The soldiers stood dumbstruck at the news—even Hahinqo, Roteka’s general—and muted cries of anguish spread along the wall. Kwasin, fearing the men’s discipline was on the verge of snapping, stepped forward and stood among the soldiers.

  “Men of Dythbeth!” he shouted. “They have slain our king, whose dying wish was to protect the city and put an end to the foul stench that is Minruth’s reign! Don’t tarry over the king’s broken and empty shell, but leave it where it lies and let the Goddess take care of his spirit! Now follow me and, Kho willing, together we shall wipe the followers of Resu from the land in the name of King Roteka!”

  As if the men were a tuning fork and Kwasin’s words the hammer that struck them, the Dythbethan troops bellowed forth a harsh cheer and surged about him. Ignoring General Hahinqo—who, red-faced, shouted at his men to come to order—Kwasin ran along the wall and then down the stairway that led between Dythbeth’s inner and outer walls.

  Already cries of “Kwasin! Kwasin!” filled the night as the soldiers charged behind him. When he had reached the bottom of the stairs, he found the city gate groaning open upon its enormous wooden hinges. Whoever was in charge of the gate had calculated that, rather than following the proper chain of command, it was better to let the giant and the men who followed him through the gate. Either that or the commander in charge recognized that Kwasin and his mad band of followers might be the city’s last hope and had ordered the gate to be opened.

  In the end it did not matter. Whoever had let Kwasin and his men through had made the correct decision. Taken by surprise at the force and ferocity of the Dythbethan tide pouring from the gate, Minruth’s troops fell into disarray. The fighting continued with its wearying cycle of advances and retreats well into the early hours of the morning, when at last the men of Khokarsa found they could no longer hold their ground against the fury-driven Dythbethans, who, enraged at the death of their king, fought with all the fierce spirit of Khukhaqo, the Leopard Goddess. The Sixth Army retreated across the plain, their losses heavy.

  The army of Dythbeth, though victorious, had also lost many men. Those among the living who were not too exhausted to walk scoured the plain along the city’s eastern wall, putting to death the lame and seriously wounded. Many women would be weeping for their lost lovers with the next coming of Resu over the great plain.

  Kwasin, bone-tired and covered in sweat, grime, and blood, much of the latter his own, dragged himself from the field of battle. He had not forgotten Taphiru’s treachery; but rather than report the man’s crime to the army commander, he wanted to deal with the priest himself. Besides, if he reported the crime to the authorities, there would be an official inquiry, and in the meantime he feared mob justice might rob him of the personal vengeance he desired.

  He approached the towering city gate, its bronze exterior streaked with flicker-ings of orange from the burning torches of the men outside. A sentry, looking nervous, stood before the huge doors, which had been cracked open to allow soldiers to reenter the city with their wounded and scavenged war loot. When Kwasin arrived at the gate, the sentry blocked his way and asked him to identify himself, though the man’s face looked ashen with uncertainty.

  In no mood to be challenged by the soldier after the grueling day and night of combat, Kwasin said, “If you don’t know who I am, then you have no business guarding the gate.” As he spoke, he grabbed the man’s spear, yanked it roughly from his hands, and tossed it to the ground.

  Suddenly a group of twelve men—looking too fresh to have engaged in the recent battle—ran out of the gate and surrounded Kwasin. Their polished bronze helmets gleamed under the torches, and they pointed cleanly oiled spearpoints at him. A wiry, tough-looking man of about forty led the group.

  “Kwasin!” he said. “Exile of the empire, and violator of the holy Temple of Kho! By order of the Queen of Dythbeth, I place you under arrest!”

  Kwasin groaned. Then, wearily, he shook his head. “Fortunately for you I am too exhausted to argue,” he said. “I will go with you peacefully. But I have urgent news for Queen Weth concerning the death of her husband. Before you imprison the man who led the charge that saved your worthless hides, grant me an audience with the queen.”

  He expected his request to be ignored, but the commander of the guard sighed in apparent relief and said, “You will see her now, but not because of any leniency on my part. The queen has ordered that you be brought to the palace immediately. Surrender your weapon and come with us.”

