A METALLIC CRASH WOKE me, and I rose to find a tall, slim iron lamppost lying on the ground, its coals red and glowing on the greenish stone floor. I sat there a long moment, blinking at the embers. There was nothing to catch fire. The bed on which I lay—if bed it could be called—was only a stone bench cut into a shelf beneath a trapezoidal window unglassed and unbarred.

I was in a cell again, if a cell more like the writing cells of Nov Belgaer than like the caves I’d grown accustomed to in my long years on Dharan-Tun. Cold wind blew through that open window, and sitting up I peered out over the broad sill—it must have been two yards deep—and down over the interior of the ringed city. I guessed my cell at around two thousand feet above the level of the desert plain, and from that great height I was accorded a commanding view of the great plain and the black temple of the skull at its heart.

It was night, and the Watcher’s skull glowed in the light of stars and of Eue’s thousands of artificial moons. From that vantage I could see the spiral patterns of the columns marching from the inner ring about the black dome toward the gray-green ramparts, terraces, and towers that formed the borders of the world. From that altitude, I could clearly see the square-topped ramparts of the far side; could make out the orange gleam of fires and low-red shine of Cielcin lamps. Here and there I spied the glint of moonlight on metal, and guessed the Pale were at guard, standing sentinel on the high walls of their holy city.

Akterumu.

I could hardly believe it was real.

To accept that it was was to accept so many things. It was to accept the Enar were real, an ancient race of monsters who had conquered the stars before mankind had even learned to walk. I had accepted a species of that belief once, when I accepted the Quiet were real, but when I learned the Quiet were of the future—and that the Quiet was not a people, but a person, a singular entity acting across time to ensure its, his, birth—my native Imperial prejudices had begun to reconstruct themselves. I had begun believing again that mankind was eldest and in a sense alone, despite knowing better. Despite knowing the Umandh of Emesh, the Cavaraad of Sadal Suud, the Irchtani of Judecca . . . the Deeps, the Cielcin. To accept the Enar as well was to accept an ancient and living universe. A universe of deep time in which mankind—however chosen—is only a small part.

A small people.

Tawdry, treacherous, and cruel.

It was to accept that smallness, that ignorance. And worst of all, to accept all I had learned was to accept that the Watchers were real. Where before they had been only a part of my visions—visions I never truly doubted, though you might, Reader—now I had seen their bones. No one who has had all of infinity and infinite time poured through their head can doubt such experiences, having lived them. Even less could I doubt that giant skull or the tumbled vertebrae half-buried in the sands. I could not disbelieve the socket of that lonely eye open like a door above the steps of the temple.

It simply was.

A gust of wind blew through the aperture again, so hard I was pushed back and nearly fell onto the bench. Doubtless that was what had upended the iron lamp the Cielcin had brought to light and warm my prison. I should have thought the clangor of it would have drawn guards, but none came, not in five minutes, not in ten.

I was alone.

Grunting with the pain of lying on hard stone in my armor, I clambered up onto the deep sill, edging inch by careful inch toward the edge. The lights on the far side of the wall—miles away—twinkled almost remote as stars. I stood there a long while, taking in that tableau. As in my cell upon the walls of the Dhar-Iagon, I might have leaped at any point in quest of freedom. But where such a leap from that wretched cell would be only to resume my hanging, to leap from the window of that cyclopean chamber would mean certain death.

More lights moved on the terraces below, and once or twice I made out the horned shapes of Cielcin sentinels, their scimitars drawn, clan colors draped about their shoulders. One could almost chew the tension in the air. So many itanimn, so many blood-clans in one place, their masters snarling at one another in the halls and across the ramparts. Sensing it, one imagined the whole city might erupt in paroxysms of violence at any moment, that clan might turn on clan and Eue might become the site of a civil war the likes of which the galaxy had scarcely seen. Every prince was on its guard, each fearing each.

