Page 122 (1/1)

But now there could be no chance of secrecy The quarrel had been witnessed, and, in accordance with tradition, so too must be the resolution

And… does any of itbefore his failure on night watch That is the truth of it I knew… doubts

His thoughts could take hi like acid As if he had raised his own dery, and could only watch as it fed on his soul Gnawing regret and avid guilt, reive answer to his death, again and again Countless answers, to crowd the solitary question of his life Is it our fate, then, to suffer beneath the siege of all that can never be known?

There had been strangers witnessing the scene The realization was sudden, shocking A merchant and his Acquitor Letherii visitors Advance spies of the treaty delegation

Hannan Mosag’s confrontation was a dreadful error in sohad been daed for the world of a month past Before the revelation of flaws and frailties

Padding through the forest, ency of dire newsA spear left in his wake, iron point buried deep in the chest of a Letherii Leaden legs taking hi on the dappled trail The sense of having justa chah in his case the chamber had been a forest cathedral, Hiroth sanctified land, and he had seen no signs of passage to give substance to his suspicion

And it was this sense that had returned to hiht events, all unencies of survival had forced upon theelid wave of conviction rose within Trull Sengar, and he knew solid as a knife in his heart, that so terrible was about to happen

He stood, alone in the longhouse

Facing the centre post and its crooked sword

And he could not rey, stiff-li on the stone platfor as if striving for a breath never found The warrior’s hands were closed about the grip of a strange, ht-bladed sword, frost-rimed and black-flecked with dried blood

Udinaas had filled the nose and ear holes ax

He held the pincers, waiting for the first gold coin to reach optimum heat on the iron plate suspended above the coals He had placed one on the sheet, then, twenty heartbeats later, another The order of placement for noble-born blooded warriors was precise, as was the allotted ti Udinaas was a period ofrepetition and exhaustion

But a slave could be bent to any task There were hard truths found only in the denigration of one’s own spirit, if one was inclined to look for them Should, for example, a man require self-justification Prior to, say, murder, or so man whose flesh is now a proclamation of death The Edur use coins Letherii use linen, lead and stone In both, the need to cover, to disguise, to hide away the horrible absence writ there in that an with the eyes

Udinaas gripped the edge of the Letherii coin with the pincers These first two had to be slightly cooler than the others, lest the eyes behind the lids burst He had witnessed that once, when he was apprenticed to an elder slave who had begun losing his sense of ti, then an explosive spurt of lifeless fluid, foul-s far too deep in the socket, the hissing evaporation and crinkling, blackening skin

He swung round on the stool, careful not to drop the coin, then leaned over Rhulad Sengar’s face Lowered the hot gold disc

A soft sizzle, as the skin of the lid htened round the coin Holding it fast

He repeated the task with the second coin

The heat in the cha coins on the torso, he was continually startled bya soft thud, rivulets ofacross the stone to drip from the sides, as if the body noept

The stench of burnt skin was thick in the hot, hu a transfor other than Tiste Edur In the , the work before the slave little different fro nets

Chest, to abdomen Each spear-wound packed with clay and oil, encircled with coins then sealed Pelvis, thighs, knees, shins, ankles, the tops of the feet Shoulders, upper arms, elbows, forearms