rather than in the bastard argot that passed for communication between the
cultures.
Lightning reflected off the courtier’s scalp as he ran to inform his mistress.
Molin slid behind a dirty tapestry into the honeycomb of narrow passages the
Ilsigi builders had put in the Palace and which the Beysibs had not yet
unraveled. Barely the height and width of an armed man, the passages were foul
smelling and treacherous, but they kept the remnants of the Rankan Presence in
Sanctuary united, to the consternation of their fish-eyed conquerors.
Molin emerged in an alcove where the sounds of the storm were inconsequential in
comparison to the fury emanating from a nearby room. An unnatural brilliance
filled the corridor before him. His skin tingled when he crossed the sharp line
from shadow to light. Thirty-odd years of habit told him to fall to his knees
and pray to Vashanka for deliverance-but if Vashanka could have heard him there
would have been no need for prayer. He told himself it was no worse than walking
on the deck of a sailing ship, and entered the nursery.
The blond, blue-eyed demon he’d named Gyskouras, on the advice of a S’danzo
seeress, was the focus of the brilliance. He was shouting as he swung his red
glowing toy sword, but the words were lost in the light. The other child, the
peaceful child of that S’danzo seeress, had a hold of Gyskouras’s leg, trying to
pull him away from the motionless body he was battering. Arton, though, was no
match for his foster-brother while the god’s rage was in him.