Chapter 2
The Cold Hearth
Otchigen’s heart beat so slowly that it seemed barely able to keep him alive. He lumbered through the palace forecourt—another pentagon, but this one larger, stone-flagged, filled with tight knots of brightly-dressed courtiers and black-robed cohort elders gathered higgledy-piggledy in a constant half-dance. They reminded Otchigen of marionettes on a storyteller’s stage. It took an effort of will for him not to think they were all looking at him, or at least whispering about him. To distract himself, he tried to imagine the feast in the Dar’s hall going on without him.
There would be long tables, garlanded and bedecked in towering creations almost too fanciful to eat—baked pies made to look like leaping stags, filled with twelve layers of delicacies like swan,
