The Hidden City

forever.’
    Tynian and Ulath exchanged a long look. Then Tynian grinned wolfishly. ‘Let’s,’ he said.
    ‘Why don’t we?’ Ulath agreed. He looked at the flickering God of Fire. ‘Our hunt has been successful, Khwaj,’ he declared. ‘We have found one of the ones who stole Anakha’s mate. You can make it burn forever now.’ He paused. ‘There are others we also hunt, though,’ he added. ‘We do not want to frighten them away so that they will be harder to hunt. Can Ghnomb put the one we have found into No-Time? You can burn it always there. When it burns in No-Time, the others of its herd will not smell the smoke or hear the crying out with hurt, and so they will not run away.’
    ‘Your thought is good, Ulath-from-Thalesia,’ Khwaj agreed. “I will talk with Ghnomb about this. He will make it so that the one who burns always burns in the time which does not move. Which one of these should I burn?’
    ‘That one,’ Ulath replied, pointing at Baron Parok.
    Duke Milanis was turning from the window when he suddenly stopped, becoming a statue in mid-stride. Baron Parok continued his restless pacing. ‘We’re going to have to start taking extra precautions,’ he said, not yet realizing that the men around him were no longer moving. Then he turned and almost bumped into the exhausted messenger from Natayos. ‘Get out of my way, idiot!’ he snapped.
    The man did not move.
    ‘I told you to take a message to Zalasta, ‘ Parok raged. ‘Why are you still here?’ He struck the messenger across the face and cried out in pain as his hand hit something harder than stone.
    He looked around wildly. ‘What’s the matter with all of you?’ he demanded in a shrill voice.
    ‘What did it say?’ Khwaj’s voice was dreadful.
    Parok gaped at the vast Troll-God, shrieked, and ran for the door.
    ‘It does not understand that it is now in No-Time,’ Ulath replied in Trollish.
    ‘It should know why it is being punished,’ Khwaj decided. Will it understand if you talk to it in the bird-noises of the man-things?’
    ‘I’ll make it understand,’ Ulath promised.
    ‘It is good that you will. Speak to it.’
    Parok was hammering futilely on the immovable door.
    ‘That won’t do you any good, old boy,’ Ulath urbanely advised the terrified Dacite nobleman. ‘Things have definitely taken a turn for the worse for you, Baron. This large fellow with the smoke coming out of his ears is the Troll-God Khwaj. He disapproves of your abduction of Queen Ehlana.’
    ‘Who are you?’ Parok half-screamed. ‘What’s going on here?’
    ‘You’ve been brought to the palace of punishment, Baron,” Tynian advised him. ‘As my friend here just explained, Khwaj is quite put out with you. Trolls are a very moralistic sort. Things that we’ve come to take in stride—abductions, poisonings, and holding people for ransom—upset them enormously. There is a small advantage, though. You’re going to live forever, Baron. You’ll never, ever die.’
    ‘What are you talking about?’
    ‘You’ll see.’
    ‘Does it understand now?’ Khwaj demanded impatiently.
    ‘It is our thought that it does,’ Ulath replied in Trollish.
    ‘Good.’ Khwaj implacably advanced on the cringing Dacite, extending one vast paw. Then he clapped it down on top of Parok’s head. ‘Burn!’ he growled.
    Baron Parok shrieked.
    Then his face seemed to split, and incandescent fire came spurting out through his skin. His doublet smoked for an instant and then flashed into ashes. He shrieked again. His form was still the form of a man, but it was a form etched in flame. The Baron burned, unconsumed, and he danced and howled in agony. Khwaj struck the immovable door with one huge paw, and the door burst outward in flaming chunks. ‘Go!’ he roared. ‘Run. Run forever, and burn always!’
    The flaming Dacite fled shrieking. The town of Arjun stood frozen in that eternal instant of perpetual now. The citizens, like statues, stood frozen stock-still, unaware of the burning wraith that ran through their silent streets. They did not hear its agonized screams. They did not see it flee toward the lake-shore.
    Baron Parok, all ablaze, ran, trailing greasy smoke. He reached the docks and fled in flames out a long pier stretching into the dark waters of the Sea of Arjun. He did not pause when he reached the end of the pier, but plunged off, yearning toward the quenching water. But, like the moment itself, the surface of the lake was unyielding and as