Then Randal put down his knife and wiped his long nose with a gory hand. "Maybeit'll bring your god back, Strat. Rouse Vashanka from wheresoever the PillageLord is sleeping. The men think so, that's sure enough." The mage rose up andmade a pass over the quartered dog and all four parts of it-fore and hind-roseinto the air, dripping fluids, and floated away toward the field altar outbehind the training ground.
Strat watched the pieces disappear around a corner before he said, "Vashanka?Back? What makes you think the god's gone? He's reverted to His secondchildhood, is all. He's lost all sense of proportion like a child." Then Stratturned on Ischade, as she'd thought he might, and his eyes were as flat and hardas her nerves told her his heart had become.
"Does this suit you, then, Ischade? All this 'order' that you see here? Will ithelp us-give us a few nights more for you to lie with me without your 'needs'taking over? Are you sated? Can a necromant ever have enough? Is it safe for youto take me home?"
Home to her embrace, he meant. To her odd and shadowed house, all gleam andvelvet by the White Foal's edge. Straton made her soul ache and because of himshe'd mixed in where no necromant belonged. And it was true: The death here waspartly of her making; she'd be content now, without having to stalk the nightfor victims, for days.
She saw in his eyes that he knew too much, that all she'd done to give him whathe wanted-her-for stolen evenings on brocade cushions was about to exact theprice she'd always known it must.
Randal, knowing the conversation was getting too intimate for outsiders, hurriedoff, wiping hands on his winter woolens as he followed his sacrifice out toward