Queen of Fire

Verniers’ Account

We put in at Marbellis on the thirty-fifth day of our voyage where the captain took ten crewmen ashore, each laden with an impressive pile of loot and weapons harvested from various unfortunate Volarians at the Teeth and Alltor. “A ship feeds on cargo,” he grunted at me before departing. He was slightly more inclined towards conversation these days, but still refused to share any words with Fornella. “Should fetch half a hold’s worth of spice with this lot. Stay on board and keep an eye on that witch of yours.”

She joined me at the rail as I surveyed the docks and the city beyond. “I had heard this place described as the treasure of the northern empire,” she said. “I must say it seems somewhat tarnished.”

Marbellis had been in a continual state of reconstruction since the war, the various burnt and wasted districts slowly disappearing as the great port healed itself. But whilst a city could be repaired the hearts of its citizens were a different matter. The years since the war had seen many appeals to the Emperor for more direct and lasting retribution against the Northmen, the loudest and most numerous originating in Marbellis.

“‘We found a jewel in the desert,’” I quoted. “‘And from it fashioned a charred cinder.’”

“Pretty,” she said. “One of yours, I assume.”

“Actually, it was penned by a young poet I met in Varinshold. The son, in fact, of the general who commanded the army that nearly destroyed this city.”

“Couldn’t get to the father, I assume?”

“No. He refused all requests for an interview. His son, however, was happy to talk as long as I paid his nightly wine bill.”

“Did he have any excuse for this? Any particular reason?”

I shook my head. “Just regret, and guilt though he took no part in the slaughter. He was keen to point out that his father had been quick to quell the excesses of his army, executing over a hundred men for various dreadful deeds in the process.”

“Tokrev would have executed them too. Dead slaves are of no value.”

I turned back from the rail and started for the cabin we shared. “We have work to do.”

Over the preceding weeks our researches had done much to expand my knowledge of ancient myth but as yet revealed scant evidence as to the Ally’s origins or the whereabouts of the endless man he sought. There were a few references to the machinations of dark gods or malign spirits in the oldest, mostly fragmentary tales left by the denizens of what later became the Volarian Empire, but sorting fact from superstitious delusion was simply impossible. The endless man proved a more fruitful line of inquiry, unearthing no less than seven different versions of his story, mostly from Asrael and revolving around the unfortunate subject’s rejection of the Faith. However, there were other tales, one from Cumbrael which cast the fellow as a godless heretic who committed the ultimate crime of burning the Ten Books, finding himself cursed by the World Father to contemplate his sin for all eternity. Today, however, my research uncovered a Meldenean legend telling of a man washed up on the Isles after a shipwreck, a man who should have drowned but lived when all his crew-mates perished. He named himself Urlan, come in search of the Old Gods.

I looked up from the scroll as the tramp of many feet on the deck told of the captain’s success in securing cargo. Fornella had fallen to slumber already, lying naked on the bunk as was her perennial wont. She seemed to sleep more as the days went by and ever more grey appeared in her hair. You grow old, mistress, I thought, surveying her nakedness and finding, for all the wrinkles that now etched her face, she was still beautiful. I tossed a blanket over her and went outside.

Night had fallen and the deck was brightly lit with torches, most clustered at the bow where a persistent chopping sound could be heard. I went forward to find the captain standing with crossed arms, stern visage fixed on the sight of a man suspended by ropes to hang over the bow. The man was old but spry, clearly Alpiran from his colouring, working a hammer and chisel over the jawless figurehead, wood chips flying as he erased the scars from its snout. I noted a fresh but as yet unshaped block of wood had been nailed into place to fashion a new jaw for the serpent.

“Crew don’t like to sail without a god to calm the waves,” the captain grunted, watching the carpenter work. “Paid him triple to have it done by morning.”

“Which is he?” I asked, gesturing at the serpent. “An old god or a new one?”

The captain favoured me with a squint, faint amusement in his eyes. “Finding my people worthy of study now, scribbler?”

“It might help, with my mission.”

He shrugged, nodding at the figurehead. “Not a he, a she. Levansis, sister to the great serpent god Moesis. Though she despised her brother for his vicious ways, she wept when Margentis destroyed his body and her tears calmed the sea for ten full years. When the storms rise, she’s the one we pray to.”

My knowledge of Meldenean history was scant but I knew their pantheon dated back to their colonisation of the Isles some six hundred years ago, and from my survey of the ruins found there, they had clearly been occupied long before that. “A new god then,” I said. “What can you tell me of the old ones?”

He looked away and I noted how his crossed arms tightened further. “Them we do not pray to.”

“But what are they?”

The captain cast a wary eye at the nearest of his crew, two sailors, young but both bearing scars from the Battle of the Teeth, and glaring at me in naked outrage. “Ill luck to talk of the old gods on a ship’s deck,” the captain said, moving to the gangplank. “Come, I’ll let you buy me a drink, scribbler. Besides I have news to impart.”

He led me to a quiet tavern near the warehouse district, the patrons mostly stevedores indulging in a cup or two of wine at the end of the day’s labour. Even in light of the fatigue evident in the other customers, the mood was sombre to the point of oppression, most sitting in silent contemplation of their wine. We sat beside a window, the captain lighting his pipe, the bowl filled with the sweet-smelling five-leafed weed popular in the northern empire but frowned upon elsewhere for its soporific effect.

“Ah, that’s the stuff,” the captain said, exhaling a cloud of smoke. “Once took some seeds home for the wife to grow. Never did, soil’s not right. Pity, could’ve made a fortune.”

“The old gods,” I said, pen poised above my scroll. “What do you know of them?”

“Well, they’re old for a start.” He gave an uncharacteristic laugh, something I attributed to the contents of his pipe. The merriment also raised some heads at the surrounding tables, a few scowling in disapproval, making me wonder what grim tidings had heralded such a mood.

“They were there when we landed on the Isles,” the captain went on, recapturing my attention. “The old gods, standing in stone, so lifelike it seems as if they’ll stir if you touch them at all.”

“You’ve seen them?”

He took a puff on his pipe and nodded. “Captain’s privilege, once you get your own ship, you go to the caves to pay homage to the old gods. Since they were there first, seems only polite. And there are stories aplenty about the ill fates of captains who failed to make the pilgrimage.”

“So, they’re statues found centuries ago.”

“More than statues, scribbler.” The captain’s gaze darkened at the memory. “Statue doesn’t make you sweat the moment you lay eyes on it, doesn’t make your head ache when you get near, nor put images in your head when you bow to touch its foot.”

My quill stopped its track across the parchment and I concealed a sigh. I had seen enough by now to fully appreciate that what I once thought of as superstition was all too real, but still the inherent skepticism lingered. “Images in your head?” I asked in a passive tone.

“Just for a second. I touched her foot and… I saw the Isles, but not our Isles. There was a city, standing where our capital now stands. But so beautiful, gleaming marble from end to end, the harbour filled with ships, longer than ours and mostly driven by oarsmen. And they were not pirates, I could see that. Not a single sailor carried a weapon. Whatever time it was, it was a time of peace.”

He fell silent, face now clouded with memory as he took the pipe from his lips, barely stirring when I prompted, “Her foot? The old gods are female?”

“One is. The other two are men, one a great bearded fellow, the other younger and handsome of face. I didn’t touch either of them, for the visions they impart are only for the bravest eyes. They say the Shield touched all three though, the only man ever to do so.”

“There’s a story, about a man who couldn’t die. It says he came to the Isles in search of the old gods.”

The captain huffed a laugh and returned to his pipe. “Urlan. My old gran used to tell me that one.”

“The version I have says he offended them by asking for an impossible gift, so they cursed him to walk the ocean floor for all time.”

He frowned, smoke billowing and a faint dullness creeping into his eyes. “Gran’s tale was different, but the old stories often change depending on who tells them. She said Urlan was driven from the Isles, set adrift in a boat and warned never to return. And not because he had offended the old gods, but because having heard his words, the people feared one so young who knew so much.”

He watched me writing down the tale, extinguishing his pipe and tapping the remaining weed into a pouch. “Time I imparted my tidings, scribbler,” he said.

“More grave news from the war, I take it?” I replied, glancing around at the grim-faced patrons.

“No, from Alpira.” I saw that the dullness had faded from his eyes and he regarded me with a steady, regretful gaze. “Emperor Aluran died a week ago. Before passing he named his successor as Lady Emeren Nasur Ailers, to be known forever more as Empress Emeren I.”

CHAPTER ONE Vaelin

Dahrena called her war-cat Mishara, the Seordah word for lightning, and took great delight in training her. Every morning she would spend an hour or more in the forest, smiling as the beast leapt, ran or climbed trees at her command. “I had a kitten when I was little,” she told Vaelin, throwing a ball fashioned from walrus-hide for Mishara to catch, leaping high to snatch it from the air with a fast snap of her impressive jaws. “I named her Stripes. One day she went missing and my father told me she must have run away. I found out later he didn’t have the heart to tell me she’d been crushed by a cart-wheel.”

She frowned at Vaelin’s vague nod, sending Mishara off into the trees with a flick of her wrist before coming to sit next to him, taking his hand. She asked no question, as ever much of their communication was unspoken. “In the Order,” he said, “they told us prophecy was a lie, like a god. The province of deluded Deniers mistaking madness for insight. Yet all the while the Seventh Order laboured in secret pursuit of its own prophecies.”

