One-Eye said, “While they’re getting caught up I want you to climb in the wagon and go for a stroll with the ghost. Whoa, boy! Let’s not get so eager. If the Old Man wants you to see me about your dreams there’s only one possible reason.” He looked over his shoulder. He laid a really hard look on mother and son. “Something he told me to spend some time on before you all took off for your adventures over here.”

“Think you can get to the point?” I had both hands on the wagon’s tailgate.

“All right, smartass. You get in there, you take Smoke back to the night your wife died. You watch it happen.”

“Goddamn it!”

“Shut up, Kid. I’ve had all your self-pity I can handle. So’s the Old Man, I guess. You want to be able to deal with these dreams, you go back there and take a damned good look at what made you the way you are right now. You watch every second of it. Three times, if that’s what it takes. Then you come back and we’ll talk.”

I started to argue.

“You shut your mouth and do it. Or you just stay away and spend the rest of your life living in your own fantasies.”

He pissed me off so bad I wanted to jump his ass. Which would not be wise on several counts. I let the anger give me a boost as I hoisted myself into the wagon.

I guess you do not quite know yourself, ever. I really did believe I had it handled until the encounter with Kina, the temptation of the impossible promise to give me back my dead. After that the pain had grown back up again.

It was amazing how much I did not want to go watch Sarie die. The force that moved me on, that convinced me I had to do it, was a whiff of carrion I caught as something that might have been Kina passed me in the ghost world. Looking for me?

I found the Palace. I stalled by looking in on the Radisha Drah. Not much had changed except that word had arrived about the triumph at Charandapresh. Debate was more lively now, with the Radisha forced to take the unpopular viewpoint and remind her fellow conspirators that this unexpected victory did not mean that Longshadow had been conquered. In the end she closed debate by ordering Cordy Mather to take a party of fact finders south to gather reliable information. A bureaucratic solution that just pushed back the day of treachery.

With a reluctance I did not entirely fathom, so powerful was it, I rode Smoke to my old quarters. They were unoccupied still. Everything lay where I had left it, gathering dust.

I had Smoke move backward, very gingerly as we approached the time when the evil had occurred. For some reason I felt it was very important that I not encounter my previous self. That if I did so I would get caught back there living the whole thing over again just as I had a number of times with my plunges into the darkness of Dejagore.

Maybe I could warn Sarie. That woman in the swamp had been aware of me for an instant. Maybe someone who knew me as well as Sahra did, and me wanting to change things as much as I did, could force a warning across the barrier of time.

It seemed my trips back to Dejagore may have changed a few things, though there was no way to be sure.

There. Guards and whatnot rushed all over the place. Some chased Stranglers, some headed for my apartment. This would be after I had arrived myself. So I needed to jump maybe another half hour.

I did so, going down to the entrance the Deceivers had used to penetrate the Palace. I had seen these murders before because I had been curious how men so alert could be taken by surprise. The first couple of Deceivers came disguised as temple prostitutes fulfilling their obligations to their goddess. It had not occurred to the guards to turn the ladies down. That would have been sacrilegious.

This was before I became involved. I jumped upstairs, to the apartment, where my mother-in-law and Sarie were doing housework, concluding the day. Uncle Doj and To Tan were asleep already. Thai Dei was not, probably because he was waiting for me to return from a job where he had not been welcome. He had his eyes closed and seemed to be trying to shut out his mother’s carping two rooms away.

How Sarie managed I do not know. Particularly when I was the object of this diatribe.

Mother Gota was more fierce than usual. She wanted to know when Sahra was going to abandon this headstrong idiocy—a thousand curses upon the head of Hong Tray—and get herself back to the swamps where she belonged. There was still a chance she could marry, though certainly not well, seeing as she was past her best years and she had allowed herself to be defiled by a foreigner.

Sarie took it with such calm I knew she was accustomed to it and did not let her emotions be touched. She went about her business as though her mother was not speaking at all. Soon they finished what they were about. Sahra went to our room without so much as a “Good night,” which only irritated her mother more.

I always knew Mother Gota did not approve of me and suspected she talked behind my back but I never guessed it had gotten that virulent. The sound of it told me the only reason Mother Gota had come to Taglios was to get her daughter back home.

I was aware that she had broken some tribal taboos in coming to me but I had misjudged the true depth of feeling of the Nyueng Bao toward outsiders.

The apartment became very quiet. To Tan and Uncle Doj were snoring. Sarie fell asleep almost instantly. Mother Gota was too busy complaining to turn in immediately.

She did not need an audience, apparently.

I was there hovering when the apartment door opened and the first Strangler slipped inside. He was a black rumel man, an assassin who had killed many times. One after another, a whole troop followed him in. They believed they were going to attack Croaker, the Liberator. The last reliable intelligence they had from inside the Palace had Croaker living in this apartment. He had turned it over to me little more than a week before.

The results were unfortunate for everyone but the Old Man.

Moments after they entered they were aware that there were several people in the apartment. They whispered too softly to be heard. Fingers pointed. They split into four teams, three of three men each while another half dozen stayed in the main room, just inside the hall door.

To Tan, Thai Dei and Uncle Doj were nearest that room. To Tan was nearest of all. Then Uncle Doj. Then Thai Dei.

To Tan never had a chance. He never woke up. But Thai Dei was not asleep yet and Uncle Doj must have had a guardian angel. He popped up as the Strangler team hit him. The arm-holders, whose task it was to keep the victim from defending himself while the senior Strangler got his rumel around his neck and finished him, were not strong enough for their task. He threw them off, then dropped the master Strangler with a violent smash from an elbow. Before the other two could get back at him he reached Ash Wand.

Thai Dei came to his feet as the door to his room swung inward. The arm-holders hit him as he headed for his swords, flinging him violently across the room but not before he got hold of his shortsword.

Thai Dei shouted warnings as he lashed out.

The Stranglers waiting in the main room stormed back to help their brothers. By the time they arrived Mother Gota was up and flailing around with a sword and Sahra, who had no weapon whatsoever and no way out of our room except through the melee, was trying to find some way to block the entrance.

I studied the next two minutes over and over. During them a dozen people died. All of them Deceivers. Thai Dei managed to get his arm broken. Uncle Doj chased survivors into the hall.

It did not happen the way I had been told but it was close enough to that point. But afterward no bad guys got in behind Doj and murdered Sahra. Sahra was in bad shape but she was alive. When Doj returned from the chase Mother Gota suggested she be given something to calm her down. Uncle Doj agreed. In minutes Sahra was out, in the bed where I would see her shortly.