Lady Hansherat was already a phantom dwelling among ancient tombs, already dead in her own mind and in the minds of all who had ever known her, certainly mad when she came to possess her “child.”
Her story is familiar. The tragedy based on her life, The Fatal Stroke, first performed at the court of Angzerab IV, will live long in memory.
The Fatal Stroke,Everyone knows how Hansherat’s young husband, Valpetor, was murdered by certain great lords of the Delta, by hawk-faced Andraxes, silent Belphage, and mocking Ruaine; how his body was burned in secret without any rites, so that his soul was trapped in Leshe, the twilight borderland between dreaming and true death, whence it returned each night into Lady Hansherat’s bedroom to shriek its despair.
Leshe,But the murderers underestimated her
