She turned, in time to see the last of them rush out of the tavern door.

Seerdomin snorted.

Impressively, the young woman held her ground. The robe fell open-lacking a belt-and Spinnock Durav judged she was barely adolescent. A priestess? Ah, the Great Barrow, the Redeemer. ‘Benighted,’ she resumed, in a voice that few would find hard to listen to, indeed, at length, ‘I am not here for myself. Those who were with me insisted, and even if their courage failed them at the end, this makes their need no less valid.’

‘They came with demands,’ Seerdomin said. ‘They have no right, and they re¬alized the truth of that as soon as they saw me. You should now do the same, and leave as they have.’

‘I must try-’

Seerdomin surged to his feet, suddenly enough to startle Garsten and Fuldit despite their addled senses, and both stared up wide-eyed and frightened.

The priestess did not even flinch. ‘I must try,’ she repeated, ‘for their sake, and for my own. We are beset in the camp-’

‘No,’ cut in Seerdomin. ‘You have no right.’

‘Please, will you just listen?’

The hard edge of those words clearly surprised Seerdomin. Garsten and Fuldit, collecting their tankards and bottles, quickly left the table.

Spinnock Durav rose, bowed slightly to both, and made for the exit. As he passed Resto-who stood motionless with a pitcher in his hand-he said under his breath, ‘On my tab, please-this entire night, Seerdomin will have no thought of you when he leaves,’

Resto blinked up at him, then nodded,

In the darkness opposite the Scour’s door, Spinnock Durav waited. He had half expected to see the pilgrims waiting outside, but the street was empty-they had fled Indeed, at a run, probably all the way back to the camp. There was little spine in the followers of the Redeemer.

With at least one exception, he corrected himself as the priestess stepped outside.

Even from ten paces away, he saw her sag slightly, as if finding herself on suddenly watery legs. Tugging the robe tight round herself, she set off, three, four strides, then slowed and finally halted to turnand face Spinnock Durav.

Who came forward. ‘My pardon, Priestess,’ he said.

‘Your friend took that pitcher for himself,’ she said. ‘Expect a long night. If you have a care you can collect him in a few bells-I’d rather he not spend a senseless night lying on that filthy floor.’

‘I would have thought the possibility might please you,’ Spinnock said.

She frowned. ‘No. He is the Benighted.’

‘And what does that mean?’

She hesitated, then said, ‘Each day, until recently, he came to the Great Bar¬row and knelt before it. Not to pray, not to deliver a trinket.’

Confused, Spinnock Durav asked, ‘What, then?’

‘He would rather that remain a secret, I suspect.’

‘Priestess, he is my friend. I see well his distress-’

‘And why does that bother you so? More than a friend might feel-I can sense that. Most friends might offer sympathy, even more, but within them remains the stone thought that they are thankful that they themselves do not share their friend’s plight. But that is not within you, not with this Seerdomin. No,’ she drew a step closer, eyes searching, ‘he answers a need, and so wounded as he now is, you begin to bleed.’

‘Mother Dark, woman!’

She retreated at his outburst and looked away. ‘I am sorry. Sir, the Benighted kneels before the Great Barrow and delivers unto the Redeemer the most precious gift of all. Company. Asking for nothing. He comes to relieve the Redeemer’s loneliness.’ She ran a hand back through her short hair. ‘I sought to tell him something, buthe would not hear me.’

‘Can I-’

‘I doubt it. I tried to tell him what I am sensing from the Redeemer. Sir, your friend is missed.’ She sighed, turning away. ‘If all who worship did so without need. If all came to their saviour unmindful of that title and its burden, if they came as friends-’ she glanced back at him, ‘what would happen then, do you think? I wonder…’

He watched her walk away, feeling humbled, too shaken to pursue, to root out the answers-the details-he needed most. To find out what he could do, for Seerdomin. For her.

For her?

Now, why should she matter? By the Abyss, what has she done to met

And how in the Mother’s name can Seerdomin resist her?

How many women had there been? He had lost count. It would have been better, perhaps, if he’d at least once elected to share his gift of longevity. Better, yes, than watching those few who’d remained with him for any length of time lose all their beauty, surrendering their youth, until there was no choice but for Kallor to discard them, to lock them away, one by one, in some tower on some windswept knoll. What else could he have done? They hobbled into lives of misery, and that misery was an affront to his sensibilities. Too much bitterness, too much malice in those hot, ageing eyes ever fixing upon him. Did he not age as well? True, a year for them was but a heartbeat for Kallor, but see the lines of his face, see the slow wasting of muscle, the iron hue of his hair…

It was not just a matter of choosing the slowest burning wood, after all, was it? And with that thought he kicked at the coals of the fire, watched sparks roil nightward. Sometimes, the urgent flames of the quick and the short-lived delivered their own kind of heat. Hard wood and slow burn, soft wood and smoulder¬ing reluctance before ashen collapse. Resinous wood and oh how she flared! Blinding, yes, a glory no man could turn from.

Too bad he’d had to kill every child he begat. No doubt that left most of his wives and lovers somewhat disaffected. But he had not been so cruel as to hesi¬tate, had he? No. Why, he’d tear those ghastly babes from their mothers’ arms not moments after they’d tumbled free of the womb, and was that not a true sign of mercy? No one grows attached to dead things, not even mothers.

Attachments, yes, now they were indeed a waste of time and, more relevantly, a weakness. To rule an empire-to rule a hundred empires-one needed a certain objectivity. All was to be used, to be remade howsoever he pleased. Why, he had launched vast construction projects to glorify his rule, but few understood that it was not the completion that mattered, but the work itself and all that it implied-his command over their lives, their loyalty, their labour. Why, he could work them for decades, see generations of the fools pass one by one, all working each and every day of their lives, and still they did not understand what it meant for them to give to him-to Kallor-so many years of their mortal existence, so much of it, truly, that any rational soul would howl at the cruel injustice of such a life.

This was, as far as he was concerned, the real mystery of civilization-and for all that he exploited it he was, by the end, no closer to understanding it. This willingness of otherwise intelligent (well, reasonably intelligent) people to parcel up and then bargain away appalling percentages of their very limited lives, all in service to someone else. And the rewards? Ah, some security, perhaps. The cement that is stability A sound roof, something on the plate, the beloved offspring each one destines to repeat the whole travail And was that an even exchange?

It would not have been no, for him, He knew that, had known it from the very first. He would bargain away nothing of his life. He would serve no one, yield none of his labour to the edification and ever-expanding wealth of some fool who imagined that his or her own part of the bargain was profound in its generosity, was indeed the most precious of gifts. That to work for him or her was a privilege-gods! The conceit of that! The lie, so bristling and charged in its brazen display!

Just how many rules of civil behaviour were designed to perpetuate such egregious schemes of power and control of the few over the many? Rules defended to the death (usually the death of the many, rarely that of the few) with laws and wars, with threats and brutal repression-ah, those were the days, were they not? How he had gloried in that outrage!