The sister stepped back; anger, thwarted desire and more burned in her eyes, but Seylalha saw the fear in her movements and knew she had won. The man's fingers wove through her honey hair, closing on the neck brooch that held the cloth at her shoulder, ripping it from the soft silk.

'She's right, Cime. You can't lure me with His freedom; I've felt it for too long already. We'll play Torchholder's little game to the end and let the Face of Chaos laugh at us. The girl's won her child. so leave - or I'll let her use the tent-peg on you.'

Cime's face was fury unbounded, but Seylalha no longer cared. The sword dropped from her fingers as soon as his arms lifted her a second time and carried her, without interruption, to the pillows. She grasped his tunic and tore it back from his shoulders with a determination equal to his own. The mute women gathered their instruments and found a compelling harmony with which to fill the tent.

Seylalha lost herself with him until there was nothing beyond the pillows and the memory of the music. The torches were long since exhausted and in the darkness her god-lover was neither awesome nor cruel. He might have intended rape and pain, but her passion for a child and freedom consumed him and he lay asleep across her breast. Her body curved against his and though she had not meant it to happen, she fell asleep as well.

He grunted and jerked upright, leaving her puzzled and cold on the pillows. Wariness tightened the muscles of his leg. She raised herself up on one elbow without learning the source of his sudden concern.

'Cover yourself,' he instructed, thrusting his torn tunic at her.

'Why?'

'There'll be a fire here,' he spoke as if repeating words that swam in his head already. 'By Wrigglies, Cime or what... we're betrayed.'

He gripped her arm and hauled her to her feet as the tent burst into flames around them. Clutching the tunic to her breast, Seylalha moulded herself against him. He was motionless for less than a second; the fire swept through the roof cloth and raced towards the carpet and pillows where they stood. Sparks jumped towards her long hair; she screamed and flailed at the flames until he put them out with his hands and hoisted her rudely in his arms.

The firelight leeched all gentleness from his face, replacing it with pain and a glint of vengeance. One of the beams that supported the tent cracked down before them, sending a blaze of fire up past his knees. He cursed names that meant nothing to her as he walked through the inferno.

They broke through the ring of flames into the predawn moist-ness of the port city air. She coughed, realizing she had scarcely breathed since he had lifted her. With the gasps of cool air she caught the bitter scents of singed hair and charred flesh.

'Your legs?' she whispered.

'They'll mend; they always do.'

'But you're hurt now,' she. protested. 'I can walk - there's no need to carry me.'

She twisted to be free of him but his grip grew tighter and unfriendly. She began to fear him again as if their moments together in the tent had been a dream. The pinching fingers holding her arms and thighs could never have been gentle.

'I have not hurt you,' he snarled. 'Of more women than I care to remember you alone had demands that would sate me. You've got your freedom and I've got rest in a woman's arms. When it is safe I'll put you down, but not before.'

He carried her past the scattered stones of the unfinished temple and out into the open land beyond the limits ofRankan Sanctuary towards the houses left to ruins since Ilsig abandoned the town. She shivered and shed quiet tears, but clung tightly as he assaulted the uneven, overgrown fields in the grey predawn light. He stopped by a crumbling wall and set her down upon it.

'The Hounds patrol here at dawn; they'll find you and bring you safely to the Prince and Torchholder.'

She didn't ask to go with him, holding the request firmly within herself. The One for whom she had danced was gone, probably forever, and the one who remained was not the sort a dancer slave would be wise to follow. And there was the child to consider ... Still, she could not turn away from him as he glared at her. His face softened slightly, as if her lover might live somewhere behind that grim visage.

'Tell me your name,' he demanded in a voice half-gentle, half-mocking.

'Seylalha.'

'A Northern name, isn't it? A pretty name to remember.'

And he was gone, striding back across the fallow gardens to the town. She wrapped the torn, scorched tunic around her bare shoulders and waited.

7

Molin Torchholder hurried down the polished stone corridors of the palace; his new sandals slapped the soles of his feet and echoed in the empty hallways. The sound reminded him of his slaves' leather-wrapped sticks and that reminded him of how few slaves were left in the temple since the mysterious fire had taken so many lives the night of the Ten-Slaying two weeks before.

He had sent a messenger to the capita] the next day with a full report of the events as he understood them. He'd written and sealed it himself. The Prince could not have sent word faster; no post could have returned in that time. There was no reason to think that Kadakithis or the Emperor himself would be thinking about Vashanka today. But the Prince's summons had been preemptive. so Molin hiked the long, empty corridors with a worried look on his face.

The Ten-Slaying had convinced him to take his Prince more seriously. When the charred tatters of cloth and wood had cooled enough to let the Hounds investigate the blaze, they had found a heap of blackened skulls in one place and the bodies of the ten felons scattered throughout the burned wreckage. For one who had expressed a distaste for bloodshed, Kadakithis had recreated Vashanka's vengeance to the final letter of the legends - a precision not required and which Molin could not even remember describing to the Prince.

Tempus stood beside the Prince's throne, back in town after another unexplained absence. The massive, cruel Hell Hound did not look happy - perhaps the strains of the Sacred Brotherhood's loyalty were beginning to show. Molin wished, for the last time. that he knew why he had been summoned, then nodded to the herald and heard himself announced.

*Ah, Molin, there you are. We'd been wondering what was keeping you,' the Prince said with his usual charm.

'My new quarters, while much appreciated, seem to be several leagues from here. I'd never thought there could be so much corridor in a small palace.'

'The rooms are adequate? The Lady Rosanda ...'

'The girl who danced Azyuna's Dance - what has become of her?' Tempus interrupted and Molin turned his attention at once from the Prince to the Hell Hound.

'A few burns,' he responded cautiously, seeing displeasure in Tempus's eyes. The Hound had called this interview; Molin no longer doubted it. 'Minor ones,' he added. 'What little discomfort she may have experienced seems to have passed completely.'

'You've freed her, haven't you, Molin?' the Prince chimed in nervously.

'As a matter of course, though it's too soon to tell if she'll bear a child. I thought it best to take her survival as a sign of the god's favour - in the absence of any other information. You haven't remembered anything yourself, my Prince?' Molin faced the Prince but glanced at Tempus. There was something in the Hound's face whenever the Ten-Slaying was discussed, but Molin doubted he'd ever get to the bottom of it. Kadakithis claimed the god had so completely possessed him that he remembered nothing from the moment the tent was sealed until sunrise when he found himself in his own bed.