Hildaborg smiled, and proceeded to cut strips of cloth and dispose of the guard as she had said. Then she turned to Alfric. "You are hard of heart," she murmured, "but perhaps Valkarion needs one like you, strong and ruthless." Her deep eyes glowed. "How you fought, Alfric! How you fought!"
The barbarian squatted down and began wiping blood off the looted armor. "I've had enough," he growled. "I've been hoodwinked and hounded over the whole damned city, I've been thrown into a broil I never heard of, and now I want some truth. What is this prophecy? Why are you here? What does everyone want—" he laughed humorlessly—"besides our heads?"
"The prophecy—it is in the Book of the Sibyl, Alfric. It was made I know not how many thousands or tens of thousands of years ago, at the time of the Empire's greatest glory. There was a half-mad priestess who chanted songs of ruin and desolation, which few believed—what could harm the Empire? But the songs were handed down through many generations by a few who had some faith, and slowly it was seen that the songs spoke truth. One thing came to pass after another, just as it was foretold. Then the songs were collected by the priesthood, who use the book to guide their policies."
"Hmmmm—I wonder. I've no great faith in spaedom myself."
"These prophecies are true, Alfric! Now and again they have erred, but I think that is simply because the songs had become garbled in the long time they were handed down without much belief. All too often, the future history in the Book has been written anew by time's own pen." Hildaborg slipped a guardsman's tunic over her slim form. Her eyes were half-shut, dreaming. "They say the Sibyl was loved by Dannos, who gave her the gift of prophecy, and that Amaris jealously decreed she should foretell evil oftener than good. But a wise man at court, who had read much of the almost forgotten science of the ancients, told me he thought the prophecies could be explained rationally. He said sometimes the mind can slip forward along the—the world line, he called it, the body's path through a space and time that are one space-time. Sometimes, he said, one can 'remember' the future. He said the Sibyl's mind could have followed the world lines of her descendants too, thus traveling many ages ahead ... but be that as it may, she spaed truly, and her prophecy of tonight is of—you!"
The warrior shook his dark head, feeling a sudden eerie weight of destiny. "What was the tale?" he whispered. The wind whipped the words from his mouth and whirled them down the empty street.
Hildaborg stood while he buckled the corselet on her, and her voice rose in a weird chant that sang raggedly across the ruined buildings, under the stars and the two flying moons. Even Alfric's hardy soul was shaken by the ominous words, his hands trembling ever so faintly as he worked.
"Woe, woe to Dannos and to Amaris and to those who serve them, cry woe on Valkarion and the world! The Thirty-ninth Dynasty shall end on the night when Dannos weds again with Amaris; winds shall howl in the streets and bear away his soul. Childless shall the Emperor die, the Imperial line shall die with him, and a stranger shall sit in the high throne of Valkarion.
"He shall come riding alone and friendless, riding a gray hengist into Valkarion on the evening of that night. A heathen from the north is he, a worshipper of the wind and the stars, a storm which shall blow out the last guttering candles of the Empire. From the boundless wastes of the desert shall he ride, ruin and darkness in his train, and the last long night of the Empire will fall when he comes.