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The Living God


The Living God
Book 4 of A Handful of Men

By Dave Duncan

ISBN: 0-345-38878-X




PROLOGUE
The ancient house was hot in the summer night, holding the heat of the day behind windows long sealed. Its many rooms and corridors were stuffy
and airless, smelling again of dust as they had before the visitors had come. They had all gone now, the visitors. The people had departed, lords and
ladies, maidservants and manservants. Fireplaces had cooled, doors had been locked again, stillness had returned. For barely half a year the house
had been a dwelling and now it was tomb once more, a monument to its own long past.


The old woman wandered the halls and passageways, needing no more light than the beams of summer moonlight angling down from dusty
casements. The Voices were upset tonight and her antique bones could not rest.


"What ails, Ghosts?" she called. "Why do you fret?"


No words answered. No wind rattled and wailed tonight, but the little creaks and groans told how the old house was cooling after the long, hot day,
and in those tiny sounds she heard the Voices complaining.


"I do not understand!" she cried. "Speak louder."


Pale blue light made angular puddles on the floors. Rafters settled, beams creaked.


Again she called out. "He is gone. He stole away his lady, as you said he would. He took her away, and her child, also. They escaped. The others
have departed. Those who came later asking questions have departed, too. There is only me. What ails, Ghosts? You can speak now."


Clicks and creaks and tappings ...


"Danger? Is that it, then? He is in danger, or his lady? Speak louder. The child? Her child? What is her child to him?" The old woman stood in
darkness beside a patch of moonlight, her head cocked, straining to hear.


"What danger? That one they called Centurion? He is the danger? The one I shut in the cellar? I never trusted that one. Yes, you told me to beware
of that one. Nasty, violent man. Shut him up in the cellar, we did, and let them escape."