Although all this was about to end. There was no more work.

Gone were the days of pharaohs and kings. The world was ruled by presidents and dictators, locked in the bloodless, twilight combat of the modern age.

Even war was different. At the moment, there was one being fought to the south. At night the villagers would climb to their roofs to watch the explosions of artillery shells. Like all the other wars of the twentieth century, it was all about machines and guns and men on foot advancing and retreating until one side thought it had captured a prize. The artistry of assassination was lost. The world was big and clumsy and dismissive of the old ways.

Because the rules had changed, the Impostor couldn't find work. Who needed a scalpel when he could use a club? Why remove a king's head when a single bomb could obliterate his entire kingdom? The work had gone away, and the desolate shadow of death had descended over the small village.

If the food they ate and the wood they used to cook it came courtesy the Impostor, it would not be so for much longer. When the money he had earned was gone, he would have to draw on reserves bequeathed to the village from those who came before. And one day it, too, would all be gone.

The Impostor's only hope-the only hope for the future of the village-was the young boy sitting on this dirty floor, bathed in the dancing fires of hate carefully stoked and tended by his bitter mother.

"He thinks you will save his family," his mother said as the warm fires burned and the wispy smoke rose in ghostly black threads up the chimney. Drawing up a deep ball of phlegm, she spit on the stone floor. "That is all his family is worth. You are the hope of our future, not his. Bring him to ruin. Do it for your family. Such has it been foreseen, such it will be. It is our destiny, and yours."