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separated the Lower Chambers from the Main Hall above squeak shut. There was little light, but as his eyes adjusted to the dim candlelight flickering over walls laden with mosaics so ancient that many of them had almost merged into the surrounding stone, he saw the Masters he had served almost all his young life waiting there – for him.
    It occurred to Ursu that his bladder was uncomfortably full.
    Uftheyan was gone, merged with the shadows, and Ursu stood alone in the centre of a circle of watchers. He felt a nervousness tinged with excitement, and the delight of a new life now awaiting him.
    And there, straight ahead of Ursu, sat Shecumpeh itself, the beating heart of Nubala, on its throne of brass and gold.
    The god of the City was represented by a clay figure moulded loosely in the form of Ursu’s own people, with spiralling incisions to indicate fur, a long tongue sliding downwards over the torso and a broadly grinning tooth-filled snout that might be interpreted by some as menacing. Shecumpeh was as old as the city itself – was in fact indistinguishable from the city. By an ancient Plains tradition, each of the Great Cities maintained its own god, and when it chose to, the god spoke to its citizens. Ursu had been taught how, at times, these gods would speak of things beyond nature, beyond understanding.
    And suddenly the spirit of Shecumpeh was within Ursu. The attentive Masters could feel it too: an accompanying sensation, not quite taste nor smell, like the way the air feels the morning after a thunderstorm. Something clean, and sharp and bright.
    He heard nothing that might be described as sound, nothing like words spoken. It was as if suddenly revealed memories, images, sensations flooded into him.
    Ursu knew the god was asking him for his true name.
    ‘I—’ he said out loud, then remembered himself. He was alone now in the centre of the room. I am Ursu , he spoke in his thoughts, and he wondered if the god could hear him.
    And that was when the god spoke his true name, his private name, the name of his soul.
    When Ursu had been five summers old, his adult mind so recently implanted in his canthre body that it still seemed a strange thing to be walking on two legs, he had undergone the same ritual that every other child of the city experienced, receiving his true name in the shape of just one of many hundreds of intricately carved pieces of wood picked at random from a great urn. This was to be his inner name, and he had been solemnly warned how demons would try to steal into his dreams to root it out. The horror was that once they had it, they owned your soul.
    The only entities who should know your name – your true name – were the gods. And so it was that Shecumpeh spoke to Ursu.
    More sensations, sounds and smells overwhelmed him. And this time, Ursu saw the image of a small, weak-looking individual in a robe too big for him, slipping through the streets of Nubala at night. And strapped to his back was . . . was . . .
    Ursu stared at the idol of Shecumpeh that sat before him. Surely there could be no doubt about the message the god of the City was giving him? He realized now that he was the one in the god’s vision, struggling through the city, this very same effigy crudely strapped into a bag slung across his back.
    Then there he was again, slipping as if invisible between the ranks of the enemy marshalled outside the gates. On to the orchards beyond, and – on again. At first clear and sharp, the images flooding into Ursu’s mind began contradicting themselves, as if several separate visions were being presented to him at once, each slightly different in outcome.
    And then on, further into confusion and madness, as Ursu envisaged fire raining down from the heavens, the great city of Nubala burning in invisible light, all its territory being reduced to death and ruins.
    As vision after vision assailed him, he became lost to the basement temple around him, his mind stretching out to explore