He falls down before such
and tearfully worships their acrid, stinking smoke, and licks dust,
crying loudly, Spare me oh gods!'
Si'Wren thought of the wrath of Master Rababull, long-dead, and what he
had done to poor defenseless Nelatha. Then she thought of the sudden
fate of Sorpiala, and how one never knew when one's time might come.
Si'Wren sensed a great consternation in Emperor Euphrates, though she
barely glimpsed him out of the corner of her eye as he continued to
read her words as fast as she could write them.
Then, she finished her statement as her sticks worked almost in a blur;
'Shall I bow my living face down and eat of the dust that not only
covers all things but also collects upon their dumb wooden heads?'
Si'Wren stopped and sighed, waiting, and expecting any moment for an
avenging sword to be loudly and vehemently called for, that she be
dispatched in no short order with the same gruesome fate such as
Nelatha had suffered.
But all she heard was the heavy breathing of her mighty Emperor
Euphrates, as he stared long at her clay words. She knew he was
especially fond of her personal manner of marking the clay, her
especially delicate but incisive 'writing style', which was as rare art
to the old monarch, but she knew also, that this former fondness of his
toward her would only serve to make him all the more angry, should he
finally pass the boiling point in his outraged idolater's heart.
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