No. So many…! It is…

Vansen did not know if the thoughts were his own now or Barrick’s, or perhaps even Gyir’s. All he knew was that the terrible sight blurred before him as if his eyes were filling with tears, then it all flew away into darkness and he was back in his own frail body once more, sprawled on the floor of the cell beside Gyir and Barrick, weak, ill, and horror-stricken.

26

Rising Wind

Uvis White-Hand, favorite of dark Zmeos, was wounded by Kernios and was taken from the field to die. In his rage, the Horned One beat down brave Volios of the Measureless Grip, stabbing him with his terrible sword Whitefire until the war god’s blood turned the river Rimetrail red, and at last the giant son of Perin staggered, fell, and died.

—from The Beginnings of Things
The Book of the Trigon

PINIMMON VASH, THE PARAMOUNT MINISTER of Xis and its possessions all across Xand, looked at his closet with disaffection. Three boys, naked except for artful decorations of gold around their necks and ankles, cringed on the carpet. The slaves knew what it meant when their master was in an unhappy mood.

“I do not see my silk robe with my family nightingale crest. It should be in the closet. That robe is worth more than your entire families to the seventh generation. Where is it?”

“You sent it to be cleaned, Master,” one of the slaves ventured after a long silence.

“I sent it to be cleaned and brought back. It has not been brought back. I am going on a voyage. I must have my nightingale robe.”

Vash was just debating which one of them to beat, and if he had time to beat two, when the messenger came. It was one of the Leopards, dressed in the full panoply of warfare and very conscious of the days of fire and blood just ahead. The soldier stood straight as a broomstraw in the doorway, touched his palm to his forehead in salute, and announced, “Our lord Sulepis, the Master of the Great Tent, requires your immediate attendance.”

Pinimmon Vash carefully hid his irritation: it was not wise in these days of universal upheaval to give anyone even the slightest thing to mention to an ambitious courtier or (might all gods forbid it!) the autarch himself. Still, it was annoying. He could not imagine when he would find the time before leaving to give these boys the discipline they deserved, and even his large shipboard cabin was a place of little privacy. Nothing to be done, though. The autarch had called.

“I come,” he said simply. The Leopard guard turned smartly on his heel and strode out of the room. Vash paused in the doorway.

“I will be back very soon,” he told his servants. “If the nightingale robe is not in the closet, all of you will go up the gangplank limping and weeping. If the robe is not in excellently clean condition, I will be taking other servants on my voyage. You three will be floating down the canal past your parents’ houses, but they will not recognize you to weep over you.”