There was good hunting for a blood drinker in this city and in its surrounding areas, but that was about all that could be said for it in Rhosh’s estimation, and he was desperate to penetrate the compound of Maharet, Khayman, and Mekare, but he could not.

Each night the Voice urged him to be strong, to attack the defenses of the twins, to force his way in. But Rhosh was wary. He could not overcome the combined strength of Khayman and Maharet. He knew this. And he did not trust the Voice when it said they would never attack him, that he would take them by surprise and find them surprisingly vulnerable to his gifts and his will.

“I need you to free me from this creature,” the Voice continued to insist. “I need you to free me from this Unholy Trinity which keeps me captive here, blind and immobile and unable to fulfill my destiny. And I do indeed have a destiny and have always had a destiny. Do you know what I have endured to learn how to express myself as I am talking to you now? You are my hope, Rhoshamandes, you have five thousand years in the Blood, do you not? You are stronger than they are because you know how to use your gifts and they are reluctant.”

Rhosh had given up arguing honestly with the Voice. The Voice was a conniver and a child.

Rhosh feared Maharet. He always had. Who in the Blood was more powerful than Maharet? She had a thousand years on him, but she had something else. She’d been one of the first ever made, and her spiritual resources were a legend.

If the earliest children of First Brood and Queens Blood hadn’t been deaf to each other telepathically, this drama would have come to a close well before now. If Maharet could hear the Voice speaking to Rhoshamandes, it would be finished for Rhosh, he was sure. Even now he wondered if this miserable humid and tropical place was not to be the end of his long journey on this Earth.