She ate woodenly, without pleasure or appetite, eating from a need for sustenance.
“An old eccentric woman,” Wathsala said, her voice low, “that's all she is. Lurking about the mountain like a wraith, scolding anyone who came too near. She was old when I was a child, and I'll bet Buddha's belly she doesn't look a day older now. Witchery of some form, or necromancy. A flesh that doesn't age never lived, the old maids say. Well, neither does one that's dead to start with. What's her Grace wanting you to find out, anyway?”
Jayani smiled and hushed the old Disciple, herself an example of a well-lived life.
Back on deck, the night breeze tugging at her cowl, she swore she could make out the vague shape of Nallur Mountain to the east.
In the sky, against the diaphanous glitter of the Milky W
