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SECOND SOLDIER: Little you know! It's the beginning for us When the order caarden, specialyou back Ten chrisos you'll be worth, or I'm a cobbler

He seizes JAHI, and as soon as he does so, MESCHIANE darts off into the darkness

FIRST SOLDIER runs after her

SECOND SOLDIER: Bite me, will you!

He strikes JAHI with the shaft of his weapon They struggle

JAHI: Fool! She's escaping!

SECOND SOLDIER: That's Ivo's worry I've got my prisoner, and he let his escape, if he doesn't catch her Co to see the chiliarch

JAHI: Will you not love me before we leave this winsome spot?

SECOND SOLDIER: And have my manhood cut off and shoved into my mouth? Not I!

JAHI: They'd have to find it first

SECOND SOLDIER: What's that? (Shakes her)

JAHI: You take the office of Urth, ill not trouble herself for me But wait - release s

SECOND SOLDIER: I can see theive all thanks to the moon

JAHI: I canto you But I have no pohile you grasp er than the other woman's, but I've seen that you don't move so readily on them Indeed, I think that you can scarcely stand

JAHI: No more can I

SECOND SOLDIER: I'll hold your necklace - the chain looks stout enough If that's sufficient, shohat you can do If it's not, come with me You'll be no freer while I have you

JAHI raises both hands, with the little fingers, index fingers, and thue, soft entle flakes

SECOND SOLDIER: Stop that!

He seizes one arm and jerks it down The music stops abruptly A few last snowflakes settle on his head

SECOND SOLDIER: That was not gold

JAHI: Yet you saw

SECOND SOLDIER: There's an old woe who can work the weather too She's not as quick as you, I admit, but then she's a lot older, and feeble

JAHI: Whoever she may be, she is not a thousandth part as old as I

Enter the STATUE, h blind

JAHI: What is that thing?

SECOND SOLDIER: One of Father Inire's little pets It can't hear you or make a sound I'm not even sure it's alive

JAHI: Why, neither am I, for all of that

As the STATUE passes near her, she strokes its cheek with her free hand

JAHI: Loverloverlover Have you no greeting for me?

STATUE: E-e-e-y!

SECOND SOLDIER: What's this? Stop! Woman, you said you had no pohile I held you

JAHI: Behold ht him? Go ahead - break your spear on that broad chest

The STATUE kneels and kisses JAHI'S foot

SECOND SOLDIER: No, but I can outrun him

He throws JAHI across his shoulder and runs The door in the hill opens He enters, and it slahty blows, but it does not yield Tears strea with his hands

GABRIEL: (Offstage) Thus stone ies keep faith with a departed day, Alone in the desert when , the stage grows dark When the lights coain, the AUTARCH is seated on his throne He is alone on stage, but silhouettes projected on screens to either side of him indicate that he is surrounded by his court

AUTARCH: Here I sit as though the lord of a hundred worlds Yet note There is a shouted order

AUTARCH: Generalissioat skin and carries a staff whose head has been crudely carved into a strange symbol

PROPHET: A hundred portents are abroad At Incusus, a calf was dropped that had no head, but mouths in its knees A wo, last night a shower of stars fell hissing onto the southern ice, and prophets walk abroad in the land

AUTARCH: You yourself are a prophet

PROPHET: The Autarch himself has seen them!

AUTARCH: My archivist, who is most learned in the history of this spot, once informed me that over a hundred prophets have been slain here - stoned, burned, torn by beasts, and drowned Some have even been nailed like ver of the co prophesied How is it to coive the old archivist another mark for his tally, and train the pale moonflower to cli you, but I shall attempt it

AUTARCH: Do you not know?

PROPHET: I know But I know you for a practical man, concerned with the affairs of this universe alone, who seldoher than the stars

AUTARCH: For thirty years I have prided myself on that

PROPHET: Yet even you must know that cancer eats the heart of the old sun At its center, h there were there a pit without bottom, whose top surrounds it

AUTARCH: My astrono told me so

PROPHET: Think on an apple rotten from the bud Fair still without, until it collapses into foulness at last

AUTARCH: Everyin the latter half of life has thought on that fruit

PROPHET: So much then for the old sun But what of its cancer? What knoe of that, save that it deprives Urth of heat and light, and at last of life?

Sounds of struggle are heard offstage There is a screae vase had been knocked from its pedestal

AUTARCH: We will learn what that coh, Prophet Continue

PROPHET: We know it to be far more, for it is a discontinuity in our universe, a rent in its fabric bound by no lae know Froht escapes Yet fros we know is no slave to its own nature

Enter NOD, bleeding, prodded by pikes held offstage

AUTARCH: What is this miscreation?

PROPHET: The very proof of those portents I spoke to you In future ti been said, the death of the old sun will destroy Urth But frorave will rise monsters, a new people, and the New Sun Old Urth will flower then as a butterfly from its dry husk, and the New Urth shall be called Ushas

AUTARCH: Yet all we knoill be swept aside? This ancient house in which we stand? Yourself? Me?