Tenoctris, the wizard whose arrival in the surf off Barca's Hamlet had been the first of the events rushing Garric's quiet world toward catastrophe, said she thought at least twenty eras had been thrown together, spanning at least that many thousands of years. Tenoctris insisted she wasn't a powerful wizard, but her care and impeccable judgment had saved the kingdom repeatedly where someone with greater strength and less wisdom would've added to the looming disaster.

Garric had more confidence in a guess by Tenoctris than he did in tomorrow's sunrise. There'd been times in the past two years that the sunwouldn't have risen the next day, for Garric or the kingdom or for all mankind, if it hadn't been for the old wizard's skill. Coerli warriors shrieked from the walls of the Place as the gates shuddered outward. The trumpeters and cornicenes of the royal army brayed a brassy response, and the massed ranks of soldiers shouted and clashed spears against their shields. "We could cut right through the beasts,"

Carus mused regretfully. "Cut and burn and wipe them off the face of the world. But we'll do as Tenoctris says." And we'll killthisCorl, Garric thought. So that the rest believe me when I tell them they have no choice but to obey the laws we humans set them. Human slaves finished pushing the gate open; they scuttled back within the walls.

The Coerli used men the way men used oxen. Garric's eyes narrowed, but six naked slaves forced to shove on gate leaves wasn't the worst injustice taking place in the world. Worse things were happening a thousand times every day in human cities and on human estates.