From the doorway leading back to the blue room, there was groaning and hissing. More of the things were stumbling in. Almighty God help us.
“This isn’t working. You have to do something,” she said to her husband. She felt his long-fingered hand on the small of her back and some part of her was less afraid. Then she heard him mumbling sonorously in that magical nonlanguage that she’d never come any closer to understanding in their thirty years together. He was preparing to release the energies he’d been holding at bay.
“All of you, get behind Dawoud!” she screamed at her companions. Raseed and Zamia obeyed. But she saw sadly that Roun Hedaad could not —he lay dead, half his head cleaved off. Two of the skin ghuls were tearing at the dead captain’s chest, trying to get at his heart. Trying to feed.
She stepped behind her husband, whose chanting had grown unnaturally loud. His sweet, gravelly voice never sounded so strong as when he spoke a spell, she thought. It was in the instant that a spell left his lips that he seemed most a man to her.
He fell silent and pointed his palms at the advancing horde of monsters—there were near a dozen of them in the Green of Beasts now. A great blast of light —a glowing, golden beam as bright as the midday sun above them—shot forth from her husband’s hands and slammed unerringly into the skin ghuls. She’d once seen that beam reduce a standing man to ashes. And for a moment, as the beam bowled over the whole pack of creatures, Litaz dared to hope her husband’s magic had prevailed. Every single one of the skin ghuls lay still, smoke rising from their bodies.
She heard Dawoud draw in an exhausted, rattling breath, watched two new wrinkles suddenly seam his face.
Then she saw movement among the skin ghuls’ bodies. Her heart dropped. The creatures had simply been slowed—already, they were starting to scrabble back to their feet. “What now?” Dawoud asked, panting such that she thought he might die.
Only ten years ago, he’d have been standing tall after casting that spell, she worried. “I don’t know,” she said. “We can’t fight these things B.
Dawoud’s spell bought them enough time to race through a great archway, out of the Green of Beasts and into a roofed room—a small stone antechamber.
Raseed and Zamia followed, but the dervish made an annoyed noise. “Auntie! Retreat is not the way of the Order—”
“Nor of the Badawi,” Zamia’s half-lion voice broke in.
Through the archway she saw the skin ghuls gather themselves into a mockery of a guard-squad and march slowly toward them. They had no time for this. “Stupid children!” Dawoud bit off between breaths, echoing her thoughts. “Those are skin ghu ls! Lion-claws, spells and solutions, forked swords—they are all of them useless against those monsters, if the old books are to be believed. Only Adoulla would know how to kill these things. And if we can’t—”
He stopped speaking as a blood-curdling scream rent the air —a scream Litaz recognized. It was coming from the next room. Adoulla! Hold on, old friend, we’re coming! At the very least, we’ll all die together!
Zamia and her companions stood in a small antechamber off of the Green of Beasts. “Only Adoulla would know how to kill these things.” Dawoud Son-ofWajeed said. “And if we can’t—”
Zamia heard a familiar voice scream from the next room. The Doctor! With lion-speed she flew forward into a great columned chamber, Raseed moving beside her. She was still weak from her earlier injuries, and holding onto the shape took every bit of strength she could muster.
The room was a riotous mix of scents and sights. The Falcon Prince and a boy sitting on a throne, shouting. Men’s corpses. A wall of light. More of those gibbering monsters. A gaunt, black-bearded man who smelled of unnatural filth.
Zamia shut it all out and focused on what had brought her here —Mouw Awa the manjackal, hunched over the body of the Doctor. She pictured her band’s bodies, and drew new strength from her rage.
She shot past Raseed, never taking her eyes off of Mouw Awa. “This one is mine!” she growled. She slammed into the shadow-creature, raking out with her claws and knocking the thing yards away from the Doctor. Raseed turned to face some new threat and was lost to her sight. The manjackal’s eerie voice filled her head. The Kitten! No! She hath been slain by Mouw Awa! The savage little lion-child hath been slain!Mouw Awa’s shadowy shape backed away as Zamia approached.
Zamia snarled. “Not quite. You are afraid, creature? Good!” She felt bold, as a Badawi tribeswoman ought to. It felt as if her father were speaking through her. She tensed herself to strike. She leapt, but Mouw Awa moved too quickly. It scrabbled back, and her claws cleaved only air. The monster snapped at her once, twice. But she was ready for its every desperate strike. Mouw Awa was fighting fearfully. The th Bkt. a great coing was truly part jackal—cruel to a helpless foe, but cowardly when facing one who could kill it.
