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"A fine tale It is true that you speak with the accent of the eastern border, and certainly you look as if you’ve walked a long ith nothing oat But a fine tale htly woven tapestry thrown up on the wall to conceal an ugly scar which lies hidden behind it The Qu, Zacharias stood He turned, pulling the torn shoulder of the robe down to reveal his right shoulder blade and the brand, healed badly enough that skin still puckered around it,the cloth, he turned back to confront the rave "So stands the mark of the snow leopard’s claw, my lord"

"A desperate man can have himself cut to lend credence to his story," remarked Villam pleasantly

"Would a man cut himself in this manner, merely to lend credence to his tale?" Zacharias deht of Zacharias’ asped out loud, lost color, and groped for his wine cup He gulped it down, and then signaled to his steward, the slenderwine for this man, if you please He must be desperately thirsty"

Zacharias drank deeply The as very good, and he saw no reason to waste it Perhaps the shock of his mutilation would throw Villarave was too old and too crafty, he had played the ga, to be thrown off his attack even by such a vicious strike Once he had taken a second cup of wine, he gestured to his servant "Huned, Zacharias watched as Villa that would condemn any man He displayed, for Zacharias’ edification, the parchs of a mathematici

Zacharias drained the last of his wine, wondering what he would get to drink when he languished in the skopos’ prison da it upside down,

Villaain "It aze of a hter and trouble in his ti iation could end happily, but Zacharias refused to collapse in fear as long as his tongue seemed safe "Nay, my lord, I am not"

"Truly, you do not resemble one, for I have always heard it said that a sorcerer has such nificent powers that she will always appear sleek and prosperous, and you,the prince?"

"To find out where that parchment came from, my lord I have reason to believe that he knoho made those marks on that parche of the stars I have no wish to be a sorcerer, my lord But I was vouchsafed a vision of the cos The memory of what he had seen in the palace of coils still tor cosmos, rent by clouds of dust and illuels, they had halos His loss of faith in the God of Unities no longer troubled his sleep, because the desire to understand the workings of the universe, a dazzling spiral wheel of stars hanging suspended in the ulfed his spirit and consumed his ht die before I understand the architecture of the universe"

That I ht he dared not voice out loud

Villa tian to fidget nervously, waiting for the rave’s reply He had told the truth at last He had no further to retreat except to reveal the one thing which would damn him most: that he had traveled as a servant with the Aoi sorcerer and witnessed her hu power Once they discovered that, they would not care that she had, in the end, discarded hi stick she had no further use for

"I arave," he said finally, when he could bear the silence no longer

"So we coain," murmured Villam "Can it be true, what the prince said of her ancestry? Is it not said of the Emperor Taillefer that ‘God revealed to him the secrets of the universe?’ The virtues of the parent often pass to the child"