Narayan will pay. I will tear his heart out and use it to choke his G.o.ddess. They do not know what they have awakened. My strength has returned. They will pay. Longshadow, my sister, the Deceivers, Kina herself if she gets in my way.
Their Year of the Skulls is upon them.
I close the Book of Lady.
Envoi: Down There
Incessant wind sweeps the plain of stone. It murmurs across pale grey paving that sprawls from horizon to horizon. It sings around scattered pillars. It tumbles leaves and dust come from afar and stirs the long black hair of a corpse that has lain undisturbed for generations, desiccating. Playfully, the wind tosses a leaf into the corpse"s silently screaming mouth, tugs it out again.
The pillars might be thought the remnants of a fallen city. They are not. They are too spa.r.s.ely and randomly placed. Nor are any of them toppled or broken, though some have been etched deeply by gnawing ages of wind.
And some seem nearly new. A century old at most.
In the dawn, and at the setting of the sun, parts of those columns catch the light and gleam golden. For a few minutes each day auric characters burn forth from their faces.
For those remembered it is immortality of a sort.
In the night the winds die and silence rules the place of glittering stone.
To Be Continued in Glittering Stone