“Was he aware of you at all?” she asked.
“Not consciously.”
“His mind is tense and inward,” she said, “and easily threatened. Mostly he allows his psi to function only with verbalized thoughts, and that only guardedly.
“And your sight—could you see when you were out of the body?”
“Better than with eyes. More finely, and in every direction at once.”
She nodded. “And now?”
“I’m going to the two star men, Matthew and Mikhail, and see how things are with them—what the situation is.”
Concentrating but without effort he edged into thereness until he could see Matthew. He sensed at once the familiar feel of Draco’s dungeon, which he had not expected. He’d assumed they were Ahmed’s prisoners, and it had been clear earlier that Draco and Ahmed were enemies. Scanning, he sensed Mikhail nearby, the still catatonic Chandra, and a female with Chandra, desolate and in pain, that had to be the one called Anne Marie. The hostages had been brought together.
A dungeon captain, ill-at-ease, psi intent, was moving sword in hand down the alleyway between the rows of cells, and Nils withdrew. For only a minute he stayed in his body, sensing Ilse’s awareness, then left again.
Nephthys was alone at her loom, looking critically at a half-completed tapestry. She was conscious of him almost at once. Carefully she looked around, saw nothing meaningful, and took her lip thoughtfully between her teeth.
“I’m not asleep,” she thought. “Is it you? Can the dead return?”
He acknowledged that it was him. “Is the one called Ahmed still alive?” he asked.
“No. Draco had him killed and rules the entire army now.” She hesitated. “Do you know about your people?”
“What about them?”
“Ahmed made an alliance with them. Oh Nils, I heard they’d blinded you but I didn’t know you’d been killed.”
“They blinded me.” His mind was gentle but persistent. “What about my people?”
“They sent out an army to help Ahmed overthrow Draco. Ahmed had promised to protect them with his sky chariot if Draco tried to attack them in the open. They believed if Ahmed won he’d take us all to Egypt and leave this country to them. But now . . . ”
She paused and he finished for her. “And now Draco has the sky chariot and the whole orc army and plans to destroy us.”
Mentally she nodded.
“When?”
“I don’t know. As soon as his army reaches them. It left this morning.”
She looked around her again.
“I can see you now, barely, as if you were made of pale light. Can you let me see you better?”
He made a stronger facsimile of his body until it appeared almost like flesh. Nephthys reached toward him and touched . . . nothing. “Can’t you take me in your arms then?”
Gentle negative.
“You have sons. Two of them.” She walked to a slender silvered cord and somewhere a bell rang. Nils withdrew to near absence, and in a moment a servant entered.
“Bring the babies,” Nephthys ordered.
The slave girl curtsied and left. In three minutes she was back, pushing a large-wheeled crib of simple elegance, and left it. Somewhat, Nils reappeared.
“They are not light-skinned like you,” Nephthys said, “but they have hair.”
Nils smiled softly in her mind.
“I wish they could have known you.” She was suddenly forlorn. The response she read in him had nothing of regret or unhappiness, only a soft awareness akin to love. He began to fade.
“When Draco comes back from killing your people, he will die,” Nephthys thought alter him. “I promise you.”
He was gone.
Nils conveyed to Ilse what he had learned, then got up from the deck. “I need your help to bathe,” he said. “I smell of injury and old sweat.”
Ilse sat up and put her feet on the floor. “I’ll take you to a bathing place; they call it a ‘shower.’ It is very pleasant; you can have the water as warm or cold as you want. Come, I’ll help you.”
For lack of clothes to fit him, someone had cut and hemmed a sort of toga from a bed sheet until something better could be sewn. The man looked, Ram thought, like an artist’s conception of Alaric, the Visigoth chief, after his barbarians had sacked Rome. Alaric with his skull shaved and grown to disreputable stubble. Alaric with empty sockets ugly in his face. He’d have to have eye patches made.