The king nodded his head very slightly. No hint of anger diminishing. He would be in very great pain but wasn't showing it. "All three of them. Amusing. I ordered them to be executed for their incompetence, but they would each have died soon, wouldn't they? None of them noted the poison."

"It is rare here," said Rustem, struggling to order his thoughts.

"Not so rare. I have been taking small amounts for twenty-five years," said the king. 'Kaaba, other evil substances. Anahita will summon us to herself when she wills, but men may still be prudent in their lives, and kings must be."

Rustem swallowed. He now had the explanation for his patient's survival to this point. Twenty-five years? An image came into his mind: a young king touching-fearfully, surely-a trace amount of the deadly powder: the sickness that would have ensued… doing the same thing again later, and then again, and then beginning to taste it, in larger and larger amounts. He shook his head.

"The king has endured much for his people," he said. He was thinking of the court physicians. Kaaba closed the throat before it reached the heart. One died in agony, of self-strangulation. He had seen it in the east. A method of formal execution. Amusing, the king had said.

He was thinking of something else now, as well. He pushed that away for the moment, as best he could.

"It makes no difference," said the king. His voice was much as Rustem had imagined it might be: cold, uninflected, grave. "This is a lion arrow. Protection from poison doesn't help if the arrow cannot come out."

There was a tapping at the door. It opened and Vinaszh the garrison commander returned, breathing as if he'd been running, carrying dark brown leather riding gloves. They were too thick for easy use, Rustem saw, but he had no choice. He put them on. Unlaced the thong of the case that held a long thin metal implement. The one his son had brought out to the garden for him. He said an arrow, Papa.