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Updated: May 6, 2025
Lur's soft laughter rang in both their heads. "Asti in His Infinite Wisdom can see through Centuries. Memphir has fallen because of its softness and the evildoing of its people and the barbarians will now have their way with the lands of the north. But to me it appears that Asti is not yet done with the pattern He was weaving there. To each of you He granted a second life.
The question was a shrill whine in her brain, her hands half arose to cover her ears "I am Varta, Maiden of Asti. Memphir has fallen to the barbarians of the Outer Lands and now I go, as Asti once ordered ." The Guardian considered her answer gravely. In one skeleton claw it fumbled a rod and with this it now traced certain symbols in the dust before Varta's webbed feet.
And there, preserved in the chest in which men born in the youth of Memphir had laid them, Varta found that which would keep her safe on the path she must take. She put aside the fine silks, the jeweled cincture, which had been the badge of Asti's service and drew on over her naked body a suit of scaled skin, gemmed and glistening in the rays of the small sun.
Overhead the worlds and sun of Asti still traveled their appointed paths. The worlds of Asti! If it was His Will which had brought them here, then Asti's power would wrap her round with safety. By His Will she had come out of Memphir over ways no human of Erb had ever trod before. Could she doubt that His Protection was with her now?
Look at this man, is he not like the men of Memphir as they were in the olden days of the city's greatness?" The stranger was tall, taller than the men of Memphir and there was a certain hardness about him which those city dwellers in ease had never displayed. But Lur must be right, this was a man of her race. She smiled in sudden relief and he answered that smile.
No human on Erb, this one had said, and yet were there not her own people, the ones who had built Memphir? And what of the barbarians, who, ruthless and cruel as they seemed by the standards of Memphir, were indeed men? Whence had they come then, the men of Memphir and the ancestors of the barbarian hordes?
So He and those who served Him had withdrawn to this mountain outcrop. And she, Varta, was the last, the very last to bow knee at Asti's shrine and raise her voice in the dawn hymn for Lur, as were all his race, was mute. Even the loot of Memphir would not sate the shaggy headed warriors who had stormed her gates this day.
The breaths were deeper Then the man half turned, his arm moved. Varta and Lur drew back. For the first time the girl probed gently the sleeping mind before her even as she had read the minds of those few of Memphir who had ascended to the temple precincts in the last days. Much of what she read now was confused or so alien to Erb that it had no meaning for her.
But what is more surprising yet, Memphir, a
Even in Memphir the lords of the last days forgot the wisdom of their earlier sages they fell before the barbarians easily enough." "If ever men had wisdom to produce this it was not of Asti's giving," she edged away from the glare. "Let us go."
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