Once, the town of Sanctuary had been sneered at as the anus of Empire-but atleast then it had been part of something comprehensible: the Rankan Empire,venal and vicious, was a creation of men and manpower, not of women and sorcery.The Harka Bey and their sorceresses imposed a rule of supernatural terror uponSanctuary that all priests- Ilsig and Rankan alike-agreed would soon bring downthe wrath of the elder gods.
An Ilsigi priest, in his fiery sermons (held surreptitously north of town in theOld Ruins), had warned that the gods might send Sanctuary to the bottom of thesea if the populace did not unite and oust the Bey.
Some had hoped Kadakithis might show his face there last night; but no one inthe city had seen the poor Prince/Governor up close since the takeover:sometimes a personage who looked very like Kadakithis appeared at the highwindow in the Hall of Justice, but the whispers were that this was only asimulacrum of Kadakithis, that the Prince/ Governor languished, all but dead,under the Beysa Shupansea's spell. And the rumors were not so far from thetruth, though Kadakithis was held in thrall by love, not magic.
Things were so much worse now than they'd been when the Nisibisi witches hadcome down from the north preaching Ilsig liberation and prophesying a greatupheaval to come that, had the most terrible Nisibisi witch-Roxane, Death'sQueen-appeared now before Hakiem and demanded his soul in payment for theopportunity to tell a tale of Sane- f tuary's freedom, Hakiem would gladly