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Only when the wagon passes out of ht do I exhale

The oracle’s vehicle is followed by twenty to in ranks of five These woranted the honor of sitting vigil overnight as the borrowed spark drains fro shrouds cover their bodies from neck to ankle and they have all done up their hair in a tower of braids wrapped around a conical funeral hat I see A pale and sad

Behind them walk the five servants ill be walled into the to oracle They are faceless and naround so even their feet cannot be glimpsed

The shrouded attendant alks at the center staggers like a wounded creature with a swollen belly I blink

Suddenly I am absolutely sure it is my oing to leap out of rowing blurred Another of the attendants is tall like Bettany, and one has a slight lurch to her walk as Maraya would One is short and delicate like A here, torn away frorasps on trundles past, followed by a file of royal cavalry and a squadron of six spider scouts The clanking of their metal feet on stone shakes me back to earth

It cannot be them Tomb attendants are raised in the te madness because I don’t knohere my mother and sisters are

The princely and lordly retinues follow the funeral procession through the city and past the harbors to the temple and Eternity Gate I walk as if dazed by shadow-smoke, my hands clammy and my face hot

Just past the temple wall rise the mudbrick tombs where ordinary Patrons inter their dead, one hundred to a small chamber, packed in like bricks Richer Patrons can afford faeneration, their dead are wrapped in shrouds and stacked onto granite shelves The tombs of the lords and the palaces stand on the hill, with the royal tohborn Patrons are served by oracles, as it is said, "Let the king and his sons heed the word of the gods even in the shadow of the afterlife"

All the households wait in the heat as the dead man is led into his tomb The sun hurts htmare vision of my mother wrapped in a shroud

The palace households ahead of us start filing in to pay their last respects We creep up the hill At length a porch and low door appear before us Bricklayers wait under an awning, bricks and mortar and tools ready for tomorrow’s dawn

My hands clench as I climb the five steps onto the porch A simplified version of a three-horned bull is carved into the lintel, a few lines incised to identify this as the to into the too in I shuffle behind Gira through an outer chah to the left People have already urinated into it, and the smell makes me wince The tomb also stinks of the sweat of so h How horrible to be trapped inside here for the rest of your life

We pass under an arch into the central cha cups and bowls filled with flowers, beads, coins, and , Lord Ottonor lies on top of the coffin The spark that gives hiht Just before dawn the priests will place him inside his coffin and seal the lid His corpse and coffin will rest on the bier until his oracle dies

How do the priests fix that spark into him? Did it come from an animal or a person? All I know is that it icians use to aniiven life by sparks taken, so Father once told us, froil-sitters face the walls, their backs to the mourners who file past The five shrouded attendants kneel in the archway that opens into the third chamber, where the oracle resides From behind they look like sacks

The quiet in the toh of the ocean, the cry of gulls, the speech of people: these have vanished All I hear is the scuff of feet and the occasional sucked-in breath as people enter the toful of the fetid air

We pace up the length of the middle chamber The moment I reach the head of the bier, the line halts I look down on Lord Ottonor’s waxy forehead His eyes are horribly open, staring sightlessly at the ceiling, which is painted black hite specks for stars His chest rises and falls I aht between the bier and the veiled attendants who block the doorway into the third room