Tempus, a mercenary general in the service of Ranke's new emperor, was knee-deepin the bloody purges marking the first winter of Theron's accession to theRankan throne when the sky above the walled city began to weep black tears.

By the time dawn should have broken, ashen clouds massed to the very vault ofheaven so that not even the Sun God's sharpest rays could pierce the arrayedarmies of the night. The city of Ranke, once the brightest jewel of the Rankanempire, shuddered in the dark, her ochre walls stained dusky from the storm'sblack and ugly might.

Thunder growled; winds yowled. Black hail pelted Theron's palace, shatteringwindows and pounding doors. On temple streets and cultured byways it bounced,sharp as diamonds and large as heads, bringing impious priests to their kneesand cheap nobles to charity in slick streets covered with greasy slush freezingto ice as black, some said, as their emperor Theron's heart.

For all knew that Theron had come to power in a coup instigated by the armies-hewas a creature of blood, a wild beast of the battlefield. And the proof of thiswas in the allies who had brought him to the Imperial palace: Nisibisi witches,demons of the black beyond, devils of horrid aspect, even the feared nearimmortals of the blood cults-Askelon, the lord of dreams, and his brother-in-lawTempus, demigod and favorite son of Vashanka, the Rankan wargod, to name buttwo- had lent their strength to Theron's cause.