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Linar got up and started to walk long strides that in four or five steps carried him from one end of the room to another. In the last few days he had noticed a growing unease, as if a colossal storm was brewing, of a telluric scale. Perhaps he had had a premonition of Yatom’s death; or perhaps it was only the first sign of greater evils.
"I am an echo..."
This time Linar gave a jerk. He turned to Mikhon Tiq. The young man was still asleep, but his lips moved and from them sprung grave and deliberate words, torn from the deep breaths of his sleep.
"When you hear me I’ll be dead, brother ..."
Linar approached the boy and leaned over him. He had his eyes closed and his pupils were moving under his eyelids. The voice that came from his mouth rang with the youthful timbre of Tiq Mikhon, but the cadence, accent and words were those of Yatom.
"For some time the disease has been devouring me. Despite my power, the evil has spread its seeds through my body and I'm a boat taking on water through a thousand fissures. You must take in Mikhon Tiq so that when the moment comes you can awaken the Beautiful Light and keep my soul from being lost."
"I turn to you because I see signs of difficult times like we have not experienced for hundreds of years. I do not trust that the other members of the Table accept my words. Attend well, Linar...”
Linar sat before Mikhon Tiq and listened to that message from beyond the grave. According to his brother, a previously unknown terror extended throughout Tramórea. The roads had become more dangerous, merchants gathered in well-stocked caravans for fear of robbers; even the Silk Road, which had been secure for decades, no longer was. There was talk of atrocious rituals in which humans were sacrificed to dark and bloodthirsty deities, like in times remote and more cruel.