  Reluctantly, Kwasin complied. He groaned again, however, when he handed over the ax to one of the guardsmen, who seemed awed to hold the weapon, with its enormous head of exceptionally heavy iron. Or perhaps it was the legendary giant who awed the man. Right now Kwasin did not care.

  When another guardsman made to place chains on his wrists, Kwasin said, “You may try, little man, but I will wring your neck first, and then that of your commander, before anyone can stop me.” Kwasin glowered at the blanching man, and the commander of the queen’s guard pressed his lips tightly together as if weighing the words of the giant before him.

  Then Kwasin shook with laughter. “Don’t look so sickly, commander. I swear to you on my honor as a Bear man that I won’t harm the queen and will do as she bids. We are all allies against Minruth, are we not?”

  The commander, from whose belt dangled a bone-carven fetish of the Bear Totem, stood silent. Then, somewhat to Kwasin’s surprise, he ordered his man to stand down. Totemic glue had proven stronger than royal decree.

  Kwasin and his escort passed through the giant doorways of the outer wall, and a moment later through the gate of the older inner wall. The latter rose not quite as tall as its companion, white plaster covering its granite foundation. While the stone of the outer fortification was barefaced, sculpted effigies of various animals and deities decorated the tops of its turrets. These included leopards, serpents, trumpeting elephants, Lahhindar pulling back her divine bow, and Kho as the Goat-Headed Mother, Her horns aimed menacingly at approachers to the city. Even though Dythbeth had for many hundreds of years sworn allegiance to the empire, the fierce and intimidating sculptures looming upon the city’s walls bore witness to its long history of stubborn independence.

  They followed the wide, stone-block road that curved round the massive military barracks on one side and a commercial and residential district on the other. The latter was made up of white plastered adobe buildings that stood two to four stories in height, divided by a crisscross of narrow streets and back alleys, many of which hosted bazaars and markets in the daylight hours. Torches and oil lamps burned in both sections of the city; the army still had much post-battle work to do and the concerned citizens undoubtedly could not sleep through the night’s excitement. Overall, three main double-fortified enclosures, each decreasing in size with its relative age, outlined Dythbeth. The section through which Kwasin and his guards passed, the newest and largest, was built to provide support for the Fifth Army, with homes and shops densely distributed throughout the enclosed area.

  Soon they came to the towering bronze gate that led to the city’s center. At seeing the queen’s guard, the sentries ordered the great doors swung open, and Kwasin and the guardsmen passed inside. This sector housed the royal palace and governmental buildings, and was also home to the many temples dedicated to various goddesses and gods. On their right, the temple of Piqabes, the green-eyed daughter of Kho and goddess of the sea—one of the most important deities in this port city— jutted proudly into the sky, taller than any other building except the palace and the Temple of Kho. They passed the College of Awines, the native genius of Dythbeth who a thousand years before invented the syllabary that was used across the empire, as well as conceived for the first time algebra, the science of linguistics, knowledge of the circulation of blood, the invention of the catapult, wooden blocks for printing, the water clock, the magnifying glass, and a solar calendar, among many other inventions, theories, and formulations.

  And there was the temple of Khukhaken, where Kwasin’s mother, Wimake, had conceived him while serving as a divine prostitute. Beside a great marble-hewn statue of the Leopard God, a priestess stood counting the jewels of her rosary, offering prayers of thanks to the returning soldiers who passed wearily by. Kwasin leered at her. He had not had a woman since the priestess at Q’okwoqo, and though he had thought himself utterly fatigued, lust stirred in his loins. Upon seeing Kwasin the woman stopped fingering her rosary and, glaring at him, muttered something beneath her breath. Recalling the reason for his long exile, Kwasin grimaced and looked away.

  Kwasin’s stomach growled as the aroma of stewed buffalo meat wafted his way from the hall of the Klakordeth, or Thunder Bear Totem. He had not eaten since early last morning, and that had only been a paltry meal of millet bread and mowometh berries, accompanied by one small spoonful of honey cultivated by the bee farmers of Qoqada, dished out to him by a stingy army cook. Hunger tempted him to ask the head of the guard if they could stop to eat an early breakfast with their totem brothers, but again Kwasin pushed desire from his mind and remained silent.

