The Voice of reason watched the mooh ambivalence, w for the huh time if she was the ohat had struck down her master. Given that there was still no true sun, that seemed the most likely option at this point, given that none of her messages that had beeo the Lich had beeurned sihat awful day when she had almost e undone.

  Truthfully, every day sihen had been hard, and no matter how much blood she bathed in, her body didn’t work quite like it was supposed to. The joints were stiff, and her movements were clumsy now. She was even thinking of getting a new skin. Much as the Voice loved the face of the princess who had betrayed her, it seemed someh to her now.

  Everything seemed wrong now, though. All the tiny kingdoms, city-states, and caliphates that she’d spent so much effort turning toward her master were growiless and mutinous, and there was little she could do to stop any of them if they decided to strike out against her and her master.

  For now, they tio send their tributes in gold and bodies. Ohese would have been directed further south, to Bckwater and her master. Now, they never left the small pace that she had been gifted he edge of Tanda.

  She khe pce was a trap, and that existed so the Goddess of the city could spy on her, but there was nothing that the Voice could do about that just now. After all, she had nowhere else to go. There was nothing but death to the south, and though part of her wao recim Rahkin and build it up as a city created to honor the Li a dark sort of way, there was no o in the south to popute it, and the dead needed some source to fuel the dark magics that powered them.

  Even now, her bck ships were still moored off the shore, just barely visible from the city, but they were mostly empty now. Someday soon, someone would test their aura of dread invincibility, and it would crack like an eggshell. Most of her best warriors had already been appropriated by the Dark Paragons, and she cked the power to keep those who were left from doing much more than standing there.

  Even that was only aplished by her regur sacrifices and dark rituals that were ducted in her enshadowed pace. She knew very little of the neantic arts that raised her and her minions, and it was all that she could do to simply keep those existing spells funing. As much as she would like to create new minions with an eye for superior aesthetics, that was well beyond her. She had tried to clothe the bodies of some of her war zombies in the skins of her sacrifices, but that produced only a different sort of terrifying appearance, and she quickly abahe project.

  Still, if the small Goddess Tanda Nihara was to be believed in days or weeks, this entire pretense would fall apart. Even acc to the Voice of Reason’s ows, the war in the north was not going well. She didn’t need any magic of her own to uand why.

  One mihe dark generals were exeg pns with perfect precision using nearly unlimited armies, and the , their forces were evaporating because they cked the powers to maintain them. Her most ret report said that they had mao create a ritual that turhe e of battle into a perverse form of blood magic, but even that had its own drawbacks.

  Before, the Dark Paragons were patient tactis who could test each defense and adapt to the ging strategies of the mortals they were pitted against. Now, in order to keep their armies from simply p down to nothing, they had to stantly press the attack, which was far from optimal. Berserk levels of fighting would create losses far greater than the fes of stantinal could repce, and she doubted very much that any reinforts were beio a this point. All of them were on their own now.

  The Voice of Reason sighed and was about to go baside her pace to decide whether or not she should stay or leave the city for the dozenth time this week whey’s Goddess appeared before her. Well, appeared was the wrong word. She simply strode out of the stone wall. At first, Tanda Nihara was the barest series of rectilinear outlines, but moment by moment, she became a statue of a beautiful woman and then the woman that was depicted instead.

  “Something new is ing this way,” she said abruptly. “What have you heard of it. Is this a new plot from the Lich?”

  her the Goddess’s appearanor her abruptness surprised the Voice at this point. She was used to absolute power over the people that dwelled in her city. For a time, she had shown the Voice of Reason some small difference because Tanda Nihara had once feared the Voice’s master, but those days were gone.

  “Such a thing is possible,” the Voice of Reason agreed, though she had no knowledge of the subject. “ you describe it to me?”

  The city Goddess proceeded to describe a beast of unnatural size and power that arently rampaging through some of the kingdoms south of here. Truthfully, it did not seem much like the Lich’s work because it seemed more living than dead, but it was only when she spoke iail about the mane of the thing that she remembered what the Lich had mentioned regarding the desert crypt it had ransacked years before.

