Perhaps the Voice was a consummate flatterer and liar. Perhaps the Voice played blood drinkers against one another.

“You alone, I have loved above all, your face and form and your mind,” the Voice had said to Rhoshamandes.

Hmmm. We’ll see about that.

He blew out the candles. For some reason his telekinetic powers could never just make them go out. He had to do it with his breath. So that’s how he did it.

He went back into his bedchamber and opened another armoire that was indeed a true armoire, holding his weapons, those items he’d collected over the years more for sentiment than any other reason. He took the sharp knife he loved best off the shelf, and tied the scabbard to his leather belt inside his coat. Then he took out another weapon, a small greenish weapon from modern war called simply a hand grenade. He knew what this could do. He’d seen it plenty during the great wars that had laid waste to Europe in the twentieth century. He tucked it into his coat. He knew how to pull the pin and hurl it should the need arise.

Then he went out on the high windswept battlements and stared up at the misty sky and out over the cold, roiling gray sea.

For a moment he was tempted to abandon all this, to return to his library and light those candles again and the oak he’d chopped himself for the little fireplace, to sink down into his velvet chair and pick up one of the many books that he’d been reading of late, and just let the night pass as so many others.

But he knew he couldn’t do that.

There was a raw inescapable truth in Benji Mahmoud’s chiding words. He and the others like him had to do something. He’d always admired Maharet, and cherished the wee bits of time in the past that he had spent with her. But he knew nothing of her in this era except what others had written. And it was time to go see her himself and get to the bottom of this mystery. He figured he knew exactly who this Voice was, and it was time for Rhosh and the Voice to meet.

He’d never bowed to anyone’s authority, but avoiding the wars and quarrels of the Undead had cost him dearly. And he wasn’t so sure he was willing to acquiesce or migrate again. The Voice was right about power. We seek power so as not to fall under anyone else’s power, yes.