughout the ranks.