“You recall what Brother Harlick told us,” she said. “All prophecies are false.”

“You saw their wall.”

“Pictures painted countless years ago and only visible now because these people maintain them with such devotion.” She squeezed his hand tighter. “The visions of Nersus Sil Nin gave the Seordah centuries to prepare for the coming of the Marelim Sil, but still they were driven into the forest. The future is not pigment daubed onto stone, we make the future with every breath and every step. Our mission is vital, you know it. We cannot allow ourselves distraction.”

“Kiral tells me her song swells with warning whenever I talk of moving on. For now, it seems this place is our mission.”

She sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. “Well, at least it’s started to thaw.”

He inspected Orven’s guardsmen in the afternoon, mainly to assure the Lord Marshal of his appreciation for returning them to martial readiness with such alacrity. Throughout the Long Night he had maintained the stern discipline and rigid adherence to routine that characterised the Mounted Guard, the beards grown on the ice soon sheared off and every breastplate scraped clean of rust.

“How goes the training?” Vaelin asked Orven after surveying the ranks and exchanging ritual pleasantries with the men. They spoke up readily enough, all veterans of the march from the Reaches and Alltor, regarding him with an implacable respect he knew might never fade. Even so, despite the generous fare offered by their hosts, many retained the gaunt aspect of those exposed to the worst extremes of climate.

“Fighting on foot is hard for those accustomed to the saddle, my lord,” Orven replied. “But it can’t be helped. The Lonak sometimes join in with practice. I think they find it amusing, or have little else to do.”

Vaelin glanced over to where a cluster of Sentar stood watching one of the Wolf People skin a recently caught walrus, taking note of the fact that Alturk was not among them, nor had he been for much of the Long Night.

“Concentrate on close-order drill,” he told Orven. “You’ve seen how the Volarians fight, whole battalions moving as one. I’m sure it’s a feat the guards can match.”

Orven straightened, his fist going to his breastplate in a customarily perfect salute. “Indeed we can, my lord.”

Astorek found him grooming Scar in the small stable the Wolf People had allowed him to construct near the shore. As usual a gaggle of children had gathered to watch as he led the warhorse from his makeshift home, apparently fascinated by the strange four-legged beast, bigger than a moose but without antlers. They seemed to have no inclination to shyness, or awareness that Vaelin might not understand their babble of questions as they clustered around, small hands playing over Scar’s coat, occasionally retreating with delighted giggles at the horse’s irritated stamps and snorts. One little boy was more insistent than the others, tugging at Vaelin’s furs and repeating the same question with a puzzled frown.

“He wants to know why you don’t eat him.”

Vaelin turned to find Astorek standing nearby, watching the scene with faint amusement. Two of his wolves sat a short distance away, a male and a female of disconcerting size, their scent provoking Scar to a fearful shudder.

“They’re too close,” he told the Volarian, nodding at the wolves.

Astorek inclined his head and the wolves rose in unison to trot towards the ice, their usual placidity evaporating as they began to leap and nip at one another in a playful dance.

“He’s for riding,” Vaelin said, turning back to the boy as Astorek translated. “Not eating.”

This seemed to puzzle the child even more, his small features creasing into a scrunch of bafflement, so Vaelin lifted him onto Scar’s back, taking the reins and leading him on a slow walk towards the shoreline. The boy laughed and clapped his hands as he bounced along, the other children following in a clamour that didn’t need much translation; they all wanted a turn. After an hour or so of entertainment Astorek finally shooed the children away with a few short words. Although the Wolf People’s discipline of their young folk seemed lax, the instant silence that descended on the children told of an underlying authority that brooked no dissent and they had soon scampered off to find other amusements.

“His description of you was not wholly accurate,” Astorek said when the children had gone. “He said you would be fierce.”

“Your prophet’s words? You talk as if you knew him.”

“Sometimes I feel as if I did, I’ve heard his words so many times. Our people write nothing down but all shaman are taught to recite his message without fault.”

Vaelin led Scar back to the stable, fixing a feed-bag over his snout. The islands were poor in grain but rich in root vegetables and berries, harvested in the summer months and preserved through the winter. From his contented snorts and noticeably less denuded frame, it seemed Scar found the mix just as appetising as any bag of corn.

“My mother and father,” Astorek said, “bade me ask as to your intentions.”

“Intentions?”

“The Wolf People have awaited your arrival for as long as they can remember, knowing it would herald a time of great danger. And yet you spend every day tending your horse, whilst your companions play and the big man drinks his way through our stocks of pine ale.”

“Alturk is a… troubled man. And we have lingered here because Wise Bear advised venturing forth during the Long Night meant death. We are, of course, grateful for your hospitality.”

“You talk as if you intend to leave us.”

“We came in search of a particular man. Kiral’s song will guide us to him. When she hears a clear tune we will move on.”

“Leaving us to our fate, whatever it may be?”

“You put great stock in ancient paintings and long-told stories, especially since you cannot have been born to this life.”

Astorek gave a bitter laugh. “Is that it? You deny my people aid because you still distrust me?”

“Your people require no aid, as far as I can tell. As for you.” Vaelin took the bag from Scar’s snout, scratching his nose. “I’ve yet to learn how you came to be here, at this time, speaking our language without fault.”

“If I were an enemy, would not the huntress’s song warn you?”

Barkus, that night on the beach, the mask slipping away in an instant. All those years and the song had told him nothing. “It should, but I know to my cost how well the servants of our enemy can evade detection.”

He put the feed-bag aside and hefted a seal fur over Scar’s back, the warhorse voicing a rumbling snort of welcome at the increased warmth, then turned to Astorek, eyebrows raised in expectation. The Volarian’s gaze became downcast, his response a reluctant murmur, “I was guided here… by a wolf.”

“My father was a wealthy man.” Astorek’s face was bathed yellow in the firelight, his gaze fixed on the flames. Vaelin had called the others to the great dwelling they shared to hear his story, the Lonak sitting with their customary attentiveness when promised an interesting tale. The Gifted sat on either side of Vaelin, Orven and his guardsmen arrayed in neat rows behind. Only Alturk was absent, something that provoked a sharp exchange between Kiral and one of the Sentar, a veteran warrior who shifted uncomfortably at her terse enquiry. From her disgusted expression Vaelin divined she found his answer less than satisfactory.

“A merchant to trade,” Astorek went on. “Like his father before him. The great port city of Varral was our home, where I grew up in my grandfather’s fine house surrounded by fine slaves and fine toys. Most of grandfather’s trade came from the Unified Realm and we often played host to merchants and captains from across the sea. Keen to ensure his legacy, my grandfather insisted I be taught all the principal languages of commerce, so by the age of twelve I was fluent in Realm Tongue and Alpiran, and could even converse adequately in the two main dialects of the Far West. I remember being a happy child, and why not? As long as I remained attentive at lessons for a few hours a day, every whim would be indulged, and my grandfather did like to spoil me so.”

Astorek’s smile of fond remembrance faded as he continued, “It all changed when Grandfather died. My father, it seemed, had once nurtured youthful aspirations to be a soldier, quickly discounted by Grandfather of course, who had little interest in things military beyond trade in weapons. All Volarian males are supposed to serve a minimum of two years in the Free Swords but Grandfather knew whom to bribe to deny his son a chance at military glory. And so, as the years passed, my father nursed his grievance and fed his secret ambition, an ambition given free rein with Grandfather’s passing.

“Volaria tends to frown on amateur soldiers, the sons of the wealthy can purchase commission to junior officer status but thereafter promotion is granted strictly on merit. However, my father also knew whom to bribe and soon after securing his commission, and providing funds to equip and recruit a full battalion of Free Sword cavalry, found himself quickly elevated to the rank of commander. But rank wasn’t enough, his thirst for glory hadn’t abated. Varral, like all Volarian cities, is rich in statues, long rows of bronzes commemorating heroes, ancient and new, and Father badly wanted a plinth for himself. A sudden upsurge in campaigning against the northern savages provided him his opportunity, and, as is custom for the wealthy in Volaria, sons of sufficient age are required to follow their fathers to war. I was thirteen years old.”

“Your mother raised no objection?” Vaelin asked.

“Perhaps she would have, had I ever known her. Grandfather told me she had been cast out after revealing herself a faithless whore and Father never said a single word about her. But there was a slave, an old woman who worked in the kitchens, so old she was losing her mind. She caught sight of me once, stealing cakes as I often did, and started screaming, ‘Elverah’s spawn. Elverah’s spawn.’ The other slaves quickly dragged her away and I never saw her again. That was the only time my grandfather ever punished me, thirty strokes of the cane, and after every stroke he made me promise never to speak of my mother again.”

“She was Gifted,” Dahrena said. “Like you.”

“I expect so. It’s the same among the Wolf People, only mothers with power pass it on to their children. As I journeyed north with my father’s battalion the soldiers would sometimes exchange stories of strange folk spirited away by Council agents, never to be seen again. Though they always spoke softly of such matters, for Father was zealous in enforcing discipline, flogging several men in the first week of the march. I suppose he was trying to compensate for a complete absence of any military talent.

“Poor old father. He was a terrible soldier, quick to tire in the saddle, prone to sickness, lax in ensuring sufficient supplies for his men. By the time we joined with the rest of the army his dreams of glory had faded amidst the truth of a soldier’s life, which, from what I could tell, consisted mainly of discomfort, bad food and the constant threat of flogging, enlivened only by an occasional wine ration or game of dice. I suspect he had resolved to extricate himself from his new-found career, and might well have done so with a judicious bribe, but for General Tokrev.”

