CHAPTER 5Heraj looked into his crystal ball. Absently he flung out his right arm, which extended for seven feet and allowed the hand to grasp a beaker of honey wine sitting on a taboret across the room.
His eyes lit up greenly at what he saw in the ball. He tossed off the wine and hared out of his apartments, through the room where fourteen lieutenants of Mufaddal’s force were playing at dice, and into his master’s sleeping room. Mufaddal sat up from his rugs and howled.
“This damnable lack of privacy must cease! I—” Then he saw what his half-brother was doing casually with his left foot, and subsided. “Yes, Heraj? What is it?”
“Listen, al Mamun. I put a thought in Godwin’s head this afternoon—just a suggestion, you know. He followed through beautifully.”
“Good. Did he hang himself to
