Her beynit vipers, tasting the incense and the music, rose from the panniers tobegin their own journey. Shupansea trembled involuntarily as the scales slidcoldly between her thighs- for the cosa was meant for the display andconvenience of the snakes, not the avatar. Three sets of fangs sank deep intosensitive skin: the beynit did not approve of her anxiety. Venom enough for thedeaths of a dozen men shot into her. She gasped then relaxed as the languidstrength of Mother Bey enveloped her.

She raised her arms, lifting the cosa away from her body. The serpents emerged,baring their moist fangs and their vermilion mouths. It was her priest's turn totremble anxiously. The Beysib priest summoned Molin to the altar where, withoutceremony or explanation, the ancient, bald man transferred the ritual artifactsfrom the old order to the new and ran from the room.

Molin held both with evident discomfort and outright fear. "What do I do?" hewhispered hoarsely.

"Complete the ceremony," the voice he had last heard in Stonnbringer's swirlinguniverse informed him from Shupan-sea's mouth. "Carefully."

Torchholder nodded. The vial contained blood from the Stormchildren, venom fromthe snake Niko had slain with Askelon's weapons, and ichor from Roxane's giantserpent which had been combined and distilled four times over with I powdersthe Beysib priests knew but had no names for. The ' scent of its vapors couldkill a man; a drop of the fluid might poison an army. Molin intended to be verycareful.

"The vial first," the avatar informed him. "Poured on the knife edge and offeredto each of our children."

Molin remained slack-jawed and motionless.

"The snakes," Shupansea's normal voice whispered, but the Rankan priest did notbegin to move. "Hold your breath," she added after a long pause.

He had once said to Randal that he did whatever had to be done, be it moving theGlobe of Power or unstoppering the lethal glass teardrop. He held his breath andtried not to notice the green-tinged fumes or the sizzling sound the liquid madeas it ate through the carpet and on into the granite beneath. The obsidian shookwhen he extended it toward the smallest of the serpents-the one with its leafnosed head resting on the Beysa's right nipple. He was prepared to die in anynumber of unpleasant ways.

The beynit's tongue flicked a half-dozen or more times before it consented toadd a glistening drop of venom to the sulphurous ooze already congealing on theknife edge-and it was the most decisive of the lot. His lungs strained tobursting and his vision drifting amid black motes of unconsciousness, Molinfaced the avatar again.

Shupansea held her hands out palms upward. He looked down and saw the latticework of uncountable knife-scars there. During his youthful days with the armieshe had killed more times than he cared to remember, and killed women more thanonce as well, but he hesitated-for once unable to do what had to be done.

"Quickly!" Shupansea commanded.

But he did not move and it fell to her to grab the knife, letting its noisomeedges sink deep. 0 Mother! she prayed as her blood carried its searing burdentoward her heart. It was too soon. The priests had said wait for the fifthdecoction; they had abandoned their offices rather than preside at her death.The serpents plunged their fangs into her breasts many times over but it wouldnot be enough. Not even the presence of Mother Bey within her would be enough tochange the malignancy Roxane had created. Clenching her fingers together, theBeysa heard the rough edge of the knife grind into bone but she felt nothing.

She fainted, although the lifelong discipline of Mother Bey's avatar was suchthat she did not topple to the ground. Still, she was oblivious to the agonywhen the imperfect decoction reached her heart and stopped it.

She did not hear the collective gasp that rose from Beysib and Rankan alike whenher eyes rolled white and the three serpents stiffened to rise two-thirds oftheir length above her shuddering breasts.

She did not feel Molin let go of the knife or see him ignore the hissing beynitto hold her upright when even discipline faded.

She did not hear Kadakithis's enraged shout or the slapping of his sandalsacross the stone as he raced to take her from the priest's arms.

She experienced nothing at all until the prince's tears fell into her open eyesthen she blinked and stared up at him.

"We've done it," she explained with a faint smile, letting the now-harmlessknife fall from her scarred, but uncut, hands.

But barely. Shupansea lacked the strength to gather the drops of blood nowwelling up on her breast in a second, pristine vial; nor could she take thatvial and place its contents on the lips of first Gyskouras, then Alton. Her eyeswere closed while everyone else prayed that the changed blood would awaken theStormchildren and they remained that way when the two boys began to move and achorus of thanks rose from the assembly.

"She needs rest," the prince told the staring women around them. "Call herguards and have her carried back to her rooms."

"She is alone with All-Mother," the eldest of the women explained. "We do notinterfere."

Kadakithis blinked with disbelief. "The goddess isn't going to carry her to bed,is she?" he demanded of their glass-eyed silence. "Well, dammit, then-I'll carryher."

He was a slight young man compared to any of the professional soldiers in hisservice, but he'd been trained in all the manly arts and lifted her weight withease. The trailing cosa tangled in his legs, very nearly defeating him until heplanted both feet on the gilt brocade and ripped the cloth from its frames. Thebeynit, their venom temporarily expended, slithered quickly out of his way.

"She is alone with me," he informed them all, striding out of the bedchamberwith the Beysa cradled in his arms.

Molin watched as they went through the doorway-turning left for the prince'ssuite rather than right toward hers. He suppressed a smile as the snakes foundsafe harbor with the other Beysib women, not all of whom were so comfortablewith a serpent spiraling under their garments as Shupansea had been.

Unimpressed by the ceremony surrounding them, the Storm-children behaved as ifjust awakened from their daily nap. They had already pulled the velvet hangingsfrom the altar. Arton twisted the cloth around his head in unconscious imitationof his S'danzo mother's headgear while Gyskouras put all his efforts intowrenching the golden tassels free from its comers.

The archpriest turned to his single acolyte, Isambard, who could scarcely beexpected to control the Stormchildren when they became either adventurous orcantankerous-which they were certain to do. "Isambard, go downstairs to thehypocaust room and remind Jihan that the children need her more than anyoneelse." The young man bowed, backed away, then scampered from the room.

Molin then turned his attention to the Beysibs in the room. The musicians hedismissed immediately, sending them on their way with only the most perfunctoryof compliments. The women stared at him, defying him to give them orders as theygathered up the discarded cosa and bore it reverently from the chamber. Thisleft him with a double-handful of priests, their foreheads still bent to theground, who had been left to him by Mother Bey's high priest.

Ignoring the holes and the sacrilege, he paced the length of the gold carpet andback again. "I think a feast is in order: a private feast. Something delicateand easily shared: shellfish, perhaps, and such fruit as remains in thepantries. And wine- watered, I should think. It would not do to dull theirappetites." He paused, waiting to see which shiny head would move first.