The Realm folk all straightened at the mention of the name, causing Astorek to blink in surprise. “You know this name?”

“He committed many crimes in our homeland,” Vaelin said. “He’s dead now.”

“Ah. News I had long hoped to hear. I always suspected he was not destined for a long life, though, like some of red-clads, it was rumoured that he was already far older than he appeared. We knew his reputation, a commander of tactical brilliance, it was said, but also stern discipline. When we first joined with the army he was in the process of hanging three officers for cowardice, one a battalion commander guilty of voicing defeatist sentiments. Tokrev’s orders were to concentrate his efforts on the mountain tribes, the slave quota for the year being only half-filled, but he nursed ambitions to go farther, into the frozen north where legend spoke of wild tribes who lived on the ice, said to be far richer in Gifted blood than any people on earth.

“Many of his officers, my father included, were less than happy with this plan. However, Tokrev’s demonstration was enough to silence any dissent and north we marched, being obliged to fight our way through the tribesfolk on the way. They are a fierce people, born to a warrior’s life, and make a formidable enemy. Luckily, they also take as much delight in warring among themselves as in fighting the hated southron invaders, so never possessed sufficient numbers to pose a serious obstacle.

“Our battalion was given the task of patrolling the flanks, a tricky business for the most experienced commander, and one far beyond my father’s abilities. Suffice to say our first engagement was a predictable disaster, Father leading us into a narrow ravine to be assailed from above by archers and slingers. His chief sergeant had enough wit to order a charge that carried us into open ground but they were waiting on the other side, a thousand or more screaming tribesmen charging down from the surrounding hills. I saw my father unhorsed in short order and charged towards him, for all his faults he was my father after all. I managed to get to his side but a tribesman’s axe cut through my horse’s foreleg, leaving us both on foot and surrounded. Father was wounded, a deep gash to the forehead, barely aware of what was happening, screaming horror all around as his battalion was torn to pieces. The mountain folk were laughing as they came closer, laughing at the boy trying to ward them off with a shaking sword whilst his father staggered about and shouted orders to corpses. That was the first time it happened.

“I saw a group of horses being gathered a short way off, the tribesmen have few of their own so they are a great prize. I knew if I could just get us to a horse we could ride free, knew it with all certainty. I stared at them, willing them to hear my desperation… And they came, all of them at once, breaking free of the tribesmen and stampeding through those surrounding us, stamping and kicking. Two halted at our side, both standing still as if frozen. I managed to get Father into the saddle and we rode away, every surviving horse following at our backs. We rode blindly for an age, until I too began to slump, realising I was also bleeding, from my nose, my eyes, my mouth. I remember falling from the horse then all was blackness.

“We were found by a Varitai scouting party the next morning, lying senseless amidst a herd of riderless horses. They took us back to camp where the slave-healer was able to wake Father with some kind of herbal mixture, but he was not the same, looking at me with eyes that saw a stranger, his lips spouting gibberish only he could understand. Loon though he now was, General Tokrev still deemed him an incompetent and a coward. As sole heir I was obliged to watch as he was beheaded, the general decreeing his line unworthy of freedom and condemning me to slavery. Naturally, as the wronged party, all my family’s wealth was now his.

“A slave’s life is rarely an easy one, but to be a slave in army service is a particular form of torment. My comrades were mostly cowards and deserters, subjected to routine beatings to crush any defiance, the slightest sign of disobedience punishable by prolonged torture and death, a fate suffered by three of my companions during the march north. We were employed as beasts of burden, laden with packs that would have tried the strongest man, fed barely enough to sustain life, our numbers dwindled from two hundred to less than fifty by the time we reached the ice.

“The general’s glorious campaign began with the destruction of a small settlement on the shore of the frozen ocean. Perhaps five hundred people, small in stature and clad in furs. It should have been an easy victory but these people were far from defenceless, for they somehow had command of bears. Great white bears unlike any seen before, bears that seemed to feel nothing as arrows or spears pierced their hides, bears that tore whole companies to pieces before being hacked down. The general was compelled to commit a full brigade to the fight, and what was expected to be an easy victory turned into a prolonged slaughter. The settlement was his, though many of its inhabitants had fled onto the ice. The few captives, mostly wounded men and women who had fought a rear-guard action to buy time for their people to flee, sat down and refused to move regardless of what torments were visited upon them by the overseers. They were dragged into cages but refused to eat, perishing shortly after, none speaking a single word.

“Although Tokrev was quick to send an inflated account of his victory to Volar, his troops didn’t share his exultation. The cold was already claiming lives and winter had not yet fully fallen, and the Free Swords looked upon the vast expanse of ice before them with great unease. However, none had the courage to gainsay the general when he ordered the advance and I soon found myself hauling a sled across the ice alongside a dozen other unfortunates. Every morning we would wake to find our numbers diminished until soon only I and three others were left. The overseers cursed and beat us but had little option but to lighten the load, vital provisions being left behind because there were insufficient slaves to haul them. Bellies began to rumble and tempers shorten, the Free Swords’ fear growing with every step on the ice, fears that proved well justified.

“The Bear People bided their time, letting us spend lives and food with each passing mile, until the days grew so short the army could cover no more than a few miles at a time. Strangely I found myself better fed than before, the chief overseer had contrived to plunge to his death at the bottom of a hidden crevasse and his surviving subordinates were too wearied by the cold to prevent me helping myself to my fellow slaves’ rations. They had all perished by now, some due to the beatings, but most taken by the cold.

“I remember the day I last saw the general, standing alone at the head of the column. He paced about on the ice, stamping with impatience and it seemed to me he was waiting for something. Thanks to my increased strength I had begun to harbour insane notions of revenge. The ever-more-neglectful overseers, themselves reduced in number to only two, had failed to notice when I procured a key from one of their fallen comrades, a drunkard who had foolishly passed out after forgetting to properly secure his furs. It would be a simple matter to unfasten my shackles from the sled, sprint towards the general, and hook the chains over his head, strangling him before his Kuritai could respond. It was a hopeless scheme, of course. The man was twice my size and his Kuritai would have been on me before I covered half the distance. But I was young, and hope is ever bright in the young. And the sight of my father’s headless corpse had never faded, fool though he was.

“So, as the general paced back and forth I slipped the key into the lock and made ready to execute my plan. I often wonder what would have transpired then had not the eyeless man appeared, most likely there would have been one more dead slave littering the course of this madman’s army across the ice. But still, in my less reflective moments, I often think how it would have felt to have that man at my mercy, just for an instant, to know his fear as the chain tightened around his throat.

“But the arrival of the eyeless man forced all such thoughts from my head. He seemed little different from the people slaughtered on the shore, clad in furs, small and broad of face, but instead of bears, he brought cats, very large cats that appeared out of the mist on either side of him, making the few surviving horses rear in alarm, along with more than a few Free Swords. Many began to draw swords but stopped at a command from the general. To my great surprise he then began to converse with the eyeless man, not in some alien tribal tongue, but in Volarian. Even more shocking was his demeanour, his shoulders hunched and head slightly bowed, the posture of a subservient man. Their words were faint but I heard a few snatches of conversation above the constant wind, ‘You were told to wait,’ the eyeless man told the general. Tokrev appeared to bluster, speaking the kind of military jargon my father rejoiced in but barely understood, talk of seized initiative and bold thrusts. The eyeless man told him he was a fool. ‘Come back next summer,’ he said before turning away. ‘If they leave you anything to return with.’ Then he was gone, and his cats with him.

“We remained encamped as night came on, every soul no doubt now silently beseeching Tokrev to order a retreat come the morning. In the event, the Bear People left him no decision in the matter. The spear-hawks attacked first, streaking out of the night sky by the hundred to rip eyes from sockets, tear away faces and fingers so that it seemed a red rain was falling all around. Panic seized the Free Swords and only the Varitai and Kuritai responded to the bugle blasts, forming a defensive cordon around the camp. For a moment all was quiet, the night beyond the torchlight nothing but a silent void, but then the sound came, filling the night, the roar of a thousand bears stirred to fury.

“They came at us from two sides, a solid wedge of charging muscle and claw, smashing through the Varitai as if they were made of straw, then rampaging through the camp. Everywhere men fell shrieking, slashed open or decapitated by sweeping claws, the bears rising and falling as they pounded men to bloody ruin. My last view of the general was the sight of him amidst a cluster of Kuritai, fighting with all their expertise to keep the bears at bay as he fled, a dense knot of fear-maddened Free Swords following close behind.

“As for me, I still crouched next to the sled, now liberally adorned with the remnants of my overseers. Everything had happened with such speed I could scarcely believe it. The bears seemed content to continue dismembering corpses, but then I saw men running from the shadows, many men with spears, more bears running alongside them and the air above alive with the thunder of wings. I knew in an instant to linger here another moment meant death.

“I unlocked myself and fled into the darkness, not thinking to seize some supplies, my only thought of escape. I ran until my lungs burned with the frozen air, collapsing only when my legs gave way. I lay still for a time, trying to recover some strength, but I was so tired, and it was so cold. I thought it might be best to sleep for a while, and might have fallen to an endless slumber had I not heard the steady crunch of a bear’s claws on the ice behind me. I forced myself to my feet, staggering on, fuelled only by terror, but even that was not enough to maintain my flight and I fell again.

