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Fretfully, he fingered a parch a hand up the neat lines of its text and then down again, up and then down "You were all that mattered From the first day I met you it was as if I had been blinded, a veil cast overbut you" He fell silent, and at last went on "I know your secret, I knohat you are, but I will never betray you"

"What aaze, and his stare was so intense and so scalding that she wished he hadn’t Better not to see him, scarred and flawed as he was but still as beautiful as the dawn; standing this nakedly before her, his desire for her was plain to see

"Fire," he said hoarsely "Ai, God, Liath, go Go I desire you too much I can’t trust myself with you so close I’ve tried towhat I can to serve God, and it will be enough"

"I’ll go," she said, stu over the words as the chains wrapped their silken cord around her again, wanting to say, "I’ll stay" "But you said that you have Da’s book"

"The book" He lifted a hand to conceal his face He stood so still for a moment, his emotions hidden from her, that she actually had an instant of disorientation, as though the world was spinning wildly beneath her feet and she was about to fall, or was already falling endlessly and forever down through the spheres until she would be lost in the pit and never free

"The book" He lowered his hand to rustle the parchures neatly inscribed there

"What is that?" she asked, enticed by the orderly lines and repetitive figures Fetters drew tighter, binding her again as she ht "That’s a date"

"A date? I’ve been puzzling this out I don’t knohat it means, but there’s clearly a pattern Do you know?"

"Yes, yes," she said withlike this in the ruins of Kartiako There was a very old e of the most ancient days of his tribe Of course I can’t read this writing, all sticks and angles, but he said it was a table charting the course of So sky and when in the "

"And the intervals of disappearance?"

"Yes, exactly! But this is a whole page! The other was only frage I have seen I believe it was copied from a more ancient source, perhaps from one of these clay tablets you e, "how the scribe made a mistake and then corrected it How does it work?"

"The ancient Babaharshans observed the stars for a thousand years They recognized that So star, and that when she falls into the shadow of the sun that she vanishes for an interval, soht days and soht up in her exciteuides her ain to the place she was before, relative to the position of the sun?"

"Yes, of course Look, here That set of e at Kartiako He called it--"

A moment only it took her to shift her attention into her city of , the Sword of Strength, the Cup of Boundless Waters, the Ring of Fire, the Throne of Virtue, the Scepter of Wisdo beneath the Crown of Stars itself to the topmost part of the city where lay the astrono walls Here in these galleries she had set herstars and the precession of the equinoxes Here, in an alcove ht sapphire no brighter than Hugh’s eyes to signify the sage’s co for

"He called it the nify numbers, so that would be eleven I don’t kno to read the rest, but this says that on the eleventh day of the month of Ishan, Somorhas would, well, that’s the puzzle, isn’t it? Her first appearance asstar for that cycle, perhaps, or her disappearance into the sun’s glare" She faltered, reht up in cycles and epicycles, conjunctions and precession, the endlessly intriguing wonder of the universe