Xaymar's voice reached out of the blackness close at hand: "Is the pain gone from your body, warrior?"
"Yes. All gone."
"Yet this unit that gives out life and strength is but one of the least of all my secrets!" The voice of the woman-goddess took on a deeper, more vibrant timbre. "There are so many things I know—so many secrets of life and death—But come! You shall see them with me!"
A switch clicked as she spoke. Light came—a strange, halo-like glow without visible source, utterly unlike the shimmering radiance that had gone before. It formed a lambent wall against the blackness.
Haral sat up. He found himself on a cot much like the one on which the queen of storms herself had lain, back in the crypt.
She was here beside him now, her lips curved in a smile of welcome below the veil. She wore a close-fitting, high-necked garment of some unique material that matched the glistening blue-black of her hair. Yet, though the raiment masked her body's ripe curves with fabric, the overall effect became one of accent rather than concealment.
It made Haral suddenly conscious of his own nude frame. He shifted.
Xaymar laughed. "There's a cloak on the rack beneath your cot, my blue one." She turned. "Follow me."
The note of mockery in her tone jabbed at Haral beyond all reason. But he swept the cloak about him with one swift, incisive movement and fell in beside the woman.