But it clicked. Almost the way it had back when. Amazed, pleased, I whispered the words of power, moved my fingers. The muscles remembered!

The Golden Hammer formed in my left hand.

I jumped up, flipped it, raised my sword. The glowing hammer flew true. The soldier made a stabbed-pig sound and tried to fend it off. It branded its shape on his chest.

It was an ecstatic moment. Success with that silly child's spell was a major triumph over my handicap.

My body wouldn't respond to my will. Too stiff, too battered and bruised for flight, I tried to charge the second soldier. Mostly I stumbled toward him. He gaped, then he ran. I was astonished.

I heard a sound like the cough of a tiger behind me.

A man came out of nowhere down the ravine. He threw something. The fleeing soldier pitched onto his face and didn't move.

I got out of the brush and placed myself so I could watch the killer and the dirty slave who had made the tiger cough. The killer was a huge man. He wore tatters of Taglian legionnaire's garb.

The little man came around the brush slowly, considered my victim. He was impressed. He said something apologetic in Taglian, then something excited, rapidly in dialect I found unfamiliar, to the big man, who had begun searching his victim. I caught a phrase here and there, all with a cultish sound but uncertain in this context. I couldn't tell if he was talking about me or praising one of his gods. I heard "the Foretold" and "Daughter of Night" and "the Bride" and "Year of the Skulls." I'd heard a "Daughter of Shadow" and a "Year of the Skulls" before somewhere, in the religious chatter of god-ridden Taglians, but I didn't know their significance.

The big man grunted. He wasn't impressed. He just cursed the dead soldier, kicked him. "Nothing."

The little man fawned. "Your pardon, Lady. We've been killing these dogs all morning, trying to raise a stake. But they're poorer than I was as a slave."