"Oh Wise Metal, protect my journey," Estazar whispered. She felt like crying, but she didn't know why. Was it because she was leaving? That seemed the most likely answer. This had been her home, once. Her first memories came to her in flashes, never a full picture. She was in a room, reaching up to the high ceiling painted in gold and red and orange. They were twisting and winding shapes, dashes and chunks, they were fire. She could hear rumbling, the steady rumble of a voice. What words they were saying had been lost. Then, she was on her hands and knees, scurrying about on carpeted floors. Shouts of surprise and fear followed her, and finally, a word pierces through that she understood. "No!"

Had so much time passed between those two moments? Estazar knew there was at least a year between them, but they seemed so close, she could have been in one scene one second and the next in the next. Her hand made its way to her arm, tracing the long scar that wound itself about it up to her shoulder. A mobad had told her, years later, that she was lucky to have suffered such a merciful cut. She was there again, crawling towards what she could not say for sure. The carpet loomed before her, stretching into the distance. This was far before she could stand up, and view the ground from above in a standing position. As far as she knew, the horizon dipped below the world into a void of nothingness. Of course, she realized now that she'd been told that it was no void. It was merely a flight of stairs. Down she tumbled, towards the statue that stood at the bottom. A statue depicting Shah Bandaves "the Scourge of Qaro", his spear jutting towards the base. Her arm struck home, sliding across the brutal stone. She opened her mouth and screamed.

More scenes came, they became longer and more complex with her developing memory. She watched her grandfather destroy the statue of Bandaves, taking a great hammer to it again and again and again, screaming and shouting vile curses, until nothing was left of it but pebbles and dust. Entire conversations followed, none related to what she was seeing second before. She reached out her arms to a tall, muscled man, sporting a wide smile and a close-cropped beard. "Pick me up, daddy!" she heard herself scream, and he did, laughing and tousling her hair. Then, he set her back down, and kneeled so that they met eye to eye. She had learned to stand, sometime between the last scene and this.

"I can't be picking you up for a long time. I'm going away," he said. His face began to blur away, when it had once been so clear. His voice, too, passed into muffled territory, and soon she could hear nothing and see nothing but vague, far-away shapes and sounds. Then, his voice pierced though, with a simple message. "I'll be back within a few months or so, and I'll bring a new mommy with me." Then, although she did not see, she somehow recalled, if recalling was the right word for it, that he had left to fight the Qaroitn raiders. That was seven years ago.

The door behind her opened, and she jolted back into the present. She stood up and turned, to be greeted with two figures. One was a Garmardom, of her own height and skinnier even than a man from Nithush province. The other, a Giyamardom, towering over her at perhaps three or even four times her own height. Together they bowed their heads and kneeled before her.

"You shahbanu. I Satrap Farrodana, Zirpin Province. Little shahmardom, many garmardom. I serve you," the garmardom said. 

"I Satrap Abafrir, shahbanu," the giyamardom said, standing back up and ducking his head as not to bump it on the ceiling. "Tansa province. Many grass, many giyamardom. We chosen by shah. Take shahbanu to Tammir."

"Is safe, Tammir. No Kehmeyid. No assassin," said Farrodana. "Come. No time." 

"I have wagon. Big space. Food. No worry," said Abafrir. He reached out his hand to take her own, one strong and steady and the other trembling. "Many speed. Go Tammir." Nodding slowly, Estazar allowed the two of them to lead her out of the prayer room, towards where the wagon awaited her.