On the far wall, a light flashed once, twice, glimmered and blinked in a sequence I did not understand as one prince signaled another. I wondered what secret message that light carried, and to whom.

Putting it from my mind, I looked down again and shut my eyes.

I must have stood there a century.

The Quiet would save me—had saved me before. As I had died upon the Demiurge and awakened somewhere else, I could die here.

Yet even as that thought crossed my mind, a memory of that unheard voice resounded in my soul. Time changes, the Quiet had said. Soon your time will go beyond our sight.

I was alone.

Was I alone?

Cold wind stung my wounded face, and it was only steadily that I opened my eyes and peered down once more. There were no sentinels patrolling the terrace below, though further down and left I spied a reddish light moving. They might not find me till morning, or until sundown. I realized I had no way of knowing just when the Cielcin would arise—instinct taught they should be nocturnal, but then . . . there is no sun underground. I teetered a moment on the brink of the precipice, one foot raised for the final step.

Decisions.

Another gust chose that moment to blast its way across the face of the ringed city, caught me unbalanced. With a cry I toppled back and fell from the sill to the giant stone bench with a yell. I avoided hitting my head only by accident.

Against all sense, I laughed. Whatever knot of nerves had wound itself about my heart and pulled my foot up and out over the edge unspooled itself then, and relief washed through me. Relief. I did not want to die. Even after all I’d suffered. On Padmurak. On Dharan-Tun. On Eue.

What would killing myself accomplish? Syriani would parade my corpse instead of me, mock and mutilate my remains. But living, I could choose how I endured it. If I was to be a spectacle one last time, I would not give the Cielcin the satisfaction of deciding how I looked upon the platform. If I must die, I would die a man, not the creature Syriani had tried to make me.

Teche!

Lying on my back, I tried to pretend I had not heard what I knew I’d heard. The ceiling above was flat, cut of the same green stone as the rest of the mighty structure, and carved with more images of Enar conquest.

Arkam resham aktullu. Arkam amtatsur.

I sat up. The wind had died, and all the world was still. Carefully then, I clambered back onto the sill, looking out once more at the gray desert and the forest of slim columns. The words were strange to me, their sound a pressure on my mind. Though I could not comprehend the sound of them, I sensed their meaning plain enough. They were a salutation, a salute. A summons. A crooked finger beckoning to me, begging me to leap, to hurry to its source.

I stopped again at the edge of that cutting, feeling the dead air.

Ana mahriya teche!

My own breath caught. A pale light was shining from the lonely eye socket that formed the arched opening of the shrine on the sands below, casting its faint and grayish radiance far out across the sands.

Teche!

I felt a sensation as of many hands seizing me, arms and wrists and ankles. They pulled me forward, out into empty air. I screamed and toppled from the balcony, knowing as I fell that I did not want to die. The terrace hurtled up to meet me, graven pillars soaring past.

The thrill of impact smashed through me, and I felt my suit’s gel-layer harden to take the blow. I expected that final darkness to come crashing in like the tide, but there was only moonlight. There wasn’t even pain. I lay upon the terrace, dazed and—apparently—unharmed. Had I conjured up my vision? Used it unconsciously? I felt half a fool. I might have used it earlier and climbed down on purpose—had I not used it to survive so long a fall on Berenike?

My ruined shoulder spasmed as I pushed myself to my feet. Ahead, a set of shallow, uneven steps descended in an arc paralleling the general arc of the city as it followed the curve of the great wall. I took them two at a time, pausing at each level out of fear I might meet one of the sentries at its prowl. As I was, I felt sure I would stand no chance in a fight, certainly not with my maimed hand and ruined shoulder. Above, the pale face of Dharan-Tun itself shone ice-white in reflected sunlight, bathing the nightscape with a corpse-lit glow. Red canals ran chiseled across its face where water ice mingled with the rust of salts, giving the alien worldship the appearance of dried blood on bloated flesh.