She slashed out again with her claws and made deep gouges in the shadow-flesh. Mouw Awa howled in pain. No! She hath hurt Mouw Awa!
The creature lunged and missed again. Her counter-strike only grazed it.
They circled each other, each searching for an opening. It tried to rattle her with that mad mouthless voice.
Dost thou remember the pain? The sickness when Mouw Awa’s fangs sank into thy soul? Yes! Thou dost recall it. She paid little attention to the words in her head. Her vengeance was at hand.
Mouw Awa feinted, then, more quickly than she’d thought possible, snapped at her again. Its jaws found only air but it grappled her to the ground. Corpse-stinking, shadowy claws dug into her flanks. The pain nearly made her black out.
She could feel more than see something that was once a man sneer somewhere within those shadows. The kitten doth hope to baffle his blessed friend’s plans! No! Mouw Awa’s mangling maw doth—
She saw her chance and struck. Swooning with pain and calling upon the Ministering Angels, Zamia twisted violently. Now her forepaws pinned the screaming monster to the ground. No! Cheated! Mouw Awa the manjackal hath been cheated! The rest of the room melted away. Zamia saw nothing, heard nothing, smelled nothing except the foe before her. Bracing herself, she plunged her maw to Mouw Awa’s throat and tore, ripping away shadows as solid as flesh. The manjackal, howling without words now, punched and clawed at her sides.
But she sank her teeth deeper and deeper until she tore Mouw Awa’s throat out. The manjackal’s clawing briefly grew stronger, then stopped completely.
She choked, the foulest of foul tastes filling her mouth and nostrils. Without willing it, she shifted out of the lion-shape.
She rose shakily to her feet. The shadows that Mouw Awa had seemed to be formed from swirled and rose like smoke. Some unseen, unfelt wind tattered the shadows until they were but dark wisps. Then the wisps themselves gusted into nothingness.
What was left on the p alace floor was a man’s skeleton. Hadu Nawas. The Child-Scythe. Instead of a man’s skull, the corpse had the skull of a jackal. The sight brought to mind wind-stripped bones of the desert—and all she had lost among the sands.
She kicked the skeleton with a booted foot, and it instantly crumbled to dust. She closed her eyes against the agonizing pain of her wounds and sank back to the stone floor. My band is avenged. The Banu Laith Badawi are avenged.
Zamia dared to tell herself that her father would be proud.
And then she was sick. Over and over again, until tears filled her eyes and her stomach ached, she was sick.
Raseed heard the Doctor scream and, heedless of whatever danger might lie ahead, shot forward as fast as his feet could carry him. He entered a vast columned room with a great dais at its center. He saw the corpses of the Khalif and a black-robed man—a court magus, he guessed—sprawled on the ground. A gaunt man in a filthy white kaftan stood above the corpses. Several skin ghuls were pounding on a wall of shimmering light.
Upon the dais was a high-backed throne of bright white stone. The Falcon Prince sat on the throne, hands clasped with a longhaired young boy by his side. Pharaad Az Hammaz was shouting. “It’s not working. IT’S NOT WORKING!”
Raseed didn’t know or care what the traitor was going on about. His attention was on the floor beside the dais, where Mouw Awa crouched over the Doctor, who screamed in pain. He had to help his mentor. The manjackal was distracted and Raseed, moving faster than he’d ever moved in his life, flew at the thing.
But, fast as he was, Zamia Banu Laith Badawi was faster. A bolt of golden light, she shot past him, growling “This one is mine!” and barreled into Mouw Awa, knocking the manjackal from the Doctor. Raseed spared a glance at the combatants, light and shadow battling in a tangle of claws and growls. Then he saw the man in the soiled kaftan—Orshado, it had to be—dash forward and calmly touch the wall-of-light. There was a flash of red, and the wall was gone. At a gesture from Orshado, the skin ghuls, no longer impeded, strode toward the throne.
Raseed reached the Doctor. Clawmarks had shredded the Doctor’s kaftan, though Raseed could see no blood. Around the rims of the Doctor’s eyes, Raseed could see a red that was brighter than bloodshot.
“Ministering Angels! Doctor, are you…What can I do?” he asked, ashamed to feel as frightened as he did. “Raseed bas Raseed,” the Doctor said, his voice hollow and vacant. “A good man…a good partner.” Raseed grabbed the ghul hunter by the shoulders. “Doctor, please! How can we kill these things?”
