PART IV

THE BORN QUEEN

When walks again the Born Queen, the bones of men will clatter within them; the wombs of their women will fill with venom; every rider of the night will take her lash with hideous joy. And when at last the bones shake off their flesh, and the wombs consume their bearers, and the lash murders; when finally it is only her single voice screaming in the night—when she lacks any man or beast or ghostly thing to harrow and she must at last turn on herself—then all will be still.

But ten times a hundred years will first pass.

—TRANSLATED FROM THE TAFLES TACEIS OR BOOK OF MURMURS