Sizek waved a gnarled, veined hand. “You worry too much about these men. They will gladly go. They’ll have their names on the wall.”
Kotori shuddered at the thought of that wall, now several blocks long, with long lists of names carved into the smooth stone. All those men had died for Arania, and what had been achieved? King Orik was playing with icefire weapons and the men had no resistance to icefire.
Whichever way his mind turned, he found additional worrying signs. He wrapped up the visit with some talk about the weather and left the hospice.
The only thing left for him to do was to punish himself in hopes of exorcising the demons or bad magic that had taken hold of his art, and cleansing it in the face of his worst failure. He must cleanse himself so that he could resume his work w
