out of his mouth he fell forward against Molin. “I didn’t mean it. I didn’t mean
it. I told him to get up an’ he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t get up.”
It was only Molin’s experience with the children that let him make sense out of
Gyskouras’s garbled syllables-that and the fact that he’d known, in his heart,
what had happened as soon as the storm began.
“You didn’t know,” he repeated softly to convince himself, if not the child.
Gyskouras fell asleep once his sobs subsided; the Storm God rages always
exhausted the small body of their perpetrator. Molin carried an ordinary child
to a small bed where, with any luck, he would sleep for two or three days.
‘”Kouras can’t stay here any longer,” Arton said, tugging at the hem of the
priest’s much-abused tunic.
The S’danzo boy rarely spoke to anyone but his foster-brother. Torchholder let
Arton take his hand and lead him to a corner away from the others who were
beginning to return to the now-quiet nursery.
“You have to find a place for us, Stepfather.”
“I know, I’m looking. When I hear from Gyskouras’s father-“
“You cannot wait for Tempus. You must pray. Stepfather Molin.”
Talking with Arton was not talking to a milk-toothed child. The seeress had
warned him that her son might have the legendary S’danzo ability to foretell the
future. At first Molin had refused to believe in the child’s pronouncements,
until Arton had utterly rejected Kadakithis and the Prince had finally owned up
to Gyskouras’ true paternity. Now he trusted the child completely.
“I have no gods to pray to, Arton,” he explained as he walked toward the door.