“Knowing my cause to be hopeless I forced myself to turn and confront my pursuer, a lumbering shape looming ever closer through the darkness, eyes bright, claws and snout red from recent feeding. Volarians have no death songs, believing there are no gods or ascended souls to hear them, but in those final moments I found myself thinking once again of my father’s foolish dreams and how I wished I had found the courage to ask him about my mother.”

Astorek fell silent, his gaze distant now, a puzzled frown on his brow as if he recalled something not fully understood. Vaelin knew the expression well, having worn it many times himself. “The wolf,” he said.

“Yes.” Astorek gave a slight smile. “The bear stopped a few feet from me, growling, eyes bright with a malice that I had only ever seen in the eyes of men before. It seemed to be savouring the moment, creeping closer until its bloody snout was only inches away, its breath, hot and stinking on my face… Then it stopped.

“I had closed my eyes, refusing to look into its hate-filled gaze, but when I felt its breath recede I opened them again. The bear had shrunk to its haunches, head lowered, eyes now lit with another human trait — fear. Not, of course, of me, but something beyond me. So I turned and saw a wolf.

“Two things struck me at once. First, it was large, larger in fact than the bear that now cringed from it. Secondly, its eyes. They looked into mine and I knew… It saw me, all of me, skin, bone, heart and soul. It saw me, and felt no malice at all.

“I heard a scraping sound and turned to see the bear fleeing into the night with all haste, the white shape soon swallowed by darkness. The wolf circled me for a short while, its gaze still fixed on me. For all the strangeness and the terror I still felt the great cold enfolding me, the sweat on my skin now frozen, leeching away what strength I had left. My vision began to dim and I knew death would soon claim me… Then the wolf growled.

“It was not a voice that came to my head then, more a certainty, an implacable conviction that I couldn’t die here. From somewhere I found the strength to stand and the wolf trotted away towards the north, stopping after a time to ensure I was following. I shuffled along in its wake for uncounted hours, or possibly days, for all sense of time seemed to fade. If I faltered, or felt the welling surge of despair that would tempt me to sink onto the ice where at least I could rest, the wolf would growl, and I would keep moving.

“We stopped when a green fire began to flicker in the sky. Not knowing what it was, I finally fell to my knees, thinking this a vision of death, or madness. Perhaps I had already died and my tutors had all been wrong; there is something awaiting us beyond the arc of life. All fear had left me by then, along with all but the most faint sensation, numbed as I was. Now there was only acceptance, a sense of a journey complete.

“And the wolf howled.”

Astorek closed his eyes and Vaelin felt Dahrena’s hand slide into his, knowing she too was recalling the wolf’s howl, that night in the forest when the Seordah heeded its call to war. He knew Astorek couldn’t describe how it felt, the sound that seemed to strip away everything but the core of those privileged, or cursed to hear it.

“I would have wept,” the young shaman said, reopening his eyes to regard his audience with a sombre smile. “Had not my tears been frozen in my eyes. The wolf’s howl faded and it looked at me, one last time, then was gone, bounding across the ice. I stared up at the fire in the sky for a time then lay down to sleep. Whale Killer must have found me only minutes later, for I was still alive to greet the next dawn.”

“And you have remained here ever since?” Vaelin asked. “Never tempted to return home?”

“What home would I return to? Everything I had is gone. Besides, when they returned the next summer, I learned full well the vileness of my former people. We knew of the Bear People’s great battle with the Cat People, that they had fled to the west in search of easier prey. The Wolf People were not sorry to see them gone from the ice, for they had fallen to unwise ways. But, though the Bear People had won a victory, their losses meant they couldn’t withstand another Volarian expedition, especially since the Volarians had learned their lessons well and came better equipped and in much greater numbers. When they were done with the Bear People they came for us.

“Many Wings had taught me much, and I was a very keen student. She had hoped to shield me from the struggle but I wanted to repay their kindness. We killed many Volarians together, my wolves and her hawks, striking where they were weakest, fleeing before they could strike back. For months we harried them until their line of march became a red smear across the ice. But there were always more, and, though I searched for him, I never caught Tokrev’s scent again. Two winters ago they stopped coming. We thought we had finally convinced them to leave us be, but it seems they went across the great water to torment your people instead, for which we are sorry.”

Vaelin’s gaze went to Kiral who gave a short nod. She hears no lie… as I heard no lie from Barkus.

“They will come again,” Astorek went on, eyes intent on Vaelin. “In greater numbers still. But now we have you, Raven’s Shadow.”

The hut where Alturk had chosen to seclude himself was a mean thing, little more than a slanting shack in a small clearing away from the main settlement. The door gave way easily under Vaelin’s boot, releasing the fetid odour of an unwashed man mired in overindulgence. Alturk’s substantial form lay on a bed of furs, snoring loudly, surrounded by the walrus-tooth flasks their hosts used to store pine ale, all empty. The slumbering Alturk gave no indication of having noticed the intrusion, something that changed abruptly when Vaelin emptied a bowlful of ice water over his shaggy head.

The explosion of rage was instantaneous, the Lonak surging upright, war club in hand, teeth bared in a snarl. He paused at the sight of Vaelin in the doorway, confusion flickering across his dripping face. “Do you choose death now, Merim Her?” he demanded in a hiss.

“Sorbeh Khin,” Vaelin stated, the Lonak for a formal challenge. “You are no longer fit to lead the Sentar. They are mine now. If you wish to keep them, fight me.” He turned and walked into the clearing where the Sentar waited, looking on with shared expressions of grim understanding. Kiral had explained Vaelin’s reasoning and, to his surprise, none had raised an objection.

“Faithless dogs,” Alturk growled at them as he emerged from the shack, going on to harangue them in Lonak in a short but vehement diatribe that appeared to leave all singularly unmoved.

“You no longer hear the word from the Mountain,” Kiral told him. “You make yourself, varnish. This man gives you a chance to prove otherwise.”

Alturk gave no reply, consenting only to sneer at her before fixing his unsteady gaze on Vaelin, grip tightening on his war club. “Where is your weapon?”

Vaelin spread his hands, showing the absence of a dagger at his belt, his sword also gone from his back. “Why would I require a weapon? You offer no threat.”

Alturk stared at him in fury for a moment longer, then began to laugh, throwing his head back and casting hearty peals of mirth into the trees as he tossed his war club aside. “I should thank you,” he said when his laughter finally subsided. “Not every man gets to make his dreams real.”

He came at Vaelin in a crouching sprint. Their time among the Wolf People had done much to restore his frame and, for all the pine ale in his belly, his speed was impressive, leaving only the barest time for Vaelin to sidestep the charge and deliver a punch to his jaw. Alturk grunted in pain but didn’t falter, replying with a swift round-house blow. Vaelin blocked it with both forearms and drove his elbow into the Lonak’s exposed face, following up with a rapid series of punches to the face and belly, dodging Alturk’s counterblows as he drove him back, every punch landing with unerring precision… Until the Lonak caught one in his fist and hammered a blow into Vaelin’s temple.

He reeled from the impact, the world suddenly a blur as he struggled to resume a fighting stance. Alturk didn’t afford him the opportunity, however, sweeping his legs away with a kick and driving another punch into his face. For a moment the world went away and Vaelin could see only a vague shadow, surrounded by glittering stars…

“You,” Alturk grated, looming closer, meaty fist drawn back for another blow. “You made my son varnish. I see him every night, I watch him die every night, because of you, Merim Her.”

“I spared a boy,” Vaelin replied, spitting blood, feeling his left eye swelling shut. “You killed a man… A man who made his own choices.” He saw it then, a flicker of something in the Lonak’s eyes, a spasm of expression on his craggy face. “You knew,” Vaelin said in realisation. “You knew he had betrayed you long before you killed him.”

Alturk snarled again, drawing his fist back farther. Vaelin hawked and spat blood into the Lonak’s eyes, buying enough time to twist and deliver a kick to the side of his head. He surged upright as Alturk staggered away, charging forward to drive his head into the Lonak’s midriff then jerking it up to connect with his jaw. He followed with more punches to the face, Alturk sagging more with each blow, arms flailing as he tried to ward off the assault. Finally Vaelin sent him to his knees with a right hook to the jaw.

Vaelin paused, chest heaving, his fists leaking blood onto the forest floor. “Nishak told me,” Alturk said in a dull, weary voice, gazing up at him, blood streaming from numerous cuts. “I… didn’t listen.” He lowered his head, slumping in resignation, muttering, “I make no request for the knife.”

Kiral appeared at Vaelin’s side with Alturk’s war club in hand. “Strike true, Tahlessa,” she said, offering the weapon to Vaelin. “He deserves a quick end at least…”

She trailed off abruptly and straightened, her gaze going to the south. From the pained expression on her face he knew her song must be sounding a powerful note. However, this time he didn’t need to ask the meaning, for he could hear another warning, pealing across ice and forest, undeniable and implacable. The Sentar stirred in discomfort, exchanging fearful glances, for no wolf’s howl was ever so loud.

Vaelin turned to Alturk as the howl faded, finding him now on his feet, the defeated slump vanished from his shoulders, his gaze fierce with certainty. “I’ll need that,” he said, gesturing to the war club.

