Again the shroud of silence. Padded maces, thought Matlin. It was a memory, a vague, troubled, unclear memory. Perhaps I was very good with padded maces, but in their padding they did not hold death, the kind of death this man Felg had delivered with spiked maces and would deliver again....
"Well, come on, man, come on!" shouted the overwrought Felg impatiently. Ranmut merely looked at Matlin, neither glad nor sorry for the temporary reprieve, awaiting the end which a five thousand year old fabrication told him was merely the beginning.
Forever we die!—these were the first words of the Book of the Dead. But—to live again? The writers of the book had lied, for they hadn't known. No one had known, thought Matlin.
The Sirian whisky roared through his veins. His vision clouded, then cleared. "I am Matlin," he said.
A Kedaki nearby gasped and Felg cried: "The Reborn! You dare to call yourself that?"
"That is no name," Ranmut whispered, his voice strange.
"I am Matlin, for the record you must keep," Matlin told Felg, his words dropping like peals of thunder on the silence in the great room. "I am bigger than this man Ranmut and I can use the mace. I challenge you, Felg."
Felg appraised him, then said, "Later, if you have a grievance. But I don't know you, Matlin."
"No! Now. I wish to take Ranmut's place." Don't think, he told himself. Don't think that in the memory your skin was white as an Earthman's. And don't think that you fought with padded maces only.