The Doctor’s bright brown eyes seemed to struggle against the red light that rimmed them. “Hunh? Be…behead. Stop skin ghuls!”
“I did behead one, Doctor, it just—”
“O…Orshado.” It was the last thing the Doctor said before he fell into some sort of sorcerous deathsleep.
Orshado. Then the ghul of ghuls himself must be beheaded!
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw gouts of magical flame—Litaz and Dawoud battling yet more skin ghuls. He didn’t know what had become of Zamia. Raseed laid his mentor’s big limp bo dy carefully upon the dais. He looked up and saw Orshado leap impossibly—magically—onto the throne itself. The ghul of ghuls backhanded Pharaad Az Hammaz with a, no doubt, sorcerous strength. The master thief dropped his sword and fell from the throne onto the dais. Then Orshado, one foot planted on the throne, grabbed the child—the Heir, Raseed realized—by his long, jet-black hair and dre Bk row a knife.
He’s going to drink the Heir’s blood, just as that scroll said.
Orshado’s curved knife darted up and down, and the Heir screamed in pain. A red spray spattered Orshado’s kaftan. At the same time, the half-conscious Falcon Prince spoke a single word and made a strange gesture. Then he reached past the bleeding Heir and pressed something on one of the throne’s armrests. Raseed heard a loud click and a groan of shifting stone.
Another secret that the Khalifs never learned of? It seemed so, for below him the floor swiftly receded as the throne and the entire dais it sat on—with Raseed, the Doctor, the Heir, Pharaad Az Hammaz, and Orshado all on it—rose on some sort of column.
Raseed gave the Doctor’s limp form one last pained glance, then looked back to Orshado. The ghul of ghuls plunged his knife into the Heir’s chest a second time.
Raseed leapt toward the throne. Almighty God, though I know I am unworthy, I beg You to grant Your servant strength!
He flew at Orshado. But the ghul of ghuls waved his hand, and then something strange—something impossible—happened. The throne room around them ceased to be. Where stone walls and ceiling had been there was only swirling red light. Raseed’s companions were gone. Orshado and his monsters were gone. Raseed was alone.
What foul magic is this?
Raseed looked around frantically, trying to find a ceiling, a floor, or a door. But there was only the churning whorl of red light. He went into his breathing exercises, and with them came a degree of calm. He recited scripture. “Though I walk a wilderness of ghuls and wicked djenn, no fear can cast its shadow upon me. I take shelter in His—”
The Heavenly Chapters died on Raseed’s lips as a man appeared before him.
The man carried a spear. He was roughly dressed and had a gruesome sword wound through his middle. He should not have been able to stand. Something about his face was familiarto Raseed… One of the highwaymen! When Raseed had first left the Lodge of God two years ago, he had been ambushed by three highwaymen on the long road to Dhamsawaat. He had slain them with ease. This was the first man Raseed had ever killed.
The man looked at Raseed with empty eyes and spoke.
“‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP!’”
At the sound of that voice quoting from the Heavenly Chapters, Raseed froze in fear. The man’s mouth moved, but the voice that spoke the scripture was Raseed’s own—the doubting internal voice he often heard in his head.
As the man spoke, the other two highwaymen whom Raseed had killed on that day appeared. One had half his head missing, the other bled from his chest. They joined in the chanting, each speaking in Raseed’s own voice.
“‘O BELIEVE Bkeed the otherR! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP!’” Another mangled man blinked into existence beside Raseed. The magus Zoud, who had been kidnapping women, wedding them, then feeding them to his water ghuls. Raseed had killed the man on his first ghul hunt with the Doctor.
“‘O BELIEVER! KNOW THAT TO MURDER ANOTHER MAN IS TO MAKE GOD WEEP.’” Another wicked man whom Raseed had slain appeared. Then another. As one, the dead men stepped toward him. And at last Raseed felt movement return to his limbs. He slashed out with his sword at the closest form, but the forked blade whistled through the highwayman as if through empty air. He feared the touch of those dead men’s hands more than he had ever feared anything, though he could not say why. He backed away step by step, keeping his eyes on them.
Behind him he heard a great whoosh of fire. He felt his blue silks singeing. Prying his eyes from the dead men, he turned toward the horrible heat. He saw a vast chasm filled with water-that-was-fire. The Lake of Flame! I have been consigned by God to the Lake of Flame! The dead men advanced. Raseed backed away a few more steps and felt the heat at his back begin to scald his skin. From nowhere and everywhere he heard a soft weeping that sounded like the universe being torn in two.
