The Standing Dead [antikvár]

LOSTFather, do you remember me telhng you I had found a lover? Then I believed he was a divided sybling: at the election I discovered him to be Osidian Nephron. I did not easily forgive him the deception. Can you understand our wish to have one last day together before we are partedfor ever by his Apotheosis? No search will find us. Expect us in the Labyrinth on the thirty-second day of Tuta; the thirty-third at the latest, your son, Suth Carnelian{a letter sent by Suth Carnelian to his father, the Ruling Lord Suth Sardian, at the time, He-who-goes-before)BENEATH THE IMPERIOUS GAZE OF THE FUNERARY COLOSSI OF THE Chosen, the fires lit by a hundred thousand tributaries formed a trembling field of light on the Plain of Thrones. High above the colossi, on a balcony cut into the cliff enclosing the plain, stood the Ruling Lord of House Suth. He turned his head enough that the eyeslits of his mask shielded his eyes from the dying sun, then surveyed the scene below. Flanked by the immense, towered saurians the barbarians childishly called dragons, the crowd seemed numberless. More than a third were the children brought by tribes from beyond the Commonwealth to pay their flesh tithe. The rest were either their kin or the deputations the cities had sent with their taxes of coined bronze. All had cowered there for days awaiting the ceremony of the Rebirth which would occur as the Rains broke over the crater of Osrakum. This Rebirth would include the Apotheosis of a new God Emperor.