only sounds in the morning room for an hour. ‘Do you hear something?’ Mernorad
said suddenly.
Regli froze, then ran to the bedroom door. ‘Samlane!’ he shouted. ‘ Samlane /’
He gripped the bronze latch and screamed as his palm seared.
Acting with dreadful realization and more strength than was to be expected of a
man of his age, Mernorad ripped a battle-axe from the staples holding it to the
wall. He swung it against the door panel. The oak had charred to wafer thinness.
The heavy blade splintered through, emitting a jet of oxygen into the
superheated bedroom.
The room exploded, blasting the door away in a gout of fire and splinters. The
flames hurled Mernorad against the far wall as a blazing husk before they curled
up to shatter the plastered ceiling.
The flame sucked back, giving Regli a momentary glimpse into the fully-involved
room. The midwife had crawled from the bed almost back to the door before she
died. The fire had arched her back so that the knife wound in her throat gaped
huge and red.
Samlane may have cut her own jugular as well, but too little remained of her to
tell. She had apparently soaked the bedding in lamp oil and then clutched the
open flame to her. All Regli really had to see, however, to drive him screaming
from his house, was the boot knife. The wooden hilt was burned off, and the bare
tang poked upright from Samlane’s distended belly.
Samlor had asked a street-boy where the Temple of Heqt was. The child had
blinked, then brightened and said, ‘Oh – the Black Spire!’ Sitting on a bench