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the Dark Path and find you can’t return. Already, it’s entered your heart. Don’t you feel an unnatural coldness? You must break free of it.”
    “How?”
    “Eat. Rebuild your strength. Submit to my discipline.”
    “And who made you my master?”
    “Didn’t you say you’ve been apart from Yim for seventeen winters?”
    “Yes. So?”
    “Seventeen’s a fateful number, for it clarifies what’s tattooed upon your back. The Seer who made those marks foretold my role, and Karm inspired the Seer. You may have renounced the goddess, but she never renounced you. Won’t you return her love?”
    Honus sat silently as Daven waited for a reply. It was a long while before the old man shook his head and looked away.
    The Most Holy Gorm’s divining chamber was atop the highest tower in the Iron Palace, but sunlight never entered it. Only a single oil lamp broke the darkness of the windowless room. The smoky flame gave the air a pungent odor but didn’t ease its otherworldly coldness. The lamp’s pale light illuminated an iron door and walls of black basalt, a circle of blood painted on the stone floor, the corpse of the young boy sacrificed to provide it, and the Devourer’s high priest. Gorm sat within the circle’s protection and cast a set of ancient human bones upon the floor. They were yellow with age and inscribed with runes. As the bones clattered upon the cold stone, they appeared to move as if stirred by an unfelt wind, and it took some time for them to settle.
    After the bones grew still, Gorm stared at them and noted their positions, where their shadows fell, and what runes were exposed. On three successive days, he had performed the ritual. Each time the revelation was the same. “Seventeen,” he uttered to the chilly darkness. “Seventeen today.”
    The room slowly warmed as Gorm waited patiently within the circle of blood until it was safe to leave it. Even he wasn’t immune to his master’s malice, and the blood served as both offering and barrier. When the Most Holy One deemed it safe, he left the tower room and descended the long spiral stairway to the palace rooms below. Passing through them to the great hall, it was impossible to ignore their neglect. Gorm had been present when the foundation of the Iron Palace was laid, and had lived through the reigns of all its lords. The structure reflected the wax and wane of the lineage. Its iron exterior was oiled and black when Lord Bahl was in the fullness of his power, and rusty when that power passed to an infant heir. But never had the cycle reached such a low. Gorm walked past empty rooms shrouded in dust and gazed out dirty windows to view towers and crenellated walls encrusted with a thick reddish cancer.
    Few servants remained, and even the garrison of the Iron Guard had many empty bunks. That was partly due to economy, for no plunder poured into the coffers, but it also reduced the number of potential wagging tongues. Gorm knew it was rumored that the heir was absent. He had done his utmost to suppress the talk, but it was hard to hide what was so plainly evident: The lord of the Iron Palace was but a husk with his seed missing. The most Gorm could hope for was an uneasy silence until the heir was found.
    Gorm entered the great hall, his footsteps echoing in the empty, cobwebbed space. He passed the huge, cold fireplace and the unused banquet tables with their vacant chairs, all pale with long-gathered dust, to reach the raised platform at the room’s end. There were two seats upon it, a large ornate one at the forefront, and Gorm’s seat, slightly to the rear.The latter was modest in appearance, and few realized it was where Bahland’s true ruler sat. The ornate chair was occupied. Gorm bowed to the man sitting there out of habit, but there was no deference in his manner. “My lord, your son was born this day, seventeen winters past.”
    The man on the throne replied in a dull voice. “That long ago? How do you know?”
    “The bones told