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arm.
    “What if he’s a mage?” he said, looking from one face to another. “What if he can keep evil from entering the shrine? All evil?”
    Neeps and Fiffengurt paled. Even Hercól looked alarmed. Thasha seemed to have trouble catching her breath.
    “In that case …,” she stammered. “Well. In that case—”
    She was interrupted by a burst of song from the Mzithrini women. It was a frightful sound, nearly a shriek. At the same moment the men raised their glass pipes and began to whirl them overhead by the straps, faster and faster, until they became mere blurs of color in the sunlight. Astonishingly, although their orbits crisscrossed endlessly, the pipes never collided. And from them came a hundred eerie notes, high other worldly howls, like wolves in caves of ice. It was the summons to the bride.
    Thasha turned and looked back at her father. Isiq raised a trembling hand, but she was too far ahead of him to touch. She looked at each friend in turn, and longest at Pazel, who was fighting an impulse to shout, Don’t go in there . Then she left her entourage and walked quickly to the steps.
    The men fell back, still whirling their pipes, and so did the chorus of wailing women. And as Thasha climbed the stair a new figure emerged from the shrine. He looked to be in his thirties, nimble and straight, with a martial air about him: indeed he wore a kind of dark dress uniform, with a red sun pendant on his chest.
    “Prince Falmurqat the Younger,” said Hercól.
    “He’s not young enough if you ask me,” growled Fiffengurt.
    “A capable officer, according to Chadfallow’s informants,” Hercól continued, “but a reluctant one. Above all things his father desired a soldier-son, but until the Treaty raised the prospect of ending the long war, the son refused to have anything to do with the military. I gather he paints quite beautifully.”
    “You’re a lucky girl, Thasha,” said Pazel.
    “And you’re an idiot,” she said.
    Behind the man came his parents, Falmurqat the Elder and his gray princess, and with them another Mzithrini holy man. This one was old, but not as old as the Father, and dressed not in black but a deep blood-red.
    Thasha and the prince met exactly as planned, on the step below the boy with the silver knife. The singing ceased; the men stopped their whirling display. Thasha looked utterly serene now: she might have just climbed the steps of her own house on Maj Hill in Etherhorde. Without a word she lifted the knife from the boy’s knees, turned and raised it to the watching thousands, and replaced it. Then she curtsied before her prince, and he bowed in turn.
    Thasha held out her hand, palm upward, and the prince studied it for a moment, smiling curiously. He spoke a few words in a voice meant for Thasha alone. Then he took up the knife and pricked her thumb.
    Instantly the red-robed cleric held out a small clay cup. Thasha let seven drops of blood fall into the milk it contained. The cleric swished it seven times. And laughed—a deep, almost manic laugh. He raised the cup high.
    “Mzithrin!” he boomed. “The Grand Family! Brothers and sisters of Alifros, learn but this one word in our tongue and you learn the essence of the Old Faith. None stand alone! None are worthless, none sacrificed or surrendered, every soul has a destiny and every destiny is a note in the music of the several worlds. Before us stands Thasha Isiq, daughter of Eberzam and Clorisuela. What is to be the destiny of the Treaty Bride? I look into this milk and cannot see the gift of her blood. Has it ceased to exist? Only a simpleton could think so—only a heretic or a fool! So I ask you: can it be the fate of Thasha Isiq to vanish, dissolved in our gigantic land?
    “We of the Old Faith do not believe it. The blessed milk in my cup has not destroyed her blood. No, her blood has changed the milk, irreversibly and forever. The milk we tint red is a bond and a vow. Drinking it, we are changed: a part of this daughter