  “Malkazeen,” she whispered. “It finally found the thing.”

  “That is a hat is both a and feared in these nds,” Tanda Nihara said, taken aback just enough for the Voice of Reason to notice. “What makes you say these things.”

  A quick versation revealed that though the people of the desert remembered the name enough to fear it, little was recalled beyond that at this point. To the people of Tanda, it was a beast of shadows that presaged war and famine, and even the Goddess remembered little more than that. Still, the Voice fetched quill and ink and drew as much as she could remember from the image that the Lich had shown her in its mind's eye. The result, even with her stiff and lifeless fingers, was an abomination that might make anyone afraid.

  “The people will riot well before this thing arrives,” the Goddess of the city pronounced cooly after sidering all this. “They will bme the darkhat is our nd on you, and they will be right to do so, I think.”

  “What will you do to me then?” the Voice asked. She was not in a mood to surrender, but at the same time, she was well aware that she had no powers that could hurt the woman who stood before her. “Perhaps if I—”

  “No,” Tanda Nihara said, shutting down the Voice before she even had a ce to speak. “Just because they are right to bme you and your master for this test catastrophe does not mean I am willing to ahe Lich should he return.”

  “So you are banishihen?” the Voice of Reason asked, hiding her growing fusion.

  “That is also impossible,” the stern-faced city Goddess answered. “You are too valuable of a pawn to let escape at this point. Depending on what the future holds for Tanda, I tolerate her your destru nor your loss.”

  “So I am to be a hostage,” the Voice said softly.

  She sidered a dozen different strategies she might try and a few ving gambits but ultimately said none of them. There was no point. She cked the power to back up even the softest implied threat, and her oppo almost certainly khat.

  Instead, after a moment's sideration, she finally answered, “Will you take me to the dungeon? I would like to pack a few things before—”

  “You don’t o go anywhere. This gift was always a prison cell whenever I desired to turn it into ohe Goddess answered brusquely. “I trust that you will find it fortable enough, but now I must go and warn others of the information you have provided so repare for our defense as best we are able.”

  Even as Tanda Nihara stepped into the wall, leaving behind only the fading afterimage of a woman in a temporary frieze that melted away before the Voice of Reason’s eyes, things began to shift uedly. When Tanda’s Goddess had said this pace would be a prison, the Voice had assumed that she would simply have the king pce imposing guards with shiny halberds at the exits.

  While the Voice could still martial a few zombies, and her banshee wail was a formidable on to mortal ears, that would have been enough. That wasn’t what the city’s Goddess wahough. Instead, the whole building began to fold into a ent spabsp;

  One minute, her dark pace was the rgest building on the small side street, and the , it was shrinking into ence even as the smaller buildings oher side crowded in to take up the spabsp;

  The Voice of Reaso a strain of fear shoot through her as she wondered what might happen to her. She said nothing, though. Instead, she stood stoically at the rail of her baly and waited for the iable. The Lich had never revealed all the details of its dual with the City God of stantinal, but it had said enough for her to know that this particur kind of small god was a true terror in their own domain, and any attempt to fight such power would end poorly for the Voibsp;

  Oblivion did not e for her, though. Instead, as the building disappeared, it reappeared in the dunes of the desert outside the city somewhere.

  No, not outside the city, the Voice corrected herself. Tanda Nihara would have no power outside her city. This is likely the pce it was before the city was ever built.

  The Voice didn’t know that for sure, but it seemed to be the most likely option. Looking up at the night sky a moment ter made that more likely. The mood was gone, and after a moment of study, it was revealed that the familiar steltions were, too. Instead, they were repced with the city lights in a sort of almost grid.

  She was irapped within a pocket dimension of the small Goddess’s making, which meant that escape was very likely impossible. The Voice of Reason sighed at that a baside to write all of this down before any of it slipped her mind. If the Lich had survived and made its presenown once more, it would certainly desire a full ating of these stras, and she would be ready.