I knelt upon the bursting spiral, in that seven-cornered room, before Khys's council.  Or upon seven spirals, in seven such rooms, spaced the length and breadth of Silistra.  One corner was empty.  In one stood Khys - his flesh-and-blood presence.  In the remaining five, the flame-licked figures flickered, behind each a window looking out upon the part of Silistra in his care.  They were each in their places, and here also: the seven alcoves, identical; the seven spirals, overlayed; the five of Khys's council, bicorporate.  And I - was I seven also, where I crouched upon the symbol that focused these widespread keeps into one?

There was a feeling to inhabiting that highly charged space, one of being enwrapped, encased, embalmed in crackling force.  I wore no band of restraint.  I had been sedated, but such was no longer necessary.  I seemed, to myself in my own vision, neck-deep in the congruent spirals, the arms twisted around me like some great slitsa.  I could see my breasts, my knees, the true spiral upon the true floor, only through the others, semipresent, atop it.  I averted my eyes.  The sensation brought upheaval to my stomach and water to my mouth.

The keep wrenched sideways, churned, and it was no longer Khys that was flesh, but another.  My knees were invisible, imorisoned, swallowed by the gol floor.  Cold shriveled the edges of every cell of my body.  The golden one smiled at me.  Make heat, or die.  Simple.  I made it, using the pain I felt to kindle the conflagration.  The crown of my head was that fire's fuel, and around the flames my interrogator paced, appraising.  Damage he found there, the damage he did.  Cringing, I received it, fr I knew not how to resist.

"Speak to me of the sevenfold spirit!" my tormentor demanded of me.

I could not.  There was, within me, only a yawning chasm where he sought.  But he brought to be in thal place a blue-glowing spark, and by the light of it, to him certain things were revealed.  And I watched, without understanding, as he took what pleased him of those truths, for they were in a language I did not know.  Written upon the walls of soul, sequencers for the electrochemical devices of power lay open to him.  Within me, they had long lain.  Great shocks of force ripped at those walls - blinding heat; and what remained was melted, charred.  The wreckage dripped, steaming, as I was passed to another hand.

The second's touch was as smooth as gol, and he bade me fear him not, but make for him certain statements of mind that he called shaping.  At his bidding I saw a scarred place with those skills encysted beneath, but I could not do more than gape.  Once, I might have shaped.  My ears heard a wailing, and knew it mine.  Kindly, gently, he passed me to the third.

And I was more deeply imprisoned within the spiral at that one's hands, my substance again screaming as it was dragged into another realm, where the physical third held court.  It was his pleasure to dismantle, within me, a certain projection of my being, like tenuous water-cast gold extending out into the unborn time.  As he was about it, a wind came up roaring.  Extrusions of gale whipped around him, bound him there.  The fourth hastened to aid him, weighted down by the others, whose hands were all joined across the abyss wherein the wind held one of their number captive.  Straining, they extricated him, a molecule at a time, from  chaos.