over the new grave. When the priests were out of sight Illyra scrambled back to
the mud-holes and whispered Dubro’s name.
‘Here,’ he hissed back.
She needed only one glance at his moon-shadowed face to know something had gone
wrong.
‘What happened?’ she asked quickly, unmindful of the sound of her voice.
‘Marilla? Did they bury Marilla?’
There were tears in Dubro’s eyes as he shook his head. ‘Look at her!’ he said,
his voice barely under control.
A mud-covered shroud lay some paces away. Dubro would neither face it nor
venture near it. Illyra approached warily.
Dubro had left the face covered. Holding her breath, Illyra reached down to peel
back the damp, dirty linen.
For a heartbeat, she saw Marilla’s sleeping face. Then it became her own. After
a second of self-recognition, the face underwent a bewildering series of changes
to portraits of people from her childhood and others whom she did not recognize.
It froze for a moment in the shattered image of the Face of Chaos, then was
still with pearly-white skin where there should have been eyes, nose, and mouth.
Illyra’s fingers stiffened. She opened her mouth to scream, but her lungs and
throat were paralysed with fright. The linen fell from her unfeeling hands, but
did not cover the hideous thing that lay before her.
Get away! Get away from this place!
The primitive imperative rose in her mind and would not be appeased by anything
less than headlong flight. She pushed Dubro aside. The acolytes heard her as she
blundered through the mud, but she ignored them. There were buildings ahead