At Worldcon, and a Snippet

Things are going well so far.  I had a good signing and a well attended reading.  Tomorrow is the big panel.  The reading is too long to post in its entirety.  Here's the first third:


“Here I leave you,” said Sart Nine-toes.
They stood in the Lower Town on the edge of the desolation that circled the Kencyr temple.
“I know when I’m out-matched.  Dead gods, haunts, and demons are one thing.  Your god, though … ugh.  And I’m on duty tonight.  I’d quit to stand by my love, but we need the money, in case Kithra gets her way and throws us out of the Res aB’tyrr.”
“She would do that?”
“So she says, when she loses her temper – which, with Cleppetty, is often enough.”
“Truly, a marriage off and on?”
“Mostly on.  She’s a strong woman, my Cleppetania, with strong opinions.  When those arise, a wise man stands back.”
They watched him walk off, still rather unsteady but gaining certainty with each stride.  A strong man, that, not greatly injured by his recent trial.
By now it was late afternoon under a brazen sky, the air murky with dust and thick with heat.  Grinding sounds still came from above, muffled by clouds.  A weight seemed to press down.  Jame and Loogan crossed the expanse.  Ragged figures rose from the ruins to shamble after them and to line their way.  Jame thought that she saw Aden, although so disfigured with dirt as to be barely recognizable.  Another figure caught her eye – stout, clothed in rich if tattered finery.  She had seen him somewhere before.  Yes.  In the square before the Skyrrman five years ago as it had gone up in flames.  Harr sen Tenko:  Harri’s father, the Archiem’s rival.  There too were the three soulless Kencyr priests huddled together, one drooping –dripping? – between the other two. Again, there was that stench of fetid water and rotting vegetation, again that sharp odor that made Jame sneeze. What did they all want?  What, if anything, could she give them?
Here was the temple door, shut.  Jame knocked.  No answer.  No keyhole, either, with a convenient lock to pick.
See, little thief?  What good are your tricks now?
“Try again,” said Loogan, anxiously shifting from foot to foot.
This was no time for subtlety.  Jame hefted half a brick and slammed it against the door. The brick crumbled.  The door remained unscathed.  After a moment, though, a crack opened in the apparently seamless wall and swung wide.  There stood Titmouse.  He had shed his black coat.  The white shirt beneath drooped with sweat and his tufted hair stood more wildly on end than usual, moving in an unfelt breeze.  At first he seemed glassy-eyed, barely able to focus on his visitors. Then he blinked.
“You.”
“We’ve come for the frog,” Jame said, glowering up at him, and thrust the note into his hands.
He peered at it, lips moving as he read. Blink, blink.  “Oh.  Good.”
They followed him into the temple.  The halls thrummed with power, much more fiercely than they had on Jame’s last visit.  Her feet didn’t touch the floor at all.  This was more like trying to stay afloat in savage rapids.  She grabbed Loogan as the current threatened to upend him.  Force keened. Hair bristled.
This time, she saw nothing reminiscent of Bane, unless it was the tangled clots of spider web that twisted in corners. 
“How in Perimal’s name do we get flies inside with only one door and that usually shut?” Titmouse had asked.
Now spiders? Bane had liked them.  Perhaps he was here, in some form, but how?  And why?
From somewhere ahead came a sound:  shuffle, shuffle, stomp; shuffle, shuffle, stomp. It reminded Jame of her descent years ago into the Priests’ College at Wilden when the earth had seemed to move around her with ponderous effort.
The door to the main hall stood open.  She and Loogan clutched the posts, left and right, to avoid being swept inside, where the priests danced.  There were more of them than she had expected. Outermost were the brown-clad novices stamping and turning in the kantirs of earth-moving Senetha.  Within was a ring of grey acolytes, some flowing as if in swift water, others leaping like flames.  Where they crossed paths, the air hissed with steam.  Inner still, priests channeled the current into the swift, air-borne subtleties of wind-blowing Senetha that fretted the uncertain air into eddies and spirals.  All moved independently yet together, the kantirs of one form reflecting its counterparts among the other three, circle rotating within circle.  It was the Great Dance, which gathers power and molds it to the dancer’s will.
One black robed figure stood at the maelstrom’s still heart, where Jame had once left a whorl in the stones of the tessellated floor.  To his right was Titmouse, swaying slightly.  To his left, suspended over an unlit fire-pit, was a glass bowl in which floated a green, straddle-legged form.
“… quink …” piped tiny Gorgo piteously, scrabbling at the glass with webbed toes.
The high priest raised his head.  The slit of a mouth appeared, then the tip of a long, thin nose.  The hood slid back entirely to reveal a skull-like face, the waxy yellow of its brow.
“We meet again,” said Ishtier, smiling.