Magister Bleak watched for signs of the servants running frantically upward with burdens that must be precious to the Great God. Trapped in silence, Magister Rummage prayed that King Bifalt had stopped those men somehow. If not, nothing except terror and killing would follow. Perhaps both.

Rummage knew what those servants carried, knew it with the certainty of the doomed. Nothing else made sense. By any other standard, the Great God’s attempt on the Last Repository had already failed. Despite his throng of sorcerers and his multitude of fighting men, he could not break through the keep’s hard stone. It would withstand him indefinitely. Even the gates might hold as long as they were defended by the library’s Magisters. And the god had brought no siege engines of any kind. He had sacrificed his cavalry and fed the horde for no discernible purpose except to secure the lower plateau. If Magister Rummage was wrong, the Great God had crossed the world to sacrifice his empire and his tyranny for nothing.

But the mute man was not wrong. He was sure.

Wait.

Finally, Magister Bleak cleared his throat. “The sorcery of Shielding blurs my sight.” He sounded unnaturally calm. “I cannot be certain. At first, the servants approached along an aisle of priests. Now priests cluster around them. They ascend more slowly.

“There were ten. Now I count seven. Three must have been lost. I do not know what became of their burdens.”

Magister Rummage ground his teeth. That whoreson King! One simple task!

But he knew that King Bifalt’s task had not been simple at all. Most of the hunchback’s fury was fear by another name. Privately, he understood that what he had asked of Belleger’s King was impossible.

Wait!

The Great God turned his head to one side, to the other. His red eyes burned like curses. If he issued commands, they required nothing of the forces around him.

Soon, Magister Rummage saw the light of globes in a wide ravine below the road.

At the same moment, Magister Bleak declared, “There! Scores of priests. The servants are among them.”

Turning to Magister Threnody, he bowed. “I have done what I can, librarian. I will withdraw. When the battle begins, you will see as much as I can. I do not wish to watch it.”

From the back of the balcony, Beatrix Threnody accepted his departure. If she said anything, Rummage did not hear it. The fate of the Last Repository was too great a burden for her. Magister Rummage suspected that she would never speak again.

As the priests came out of the ravine onto the road, their formation made it obvious that they protected men in their midst. At that distance, the hunchback could not tell if those men were servants, or if they carried bundles. But he believed that the reason for the Great God’s delay was coming closer.