"Marelie, Marelie!  Woe if you cannot kill!  And woe, woe, if you should ever wish to!"

"Cleindori!" Marelie cried.  The name husked from between lips bitten and fouled with sickness.  "Don't leave me."

But the apparition of the old leronis who'd trained her guttered out.  There were only trees and the snow, clouds and the savage light of the bloody sun.  Blood defiled the snow.  Hers: well had Cleindori predicted that Marelie Esyllt, princess of Hastur and Lady of Arilinn, could not kill, not even to save herself when he, the black-bearded one, dragged her away from the rest of the Kilghard bandit pack and... and....

"Now show yourself to the Hali'imyn as a sign of their doom!" he had shouted.

The Keeper who could not, or would not defend herself against rape, people would whisper.  Keeper now no longer.

Marelie retched dryly, tasted blood, dirt, and snow.  Her eyes burned with unshed tears and her cheeks felt feverish with an outrage beyond humiliation.  Still she lay face down on the icy ground.  Her groin ached.  Each muscle felt strained from the fight she had put up (though she had quailed from summoning the lightnings), a fight ending when a blow to her jaw had knocked her senseless.  And once she was safely unconscious, he had raped her.

Merciful Evanda, forgive me.  How could I use laran to kill?

Contemptuously someone had flung a cloak over her before the bandits had retreated to their Kilghard forst and the warleader who had been raiding Arilinn.  Zandru wither their manhood!  Marelie loathed owing her life to their charity.  But why not?  Rape the Keeper and the woman is disarmed.  No need for her to freeze to death.

Only a dawn ago Marelie had ridden with an escort of City Guardsmen toward the ashes that once had been a village sworn to Hastur.  Survivors, so badly burnt that their flesh charred from their dying limbs, moaned of flames leaping from nowhere to ignite their homes.  Then the bandits had attacked, bandits who grinned as they forced children trying to flee back into the flames.  And over the crackling of the flames and the wail of the dying had come the mad, damned laughter, "Like Naotalba, vai leronis, as she twists in Zandru's arms!"

This was no common war.  Someone possessed one of the giant artificial matrices and a matrix circle skilled and perverted enough so to misuse it.  Most of the matrices tenth-level or stronger had been destroyed; a few, monitored and largely idle, remained insulated in the Towers.  Still, the Comyn had always feared this: an illegal matrix surviving the Ages of Chaos and falling into the power of a laranzu mad enough to use it for war.  Marelie, sworn to defend the Domains with her life against such attack, rode out to investigate.

The bandits had lain in ambush, as if their leader had ordered them to expect her.  Brandishing knives and torches, they pounced.  The torches spooked the chervines, seared her guardsmen.  As they writhed on the ground, the bandits had stabbed them.  Several others had overpowered her own mount and flung her to the ground to await the pack's captain.

Screams, burning, burning her ears, and shrieking over them the mad damned laughter...