“But where are you going?” asked Benedict. He sat up, mussed, rosy cheeked, and pretty. “Tell me.”

“Stop being so anxious,” said Rhoshamandes. “I’m going west into the night. I’m going to find the twins and get to the bottom of this. I know this Voice has to be coming from one of them.”

“But Mekare’s mindless and Maharet would never do such things. Everybody knows that. Even Benji says that.”

“Yes, Benji, Benji, the great prophet of the blood drinkers.”

“But it’s true.”

“Downstairs, Benedict, before I drag you there myself. I have to be off now.”

It was a fine retreat, that cellar suite of rooms, hardly a dungeon what with its thick animal skins and abundant oil lamps, and of course the oak fire laid ready to be lighted. The television and computers down there were comparable to those up here, and a slender air shaft actually brought a steady bit of fresh ocean breeze in from a tiny opening in the rocky cliff.

As Benedict went out, Rhosh went to the eastern wall, lifted the heavy stag-hunt French tapestry that covered it, and pushed back the door to his secret office, one of those doors weighted so that no mortal alone could move it.

Familiar smell of beeswax, parchment, old leather, and ink. Hmmm. He always stopped a moment to savor it.

With the power of his mind, he quickly ignited a bank of candles on iron candelabra spikes.

The rock-cut chamber was lined with books to the ceiling, and on one wall hung a huge map of the world painted by Rhosh himself on canvas to feature the cities that he most loved in correct relationship to one another.

He stood there gazing at it, remembering all the reports of the Burnings. They’d started in Tokyo, moved to China, then, Mumbai, Kolkata, the Middle East. And then broken out madly all over South America, in Peru, Bolivia, and Honduras.

Then Europe had been stricken. Even Budapest which contained Rhosh’s favorite opera house. Maddening.

It seemed there had been a plan at first; but the plan had broken down into utterly random attacks—except for one thing. The Burnings in South America had occurred in an arc that had become a crude circle. Only there did such a pattern appear. And that’s where the twins were, he was sure of it, deep within the Amazon. Those who knew for certain were clever indeed, and of course he was far too close to the twins in age to have a telepathic advantage with them. But he knew. They were in the Amazon.