But then, beneath that, he heard another voice. Dim and distant, he heard Doctor Adoulla Makhslood’s words from moments ago.
“Raseed bas Raseed. A good man…a good partner…”
Raseed clung to the words as if they were the sheltering embrace of God Himself. He found power in them.
No. This flame is not real. These men are dead. I have served Almighty God as best I can. I have failed at times, but “Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives.”
Around Raseed, the thick, roiling red glow wavered and seemed to thin. The dead men disappeared. For the briefest of moments, he saw a gaunt figure in a soiled kaftan before him.
Orshado! This is his doing, not God’s!
It lasted only an instant, and then the dead men were on him again, herding him toward the Lake of Flame. Raseed felt his flesh burn but he stifled his screams. He forced focus upon his thoughts as he never had before. He pictured the Doctor, Litaz, and Dawoud. He pictured Zamia Banu Laith Badawi, who had dared to speak to him of marriage. He thought of the flaws they all had and the good they had done. And he heard himself chanting.
“‘Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives. Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives. Perfection is the palace in which God alone lives.’”
Again the churning red light wavered and thinned. Again he saw Orshado standing there. Raseed flew forward, the chant on his lips, his head filled with thoughts of his friends. The red light dispersed. The dead men did not return. He slashed his sword at Orshado, and felt as if he were breaking through a brick wall.
He heard the gurgling scream of a man with no tongue. Then he was in the throne room again, on the rising dais. The Heir lay bleeding on the throne and Orshado stood before Raseed, clutching his temples in pain. It was as if time had stood still while he’d faced the death-specters.
The agony they’d caused was still with him. Pain blazed through Raseed’s body, and his back burned. But he forced himself forward, slicing out again with his sword as he did so. Manjackal, sand ghuls, skin ghuls. Again and again these past few days, Raseed’s sword arm had proven too weak to vanquish the creatures of the Traitorous Angel. But now he felt filled with God’s power. He was the Weapon of the Wisely Worshipped.
This was the moment that he had lived his whole life for.
The force of Raseed’s blow carried him and Orshado both away from the throne and over the edge of the dais, which had now risen halfway to the ceiling. They plummeted to the floor as Raseed’s sword sliced through the ghul-ofghuls’ neck.
The man in the soiled kaftan made no noise, even as he died.
Raseed felt his bones break as he hit the stone floor. He cried out in pain, but in his mind he heard only the Heavenly Chapters. God is the Mercy that Kills Cruelty.
Beside him he saw Orshado’s headless corpse twitch once and fall still. Raseed tried to stand but felt the pain pulling him down into darkness. He watched the dais —with the Doctor, the Heir and the Falcon Prince still on it—rise on a notched column of marble carved to look like the scaled length of a cobra. A stone block in the ceiling slid aside. The throne ascended through the resultant hole, the underside of the dais fitting perfectly into it. There was another loud sound of grinding stone and the contraption stopped moving.
For another astonished moment, Raseed just stared at the ceiling that had swallowed the Doctor. He noted with satisfaction that the skin ghuls were all falling to the ground.
Then the pain blazed again and darkness took him.
Adoulla Makhslood felt as if a great gray boulder were crushing down upon his soul, smashing to bits everything within him that had ever been happy. He half-sensed things happening around him—a lion running by, bursts of fire in the air, the soft footsteps of a man in a filthy kaftan, his own mouth mumbling words to a man in blue—but they meant nothing to him. He felt that he was dying and that he was being shoved from the sheltering embrace of God. In all his years on God’s great earth, he had never felt such despair.
Then he heard the howl of a jackal that was somehow also the scream of a man. And the next moment he felt the merciful hand of Almighty God rolling the soul-crushing boulder away. He blinked away tears of grateful joy. He heard a loud sound of grinding stone and a click like something sliding into place. He rubbed his eyes and sat up. His chest blazed with pain and his kaftan was shredded. But when his fingers felt for wounds they found none.
And then it all came back to him. The things his eyes had seen while his soul was behind a screen of shadow. Mouw Awa attacking B gh toohim. Zamia attacking Mouw Awa. Orshado stabbing the heir. The throne climbing to the ceiling.
