Chapter sixteen
“Kill me now and have done!”Vodun Alloran, King of Southwest Vallia, sat on the chair in the corner gazing upon Arachna’s bed of offering and of prophecy, and brooded.
The four Katra Curses of his new Kataki friends take it! The Mantissae in the room sensed his mood. They stood silently. Perhaps they couldn’t understand why the king was so sullen and enraged when he had taken up into his hand this great prize.
Well, ran the savage thoughts of Alloran, they were just stupid Kataki women, ugly as sin, doing as they were told. What could they know of the greater diplomacy of the outside world? Two items of news, one on the heels of the other, had shaken him far more than he cared for. By Takroti! Things looked black. The great force of mercenaries he’d expected from North P