Vaelin glanced at Kiral, expecting her to voice an objection, but her expression was one of grim, if reluctant assent. “Wise Bear has some healing skill,” he told Alturk. “He can stitch your cuts.”

Alturk merely grunted. “Had I been sober, you would be dead now.”

Vaelin sighed the smallest laugh and tossed the war club into his hands. “I know.”

CHAPTER TWO Reva

The Volarian was dying, she could see it; his skin hanging from the bones of his face like a desiccated mask, eyes dull with defeat and recent suffering. Nevertheless, he had told his tale in an unwavering voice, the tones clear and strong, a man of centuries-long experience in oratory. “The Empress will confront you with only a third of the fleet,” he said to the assembled captains of the Queen’s Host, called to council on her flagship. “After you have defeated them she expects you to sail into the Cut of Lokar. The full fleet will move from the south to cut you off. That is all I know.”

Reva watched as the Shield examined the detailed chart on the table. They had convened on the main deck of the Queen Lyrna, no cabin being large enough to accommodate so many. The sea was calmer today, though still fractious enough to make the boat that had carried her here pitch alarmingly, shipping water with every passing minute. Reva found life at sea not much to her liking, even after she overcame the initial bout of sea-sickness the confines of ship life were trying in the extreme, as was the recurrent ache whenever her thoughts strayed to Veliss and Ellese.

“The Cut of Lokar.” Ell-Nestra’s voice brought her back to the present as he tapped an inlet on the Volarian coast. “The only direct sea-route to Volar. Once we sail in there they could bottle us up with comparatively few ships. Numbers won’t matter for much in such close confines. Plus it’ll be an easy matter for them to garrison the north and south banks against a landing.”

“This new Empress of theirs sets an elegant trap,” Count Marven said with a note of reluctant admiration. “Sadly, it seems she’s no Tokrev.”

“An overcomplicated ruse,” the queen responded, her voice uncoloured by any respect. “I doubt she’s ever played keschet.” She turned to the Shield. “Your advice, Fleet Lord Ell-Nestra?”

“Fighting a needless battle is never a good option,” he replied, his gaze still roaming the map. “Especially at sea where so much is dependent on chance. And manoeuvring a fleet so heavily laden with troops will prove arduous to say the least. I suggest we simply avoid the enemy, taking a north-eastern course to land here.” He tapped a shallow bay a hundred miles north of the Cut of Lokar. “Some of my captains have done a little smuggling on these shores and tell me the beach here is large enough to accommodate at least a fifth of the army at one landing. With the bulk of Volarian forces securing the banks of the Cut, they shouldn’t have more than a handful to oppose us. Once the army is landed the fleet will be free to deal with any threat to our supply lines.”

The queen turned to her Battle Lord. “Count Marven?”

“It will take three days at least to land the entire army, Highness. Whilst most Volarian forces will be concentrated to the south, we must still expect an attack of some kind from the local garrisons before being fully ready to march.”

“We could land farther north,” the Shield conceded with a sigh. “But the coast offers few other landing sites for at least another two hundred miles.”

“The greater the distance to Volar the lesser our chances of success,” the queen said, raising her eyes from the map to scan her captains, her gaze eventually coming to rest on Reva. “And we have one in our ranks who can be considered expert in fending off Volarian attacks.”

“In addition to your archers and guardsmen,” the queen said, “I will give you three regiments of Realm Guard, all veterans, including the Wolf Runners.”

“They will be very welcome, Highness,” Reva replied.

She had been called to the queen’s cabin for a private audience, the first time they had been truly alone. Even the hulking Lord Protector had been ordered to wait outside. Reva found herself once again struck by the queen’s beauty, even the faint white lines tracing back from her brow into the now-lustrous red-gold hair seemed to enhance rather than mar her perfection. More than that was the innate, effortless confidence, the peerless authority that ensured she commanded the attention of every set of eyes in any gathering. Despite this, or perhaps in part because of it, Reva had yet to feel the slightest flicker of attraction for her queen. She was easier to like when burnt, she decided. Now the mask is too perfect.

“Please know you are free to refuse this command,” the queen went on. “Without any disfavour.”

“We came here to finish this,” Reva said. “Besides, I think I’d rather fight on land than sea.”

“It’s certainly an acquired taste.” The queen smiled, though it wasn’t one of her dazzling wonders; a trifle wary in fact. “Before he left on his northern expedition, Lord Vaelin asked that I not allow you to expose yourself to inordinate risk. In fact, he implored me to leave you in the Realm, as regent.”

Reva suppressed a laugh. Always so keen to act the elder brother. “A task I’m hardly suited to, Highness. Although I have been meaning to ask for a clearer explanation of the intent behind Lord Vaelin’s current mission.”

“If secrets are kept, it is for a good reason. Suffice to say, the opportunities offered by his mission were too great to be ignored.” The queen paused, her smile slowly fading. “I have had occasion recently to read more detailed reports of events at Alltor. I hadn’t appreciated before how truly difficult the situation became, the extremes to which you were compelled.”

The Volarian’s face as he knelt at the block… No better than us… “Survival compels us to extremes, Highness.”

“Indeed. Words I should like you to remember when performing your task. This war is not yet won and the survival of our peoples requires victory, at any cost.” Her gaze was intent now, the flawless mask devoid of all humour. “You understand?”

At any cost. Looking into the queen’s unwavering gaze, Reva felt a sudden rush of recognition, her mind filling with another face she knew so well, one that had also often spoken in similar terms, usually in the moments before he beat her. “Perhaps if you could elaborate, Highness,” she said. “My task will be made easier with clear instruction.”

The queen’s gaze barely flickered. “The Varitai are to be captured only if opportunity arises. All Free Swords are to be killed.”

“And if they surrender?”

“Then killing them will be a simpler task.” The queen came forward, clasping her hands, her face now a picture of sisterly affection. “As you said, my lady, we came here to finish this.”

The Shield accompanied Reva back to the Marshal Smolen, one of the newly built monsters laden with her House Guard and a fifth of her archers. Ostensibly Ell-Nestra had come to oversee the landings though she sensed a sudden desire to remove himself from the queen’s company, perhaps due to the fate of the Volarian. Reva had been making ready to climb into her boat when she saw the man recoil from the queen, his sagging features suddenly white with shock. The queen stood regarding him with an expression of serene satisfaction as he launched himself at her, snarling, hands like claws as he reached for her throat. With practised swiftness the queen drew a dagger from her sleeve and drove it into the Volarian’s chest, a smooth unhesitant act performed before her guards could react.

“Throw this over the side,” she told Lord Iltis, accepting a cloth from Lady Murel and wiping the dagger clean as she turned away. However, the Volarian had somehow contrived to cling to life and continued to rage at her as the Lord Protector carried him to the rail, voicing shrill curses in his own language. The queen didn’t turn as he was cast into the ocean, striding towards Reva with the warmest farewell and good wishes for her venture.

“The man deserved his end, by all accounts,” she said to the Shield as they clambered from the boat, scaling the ropes to the ship’s deck. “Owner of countless slaves and a member of the Council that sent their army to invade the Realm.”

“She killed his son,” Ell-Nestra responded, his voice dull with grim understanding. “She wanted him to know before he died.”

“Our queen is fair, but her justice can be harsh.”

“She is your queen, my lady. My allegiance will end when this war is finally done.”

He strode off to find the ship’s captain whilst she briefed Lords Antesh and Arentes on the plan. “We are to be the vanguard of the army,” the guard commander said, stroking his moustache. “A singular honour.”

“And a singular risk,” Antesh pointed out, ever keen to advise caution in dealing with their monarch. During the march to Warnsclave Vaelin had related the full story of his previous association with her Lord of Archers, leaving her well aware of his once-fierce antipathy towards the entire notion of a Unified Realm. Although his fanaticism had clearly dissipated over the years he still retained a lingering suspicion of all things Asraelin, Queen Lyrna chief among them.

“We are a thousand miles from home facing a vile enemy,” Reva pointed out. “Every soul in this army shares the risk, my lord. Please relate the plan to your captains, we land in five days.” She was about to add the queen’s instruction regarding prisoners but found the words stalled in her breast. Her people needed little such instruction and were like to slaughter any Volarian in arms, but voicing an order condoning their bloodlust still felt wrong, reminding her once again that the Father had never related a single word on the subject of vengeance.

Gulls appeared in the sky the next day and the first vague glimpses of land a day later. They sailed at a ten-mile remove from the rest of the fleet, thirty ships carrying the assembled soldiery of Cumbrael and the elite of the Realm Guard. The queen had also seen fit to provide four of Alornis’s wondrous new ballistae along with a Nilsaelin woman of slight build who seemed to have an expert knowledge of their workings.

“Lady Alornis said to give you her warm regards, m’lady,” she said to Reva with an awkward bow. “Wanted to come herself but Queen Lyrna threatened to tie her to the mainmast.”

Reva let her choose the most able hands to crew the ballistae from among the Scarred Daughters, a fierce but appropriate title given to the company formed from those Cumbraelin women keen to volunteer for service with Blessed Lady Reva. They numbered little over two hundred and, like her male conscripts, at least half were below the age of twenty, grim-faced girls for the most part with various awful tales of mistreatment and orphanhood at Volarian hands. Arentes had initially kept them apart from the men, intending that they act as porters or cooks, but a stern look from Reva told him that would not be acceptable. She had taken to training them herself, though their evident awe and unquestioning belief in her continued lie made it something of a trial.

