Dion made a spitting, stuttering sound. Her eyes were bulging and her face was going red, and Cyrene wondered if she would drop dead from apoplexy there and then, and deny the Dark Lord the fullness of his jest. “You… ,” she got out, sounding as though her own tongue was trying to choke her. “You… How dare you malign his holy form! Vile though you are, how dare you go so far into blasphemy as to don his shape.”

Darvezian burlesqued a hurt expression. “But dear priestess, O Faithful of Faithfuls, this is my shape. It was mine long before they started making the statues, although I will say, they do me very well, even after all this time. Between you and me, I had them do my nose a bit smaller, when they did the first ones, but we all have our little vanities, don’t we?”

Dion’s face twisted, and she let out a screech of rage. “Tell him! Someone, tell him to, tell him to…”

“Master magician, will you vouch for me?” the Dark Lord asked Penthos earnestly. “Surely you can see there is no illusion clinging to me, that what you see is no more than what you asked for: the truth.”

Penthos coughed awkwardly, and Dion rounded on him.

“What?”

“He, it’s just as he says,” the magician reported hollowly. “There is no trace of obfuscation about him. He’s…”

“Armes,” Cyrene finished. She felt as though she were watching some great natural disaster, a landslide or earthquake, vast and slow and infinitely destructive, unfolding out within Dion’s mind.

“That’s nonsense,” Harathes stated flatly. “I look more like Armes than he does.” It was a wretched sop for Dion, patently untrue, and she cast it off.

“Take what form you may. You cannot be Armes.”

“Oh, the faith!” Darvezian—or whoever it was that spoke to them—gasped, a hand to his chest as though wounded. “But all shall be explained. I insist upon it. I want you to know, before you die, what you have been living. I’ll give you a clue: it’s a lie. A big lie. A lie told for the best reasons, at first. But a lie, nonetheless.”