'If she is with child?' Tempus continued.

'Then she will live out her days at the temple with the full honours of afreedwoman and the living consort of our god - as you know. Her power couldbecome considerable - though only time will tell. It depends on her, and thechild - if there is a child.'

'And if there is no child?'

Molin shrugged. 'In many respects it will be no different. It is not in thetemple's power to remove the honours we have bestowed. Vashanka saw fit toremove her from the inferno.' It was easier to imagine Vashanka possessingTempus than the Prince, but Molin had not become High Priest by speaking hismind. 'We acknowledge her as First Consort of Sanctuary. It would be best if shehad conceived.'

Tempus nodded and looked away. It was the signal the Prince had been waitingfor. He had been even more uncomfortable at this interview than Molin; Molin wasused to hiding secrets. The Prince left the chamber without ritual, leaving theHigh Priest and the Hell Hound together for a moment.

'I've talked with her often these past few days. Remarkable, isn't it, todiscover that a slave has a mind?' Molin said aloud to himself but for Tempus'sbenefit. If the Hound had an interest in Seylalha the Priesthood wished to useit. 'She is convinced she . slept with the god - in all other respects she isintelligent and not given to false beliefs, but her faith in her lover will notbe shaken. She dances for him still, in silence. I've replaced the silks, butwomen and eunuchs must come from the capital and that will take time.

'I watch her each evening at sunset; she doesn't seem to mind. She is verybeautiful, but sad and lonely as well - the dance has changed since the TenSlaying. You must come and watch for yourself sometime.'

1

Solstice storms and heat lightning beat upon Sanctuary, washing the dust fromthe gutters and from the faces of the mercenaries drifting through town on theirway north where (seers proclaimed and rumour corroborated) the Rankan Empirewould soon be hiring multitudes, readying for war.

The storms doused cookfires west of town, where the camp followers andartificers that Sanctuary's ramshackle facilities could not hold had overflowed.There squatted, under stinking ill-tanned hide pavilions, custom weaponerscatering to mercenaries whose eyes were keener than the most carefully waxforged iron and whose panoplies must bespeak their whereabouts in battle totheir comrades; their deadly efficacy to strangers and combatants; the dear costof their hire to prospective employers. Fine corselets, cuirasses ancient andmodern, custom's best axes and swords, and helmetry with crests dyed to ordercould be had in Sanctuary that summer; but the downwind breeze had never smelledfouler than after wending through their press.

Here and there among the steaming firepots siegecrafters and commanders offortifications drilled their engineers, lest from idleness picked men besuborned by rival leaders seeking to upgrade their corps. To keep order here,the Emperor's haifbrother Kadakithis had only a handful of Rankan Hell Hounds inhis personal guard, and a local garrison staffed by indigenous Ilsigs, conqueredbut not assimilated. The Rankans called the Ilsigs 'Wrigglies', and theWrigglies called the Rankans naked barbarians and their women worse, and noteven the rain could cool the fires of that age-old rivalry.

On the landspit north of the lighthouse, rain had stopped work on PrinceKadakithis's new palace. Only a man and horse, both bronze, both of heroicproportions, rode the beach. Doom criers of Sanctuary, who once had proclaimedtheir town 'just left of heaven', had changed their tune: they had dubbedSanctuary Death's Gate and the one man, called Tempus, Death Himself.

He was not. He was a mercenary, envoy of a Rankan faction desirous of making achange in emperors; he was a Hell Hound, by Kadakithis's good offices; andmarshal of palace security, because the prince, not meant to triumph in hisgovernorship exile, was understaffed. Of late Tempus had become a royalarchitect, for which he was as qualified as any man about, having fortified moretowns than K-adakithis had years. The prince had proposed the site; the soldierexamined it and found it good. Not satisfied, he had made it better, dredgingdeep with oxen along the shore while his imported fortifications crews raiseddouble walls of baked brick filled with rubble and faced with stone. Whencomplete, these would be deeply crenellated for archers, studded withgatehouses, double-gated and sheer. Even incomplete, the walls which barred thefolk from spit and lighthouse grinned with a death's-head smirk towards thetown, enclosing granaries and stables and newly whiled barracks and a spring forfresh water: if War came hither, Tempus proposed to make Him welcome for a longand arduous siege.

The fey, god's-breath weather might have stopped work on the construction, butTempus worked without respite, always: it eased the soul of the man who couldnot sleep and who had turned his back upon his god. This day, he awaited thearrival of Kadakithis and that of his own anonymous Rankan contact, to introduceemissary to possible figurehead, to put the two together and see what might beseen.

When he had arranged the meeting, he had yet walked in the shelter of the godVashanka's arm. Now, things had changed for him and he no longer cared to serveVashanka, the Storm God, who regulated kingship. If he could, he was going tocontrive to be relieved of his various commissions and of his honour bond toKadakithis, freed to go among the mercenaries to whom his soul belonged(since he had it back) and put together a cohort to take north and lease tothe highest bidder. He wanted to wade thigh-deep in gore and guts and see if,just by chance, he might manage to find his way back through the shimmeringdimensional gate beyond which the god had long ago thrust him, back into theworld and into the age to which he was born.

Since he knew the chances of that were less than Kadakithis becoming Emperor ofUpper and Lower Ranke, and since the god's gloss of rationality was gone fromhim, leaving him in the embrace of the curse, yet lingering, which he hadoriginally become the god's suppliant to thwart, he would settle for a smallmercenary corps of his own choosing, from which to begin building an army thatwould not be a puerile jest, as Kadakithis's forces were at present. For this hehad been contacted, to this he had agreed. It remained only to see to it thatKadakithis agreed.

The mercenary who was a Hell Hound scolded the horse, who did not like its newweighted shoes or the water surging around its knees, white as its stockings.Like the horse, Kadakithis was only potential in quest of actualization; likethe horse, Kadakithis feared the wrong things, and placed his trust in himselfonly, an untenable arrogance in horse or man, when the horse must go to battleand the man also. Tempus collected the horse up under him, shifting his weight,pulling the red-bronze beast's head in against its chest, until the combinationof his guidance and the toe-weights on its hooves and the waves' kiss showed thehorse what he wanted. Tempus could feel it in the stallion's gaits; he did notneed to see the result: like a dancer, the sorrel lifted each leg high. Then itgave a quizzical snort as it sensed the power to be gained from such a stride:school was in session. Perhaps, despite the four white socks, the horse wouldsuit. He lifted it with a touch and a squeeze of his knees into a canter nofaster than another horse might walk. 'Good, good,' he told it, and from thebeach came the pat-pat of applause.