“If I may, Blessed Lady,” one of them said the day before the landing, a lissome girl of no more than eighteen, sinking to one knee on the deck before Reva.

“I told you, Lehra,” Reva said, “stop doing that.”

“My apologies, Blessed Lady.” The girl stared up at her with a face that would have been the epitome of youthful innocence but for the scar that ran from her ruined left eye to her upper lip, punishment for a minor infraction during her enslavement. “But we were wondering.” Lehra paused to glance at the rest of the Daughters, clustered nearby with heads bowed. “What verse should we recite in the morning? To be sure the Father blesses our endeavour.”

The Father has no blessing for war. You think he looks down on this business and smiles? Reva bit down on the words. The lie had carried thousands across the ocean and could hardly be abandoned now. “You must all choose your own verse,” she said, pulling Lehra to her feet, less gently than she intended for the girl shrank back in a contrite bow. “‘No multitude can think with one mind, for the Father made us all to be different, each and every soul another facet of his love. Find the path to the Father’s love with your own eyes and let no other force you from your true course.’” The Book of Reason, she rarely quoted another these days.

“Will we be at your side, my lady?” one of the other girls asked, her eagerness reflected in the faces of the others.

Reva’s gaze was drawn to the sight of the Shield leaning on the foremast and regarding the scene with evident amusement. “I would have you nowhere else,” she told them. “Now return to your practice.”

She moved to the water barrel next to the mast, meeting Ell-Nestra’s gaze as she took a drink. “Something to say, my lord?”

“You had a god-gifted vision,” he said with a shrug. “I did too, once. Didn’t like it much. Made my head hurt.”

“Your gods are figments of dreams woven into a tapestry of legend.”

“Whilst yours lives in the sky, grants wishes and, when you die, lets you live in a field forever.”

“For a man who has travelled so far, I find your ignorance quite astonishing.”

His face darkened and he nodded at the Scarred Daughters, now going through the most recent sword scale she had taught them. “You know what awaits them when we land. How many will die believing this fiction of yours?”

Reva found she had no anger for him, the truth was inescapable and she had long accustomed herself to its sting. She watched the Daughters for a moment, finding months of practice had done much to improve their skills; they moved well, the strokes and parries performed with speed and precision. Also, they were fierce, many already fashioned into killers by the Volarians. But still, all so young. As I used to be.

“Did you have a choice?” she asked him. “When they came to take the Isles? How many of your pirates died at the Teeth or Alltor? And if this war is so hateful, and the queen so vile, why are you here?”

She had expected anger, but his response was subdued, all amusement gone from his face as he said, “I thought I had a stain to wash away. But it seems all I have done is befoul myself beyond any cleansing.”

He looked up as a shout came from the crow’s nest. “The bay is in sight,” he said, offering her a bow and striding away. “Time to marshal your forces, my lady.”

They dropped anchor a mile offshore, the sailors hauling the boats over the side as Reva waited on deck with the Scarred Daughters. Lord Arentes and the full complement of House Guards were arranged at the rail as they would be the first ashore, their numbers swelled by a contingent of archers. Antesh waited on the neighbouring ship with the bulk of his men whilst the vessels carrying the Realm Guard bobbed on the waves a half mile west. Watching the activity with growing impatience, Reva reflected on the tendency of time to slow to a crawl during events she wished would pass in a blur.

Seeking distraction, her gaze wandered the ship, finding the Shield at the bows, taking an eyeglass from the ship’s captain as he pointed to something on shore.

“The enemy?” she asked, moving to his side.

“A small number only,” he replied, training the glass on the beach. “Perhaps thirty cavalry. Nothing you can’t handle, I’m sure…” He frowned, a bemused smile coming to his lips. “One of them just fell over.”

“My lord Shield!” They both raised their gaze to the crow’s nest where a sailor could be seen waving frantically to the north. “Storm front!”

She followed the Shield to the stern, drawing up in surprise at the bank of cloud now shrouding the horizon. It was dark to the point of blackness, shimmering with lightning and casting a faint rumble across the sea as it swelled, coming closer with every heartbeat.

“Impossible,” Ell-Nestra breathed.

“What do we do?” Reva asked but he stood staring at the fast-approaching storm with blank-eyed amazement.

“My lord!” She took hold of his chain-mail shirt and shook him, hard. “What do we do?”

He gaped at her, blinking as reason returned to his eyes. “Haul anchor!” he shouted, tearing free of her. “Raise every sail! Helm, set your course due south! Captain, signal the other ships to follow! My lady, take your people below.”

The crew scrambled to obey as Reva barked orders, sending the Cumbraelins to the lower decks. She lingered however, staying at the stern and watching the storm sweep ever closer. How can it move so fast? she wondered, a suspicion building in her mind as she recalled another unexpected storm, at Alltor when the rain fell in sheets by day and snow by night. The party on the shore… What have we sailed into?

Thanks to the crew’s frantic efforts, the great ship soon heaved into a southward course, sails filling the moment they were unfurled as the northerly wind built into a gale. The other ships had followed the Shield’s signal, though those crewed by Realm-born sailors were notably slower in responding than the Meldeneans. Reva watched the vessel carrying one of the Realm Guard regiments wallowing in the rising swell as they drew away, only half her sails raised and pitching at an alarming angle as her helmsman tried to steer a southerly course. Soon the rain grew too thick to make out more than a vague shape though Reva was certain she had heard a great moan rise from the huge vessel before it was lost from sight. In minutes the storm came to claim them too, Reva finding herself enveloped in blackness as the world became a howling fury.

The gale was strong enough to pitch her from her feet, the rigging above resounding with the sound of snapping rope and wood, sailors tumbling to the deck or snatched by the wind to be cast into the sea. Reva found herself sliding across the deck, now awash with water. She was carried past the entrance to the hold, close enough to hear the frightened cries of the Scarred Daughters rising from below as water cascaded down the steps. She managed to grab onto the rail before the pitching deck sent her over the side, both arms wrapped tight about the balustrade as wind and rain tore at her. A dark shape tumbled past, a hand scraping over her mail shirt for a brief instant, a sudden despairing wail soon swallowed by the storm.

The deck suddenly descended, the angle of its pitch reversing, swinging her around so that she lay on the deck, gasping in the sudden lull. “My lady!” It was Arentes, running towards her across the deck, arms outstretched. She was reaching for him when the crash came.

The impact jarred her grip from the rail, the pitch of the deck too steep to allow any purchase as she and Arentes were carried towards the starboard side. She saw the guard commander hit the rail, shattering the wood with a bone-snapping crunch, and leaving a gap through which she descended into the roiling sea.

The storm’s fury disappeared in an instant, replaced by the silence of the world beneath the waves. She could see only varying swirls of grey as she descended, borne down by the weight of mail and weapons. She let go of her bow, knowing this time Master Arren’s wonder would be lost forever, then unclasped her sword belt, letting the blade fall away. She tore at the straps to her mail shirt, writhing in the cloying chill, bubbles spouting from her mouth in a torrent.

No! She forced calm into her thoughts as the straps resisted every desperate tug. Panic will kill you.

She formed herself into as still and straight a pose as possible, facing towards the surface to slow her descent, then drew her dagger and cut each of the straps in turn. The mail shirt came loose in an instant and she felt herself rise, but too slowly judging by the now-agonised burn in her chest. She kicked for the surface, forcing every ounce of strength into her lungs and sternly refusing the compulsion to draw breath.

She broke into the air with a shout, dragging in rain-clogged air and coughing, carried high and low by tall waves. There was no sign of Arentes, or anyone else. Then a sudden cacophony, loud enough to reach her through the storm, a great cracking sound, like a thousand trees splintered at one blow. The swirl of the storm shifted for a moment, lessening the darkness to afford a view of the Marshal Smolen, the great vessel’s hull shuddering as it scraped along some unseen barrier, her sails torn from her rigging and what seemed to be dark droplets cascading from her sides, droplets Reva soon realised were people, her people, casting themselves into the sea as the ship was torn apart beneath them.

The storm shifted again, taking the spectacle with it, but Reva continued to stare, as the cold rose to numb her limbs and she shuddered, knowing death was coming soon and she had no desire to fight it.

I killed them all, she thought as the waves covered her head. With a lie.

CHAPTER THREE Frentis

The villa was the largest they had yet encountered, more a fortress than a home, its walls thick and tall, the gardens extending for several acres all around. It had clearly been home to a master of considerable wealth, enough in fact to maintain a garrison of two hundred Varitai. Despite the strength of the villa’s defences, however, the master had felt little compunction in abandoning it at the first sign of their approach. His Varitai were easily counted, lying in four neat rows in the inner courtyard, each bearing an identical ear-to-ear cut across the throat.

“All valuables gone,” Draker reported, “along with the horses. Found most of the slaves inside. Unlike this lot, looks like some put up a fight. Didn’t save them though.”

“Two hundred of their own men,” Illian said, shaking her head in bafflement. “I can make no sense of it.”

“They know what we’re about now.” Frentis nodded at a silent cluster of their own freed Varitai nearby. “Didn’t want us to have them.” He caught Master Rensial’s eye. “From the state of the bodies they can’t be more than a day’s ride north. See to it, please Master.”