Adoulla struggled to his feet and tried to sort his thoughts. I am alive. Which must mean that Mouw Awa has been destroyed. But what of its master? He saw no sign of Orshado. He was in a very small stone room without windows or doors. The throne-dais had somehow risen into this chamber, and it filled most of the room. The Heir’s unmoving body was sprawled across the Throne of the Crescent Moon, which was spattered with the boy’s blood. Pharaad Az Hammaz was hunched over the dead Heir.
And there was blood dripping from theman’s lips.
Adoulla fell to his knees, and his joy at having dodged a dark death fled. He screamed wordlessly at the foul act he was witnessing. The Prince looked at him, the guilt on his face as visible as the blood was. “The boy asked me to do this, Uncle. He knew he was dying.” His voice was a rasp, with none of its usual bravado. “The passing of the Cobra Throne’s powers through hand-clasping was a lie, it seems. Its feeding and healing magics were a myth. But the blood-drinking spell. The war powers. These are real. I can feel their realness coursing through me.”
Adoulla wanted to vomit. He wanted to choke the Prince then and there. But it took all of Adoulla’s strength just to rise to his feet. He bit off angry words as he did so. “He was a boy, you scheming son of a whore! A boy of not-yetten years!”
And, just like that, the madman’s smug mask dropped. “Do you think I don’t know that, Uncle? Do you really think my heart is not torn apart by this?”
“Better that your heart were torn apart by ghuls, than that this child should die. You are a foul man to do this, Pharaad Az Hammaz, and God will damn you for it.” The bandit wiped blood from his mouth onto his sleeve. “Perhaps. I did not kill the boy, Uncle. But he is dead now. His father is dead. There will be a struggle for this damned-by-God slab of marble, and I will need all of the power I can muster if I am going to keep it from falling back to some overstuffed murderer who lives by drinking the blood of our city. What was I to do?” The smug smirk returned.
The Prince’s matter -of-fact manner made Adoulla furious. Without quite realizing what he was doing, Adoulla lunged at the bandit, throwing out the right hook that he’d mastered back when he was the brawniest boy on Dead Donkey Lane. The man was absorbed in his newfound power, or Adoulla would never have been able to lay a hand on him. But the punch connected with a crunch.
The master thief’s eyes flashed with hatred and his hand went to his sword. Adoulla had doomed himself. But then a slow, sad smile spread across the Prince’s face. “I suppose I deserve that, Uncle. That and more.” Pharaad Az Hammaz winced as he touched the corner of his mouth, which now dripped with his own blood. Adoulla looked at the floor, disgusted with the Falcon Prince, disgusted with himself—disgusted with everything on God’s great earth.
“Look at me, Uncle, please,” the Prince said. He sounded different, now—like a frightened child. Adoulla looked up a Bhe iv height=nd locked eyes with the man. “Even…Even without the benevolent magics I’d hoped to hold,” the thief continued, “there is a chance to begin something new here. This is why, before he died, the boy asked me to do this thing. The Khalif claimed that it was God who set his line on the throne. I now know that you spoke truly that this man Orshado was sent by the Traitorous Angel to seek the throne. But me? I am just a man, Uncle. Just a man trying to do what is right.
“When I saw Orshado stab the boy, I knew what I had to do. And thanks to a trick of the old stonework I was able to do what needed doing in private. Now the question is what will happen when I lower the throne back into place and try to wrest order from this chaos. There are still ministers who support me, and my diplomats and clerks-of-law will help me twist recognition from the other realms. There is still some small chance to avoid soaking the streets in blood. Given time, my scholars might even find ways to use the Cobra Throne’s powers to help the people. But if word of this—” he gestured at the dead Heir and faltered.
The Prince swallowed and began again. “If word of this part of things gets out, even that small chance will fly out the window. It will mean another civil war, of that we can be certain. You and I are not here together through mere happenstance, Uncle. You would call it the will of God. I will simply say ‘Great sailors sail the same seas.’ But either way, I need your help. Your silence about what you have seen.”
Do you know what happens to whores in war? Miri’s question of two days ago echoed in Adoulla’s ears. He looked at the limp form of the Heir sprawled on the Throne of the Crescent Moon. If he kept this vicious, villainous secret there was a chance—a chance only—that this could happen smoothly, without ten thousand corpses in the streets. Adoulla watched a small splotch of blood—whether the Prince’s or the Heir’s, he couldn’t say—slide magically from his kaftan. Again he remembered his God-sent dream—a befouled kaftan and a river of blood. Was it Orshado that God had been warning him of? Or was it himself?
