Extraits

Some distance across the city, in his dwelling chambers within the Basilica of the Sacred Choir, his Eminence Ancel

Sicard, Bishop of Davillon, also sat upright out of a horrid dream. Groaning, he ran a few fingers through his pillowmatted beard before laying his head in his hands.

Confusing, unclear; a sequence of images, dark, disturbing, bloody. More a sensation than a sight, a cold and sick certainty that something was wrong, very wrong, in his city.

Not that he needed the dreams to tell him that. The

Houses were squabbling, the Guard were dithering, and the rumors making the rounds were as horrid as they'd been last year, when the creature Iruoch had stalked the streets.

Plus, Igraine was telling him of ever greater troubles in the criminal underworld as well…. It was no wonder his dreams were unsettling.

Except Sicard had been a priest long enough to know that sometimes the dreams of the clergy were no dreams at all.

And if these were omens, signs, then something truly, impossibly, inhumanly awful was at hand.

It had been nothing shy of a miracle that Davillon came out of the last year so relatively unscathed. It seemed almost ungrateful to pray for another one so soon, but that was what his city required: another miracle.

Or maybe, he pondered, as the image of a chestnut-haired and darkly clad young woman floated to the surface of his sleep-addled memories, just the return of a prior one.

Unbelievable that he'd ever entertain that hope. She was rude, insolent, exasperating, unpredictable, and just talking to her was like trying to scoop up a squirming armful of puppies and eels. He'd shed no tears when he learned she'd left.

Still…if she's coming back, I do rather hope it's soon.