“That is very good, Murghjhash. We will find it. I am pleased.”
“I praised you to them, my Lord.”
“Did you? Well, so you ought, that is fitting.”
“I said my master was the strongest, the oldest, he wasn’t afraid of nothing in the deserts or under the deserts and when our sun rose they’d all know it, all the filthy priests and sun-servers and y’—”
Gehrava raised a hand to stop him. “It appears you have failed all the same. You did not do what I told you.”
Murghjhash’s reborn hope died at once. “Mercy, my Lord! I was—I truly thought it was there—that horrible word. Oh, mercy, please!”
Gehrava turned to V’karra, “Give him a light.”
The tone of these four words filled Ilissos’ mind with images of bones scattered white in the dead wadis, of hard, splintering earth, and of crumbled cities
