“And what’s to stop it from coming here?” asked Benedict. “What’s to stop it from finding me here the way it’s been finding all those others who’re trying to escape? It burnt some as old as me.”

“Not quite as old as you,” said Rhoshamandes, “and not with your blood. There was an old one there, obviously, in thrall to the Voice. It was probably blasting you when the walls went up. If others were burning around you, it had you in its sights. It was in that building and it had you. But it couldn’t kill you.”

“It said horrid ghastly things to me when it spoke to me,” said Benedict. He had recovered himself a little and was sitting back again. “It tried to confuse me, to make me think I was having these thoughts and somehow was its servant, that I wanted to serve it.”

“Go, clean all the blood from your face,” said Rhoshamandes.

“Rhosh, why do you always worry about such things?” Benedict pleaded. “I’m suffering, I’m in agony here, and all you care about is blood on my face and clothes.”

“All right,” said Rhoshamandes. He sighed. “So tell me. What is it you want me to know?”

“That thing, that thing when he was talking to me, I mean before the fire …”

“Several nights back.”

“Yes, then. He told me to burn the others, that he could not come to power until they were wiped out, that he wanted me to kill them for him, and that he expected me to be ready to rush into the flames myself for him.”

“Yes,” said Rhoshamandes, laughing softly, “he’s whispered a lot of that rhapsodic nonsense to me too. He has an exalted idea of himself.” He laughed again. “He didn’t begin at such a pitch, however. At first it was simply, ‘You must kill them. Look at what they’re doing to you.’ ”

Again, he did not let on that he was in a rage, a rage now that the Voice had sought after all their many intimate conversations to enlist his Benedict. Did the Voice see through Rhosh’s eyes? Did it hear through his ears? Or could it only pitch its tent inside Rhosh’s brain and talk and talk and talk?

“Yes, but then he started all that about his coming into his own. What does he mean?” Benedict brought his fist down on the old oak desk. He’d screwed up his face like an angry cherub. “Who is he?”

“Stop that,” said Rhoshamandes. “Be still now and let me think.”

He sat down again by the stone hearth. The flames were burning brightly there, fanned by the cool wind that now and then gusted through the glassless windows.