Beneath the shadow of a viaduct I paused to catch my breath. How long had it been since I’d run? The night air was cold, and my breath rose in a white mist against the backdrop of that haunted city. Not far below, the black sands beckoned, ripples wind-tossed like a slow and wine-dark sea.

I do not remember crossing them, nor could guess how I got so far without drawing the eyes of the uncounted legions on the walls. Reading this, you wonder why I did not make a break for one of the shuttles, why I did not try to escape. But even if I might have seized control of a vessel, I could not have flown it. I am only a poor pilot, and not even the best aquilarius in the Imperium could have flown a Cielcin vessel alone. There was too much to learn, too little time.

And there were no ships in the temple.

Up close, the Watcher’s skull dwarfed the world. The ringed city stood about the horizon like distant mountains, and without the walls for comparison, the incredible size of the dead leviathan impressed itself on the mind, as though it were the only thing in creation. The skull lay where it fell, with the gray-green masonry of the Enar shoring up the foundations, buttressed by pylons of graven stone. The greatest of these faced the main avenue that ran from the opening of the broken circle and the great landing fields. Looking back, I could see the tall standards of the blood-clans flapping, their blues and greens transmuted all to black in the thin light of the false moons.

Along the greatest pylon was cut a broad and shallow stair that narrowed as it ascended to a platform arrayed beneath the pit of the Watcher’s once-great eye. Mounting those steps, I lingered on that platform. Of the low altar—more dais than table—and the iron rings I’d seen myself chained to in so many visions there was no sign. The platform was smooth and bare, without device or railing, and served only as a gathering space beneath the upper stair that led to the entrance and the great, unseeing cavern of the eye.

The presence of Enari structures about the skull confirmed my earlier suspicion. The Watcher had died long before the Cielcin ever came to Eue. If it was Miudanar—as I thought—the very one who had whispered to Elu, then it had whispered from beyond its grave. Even dead, the thing was a horror, a black god more evolved and more dangerous than anything in human experience.

And I trembled in its luminous shadow.

How many times had I stood there in dreams? Looking back I saw the twin towers that marked the entrance to the forbidden lands within the ringed city some dozen miles away. Though the air was still, it was not silent. A murmurous rasp of voices seemed ever present, distant and soft as flowing water. But there was no flowing water on Eue, only scum-choked pools. Tilting my head, I moved toward the inner stair that led to the lip of the great eye.

The substance of the dead Watcher’s bone shimmered in the moonlight, glittering like crystal, like obsidian glass. So close, the witch-gleam from its interior was like the light of distant stars, fading even as I drew near. The whispering grew louder, drowning all quietude until I could hardly think, until each step was a trial requiring the utmost concentration. Dead as it was, something in that dread titan lived still. Some quantum ghost impressed upon the world.

“Te ka ke ku ta!”

I paused on the first step of the inner stair, sure that I had heard that voice with my ears and not my mind. The murmuring continued, but this was different. This was a voice, and unlike any voice—human or Cielcin—that I had ever heard. At first, I thought it one of the Irchtani, for a clicking sound accompanied it, each syllable clear and defined, separate from one another. But it was not the Irchtani language. How could it be? Nor was it Cielcin, sharp-edged and brutal. Neither was it the strange, half-forgotten tongue that had driven me unconscious when I’d first laid eyes upon the temple of the skull, the language—or so I guessed—of the Watchers themselves.

“E na ta te ta ka! Vi lu na!”

Crouching so low I almost crawled, I reached the top of the stair, my shadow cast miles long. The chamber within bulged all around, so that I had to clamber down a short flight of steps wrought of the familiar green Enari stone to a kind of raised aisle that ran along the floor of the dead behemoth’s eye socket. Ahead, stairs built into a narrow, vertical slit led upward along a channel once intended for the optic nerve toward a chamber higher still.

The chamber where the monstrous god’s brain once had been.

