The Termagant noticed Illyra's half-smile. "S'danzo men do not have the Sight. Who is to say what he might have. You care little enough for the S'danzo-and, maybe I did wrong to mis-See danger in you, to try to keep you and the S'danzo separate. Know this then: it has been many generations since a new god was made from the gyskourem, and never have they taken the place of so powerful a god as Vashanka. But if gyskourem are to become a god, they must first be drawn by need and sacrifice; then they must become Gyskouras-become one with a chosen mortal. It will be so, even with the new Vashanka.
"They have chosen your son as Gyskouras. Through him they have Blinded you. Gods have never been a threat to us but this one, this Gyskouras-who was your son will have the Sight, and will be invincible."
"But the Gyskouras will be Molin Torchholder's child in the temple...."
"Many men hope and sacrifice, Illyra, but there can only be one Gyskouras. It is not yet decided. One child or the other must die before the Gyskouras can emerge to be among men before becoming a god. You have loved your son. If you can't free him from the gyskourem web, then kill him before it is too late for us all S'danzo and suvesh."
She pressed the clothes against the wound and, knowing that their sting would keep the young woman speechless for some time longer, turned to her husband. "You must avenge her," she said to Dubro as she began the first of four silken stitches which would hold the wound shut. "You may wait until she recovers or dies, or you can kill him outright for the insult to all the S'danzo. She will pay, but so must the suvesh who did this to her. None of us who use the cards are safe if this is unavenged."
Dubro shook his head. "If I had caught him before he left, he would be dead, but I cannot hunt a man to the death, old woman. I will send word to the town garrison. They'll be glad enough of a reason..."
"No." Illyra struggled to sit up. "No, let him go. Let him have my blood on his altar. If it will free Alton, it's small enough price. Let him be the Gyskouras of the new Stormgod."
"He attacked a S'danzo seer; his destiny is not for gods or gyskourem to decide. The S'danzo have no gods to protect them-only vengeance!" The woman raised her hand over Illyra's face and found it caught there in Dubro's bone-crushing fist.
"She is but half-S'danzo, old woman. You and the rest cast her out before. If she does not want vengeance, then you shall not give it to her." Dubro released the old woman and shoved her through the door into the abating storm. He frowned as he wiped the tears from his wife's cheek.
"Shall I go to the barracks?" the apprentice asked into
the silence.
"Not yet. We'll wait and see what happens." Illyra slipped into sleep, but Dubro sat, staring, in his chair. At dawn he awoke his wife and told her his intentions had not changed. He would sell his forge to the armorer and quietly buy a wagon. They would be gone from Sanctuary by sundown. His wife did not argue and pretended to go back to sleep. The Termagant's medicine had done its work well; the wound was cool to the touch. Once Dubro had left, she was able to dress herself, invent chores for the apprentice, and sit on the bench beside the forge to wait anxiously for her husband's return while Lillis played in the dust at her feet.
She was dozing, almost oblivious to the ache in her shoulder and the clamor of the mid-moming bazaar around her, when a heavy shadow fell over the forge. The storms came this way: darkness, then wind and rain. Pushing herself to her feet, she told the apprentice to tie the wooden shutters closed before even looking up at the sky. The Bazaar became deathly quiet as Illyra, and everyone else, looked at the cloudless sky. Nothing could be heard but the frantic calling of great flocks of birds seeking shelter. Evening stars appeared on the horizon, then the white-gold disk of the sun could be seen in the sky-with a black disk sliding over it. Someone nearby shouted that the sun itself was being devoured. The Bazaar, and the city beyond it, which had endured more of natural and unnatural disaster in the past weeks than it cared to remember, succumbed to widespread panic.
Illyra clutched the children to her and sat transfixed as the sun shrank to a glistening crescent of light. Then, just as it seemed it would vanish forever, a halo of white fire appeared around the black sun. It was too much-in a single unfeeling movement she dragged Lillis and the apprentice inside, where they cowered on the floor beyond Alton's cradle. The darkness became a storm that swept water and mud through the open doorway. Gusts of wind lifted the awning, beat it against the stones of the forge, then bore it away. Lillis and the apprentice whimpered in tenor while Illyra tried to set an example of courage she did not feel.
The storm had begun to die down when Illyra realized her son was crying aloud. Letting the apprentice hold onto Lillis, she crawled to the cradle and looked into it. Alton had thrown off his blankets and wailed mightily, but his tears were as dark as the storm itself. She gathered him into her arms and was assaulted by something which was not Sight and yet which showed her the ravening gyskourem, fueled by the ambitions and sacrifices of men like Zip, pushing aside Alton's mortal spirit, making him and themselves together into the Gyskouras of the new Stormgod. There was Sight as well, or at least empathy. She felt her son's terror and knew that in mercy and love she should take his life before the gyskourem did, but there was something beyond that: a glimmer of hope and sacrifice that might yet succeed. Ignoring the pleas and screams of the apprentice, she wound her shawl around herself and Arton and went through the doorway into the storm.
The wind carried more smoke than rain as Illyra made her way through the overturned carts and stalls. Damage and injury were everywhere, but in the chaos no one had the time to notice a lone woman picking her way carefully toward the gates with a bundle in her arms. Fewer dwellings had been leveled in the town, but great plumes of smoke were rising in some quarters. Gangs ran through the streets, some to rescue, while others went to wrest fortune from the misfortunes of their peers. Illyra thought of Dubro, somewhere in the tangle of streets himself, but she had no time to search for him as she continued on her way to the palace.
It was not like the last time she had made her way boldly through the streets of Sanctuary. Her path was not etched in the silver clarity of Sight, and she could not have confronted the palace guards with the Sight of their destinies. But the palace, well-lit by lightning from the storm, was the largest building in Sanctuary, and the guards, busy consoling aristocrats and arresting looters, had better things to do.
Within the palace walls Illyra moved with the frantic courtiers, searching for something she could not name. Her shoulder throbbed from the strain of carrying Arton. The sense that was not quite Sight led her to a half-enclosed cloister. There, sheltered from the wind, rain, and casual glances of the palace residents, she crumpled into a comer. Tears were flowing down her cheeks when exhaustion mercifully closed her eyes and sent her to sleep.
"Barbarians!"
Illyra awoke to the echo of a shrill yell. The storm had passed, leaving in its wake brilliant blue skies and only a faint trace of smoke in the air. Her shelter had become the scene of a private quarrel between a pair she could see quite well but who could not, thanks to the patterns of bright sun and contrasting shadows, see into her comer. It was just as welclass="underline" the woman was Beysib by her accent, though she seemed dressed in a modest Rankan gown, and the man was Prince Kadakithis himself. Illyra clutched Arton tightly to her, almost glad that he was once again motionless and silent.