For all the visitations of my father’s memory, this had shaken me. It might have been his ghost reproaching me for my fear, my lack of ability; for whatever power had been in me, I seemed to have exhausted it.

“Where is the meeting place, and when?” Kortis said.

“The Temple—Prince Nemarl’s joke, I venture to suggest. Midday.”

“How many of their swords in attendance?”

“Nemarl says five captains, one hundred bronzes. I think Erran will bring more.”

“See we are equal to them, and preferably superior.”

“My lord.” Zrenn went to the door, hesitated, and said, “Javhovor, my kinswoman asks that she may accompany you.”

“Demizdor shall remain here,” Kortis answered.

“That will grieve her, my lord. She’s hungry to see the savage writhe.”

“No, Zrenn,” Kortis said, “it is you who are hungry for that. Demizdor hungers for other things. I will have no ladies at such a meeting. Vengeance is a slender thing to make a truce from. Tell her to stay in her apartments.” He turned to follow Zrenn out, nodding at me, courteously. “Bear with the dark a little longer, son of Vazkor. Soon you shall have light in plenty.”

Certainly, there was light, a bright, still day at the brink of the young winter, sky like hammered platinum. A scatter of leaves blew in the streets from trees in overgrown gardens, charred cinnabar papers at the base of the looming deadness of Eshkorek.

Light in the Temple, too. A goddess temple, rededicated, as I had been told, to Uastis (mother-mine) in the days of her power, since decimated, roof fallen, walls breached and left gaping—a colossal, empty, echoing forum, filled only at its eastern end. Nemarl’s joke. Yes, surely. To decide my punishment under the shadow of she who had been my father’s wife.

For the great goddess statue was still standing. A giantess of yellow stone stained by ancient fires, a skirt of bronze and gold and necklets of emerald and jade, with ruby nipples in her breasts. She stood too high to be looted, like a small mountain. You would need heroes to scale that scarp and wrench out the gems. She seemed as tall as the sky. She would have seemed taller if she had retained her head. But the same shot that brought down the ceiling had severed the skull of the Eshkirian Uastis. In those days they had cared enough for religion to sweep up the pieces like broken eggs, but you might note the cracks in the mosaic floor where her marble brains had been dashed out.

So much for Kortis’ promise of light, and for Nemarl’s joke.

There was another joke, Zrenn’s.

They came in my cell, unchained me and led me above. In a little mildewed bathing chamber, they stripped my krarl garments and offered me the bath, gracious as for a prince. I mistrusted the barber with the razor, but he only shaved me carefully, and did not cut my throat, as I half imagined he would. This done, I was clad in black velvet breeches and tunic, royal finery, even boots of leather with buckles of gold. Bronze-masked men, with grinning eyes behind the glass eyepieces, brought me a chain of golden links, an armlet of jade thick as two fingers, a black ring.