how the female force crams its resisted way
through night, through death, taking no “no” for answer?
Yet still Right’s anvil stands staunch on the ground,
and there smith Destiny hammers out the sword.
Should that force, that fierce gift, be used for ill,
delayed in glory, pensive through the murk,
Vengeance comes home. Yet odd the way of life,
for if the power’s used for good, then still
She comes; though in far other form, and strange …
In Sanctuary that day the smoke rose up to heaven, a sooty sideways-blowing
banner against the blue of early winter. Some of that smoke rose up from altars
to attract the attention of one god or another, and failed. Most of the
immortals were too busy looking on in horror or delight or divine remoteness as
their votaries went to war against one another, tearing the town into pieces and
setting the pieces afire. A god or two even left town. Many non-gods tried to:
some few succeeded. Of those who remained, many non-immortals died, slaughtered
in the riots or burned in the firestorms that swept through the city. No one
tried or bothered to count them all, not even the gods.
One died in Sanctuary that day who was not mortal (quite), and not a god
(quite). His death was unusual in that it was noticed-not just once but three
times.
He noticed it himself, of course. Harran had worked close to death much of his
life, both as apprentice healer-priest of Siveni Gray-Eyes and as the barber and
leech to the ersatz Stepsons. He knew the inevitable results of the kind of
swordcut that the great dark shape a-horseback swung at him. No hope, he thought