Huge stelai stood in rows to either side, Enari images rendered in delicate and extraordinary detail, depicting the crustacean creatures leading armies across the stars. Wide-eyed, I soaked the images in, not really processing them. I saw Enari kings leading war parties against three-legged giants and slithering, shapeless things. I saw them kneeling spider-like before the one-eyed figure of a leviathan with a hundred arms—and seeing it knew it to be the very creature in whose hollowed skull I stood.

Miudanar. The Dreamer.

“E ku la. Te ke la.”

The chanting brought me back to myself, and I hurried forward, mounting the inner stair. You must think me mad to hurry on, but I do not recollect feeling as though I had a choice. I was a dead man already.

The inner sanctum resolved only slowly. The crystalline dome above showed faint ridges where the long-vanished brain had pressed against the underside of the cranium. There were no windows. Here again were great stelai carved with relief images of conquest—ten feet around and three hundred high—that rose to the distant roof. Huge stone panels placed against the wall continued this motif, displaying scenes of empire underwritten by descriptions in the notched Enari script. The panel dead ahead showed the hundred-armed serpent Miudanar in the fullness of its life and living terror, grasping entire planets in its fists, their orbed shapes cracked and splintering in its talons, its single eye ablaze.

But all this carven splendor was lost on me.

For I was not alone.

Still hidden in the shadows by the stairs, I froze and watched the creatures at their ritual. Washed out and gray they seemed to me, like a fading memory or the ancient phototypes of the Mericanii which Valka and I had examined in Gabriel’s Archive, somehow unreal. And yet still they terrified.

The Enar stood perhaps chest high to a man, but were nearly three times as broad. Their bodies—heads—were all of chitinous gray plate, without eyes or any organ I could name save the mouth lost behind mandibles like grasping fingers. They could not have been blind—why build a city like Akterumu and cover it in art if they could not see it, after all? And yet none seemed to notice me, which seemed to me impossible. They stood on legs tipped with cloven talons that too closely resembled human hands, splayed fingers clicking as they moved. As in the case of their monuments, the number of leg-arms varied. Some had but four, others six, others eight. Different sexes, perhaps?

It didn’t matter.

There must have been two thousand of them packed into the high chamber, shoulder to shoulder or else clambering over one another like crabs in a pot.

“Zu ga ai ya te ka u!” proclaimed one with silver limbs I took for machine replacements who stood beneath the huge relief of Miudanar.

“Te ke li!” the crowd replied. “Te ke li! Te ke li!” And in that reply I recognized the ritual chant the Cielcin employed themselves. The continuity chilled me.

The leader raised two arms, grasping in its skeletal talons an amphora of black glass, carved—I think—from the very bones of the god in whose corpse we all stood.

“Ap su!” the Enar declared and drank.

“Ap su!” the others replied.

Almost at once, the high priest began to change. A black corruption blossomed across its face, and it hunched over, wheezing. Wisps of smoke arose, and the xenobite’s whole body shook and began to dissolve. The fast-corrupting flesh ran like wax along the floor, moving with a will of its own toward the others, who stooped and touched the fluid with the delicate feelers that encircled their mouths. Then they too began to smoke and dissolve and run out across the floor, even the chitinous armor of their shells dissolving to slime.

I drew back in horror as the puddle grew. The dark water expanded in perfect circles, each merging into each. Not sure what I was watching, or why, or how I’d come to see it, I remained silent, jaw clenched against the terrible murmuring noise of the temple. The Enar had died aeons before man parted ways with the apes, yet here they were, dying before my eyes.

As they lay dying, one of the Enar turned its face toward me, mandibles clicking, falling away. I could almost swear it saw me as it rotted to nothing. The black fluid began running down the steps, and I drew back, afraid to touch it.

In destroying their bodies, they had severed their connection with the material universe, I realized. With the Lie. The Enar had been servants of the Watchers, like the Cielcin after them. Failing to destroy creation, the iugannan, they had opted for suicide, opted to destroy themselves, to free themselves from this mortal coil.