Rensial nodded and moved to his horse, his mounted company following as he galloped through the villa’s gate. Frentis briefly pondered going with them, given the master’s erratic nature, but resisted the impulse. Recent days had seen a change in Rensial, his gaze not quite so blank, even occasionally given to unbidden speech requiring less deciphering than usual. Only in war does the madman become sane.

Not all the villa’s slaves had been slain before their master’s flight, some having been at work in the fields when the slaughter began. Many were seen fleeing in all directions, though a sizeable minority made their way to the villa, cautious and bemused by the welcome they received, some collapsing in grief at the sight of their murdered fellows, mostly men weeping over fallen women. Marriage was forbidden between slaves but everywhere they went there was evidence that people were capable of forging their own bonds regardless of whatever barriers or threats constrained their lives. It was to these bereaved souls that Frentis gave the villa’s owner when Rensial returned the following day, dragging the unfortunate black-clad along behind his horse, hands bound and mouth firmly gagged.

“He had a wife and children,” Rensial reported as the slaves closed in around their former master, knives and whips raised. “I let them go.”

“Of course, Master.” They always beg. Frentis watched the black-clad collapse to his knees, bound hands raised in appeal. He was a tall man, impressively built with the look of a soldier, attested to by the various military souvenirs found in the villa. An officer of renown? The villa, the family, the slaves. All fruits of an illustrious career. A hero’s reward. He was far from heroic now, just a terrified, piss-stained man begging for his life. They always beg.

He turned away as the torment began, going to where Illian was engaged in training the latest batch of recruits. There were fewer Realm folk now but their numbers had begun to swell since the victory over the Eskethian garrison, the Free Swords they had allowed to flee carrying word of the calamity with impressive speed. Within days a hundred more runaways had arrived in the mountains, the army’s numbers swelling to over four thousand in the space of a month. Feeding so many had forced Frentis to order a move to the north-west, into the rich farmlands that stretched towards New Kethia, this villa being the first to fall.

He watched the training for a short time, taking satisfaction from the accustomed ease with which Illian marshalled the recruits, displaying all the authority of a master on the Order House practice ground. She had them learning the staff, the basis for eventual use of the pole-axe or the spear, but also a sign that they still lacked sufficient weapons. He had set the former blacksmith to work in the villa’s forge with orders to remake the copious stocks of farming tools into as many axe blades as possible. It meant they would have to linger here for a time, weeks probably, and he chafed at the delay. Keen to maintain the impetus of their rebellion, he had sent Lekran and Ivelda in opposite directions with two hundred fighters each and orders to free as many slaves as possible.

Frentis turned as Thirty-Four approached. The former slave had taken to wearing kit stripped from the bodies of Free Sword officers and gave an impression of impeccable military neatness, every inch of armour scrupulously cleaned and all buckles polished to a gleaming shine.

“He’s ready then?” Frentis asked him.

“Healed and fully able to ride, brother. Still refusing to talk though.”

“Unusual. They normally can’t shut up when they realise what you are.”

“Who I am,” Thirty-Four corrected, an uncharacteristic hardness in his voice. “What I used to be.”

“Yes.” Frentis offered an apologetic smile. “Let’s set him on his way, shall we?”

The Volarian had refused to offer a name but they had gleaned it from the correspondence found among his battalion’s baggage train. “Honoured Citizen Varek,” Frentis greeted him brightly, crouching at his side in the shade of the acacia tree to which he had been shackled. “Feeling better I trust?”

Varek remained slumped against the tree-trunk, his face betraying no emotion beyond the simmering rage that had dominated his demeanour upon waking to find himself chained and his battalion destroyed.

“I have good news,” Frentis went on, gesturing for Thirty-Four to unlock the chain. “Freedom awaits.”

Varek’s expression became guarded, Frentis noting how he suppressed the faint glimmer of hope that rose in his eyes. “No trick, I assure you.” Frentis took hold of the chain and gave an insistent tug, the Volarian slowly getting to his feet, wary eyes constantly moving in expectation of an attack. Frentis led him through the courtyard, knowing he would take full notice of the many former slaves at training. Draker waited at the villa’s arched entrance with a horse, saddled and laden with provisions for several days’ ride.

“This was your horse, wasn’t it?” Frentis asked, removing the shackles from Varek’s wrists.

The Volarian was marginally less wary now, rubbing at his reddened flesh as his gaze tracked from Frentis to the horse. “I will not betray my people,” he stated, the first words he had spoken since waking. “Whatever the reward.”

“This could hardly be called a reward,” Frentis said. “I imagine you know the kind of welcome you’ll receive in New Kethia, the defeated, disgraced son to an honoured father. The shame of it will be unbearable, but before you kill yourself please inform your tormentors that what happened to you will soon happen to them. Before the year is out their city will fall and every soul they keep in bondage will be free. But my queen is rich in compassion and willing to offer terms.”

The Volarian sighed, shaking his head. “You are mad.”

“The city gates to be opened and the walls cleared of defenders. All Free Swords to lay down their arms and all slaves, including Varitai and Kuritai, to be freed. The city will become the property of Queen Lyrna Al Nieren, who will decree a fair redistribution of lands and riches in due course.” He stepped closer to Varek, speaking softly, feeling his rage building anew. “Failure to agree to these most generous terms will result in the utter destruction of your city and the execution of every Volarian found in arms.”

Varek jerked his head towards the host of recruits. “You truly believe this rabble capable of taking New Kethia? You think the Ruling Council will sit idly by whilst you march? You will be crushed before you even catch sight of the city and every one of these dogs still alive will be flayed and left to rot in the sun, if they are lucky.”

Frentis merely smiled. “News travels slowly, it seems.” He leaned closer still. “There is no Ruling Council now. You are ruled by an empress and, trust my word on this, she will look on and laugh when I raze your city to the ground.”

“Whatever awaits me, I’ll bear it,” Varek said in a tone of complete certainty. “I’ll suffer every torment for a thousand years just for the slightest chance of getting this close to you again.”

“Then you had best invest in some sword lessons first.” Frentis turned to Draker. “Escort the honoured citizen until nightfall. If he takes one backward glance, kill him.”

Her new body is stronger than the one she left on the beach, leaping and whirling with all the speed and precision she could ask for, and yet…

“Feel it, don’t you?” the Messenger asks, lounging in a chair on the balcony. He wears the body of an Arisai, one of the few with Gifted blood, tall and lean. Behind him stand six more, also Gifted, and, although their faces are different, their expressions are identical. She has never met so much of him before and finds it trying, one was always more than sufficient.

She lowers the short sword and straightens from the fighting crouch, naked and sheened in sweat from the practice. If the Messenger finds the sight arousing, there is no sign of it on any of his faces. She is discomforted by the sight of the darkened sky that frames them, realising it was noon when she returned to the Council Tower. Since awakening in this new shell her ability to keep track of time has diminished yet further.

“Feel what?” she asks.

“The numbness. Cold isn’t so cold, heat isn’t so hot. Gets worse with every one you take. These days I can barely feel a thing.” He angles his head, studying her, a small predatory smile on his lips. “Can you hear it this time? You can, can’t you?”

She suppresses a flash of anger, resenting his effortless intuition. The shell’s owner had been older than the first, and not born to slavery, leaving a deep pool of memory that flares into aggravating clarity all too often:… playing with her brother on the shore of some mountain lake… laughing when her father showed her his tricks…

She initially thought the woman’s gift so small it couldn’t be discerned but has come to understand that memory was her gift. Every thought, action and word residing in her head, unchanging and always so bright.

“You said to prepare eight,” she says, pushing the images away. “Yet I only count seven.”

She takes some satisfaction from the sight of them clenching jaws in unison, knowing the Messenger was suppressing his own anger. “Al Sorna has a facility for acquiring useful friends,” he says after a short pause.

She sees it then. Although the shells are all youthful and athletic his evident wounding still marks them, colours their eyes with pain, weariness… and fear. “You’re certain you know where to find him?” she asks.

“He seeks the endless man. I need only journey north and I’ll find his trail. You’ll have to make me a general, and some sort of grandiose title seems appropriate. Overlord of the North, or something.”

“The Northern Armies are commanded by the General Governor of Latethia. I’ll give you an execution order. When he’s dead call yourself what you like.”

“You don’t seem to like these governors much, I must say. Does this leave any alive?”

“Only the Governor of Eskethia. I was going to execute him too but I’m becoming more inclined to leave him to his fate.”

The faces shift again, all vestige of humour fading and she knows his next words are not his. “You cannot afford indulgence now. This distraction of yours had its uses, but now obstructs our purpose. He requires that you see to the matter without delay.”

“The Council is dead and the bitch’s fleet wrecked. All at my hand. I have earned indulgence.”

“The previous three centuries have been your indulgence. Decades of murder and malice, his gift to you. And now he requires payment.”

Her hand flexes on the sword, the true depth of the antipathy she has always felt for this creature becoming apparent for the first time. She sees them tense, the seated speaker rising. “He knows what you planned,” he says. “Your cherished scheme, the dream of ruling with that boy at your side, eternal and terrible with the whole world as your playground. Did you really think it would work?”

“If he has no more use for me,” she says, smiling, “kill me. If you can.”

As one their hands reach for the swords at their side. She knows the odds are hopeless, she knows she is choosing death. Watch me, my love, she thinks, knowing he sees her. Watch me make you proud.

