13 Renewal NightTHE DAY PASSED AND as the night welled up from the east, Tyr and his parents took their places beside Azhur outside the Shrine, in the great semi-circular court where the city was assembling for a spectacle that would outdo even Mother Vashira. They sat in the highest row of a semi-circle of tiered seats that sloped from the floor of the court to the single walkway along the ramparts of the encircling wall. Tyr leaned back contented, he would miss nothing from here. Bending his supple spine as far as he could in an exaggerated curve over the back of his seat, he could peer along the rampart of the Shrine’s monstrous curving wall and out east over the city to the descending dark. A deep, black-blue night had fallen on the Plain. The torches beside each guardsman shone like g