Backing away down the steps, I shivered.

It made so little sense. They had been conquerors! A race of killers terrible in victory and majesty! They had ruled the stars and all the living things under them, and had done so with the blessing of monsters indistinguishable from gods. And they had sacrificed it all for . . . nothing, as though all they’d had and achieved meant nothing.

I turned to go, found myself facing not the steps down to the atrium, but steps down into limitless black. The whispering grew louder, but the black fluid was at my back, running down the steps in snaking tendrils. I had to move, and so descended.

And fell hurtling through naked space. The whispers turned to screaming, and I saw the many-legged things burn cities and worlds. The great empire of the Enar stretched across the galaxy, greenish obelisks and stelai rising under alien suns, decorated with the skins of their vanquished foes. I saw the armored conquerors standing over piles of bodies and of limbs, saw banners of striped hide still wet with gore and the dance of flames. They burned entire races, kingdoms and empires great and small. They sterilized planets, boiled seas, and torched green hills to glass. It was their hand, I saw—their conquests—that had left our galaxy so barren, so empty, so void of life when mankind arose to inherit the stars.

But they were gone, their worlds and armies were dust, and nothing of the Enar and their order and terror remained save old stones and ashes. And from those ashes new life arose, small and mean and stumbling.

Our forebears.

Cool stone pressed against my face, and I opened my eyes only slowly. I was lying on my belly in the chamber of the eye at the base of the stairs that ran down from the domed chamber and the remnants of the Enar sacrifice. Of the black fluid there was no sign.

“Yumnae shaan, Avarra-kita!” a rough voice cried out. The words were thick, strange, but strangely familiar, too.

This way, I interpreted. The language was like that of the Cielcin, but the vowels were strange, longer, with a curious atonal quality I had not heard in the xenobite’s tongue before. Footsteps sounded on the steps outside, and I roused myself, scrabbling across the raised floor to the shadows of one of the stelai. Images of the Enar flowed beneath my fingers as I peered out and around the bas-relief that spiraled round the column.

Two figures staggered over the threshold, looking up in wonderment and in terror, their black eyes wide and huge as fists. They were Cielcin, but dressed unlike any Cielcin I had ever seen. They wore no blacks, no ceramic armor fashioned to evoke skinned muscle, no black hoses and exposed tubes. They carried no nahute, nor wore masks of any kind. A filigree of azure lines stood out tattooed across their jaws and cheeks, and their garments were gray and bulky, with thick rings at the joints like the ancient pressure suits of our first sailors. They wore no helmets, but I could see the huge ring-locks about their necks where I guessed huge domes must fit to enclose their horned heads.

But it was their cloaks that drew my attention most. Pale white were they and roughly sewn—as of hides stitched together. Here and there the white was touched with blue to match the tattoos on the two Cielcin’s faces. They were Cielcin skins. I could see the shapes of arms and skinned hands—three and four—that, tied, held the garments in place.

Were they of another tribe? Another of the blood-clans I had not seen before? There had been differences in dress between the servants of Otiolo and those of Dorayaica, but nothing so extreme, nothing so brutal, so primitive and terrible.

The hindmost of the pair muttered something, and the leader hushed it.

“Shem nethta!” the other hissed, ordering its companion to silence. I found the language a little easier to understand now I knew what to expect. Raising its voice, the Cielcin said, “I have come, Miudanar! I have come as you asked!”

If the dead god answered the creature, I could not hear it.

“What must I do?” the Cielcin asked, and sank to its knees. “What must I do?”

A pause. An answer?

“Ba-yahiya ukoto,” it said, and standing drew a knife. By your will.

Yaiya toh.

“Avarra-kita,” the Cielcin said, turning. “Come here.”

The other Cielcin drew back, eyes wide, throat raised in submission and in fear. “Elu?” it said. “Veiyu! Veiyu!”

