Then Pokey took it and lived.” Word was out about that. His whole face puckered at the first taste. “Uhm.” I mixed a nasty, milky concoction. “Eaten outside the commissary lately, Curly?” A fly landed on his head, strutted like a conqueror. “Uhm.” I assumed my professional demeanor, sure what it was. I checked the watch schedule and duty roster. “It’s my stomach, Croaker.” His pate looks like a polished ostrich egg. I mopped my face and grimaced at my first patient. There wasn’t enough breeze to stir a cobweb. I had every shutter thrown wide, praying for a breath off the harbor, rotting fish and all. Only a fool would be surprised by anything found creeping its night streets. The Queen of the Jewel Cities was old and decadent and mad, filled with the stench of degeneracy and moral dryrot. They compile phenomenal records.īeryl totters perpetually, ready to stumble over a precipice into chaos. Still, the best augurs are those who divine from the portents of the past. We did have four modestly accomplished wizards to stand sentinel against predatory tomorrows-though never by any means as sophisticated as divining through sheeps’ entrails. Fools can make an omen of anything in retrospect. At the Bastion, the eagle not only departed, the ivy on the outer ramparts withered and gave way to a creeper which appeared black in all but the most intense sunlight.īut that happens every year. A mad soothsayer wandered the streets proclaiming the imminent end of the world. Then one evicted the eagle which lived atop the Paper Tower.Īstrologers refused readings, fearing for their lives. For nine evenings running, ten black vultures circled the Bastion. At the Fork Barracks, where the Urban Cohorts were billeted, the image of Teux turned completely around. One victim escaped after its bowels were opened and was not recaptured. Priests at several temples reported sacrificial victims without hearts or livers.

One bolt struck the bronze plaque sealing the tomb of the forvalaka, obliterating half the spell of confinement. Lightning from a clear sky smote the Necropolitan Hill. One-Eye’s handicap in no way impairs his marvelous hindsight. We must blame ourselves for misinterpreting them.

There were prodigies and portents enough, One-Eye says.

The black company cook