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"Will you be safe?" he asked in a low voice "I don’t like to leave you alone"

"Nay, beloved, there is no danger to me here"

After a h he did not relax into the pillows

It was not particularly di the sides, where wall and ceiling ht Hard-packed sand made the floor Six stakes had been driven into the sand, poles tied to theh these triangles, in the h the stone looms, six women wove an intricate cloth out of blue, purple, and cri form on the cloth, but Adica couldn’t see, yet, what it was h shawls covered their hair and their pale robes covered the rest of the loosely over their bodies They had dark coly brown-black eyes All of them had hands hennaed in the way of the attendants outside, dots and zigzag lines painted onto their skin The h it, too, were being woven into the cloth The youngest alanced up to survey Adica with bold eyes, but looked doiftly when her neighbor pinched her on the thigh

The next curtain was drawn aside by an unseen hand, and they ducked low to enter a second, inner chaloriously shaped out of copper, where they washed their hands This chamber was furnished with two chests carved with lion women, plush carpets, and a heap of pillows e on each side oven of blue, purple, and crimson threads, and they, too, depicted the lion wo a belt of bells hanging beside the inner the farthest chamber lifted Adica saw briefly into a diold sat on thick carpets and, beyond them, a filmy veil of fine linen concealed the back of the tent A woe She wore the sa robes as did the others of her tribe, but her head and face were veiled by a linen shawl Not even her eyes were visible, only a loosening of the weave so that sheto the beliefs of her people, she had looked upon the presence of her god, and the divine radiance still dwelt in her face so brightly that it would kill any other htness-Hears-Me," said Adica respectfully, waiting for Laoina to translate "Grave e and perilous"

Brightness-Hears-Me had a bit of a stutter She spoke laboriously, yet there reht in her voice, as if each word had been handled beforehand by her god "I greet you in return, Young-One-Who-Stands-A in a silence broken only by thechamber The curtains and walls muffled the sounds of the outside world At last, she spoke "From where comes this man who is not born yet?"

"Froht hi to the lands of the dead, so that he ht be my companion until the last day"

"He cannot be dead," said the holy woman, "because he is not born yet"

"Then how can he be here, in a man’s body?"

"It is a mystery His soul is not yet meant to walk on this Earth"

Adica wondered if Laoina had translated the holy woman’s words correctly Yet truly, none of the other sorcerers, including Adica, had ever looked upon the naked face of their gods Surely that changed a person Surely that s other mortals could not comprehend

"I fear I do not understand what you are saying"

Brightness-Hears-Me paused, as if listening, od

"Much of life reli that shall come to pass Tell me what passes in the lands beyond"

At Adica’s direction, Laoina recited the events that had led to their arrival here

"Whatto hear the answer

An uncanny silence settled over the h of the tent’s walls billowing in and out with the wind Had she gone deaf? That scritch was Laoina’s feet, shifting on the carpet A chihtness-Hears-Me spoke in a whisper, as slowly as if she were repeating words dictated to her from an invisible source "If our companion Horn is dead, then wein every generation, unto uncounted generations, and the fighting will never cease, for the Cursed Ones are our ene us, to this day, to all the days that will come Once my people were their slaves The God of our people led us forth from slavery and we came to this wilderness Here the servants of God who have the bodies of lions and the wings of angels and the faces of huainst the wrath of the Cursed Ones But even so the ainst us Every year there are fewer of the God’s servants, for the Cursed Ones hunt them for sport and for sacrifice"