  Leaving behind the temples, totem halls, colleges, taverns, and shops, they walked over the drawbridge that crossed the moat and led within the palace citadel. The dome-shaped palatial hall was ancient. Its original foundation was said to have been laid in the days when the hero Dythbeth settled the region. The building itself, however, had been built much later, when the science of architecture had advanced enough to allow for the lofty arches and the massive columns that supported the cavernous rotunda of the palace.

  They climbed the palace’s shallow marble steps, numbering one hundred and seventeen to honor the syllabary of Awines, and passed beyond the tall golden doorways and into a side room where buckets of warm, perfumed water were thrown over Kwasin to purify him and wash away the muck of sweat and battle. Here the palatial attendants allowed him to drink briefly from a tall cask of cool water, and though they offered him no food, he was provided with a new loincloth and a kilt of fine lion skin. From there his guards escorted him into an antechamber outside the grand rotunda, where he was forced to stand at attention in front of the royal doors for half an hour while waiting for the queen to beckon him. When, after that period, Kwasin asked that he be allowed to relieve his bladder, the attendant in charge refused. He changed his mind, however, when Kwasin threatened to empty himself on the queen’s doors. Accompanied by six guardsmen, Kwasin was permitted to enter an adjoining room, a spacious and elaborately decorated lavatory meant for visiting dignitaries. He returned to the antechamber under the chief attendant’s scornful eye just as the brass gong rang out to announce that the queen was ready to condescend to his presence.

  The tall doors opened and a herald cried out, “Behold, priestess of Kho and of Her daughter, the moon, Queen Weth of the queendom of Dythbeth! Behold, Kwasin the Exiled!”

  Kwasin smirked somewhat pridefully at his epithet and sauntered into the hall. Six guardsmen carrying bronze-tipped spears followed him on either side, their weapons angled toward him.

  In his boyhood years in Dythbeth, and after his subsequent return as an adult following his almost eight-year stay with Phimeth, Kwasin rarely had occasion to visit the royal palace; and he had never been within the throne room’s jewel-encrusted and gold-lined walls. Though not one to be impressed by such grand displays of opulence, even the seven-foot-tall Kwasin found himself feeling diminutive beneath the chamber’s immense, high-vaulted dome, whose colorful mosaic artwork illustrated exotic scenes of the Khokarsan and local pantheon.

  If the great rotunda and lavish affluence of the palace did not quite take away Kwasin’s breath, the sight of Queen Weth on her throne did. Indeed, he thought, the high priestess of Dythbeth shone with more dazzling brilliance than all of the diamonds, rubies, and emeralds embedded in the walls of her throne room. And again, though he had thought himself too tired, Kwasin grew hot with lust. Then the queen locked a frozen gaze upon him and he felt as if Kho Herself saw through to his soul.

  Still, he could not help but take in Weth’s shapely hips wrapped in their leopardess-skin kilt, the smooth bronze skin above a narrow girdle of jewel-encrusted golden rings, the full and large-nippled breasts, and her long, glossy black hair tied up in a Psyche knot. Though dark half-moons of fatigue hung beneath her bloodshot eyes, the woman seemed not to have aged at all in the intervening nine years since he had last seen her. In fact, she looked more beautiful than he remembered.

  He stopped before the throne. General Hahinqo stood to the queen’s left, eyeing Kwasin coolly; on the queen’s right stood a stooping, prune-faced priestess. The king’s chair, its platform slightly lower than the queen’s and its decorations not quite as elaborate, remained empty.

  Kwasin bowed his head and examined the mosaic-tiled floor, not out of respect for the queen, but so that she might not see the desire in his eyes. Normally he cared little how anyone, be it royalty or savage heathen, might perceive him; but he could not risk offending the priestess this time. Besides, her husband had just been killed, and even if Kwasin were fortunate enough to discover that time had softened Weth’s ire at him, the queen’s mood was certain to be black.

  He was not wrong.

