“Do any of the Chosen women ever come here?”

“Here, lord? To our cabbages?” The thought was ludicrous.

He smiled again. His face was beautiful. “Yes,” he said quietly. “To this plot of earth right here, among your cabbages.”

I smiled back, in spite of my apprehension and fear “No, lord. Never has a woman of the Chosen been here. Even we harsha don’t come here this early, usually.”

“Then how is it that you are here?”

“Because I must work early at the mine today, lord. To make up work I did not do yesterday. The overseer waits. I must go, please. This delay is death to me.”

“No – stay!” He came nearer, and held the torch closer to my face. I saw that he had tiny tongues of fire embroidered on his coat, and on a chain about his neck he wore an oval plate of gold engraved with a single human eye, and in the centre of the eye was the shape of flame. I looked up at his face, and it seemed sculpted in the firelight, stately and powerful. His eyes, wide and compelling, were of the clearest, strangest blue, and his mouth was finely shaped and strong. He had a golden beard shaped to a point, and he would have looked severe had he not smiled a little around his eyes. He looked straight back at my face, at my trembling mouth, my eyes, my brand.

“I am Amasai,” he said, “steward of the Firelord. I know custom demands that I do not look on your face, harsha. But custom has been already broken here today, and by one far greater than myself. Besides, it would have been a sin not to have enjoyed your face.”

I flushed wildly. The truth dawned suddenly on me, and I almost laughed with relief, and at my own stupidity. “I thought you were God,” I said.

His smile widened. “I am not so high, harsha. Though he who commands you is high. You must accompany me to him.” He turned to walk away, not toward the camp, but to the mountains behind, away from Siranjaro.

Panic swept over me. “Lord!” I cried, agonised. “I cannot go! I must work at the mine! It is almost day! And there are my parents – and Lesharo!”

He turned back, not smiling anymore, but inexorable and commanding. “Your days at the mine are over,” he said. “You no longer dwell in Siranjaro. It is not I who commands you, Elsha, daughter of the Quelled. It is the Firelord. It is he who asks for you.”

I stared at him, barely comprehending. He came back, took the golden disk from about his neck, and placed it around mine.

“It is his sign,” he explained, solemnly. He gazed at me as if uncertain what to do next I was incapable of doing anything, except stare at his face, which was forbidden. We both were breaking laws.

“I think I must explain,” he muttered, passing his hand through his hair. The torch leapt in a sudden wind, and then I saw that he was as bewildered and fearful as I was. He took a few deep breaths, and said, “Three days ago my high lord gave me this command. He said I was to go to a place called Siranjaro. On the day of the great festival, in the hour before the dawn, I was to go to a garden place behind the tents of Siranjaro’s Quelled. He said I was to wait there, in that hour before dawn, and that a woman would come. That woman is to be his handmaid. All these things he said to me, and all he foretold has come to pass. This is the hour before the dawn, and the garden place, and you – you are the female. So in his name, I command you, Elsha of the Quelled, to come with me now, and to be handmaid to the Firelord.”