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spun about him. Water trickled down the walls. Even the immense beams that prevented this den from crashing down on the rats and human refuse that scrabbled about in it were moist and phosphorescent, sagging with rot.
    Walking the dark passage, Marric imagined through a feverish haze that at the end would stand a throne of wood, gleaming in decay, surrounded by a nimbus of evil light. There, guarded by jackals, decked in jewelry looted from a hundred tombs, secure in powers he dared not think of, Irene would rule as queen over the dead.
    That was not Empire. True Empire lay in the sunlight where the Golden Horn gleamed, and the blue water flowed cleanly beneath the keels of great ships. Marric couldn't have loved it half as much as it deserved. But he would try to remember it as he died.
    The prison corridor twisted upward. One of the guards counted passageways under his breath. Doors studded the walls like rotten teeth. From behind one of them puffed the nauseating sweetness of something left too long unburied.
    If there were only water—Marric longed to wash the vileness of this place from him. Finally a black door loomed before them. Iron studs formed a crude pattern across its heavy crossbeams. One man thumped on it with the butt of his spear. Slowly the door opened.
    More jailers were waiting on the far side of the door. As they entered, Marric paused for a moment, though they struck him. Set deep into arched embrasures were narrow windows. Sunlight poured down. Though the light hurt, Marric stared at it avidly. Hail unto thee, oh Ra, in thy rising . . . the old prayer ran through his mind. He turned to examine his new guards, slouching in heavy armor, each with the coarse face of a brute. One croaked a remark to Marric.
    "What's that? I can't understand you," Marric replied, only then realizing the man had gobbled his words because his palate was deeply cleft.
    His companion spoke not at all, but set his massive shoulders to the door and shoved. As the door grated shut, be of the harelip grunted a protest. The other man did not notice. Deaf, Marric thought, and the other one is as good as mute. Isis preserve us all, where does Irene find—or make—such men?
    "Move, princeling!"
    Marric moved along the sunlit hallway. He remembered the day he had leapt from his war-horse to mount one of the fierce little ponies that the Huns cherished more than anything but their sons and their shamans. Ellac and Uldin were adopting him. They rode, they feasted, and then they rode again, exulting in the feel of the wind against their faces. He had raced Ellac over the plains toward the Euxine. Then they had turned back to greet their men. Had he savored his freedom enough?
    The small procession passed door after door. The windows vanished for a while, and now the doors were of silver. Somehow they had traveled underground to the palace. There had been times when Marric had strode through such doors dressed in gilded armor with an honor guard at his back. Princeling. It was a role I played. I never really had any power.
    As Marric passed, forced toward the Hall of Audiences, men grounded their spear butts. They mock me.
    The hall was long and wide, a richness of stone wrought into the likeness of a garden. On the walls were mosaics of flowers so fair that Isis might have plucked them to wear in her hair.
    At the end of the hall, enthroned in splendor, sat Irene.
     
    Light flickered around Irene as she sat between rows of her favorites. Her dark eyes, beneath arched, imperious brows, lifted to regard her victim.
    The usurping empress wore the robes of Isis-on-Earth, silks from beyond Hamadan and Nishapur, heavily woven with silver and sewn with gems of the moon: pearls, corals, and moonstones. Rubies studded the collar that overlay her robe, fluted in the archaic style of the Two Lands. At her ears hung enormous pearls. And on her dark hair gleamed the crown of Isis, a disk of lucent silver that flashed in the light. A great crimson