What a damned-by-God mess . He would keep the Prince’s secret. It was wrong, and it was foul, and he didn’t doubt he would answer for it when called to join God. But it was also the only way. And it might—right here and right now—save his city, his friends, and the woman he loved. He looked up toward Beneficent God, He From Whom All Fortunes Flow, and begged silently for forgiveness.
He looked at the Prince and made his voice as hard as he could. “If you turn out to be a liar, Pharaad Az Hammaz—if you don’t do everything in your power to keep this city safe and to feed its people— there will be a price to pay. A very heavy price. Don’t think that palaces and death-magics will protect you. If you betray this city, I swear in the name of Almighty God that I will drink yourblood.”
The Prince bowed solemnly to him and said nothing.
Chapter 20
ZAMIA STOOD WITH HER COMPANIONS in the early morning sunlight, staring at the burned and broken wreck that had been the shop of Dawoud Son-of-Wajeed and Lit Caje Litaz had finally stopped screaming. The anger in her voice now was cold but no less powerful. “The Humble Students. May God damn them all to the Lake of Flame. While we were saving this damned-byGod city from the Traitorous Angel, they were doing…they did this.”
Raseed, his arm bandaged and his face bruised from the battle, frowned at the burned-out building. “This…this is not the work of God that they have done, Auntie. I am sorry.” “It is the work of wicked men,” the Doctor said weakly, putting one arm around Litaz’s shoulders and the other around the shoulders of her husband. Even before they had discovered this destruction, Zamia noted, the Doctor had seemed unusually subdued.
After the group’s wounds had been treated by Pharaad Az Hammaz’s healers, th ey had left the chaos of the Crescent Moon Palace stealthily and under escort, the quiet thanks and blessings of the Falcon Prince following them out the gates. Even Raseed had stayed silent as they left, though his eyes had been like swords leveled at the master thief.
And now there was this.
“All I can say,” the Doctor half-whispered, “is what you said to me days ago: with weeks of work your home will be restored. You will—”
Dawoud held up a long-fingered hand and silenced the Doctor. For a long time they all just stood there staring. Hours later the five of them sat in Mohsabi’s teahouse, sipping nectar and cardamom tea, and nibbling unhappily at pastries. The teahouse owner, a well-groomed little man with a goatee, had, for a few extra coins, shooed away his other customers and left the companions alone to discuss in private the aftermath of their battle in the Palace.
“So is he still the Falcon Prince,” Dawoud was saying, “or is he now ‘The Defender of Virtue, Khalif Pharaad Az Hammaz?’ Well, whatever he decides to call himself, the madman has his tasks cut out for him. I’d still bet a dinar to a dirham that there will be war in these streets before it’s all over. And as great as Dhamsawaat is, it is only one city. The governors of Abassen’s other cities, the Soo Tripasharate, the High Sultaan of Rughal-ba—how will these men respond? The Crescent Moon Kingdoms have always been stitched together with delicate threads. After last night…” the old magus shook his head, looking even older than he had before thebattle. “What of the guardsmen, by the way? Orshado’s spell must have seized the souls of a half-thousand men,” Dawoud said to the Doctor. “Will the guardsmen survive now that this ghul of ghuls is dead?”
The Doctor shrugged. “According to the old books, it depends on the man. Some will die. Some will live but will not be what they once were—indeed, some will go mad. A few—the strongest, the closest to God, will survive whole, with only a few days’ illness and a few hours’ blank in their memories. But we have more important things to talk about. As we were walking over here, you and Litaz were whispering quite furiously about something. And twice now when I’ve brought up rebuilding your shop you’ve shut me up. Are you planning what I think you’re planning?”
The magus stretched and looked at his wife, who smiled sadly, then nodded. “You know us too well, brother -ofmine,” Dawoud said at last. “It’s time we left Dhamsawaat. Litaz has been saying for years that she’d like to see the Republic again, and now I feel much the same. We’ve always intended to make another visit. Other things just kept getting in the way. And…this last battle, Adoulla. It costme. Weeks, months of life. Soon I’ll be too old to make such a journey.”
Litaz laid her small hand on her husband’s shoulder. “This business with the Humble Students, the unrest in the city—maybe they are all signs from God. Perhaps it is time for us to return home.” “I…You…You’ll be missed, my friends,” the Doctor said, his eyes shining with unshed tears. “In the Name of God, you will truly be missed.” Lita