mistress. And he was here only because of Tasfalen.
Nothing else could have done it. So he crouched down, thinking of ways to kill
the already-dead, ways to get the Roxane out of Tasfalen, where it was bodiless
and weak.
But then he began to listen, to try to understand what the thing on the bed was
saying: “Duuussss, duuussss, duuussss…”
“Dust?” he guessed. “Do you mean dust?”
The eyes of the revivified corpse blinked open, startling him so that he fell
back and caught himself on his hands.
“Duuussss,” the blue lips said, “on tonnnn.”
“Dust. On your… tongue?” Of course. That was it. The dust. It wanted the dust.
Not ordinary dust, Haught realized: the hot dust, the bright dust, the fragments
of the Nisi Globes of Power. And the corpse was right: the dust was their only
hope-his as well as… hers.
For the first time, Haught thought about what it meant, being caged with Roxane,
the Nisibisi witch-in-man’s-body-or what was left of her. If she perished, those
who held her soul would come for her. And Haught might be embroiled. Entangled.
Taken. Swallowed. Absorbed like interest payments.
His skin hompilated: there was enough intelligence in that body to have seen the
answer before he did.
What else was there, he was in no hurry to find out. And he had a long, trying
task ahead of him: the dust in question must be collected, mote by mote.
It was going to be arduous: the place was full of dust, most of it nonmagical.
It might take days, or weeks, or years, to gather enough-especially when he had
no idea how much was enough.