towards the terrified men in white.
Screaming, despite the drugs, they raced through the tent as he winnowed through
their numbers. The wisest, least drugged, plunged through the netting into the
company of musicians. The man-god stalked his ersatz-brethren as if the darkness
did not exist and with a vicious determination that bespoke his acceptance
of the role. He shoved the shrieking women aside with his free hand and
delivered the final strokes with the bloody sword. The killing completed, he
set about gathering the heads of his enemies and placing them in a gory heap
on the banquet table -a task made no easier to do or watch by the edgeless
sword he wielded.
Still kneeling among the pillows, Seylalha drew the sheer silk tightly around
herself, twisting the loose ends about her arms until she had become a sea
-green statue, for the cloth did nothing to conceal her beauty and little to
conceal her pale, quivering fear. When the blood-smeared stranger who was more
god than man had placed the last trophy upon the table he vented his divine
violence on the woman-garbed eunuchs. Seylalha pulled the pins from her hair;
the honey-brown cascade covered her eyes and hid her from the sight of the
guardians lying butchered on the ground. She took fistfuls of hair and pressed
them against her ears, but that was not enough to block the knowledge of how the
half-men had died. As she had done so many times as a child and as a woman, she
began to rock back and forth, keening softly to gods whose names she had long