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written," murmured Shirvan of Bas-sania calmly. He was propped up on pillows, his bare chest wrapped in the linen bandages. "By the grace of Perun and the Lady, the designs of Black Azal have been blighted for a time. The physician has removed the arrow."
    The vizier, noticeably moved, passed a hand before his face and knelt, touching the floor with his forehead. Prince Murash, eyes wide as he looked at his father, turned quickly to Rustem. "Perun be exalted!" he cried, and, striding across the floor, he reached forward and seized both of Rustem's hands in his own. "You shall be requited, physician!" exclaimed the prince.
    It was with a supreme act of self-control and a desperate faith in his own learning that Rustem did not violently recoil. His heart was pounding furiously. "Perun be exalted!" Prince Murash repeated, turning back to the bed and kneeling as the vizier had done.
    "Always," agreed the king quietly. "My son, the assassin's arrow rests there on the chest beneath the window. There was poison on it.
Kaaba.
Throw it in the fire for me."
    Rustem caught his breath. He looked swiftly at Vinaszh, meeting the soldier's eyes again, then back to the prince.
    Murash rose to his feet. "Joyfully will I do so, my father and king. But poison?" he said.'How can this be?" He crossed to the window and reached carefully for a swath of linen that lay beside Rustem's implements.
    "Take it in your hands, my son," said Shirvan of Bassania, King of Kings, Sword of Perun. "Take it in your bare hands again."
    Very slowly the prince turned to the bed. The vizier had risen now and was watching him closely.
    "I do not understand.You believe I handled this arrow?" Prince Murash said.
    "The smell remains on your hands, my son," said Shirvan gravely. Rustem cautiously took a step towards the king. The prince turned- outwardly perplexed, no more than that-and looked at his hands and then at Rustem. "But then I will have poisoned the doctor, too," he said.
    Shirvan moved his head to look at Rustem. Dark beard above pale linen bandages, the eyes black and
cold. Act accordingly,
he had said. Rustem cleared his throat. "You will have tried," he said. His heart was pounding. "If you handled the arrow when you shot the king then the
kaaba
has passed through your skin and is within you by now. There is no menace to your touch, Prince Murash. Not any more."
    He believed this was true. He had been
taught
that this was so. He had never seen it put to the test. He felt oddly light-headed, as though the room were rocking slightly, like a child's cradle.
    He saw the prince's eyes go black then-much like his father's, in fact. Murash reached to his belt, whipped out a knife, turned towards the bed.
    The vizier cried out. Rustem stumbled forward, unarmed.
    Vinaszh, commander of the garrison at Kerakek, killed Prince Murash, third of the nine sons of Shirvan the Great, with his own dagger, flung from near the doorway.
    The prince, a blade in his throat, dropped his weapon from lifeless fingers and slowly toppled across the bed, his face to his father's knees, his blood staining the pale sheets red.
    Shirvan did not move. Neither did anyone else.
    After a long, frozen moment the king turned from gazing down at his dead son to look over at Vinaszh and then at Rustem. He nodded his head slowly, to each of them.
    "Physician, your father's name was…?" A tone of detached, mildly curious interrogation.
    Rustem blinked. "Zorah, great lord."
    "A warrior-caste name."
    "Yes, lord. He was a soldier."
    "You chose a different life?"
    The conversation was so implausible it was eerie. Rustem felt dizzied by it. There was a dead man-a son-sprawled across the body of the man with whom he was speaking thus. "I war against disease and wounds, my lord." What he always said.
    The king nodded again, thoughtfully, as if satisfied by something. "You know one must be of the priestly caste to become a royal physician, of course."
    Of course. The world knocking at his door, after