Prolog.
The smoke was oppressive. It crept south into the Shu from the Shen, where sorcery had birthed fires when the invaders breached the Gate of Winter.
It brought chaos. Within it combatants recognized neither friend, foe, norfleeing civilian. Men struck now and wept later. Animals careened around inpanic. The heavy overcast turned back the light of day and worsened seeing.
Qushmarrahan, Dartar, and Herodian alike prayed for rain. Rain might quenchthe fires and cool the killing insanity.
Qushmarrah was lost but its men fought on. While Nakar lived they dared notsurrender.
The surrounding horizons were clear. It seemed the city was circumvallated bywalls of light. The clouds grew rapidly darker nearer the heart of the city.
Above the acropolis, over the citadel of Nakar the Abomination, those wereblack as the breath of Hell. The citadel's tower pierced their low bellies.
Lightning shattered darkness. Thunder crushed the uproar in the streets. Ahundred thousand smoke-teared eyes looked toward the sorcerer's stronghold.
Clouds above began to swirl, to stream inward, forming a whirlpool in the sky, a celestial maelstrom.
An end-of-the-world flash and crash rattled the city to its foundations.
The rains came. They fell in torrents like none before witnessed by man.
The sorcerer sat on his dark throne, amused. He would wait a while longerbefore he crushed the invaders. They would perish in agony, every one, Herodian and Dartar traitor ...
Something moved in the shadows at the far end of that last temple of Gorloch.
He sprang up, robes flying, eyes wide. He did not recognize the man but knewwhat he must be. "You!"
"Yes, High Priest." There was soft mockery in the voice. The man wore peasantgarb. He was too tall to be Herodian, too dark to be Qushmarrahan. The breathof the desert informed his voice but he was no Dartar. "Another has come."
Nakar relaxed. They came and they came but he devoured them all. "I shouldhave suspected." He chuckled. "Cado has been unnaturally lucky."
"Not my doing, wizard. Cado's genius, your failings, and human frailty."
The sorcerer sneered. "The fire is come. It will scour away the weakness ofAram. Herod's triumph will turn in her hands, like an adder. Gorloch willstand forth in his glory again. Come. I grow impatient. I will destroy themafter I finish you." He laughed. "Come, little dog of the desert. Let it bedone between me and yours. You are the last."
"No." The man's slow advance did not falter. "There is another trainingalready. Always there will be another somewhere, hidden from your eye, tillyou are driven from the world and torment it no more." A dagger flashed in hishand. It radiated power.
Fear touched the sorcerer for an instant. Then the rage came. He would sweepthem out of the path of destiny. "Gorloch, attend me!" He hurled himselftoward his challenger. They met before the great idol, beside the altar wherethousands had screamed their last that Gorloch might be pleased and hisapostle Nakar might live forever.
The Witch entered the temple as the men met. She gasped, unable to believeeven now that she saw it. How had the man gotten through the citadel'sdefenses? What man could have earned such great power?
Clouds of light and shadow contended. Larger than life, figures turned in analmost formal, elegant dance around the slice and dart of flashing mysticblades.
The shadow was overpowering the light slowly, consuming it, but she did notsee that in her fear for the man she loved. She saw only that an enemy wastrying to kill him and that enemy was a great enough wizard to have penetratedthe citadel's impenetrable defenses. She screamed, all reason fled before theprospect of loss. "Nakar!"
Startled, the shadow turned her way.
The light struck its blow.
Nakar's bellow shook the fortress. He lurched into his enemy, clawing at hisattacker's throat. Their struggle flung them against the altar.
The Witch wailed. She had killed him with her interruption. While they yetfought, before death claimed its prize, she wove her greatest spell ever, binding them in timelessness. Someday she would bring back the man she loved, when she found the way.
She finished. In pain, as she collapsed, she cried, "AZEL!" The summons rolledthrough the citadel but there was no answer. Nakar had sent his right hand faraway, to work his will in another land. There would be no help.
It was too late. For now.
The avalanche of rain faded as fast as it had come. The clouds blew away fromQushmarrah like the souls of men newly dead. Throughout the city men began tolay down their arms. Nakar was gone.
In the Shu the stillness yielded to the cry of a newborn. And a moment laterits cries were joined by those of another entrant into the lists of life.
The war ended. The wheel turned. A new story began.
The boys came up Char Street in a mouthy pack. The hazy turquoise of the baybacked them. There were twenty of them, ranging from three to eight years old.
The pretend they were playing reflected their parents' private rejection ofhistory. They were soldiers returning victorious from Dak-es-Souetta.
Their rowdiness caught the old woman's ear. She looked up from her mending. Ascowl deepened the wrinkles webbing her dark leather face. She thought theirparents ought to whip some sense into them.
One of the boys kicked something the size of a melon. Another raced forward, snatched it up out of the dust, shook it overhead, and shouted.
The old woman's frown deepened. Wrinkles became gullies of shadow. Where hadthey gotten a skull?
The boy dropped the headbone and booted it. It ricocheted off a man's leg.
Another man kicked it past the old woman. It vanished in a canebreak of legs.
That was a busy street.
The old woman saw char marks on the skull before it disappeared.
Of course. They were razing the ruins near the Gate of Winter where, afterbreaching the wall, several hundred invaders had perished in a fire touchedoff by errant sorceries. The area would be rich in treasures for small boys.
The pack raced after their plaything, disrupting commerce and generatingcurses both good-natured and otherwise. One boy, about six, stopped in frontof the old woman. He was very formal as he said, "Good afternoon, GrandmotherSayhed."
The old woman smiled. She had teeth missing. With equal formality, shereplied, "Good day, young Zouki. You've been exploring where they're tearingthe old buildings down?"
Zouki nodded and grinned. He was missing teeth, too.
At the beginning and at the end, toothless, the old woman reflected. LikeQushmarrah.
The boy asked, "Can Arif come out?"
"No."
Zouki looked startled. "How come?"