  The queen rose from her throne, her eyes cold flames, and said, “How comes it that Kwasin, desecrator of Kho’s temple, exiled by the oracular priestess to the hinterlands beyond the empire, dare show his face in the queendom of Dythbeth and expects to live?”

  Kwasin looked up and spoke in a rumbling voice made even more cavernous under the throne room’s great dome.

  “My wanderings in the Wild Lands have taken me to many wondrous and astonishing places, and I have stood upon the shores of the Ringing Sea and witnessed the very edge of the world,” he said with his usual bombast; “but never have I seen a more welcoming sight than the proud homeland of my birth.” He looked askance at the spearpoints aimed at him and smiled wryly. Then he bent to one knee before the queen and spread his arms wide as if in supplication. “Nor have I ever looked upon a woman as fair and virtuous as Kho’s priestess at Dythbeth!”

  “Rise, you honey-tongued fool!” Weth cried.

  Kwasin felt cold bronze spear-tips press against his shoulders. He got to his feet.

  “You are a giant like out of myth,” Weth said in a shrill voice. “But your mind is very small if you think your fawning compliments will erase your crimes against the Goddess. And do you think the queen does not watch over her city and know all the evil that you do here?” Then she looked to the herald and cried, “Bring in the priest!”

  Kwasin stood as still as one of the cold granite pillars that circled the hall as the royal guards escorted Taphiru, high priest of Resu, into the chamber. When Taphiru stood beside the queen, facing Kwasin with his narrowed, snake-gray eyes, Weth said, “Tell us what you have witnessed, vicar.”

  Taphiru played his part well. As he spoke, his face grew red and his hands shook with feigned outrage. “I saw the exile, the defiler of Kho’s temple, slinking in the shadows along the outer wall. While the king fought gloriously against our enemy, this traitorous monster Kwasin crept up from behind, and before I could shout a warning, cast a spear into the back of King Roteka! He is the king’s murderer!”

  Gasps and murmurs came from the courtiers, and the queen’s eyes flashed with fury.

  “How do you speak now, Kwasin?” the queen asked. “With words dripping of sweetness?”

  Silence settled across the hall. Then Kwasin’s booming laughter shook the chamber.

  “Yes, O Priestess, the king’s murderer does stand before you,” he said. “Indeed, while many brave men died defending Dythbeth against Minruth’s blasphemous followers, this fork-tongued priest slithered into the shadows like a frightened snake.” He looked to Hahinqo. “Any of the men who fought with me on the walls will testify to that. They cannot all have been bought with the coins of the priests.” Hahinqo’s expression remained stony.

  “Just what are you insinuating?” Weth asked, and Kwasin saw doubt cross her face.

  “Why should I kill King Roteka, who promised to have you consult the oracle on my behalf?”

  Weth looked to Hahinqo.

  “It is true,” the general said. “The king made such a promise.”

  “Kwasin is a necromancer!” the priest cried. “He has learned the dark ways of the outlanders during his exile. His enchanted words twisted the mind of the king!” “And yet they do not twist mine,” Weth said. A shrewd look came over her, and she addressed Kwasin.

  “How would Taphiru benefit from the murder of my husband?”

  “Perhaps he sees himself as king once Dythbeth’s priests revolt, as the priests of Khokarsa did under Minruth.” Then he added, “Though I would certainly make a better king for her highness than this gutless priest.”

  Again the room filled with gasps, and Weth’s long nails dug into the flesh of her palms. Then her hands relaxed and she summoned Hahinqo to ascend the royal platform, where the two whispered for close to a minute. When Hahinqo had resumed his position at the foot of the dais, the queen said, “After your terrible crimes, the oracle spared you, Kwasin, from the death you so rightly deserved, and instead she condemned you to exile. But even as she cast you from the empire, the oracle decreed that one day you would return, whether to be executed or forgiven she did not say. General Hahinqo tells me that the city would have fallen without your mad charge, and so, until I have time to consult with the oracular priestess, I am forced to interpret the oracle’s words as meaning that the Goddess, in Her unending generosity, has forgiven your transgressions against Her...and against me. The oracle foresaw that Dythbeth would one day need your great strength—no matter the severity of your past crimes or the unbounded stupidity of your loutish behavior.”