Svavar asked, "What's this?"

"A well house. The women come here to get water." Shagot looked down into the cistern. "They climbed down here." An iron ladder going down into the cistern had had the rust worn away. Blood discolored its rungs.

A face appeared below. A Praman face. It betrayed astonishment and terror. It disappeared, shrieking a warning.

Shagot swung over the lip of the well and jumped down. Svavar cursed and followed more carefully. At first, the Braunsknechts refused to go down into the earth.

The Emperor entered the waterhouse. He grasped the situation immediately. He gave orders for troops to circle west of the city in search of a storm water outlet. Below, the soultaken engaged the hindmost of those Pramans who had chased the Episcopal raiders underground.

Hansel stamped out of the waterhouse. He swung onto Warspite's back. For an instant he stared uphill, toward the citadel. He would aim the soultaken that way next.

As he flexed his wrists to shake the reins to urge Warspite forward, an arrow out of the darkness entered his open mouth. Its head severed his spinal cord as it exited the back of his neck.

35. With the Direcian Combine: Cold Spring

The winter was long and bitter but not inconvenient for the combined forces of Direcia, Platadura, and the Connec. They did little but stay warm and get to know the people of Calzir. They saw no fighting.

Brother Candle did not feel he was part of a real war. He had become part of the court round King Peter, in the castle al-Negesi, atop an eminence from which, on a clear day, the hills where al-Khazen lay could be discerned. Peter felt no need to move closer. The Pramans were unable to overawe the forces already facing them.

Brother Candle understood. Peter had tripled his territories at no cost. He had created – and continued to create – a network of personal relationships with foreign nobles and people like Brother Candle, Bishop LeCroes, Michael Carhart, and Tember Remak. The lack of danger, other than from the passage on winter seas, had lured the curious from Direcia and the End of Connec. Duke Tormond and his sister spent a month on Shippen, she enjoying her husband and he learning more about the world and the men who would stand beside him in the dark times to come. Tormond was impressed by how much Count Raymone Garete had matured.

"We'll go home come spring," Bishop LeCroes predicted. "This war is over. It's just a matter of the Pramans figuring that out and laying down their arms."

If Lucidia and Dreanger did not send reinforcements.

Brother Candle doubted the Praman world would blaze with passion for a countercrusade in Calzir. Not when wealthier and more romantic little kingdoms in Direcia were being devoured by King Peter's Reconquest to resounding indifference across the remainder of the Realm of Peace.

Brother Candle was enjoying a leisurely breakfast. Bishop LeCroes stopped to say, "Loafing season may be over. Something major is happening at al-Khazen." His voice was so strained Brother Candle went looking for a high place.

He used his elbows more than was appropriate for a Perfect. Everyone had gotten there before him, equally curious. When he got a good look in the right direction he saw what looked like a tower of black smoke rising from a huge fire a long way away. Only … It looked more like a small but intensely ferocious thunderstorm. "What is it?"

"The Night gone mad. Trying to devour itself. It was much gaudier when it wasn't as light out."

King Peter, Count Raymone, and a few others in a higher turret were engaged in an animated discussion.

Brother Candle had a sense of portent. The world was about to change again. Chances were, the change would not be for the better.

Peter and his cronies sent riders to find out what was happening. And couriers to alert the various garrisons that something was afoot. Inasmuch as nobody to the east was inclined to keep their overseas allies posted.

Brother Candle had little sense of the Instrumentalities of the Night. Those who did, like Michael Carhart, assured him that rural Calzir had been sucked clean of every minor spirit. The forces gathered at al-Khazen had drawn them in. The Calziran sorcerers were a mystery. The Patriarch's forces included numerous members of the Collegium. No one knew what dark forces had been marshaled on behalf of the Grail Empire.

As time fled forward Brother Candle increasingly felt his world growing colder – for any whose philosophies did not match those of they who were convinced that they ought to rule the world.

Brother Candle told Michael Carhart and Tember Remak, "I can feel the ice coming to the Connec."

They understood. Life was about to become less attractive for Maysaleans and pagans, Devedians and Dainshaus, Terliagan Pramans, and even those Episcopate daring enough to favor the Patriarch of Viscesment.

But none of them had an imagination dark enough, bleak enough, pessimistic enough, to guess how dreadful the future could become.

36. Enfolded in the Embrace of the Night

Else crouched in the dark cistern beneath Waterhouse Two, feeling like a cowering rodent, though hiding and abiding were Sha-lug skills equaling any involving sword or lance. A Sha-lug slave warrior was obligated to preserve himself, not to waste himself on heroic gestures.

Terrible fighting was going on in the drainage system. And in the city above, from the sound. Else could not follow its progress but it seemed that Imperial troops had entered the city. The combined efforts of Starkden, Masant al-Seyhan, and er-Rashal el-Dhulquarnen were inadequate to repel them.

There was sorcery afoot, for sure. Else's nearly forgotten amulet hurt more than it had at any time since me encounter in the Ownvidian Knot.

Er-Rashal not being able to do as he pleased, when it pleased him to do so, was nearly beyond the scope of imagination. Er-Rashal el-Dhulquarnen had been a distant, almost godlike presence in the Dreangerean world for as long as Else could remember. Not being able to do as he pleased likely strained the Rascal's imagination, too.

Over twenty-five years of training and wartime stress had gone into building Else Tage, the unflappable. But the unflappable Else made a noise like a startled little girl.

Something – that, initially, wore no shape familiar to the Sha-lug Else Tage … Something filled the overflow from the collection chamber below Waterhouse Two. Else felt something touch his soul, take cues from hidden recollections. Passing through several repulsive shapes first, it took the form of a woman … No. A girl. Heris … Sister of the toddler who became the Sha-lug Else Tage… But big. So big. Too big to push through the overflow.

That thing, whatever it was, winked. It raised a finger to its lips. Then it went away. A fog formed in the space it had occupied. The entrance became invisible.

Once his mind resumed function Else wondered how that thing fit the rest of the storm-water system if it could not get into this cistern… The amulet he wore reminded him that it was still there, this time blistering cold instead of hot and painful. Principatй Bruglioni's ring seemed to weigh twenty pounds.

What the hell?

Hell might have plenty to do with it. That was no woman. That was something vast and potent, far beyond human, though probably designed by human hope and fear. It would be the thing he had been warned about. A something that could brush aside the determined efforts of er-Rashal al-Dhulquarnen. One of the Instrumentalities of the Night. Possibly a goddess to some unbeliever who had not found the True God.

Cautioning Else Tage to remain calm, quiet, and still?