No! I translated. No!

But Elu, King of the Cielcin, did not hesitate in obedience. The bone-white knife flashed and bathed the sacred stones in ichor black as ink. Who had that other been? Its brother? Its companion? Its mate?

I was dreaming. I had to be. Elu had lived twenty thousand years ago, when man was young. As I watched, the great king knelt and took up the body of the Cielcin it had murdered. “Irnasar!” it cried out. I sacrifice! “I sacrifice to you, my god! Give me strength and the will to see your truth.”

Sure then that I was dreaming, I stepped out from behind the pillar and followed Elu through the arch of the eye and out into the darkness where an army of Cielcin stood covering the sands, their white and grimy faces turned toward their master with its sacrifice in its hands. Elu lay the body of the Cielcin called Avarra at the foot of the great stair. Unbidden, several of the others mounted the lower steps and knelt. There were thirteen. None seemed to notice me where I stood in the mouth of the eye above them, though the wind tossed my hair.

Thirteen.

Certain I was looking at the original aetane, the thirteen aeta who were the closest servants of the dread king itself, I descended the shallow steps. Torches burned in the hands of the congregation below, and a bloodstained Elu raised its hands toward its most faithful servants and said, “Build an altar. Bring oil.”

And Avarra burned, and the light of its burning filled the sky with fires to match the conquests of the Enar. How many peoples had they burned before finding us? Standing behind Elu above Avarra’s funeral pyre, I could look out at the stars above the ramparts of Akterumu and see those ancient conquests. I saw Cielcin armies sack a city of drum towers whose primitive, six-legged inhabitants bellowed in grief at the smoking skies. Raiding parties returned to Akterumu laden with treasure. With lapis and sapphires and crates of silver. With rolls of alien skins and strange spices brought from distant worlds. These they laid at the feet of their great king, and the once-great city of the Enar was great again.

In the service of their dead, dark god the Cielcin spread across the stars, and when Elu was gone their dominion splintered, the thirteen aetane leading their clans to scavenge far and wide. Still they returned to offer sacrifice at the altar where Elu had burned Avarra. And though Miudanar lay dead, it was not alone. One of Elu’s aetane strode across burning sands and knelt as tendrils hundreds of feet long crested from the dunes, segments stretching to reveal the vile flesh beneath. The aeta knelt and offered sacrifice.

The whispers grew louder, and the vision changed. Red desert collapsed into rosy cloud, and I glimpsed the shape of wings and heard a roar to deafen the very thunder. A shadow blotted out the sky. When light returned, I stood upon grassy lowlands beneath a clear blue sky. The shapes of what might have been men were it not for their tall scarlet crowns moved along the shore of a gray sea. The ocean boiled, and a great arm burst from its surface, hundreds of feet high. The army on the shore let out a cry of dismay as the arm slammed the surface of the water and cast a wave to drown them all. “Caiyuz!” they shouted. “Caiyuz!”

The wave broke.

“You’re trying to frighten me,” I heard myself say.

It was working. Not since the mountaintop on Annica had I felt so small and so alone.

I knew I was dreaming, knew that—unconscious—I had slid into the dream of Miudanar itself. Though dead, some spark of malice yet remained in the old bones.

You should fear, said a voice dead and dry as the dust of Eue.

I did not answer, but turned away. Tall grass swayed, green and beautiful. Behind me, the strange, red army died. Above me on the crest of a low hillock a black figure stood, horribly wrong beneath the limbs of trees.

Syriani Dorayaica advanced, azure cloak spreading behind it like wings. I could see the destruction reflected in its eyes. The Prophet moved toward me, pale face split in a glassy smile as it reached into the folds of its robe and drew out a wicked black object. Where it walked, the vision faded. Tore. Left only darkness.

