Author's Preface
A moment under scrutiny, sub rosa.
Figures unseen, but their presence, nonetheless vividly apprehended.
Quiet words pass before a beckoning wave of the hand.
At this Umin makes his furtive way, heart a shapeless burden of misgivings and thirsty curiosity, into the spill of amber light, its ragged fringed halo pressing weakly against him.
Something in the manner of the light gamboling across the silty lane, brings to Umin's mind a sickly and sudden recollection of a once-upon-a-time task gone woefully awry.
One that left him foul with the cesspit where he fled.
A lost and frail worm-thing slithering fearful into a rancid sump.
Of blood and dismay.
When in a blistering and tragic light it came to Umin and his compatriots, the knowing that their noble mark had discreetly retained the services of a Weaver .
Had Ure been there? He couldn't recall...
The press of Pyna's finger upon his wrist brings him shuddering into the present.
She leads him into an illuminated low corridor of creamily marbled blackwood, assiduously polished to a looking-glass gleam.