It raised the black object—like a claw. Pale light blossomed, and a spike of crystal flowered in its fist. The highmatter sword crackled and sparked from some defect in the pentaquark matrix in the handle.

I reached down, forgetting that I had no sword. But my fingers—my five fingers—found the hilt. I was whole again, and armed, and drew my blade, highmatter flowering with a familiar and friendly hum. The alien shore and treeline vanished, and the Prophet and I stood facing one another beneath the stelai in the chamber of the eye. Syriani lunged like a tower falling, and I parried its blow with a groan. The blade circled round, whistling as the Prince of the Princes of Eue made to strike off my head.

Moving faster than I thought I had in me, I ducked the blow and thrust forward, forcing the giant beast to dodge. The alien weapon was longer than any human sword. Where had it gotten such a thing, and how? Had the sorcerers of MINOS wrought it for their Pale master? Or had the great prince captured and perverted the weapon of some doomed human knight? The blade hissed and spat like a live wire, and with each blow, each parry, my muscles cried out in pain. The giant rushed at me, blade falling like a mountain to crush me.

With desperation, I trapped the xenobite’s imitation blade against the quillions of my own, teeth clenched and snarling at the terrible strength in those alien thews. The great prince hissed at me, and spat. “I shall become a god!” it rasped, voice thin with strain.

And yet my blade advanced. Though Syriani had the strength, I had the leverage, and pressed the point of Olorin’s sword higher, angling it inward to kiss the demon’s neck. How many times in visions had I seen this moment? Our contest played out across potential time. How many times had I seen Syriani strike off my head, as Aranata had done?

Too many.

But never—not once—had I taken the demon’s head.

My blade sank into the dread prince’s flesh. Blood welled up about the shining blue-white blade. Not black! Not black, but silver! Blood like mercury sheeted down the Prince’s chest. I recoiled, and in doing so finished what I’d started.

The Prophet’s severed head tumbled and hit the floor. I turned to follow it, remembering how the world had tumbled as my own head fell from its shoulders. The head looked up at me, eyes flat and empty. But its lips moved, mouthed words I could not hear, but read on those writhing lips.

You cannot win.

Headless, the Prophet’s body did not fall. The silver blood that covered its chest was like a mirror. My own mangled face stared at me, deep gouges bright on my left cheek. A dry voice—the same dry voice that had issued soundless from the severed head—resounded in my chest, repeating the Prophet’s earlier boast.

I shall become a god.

Then something sprouted from Syriani’s severed neck, curled and flexed, bent hideously as talons bit into the Dullahan’s chest to find leverage.

Fingers.

A moment passed, and thin arms long as those of a fully grown man pushed themselves hideously from the ruined husk that once had been Syriani Dorayaica. Something terrible turned its narrow head to face me, and opened one lonely, burning eye.

I was afraid then—and awoke with a start.

The iron brazier lay toppled at the base of the stone bench the Prophet’s soldiers had given me for a bed. The coals still glowed cherry red on the greenish marble, and I understood that the thing had only just fallen down and awoken me. Everything that had just happened, everything I had seen, had happened in the space of a heartbeat, in the first gasping breath of sudden wakefulness. A chill wind squealed through the windows above, and looking up I found not the huge, deep window out of which I had fallen, but three narrow slits hardly a hand’s span wide.

There had never been a window large enough to climb through.

There had never been a way out.

The iron door ground open a moment after, and a guard peered in. The Cielcin had one milky eye, a hideous scar disfiguring the left side of its face. Seeing the fallen brazier, it grunted in a satisfied sort of way and slammed the door without so much as a word.

“A dream . . .” I told myself, clutching at my chest. The empty two fingers of my gauntlet folded strangely against my chest, and I remembered where I was, and all that had been done to me. A vision. And a cruel one at that. For a fleeting moment, I had been as I was before Dharan-Tun. Before the wall and the pit and the knife. So young I’d been, and strong.

Unbroken.

I held my breath to stop the tears from falling.