But the Messenger stops, all seven releasing their swords and filing towards the door in silence. The speaker lingers a moment, his face now that of a weary soldier called to inescapable duty. “He will always find more use for us. You can keep the boy, if you take him alive. But the matter must be settled.”

Alone once more she closes her eyes, seeking his presence, embracing the steely resolve she finds, joy threatening to burst her new heart. She sees something, a swirl of mist in the darkness, coalescing into a form she knows so well. His words mean nothing, beloved, she says, reaching out to caress his face. The world can still be ours.

He snatched the hand from his face, snarling in fury, his knife coming up to press into her throat. “Never!” he hissed into her face, pressing the blade deeper.

Lemera whimpered, eyes wide with horror, her face quivering with terror, her head drawn back by the fist that grasped her hair, the smooth flesh of her throat exposed and vulnerable.

The air rushed from his lungs as he dropped the knife, twisting away from her to slump on the edge of the bed, his head in his hands. “What… what is it?” he said when the shaking had faded from his limbs.

Her reply was barely more than a whisper. “I heard shouting… You were dreaming…”

He glanced over his shoulder, taking note of the thin cotton shift that barely covered her, and the depth of fear lingering in her gaze. He turned away, blinking as his eyes adjusted to the dark. He had taken over the master’s bedchamber, a spacious display of wealth and luxury, the walls liberally adorned with various paintings, most depicting battles of implausible orderliness. The master himself featured in several, a more youthful version standing tall and proud, sword in hand as he commanded his men with stern-eyed courage, a singular contrast to the bloodied, begging ruin that had been left to expire in the courtyard when the slaves tired of him.

“I… have nightmares sometimes,” he told Lemera. “I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“I’ve been hurt worse.” He felt her weight shift on the bed then a hesitant touch to his back, her fingers spreading to explore the flesh. “You have fought so much, and yet no scars.”

“I had scars, they healed.”

“Weaver?”

“No.” The seed will grow. “No, it was something else. Something I doubt I’ll ever understand.” He turned again, her hand shifting to rest on his shoulder until he gently removed it. “You should go.”

She drew back a little but made no effort to leave. Her face was shadowed but he had a sense she was smiling. “The sister said you were forbidden the touch of a woman. I thought she must be joking.”

“The Faith requires all we have.”

She shifted again, drawing her legs up to rest her chin on her knees, her head angled as she studied him, now more curious than amused. “And you are so willing to give it?”

“The Order is all I’ve ever wanted.”

“So the world beyond your Order offers no enticements?”

“I’ve seen the world, with all its enticements. I find myself content with the Order.”

“After training yesterday, Draker punched a man for telling a story. A strange tale of how you were taken to the palace, along with a woman possessed of vile magics. And together you killed your king. Was he lying?”

“No. He wasn’t lying and Draker shouldn’t have done that.”

“Yet your queen let you live and sent you here.”

“My actions were not my own. The woman’s magics bound me, compelled me to do terrible things.”

She straightened and he felt her eyes roaming his face. Although he couldn’t see her expression the intensity of her scrutiny was unnerving. He was about to tell her to leave again when she said, “So we are not so different, you and I.”

She uncoiled, lying down on the bed. “May I sleep here? Just tonight. I have dreams too.” She breathed a soft laugh at his evident hesitation. “I promise I’ll offer no… enticements.”

I should make her go, he knew. There can be no good outcome to this. But he didn’t, finding the cruelty beyond him. So he lay next to her, trying to force the tenseness from his limbs, knowing sleep would be a stranger tonight. After a few moments she shuffled closer, resting her head against his shoulder, her hand finding his, their fingers entwining.

“There will be no victory for us, will there?” she asked in a whisper.

“Don’t say that. My queen sails to these shores with a great army. If we hold to our cause…”

“I was a slave, but never a fool. This empire is vast beyond imagining and we have killed but a fraction of the force they will bring against us. They will kill us, all of us, for we are slaves and we cannot be allowed even the barest hope of freedom. Without us, they have no empire.”

The matter must be settled. “If you believe our cause so hopeless, why join us?”

She came closer still, wrapping her free arm around his, clasping his hand tighter, her breath warm on his skin. “Because you offered something I had forgotten could be offered, a choice. And I choose to die free.”

Their numbers doubled over the next few weeks as Ivelda and Lekran continued to bring in recruits by the dozen and ever more runaways arrived at the villa. Soon there were so many that feeding them all became a problem, Frentis finding himself compelled to order some into the fields to harvest more crops. A few were resentful of the order though he managed to ameliorate any discontent by promising that all would take a turn at the same chore, himself included. Conahl, the Realm-born blacksmith, had performed prodigious feats in producing large numbers of weapons but still it wasn’t enough; only a third of the army could be described as adequately armed and at least as many were still equipped with various farm implements.

“Plenty of weapons in New Kethia,” Lekran pointed out at the evening council.

“We still lack the strength to take it,” Frentis replied. Thirty-Four was well acquainted with New Kethia and had ample intelligence on the strength of its walls. Plus they had to assume the Empress had sent them some reinforcement by now, or perhaps even come herself. He resisted the urge to allow himself to dream again, resuming the nightly dose of Brother Kehlan’s sleeping draught, despite the headaches. The campaign was moving towards its crucial phase and he was unwilling to risk any chance she might divine his plans when their minds touched. He was also aware she would be raging at the sudden absence of contact, and perhaps even prone to misjudgement as a consequence.

“If we wait much longer, this region will be denuded of slaves,” Thirty-Four said. “Those that haven’t joined us will have been killed or marched off by their owners. If we were to go south, I’ve little doubt this army could be made mighty within a few months.”

“We do not have a few months,” Frentis said. “The queen’s fleet will already have sailed and marching south will not provide the diversion she needs.”

“Over half of our people are not from the Realm and know nothing of the queen. They came because we promised freedom, not to exchange one master for another.”

“If we can secure the queen’s victory, then every slave in this empire will be free. Her cause is their cause. Make sure they know that.”

He returned his gaze to the map. We have to strike somewhere. “What is this place?” he asked, pointing to a town on the northern coast, about fifty miles east of New Kethia.

“Viratesk,” Thirty-Four said. “A minor port serving the trade routes north.”

“Defences?”

“A wall, of sorts. It’s a poor place, home to only a few black-clads with scant funds to waste on a wall that hasn’t been needed for centuries.” Thirty-Four paused, lips pursed in consideration. “They do have a lively slave market as I recall. The market in New Kethia is often full to overflowing so many slavers look to alternatives to shift their stock.”

A town so close to the provincial capital put to the torch and they’ll be forced to come out from behind their walls. Frentis straightened from the map. “We wait one more week to gather numbers and train, then we march to Viratesk.”

He had Thirty-Four draw a map of the town and sent Master Rensial to scout the approaches, cautioning him against being seen. The remaining days were spent training the recruits, making an effort to exchange a few words with as many as possible, gratified that most seemed to be enlivened by the prospect of action. However, he didn’t have to look too deeply to see the fear that lingered in many, mostly those born into bondage or veterans of prolonged enslavement; they had risked all to join this rebellion and had no illusions as to the consequences should they fail.

“I nearly ran once before,” Tekrav told Frentis one morning as they went over the inventory of supplies. The former bookkeeper had proved himself enthusiastic but unskilled in training, but his facility for numbers remained as sharp as ever. “Not long after my creditors’ petition saw me chained. Myself and another newly enslaved hatched a plan during the caravan ride to the master’s villa. My co-conspirator was a great, strong fellow, but overfond of drink and poppy essence as I was overfond of dice. Our intention was for him to strangle the guard when he came close to our cage and take his keys.”

“Did it work?”

“He managed to get a hand around the guard’s throat all right, but then one of the slave-hounds bit it off at the wrist. They had little use for him after that, except as an example. It took them all day to impart the lesson, by which time he was begging for death. After that I found myself all too grateful for a slave’s lot.”

“Then why did you join us?”

Tekrav gave a small shrug. “Even now I’m not entirely sure. The master was good to me, only two floggings in all the years I served him. But he was not so kind to the others, and as One, they looked to me for protection. I had subtle ways of diverting his temper, business matters or a new wine vintage to distract him from whatever torment his mean little mind could conceive. But when the war started and the new slaves came…” Tekrav trailed off and forced a smile. “Well, he had so many new toys to play with. And I couldn’t protect them all.”

“Lemera and the others. You joined us because they did.”

“A man should stay with his family, don’t you think?”

“Yes, he should.” Frentis gave his inventory a final glance before handing it back. “This is all well in order. My thanks for your diligence. I would be grateful if you would oversee the baggage-train during the march.”

“I will, brother. I was wondering, perhaps I could have a title.”

Frentis paused, raising an eyebrow. “I assume you have something in mind.”

“Nothing too extravagant. But perhaps… Lord Quartermaster?”

“Chief Quartermaster. Any ennoblements will be for Queen Lyrna to decide.”

“Of course. I trust you’ll assure her of my worth in due course?”

Free for a few months and already he plots his rise. He’ll probably end his days as Minister of Works, should he live so long. “It will be my pleasure, sir.”

Master Rensial returned the next day to report the way to Viratesk clear of Volarian patrols. In fact, he had failed to glimpse another soul during the entire mission.

“Not like them to be incautious,” Lekran observed. “Usually a day on the road won’t pass without seeing at least one troop of cavalry.”

“The empire is always keen to police its people,” Thirty-Four agreed.

“So we scared them off,” Ivelda said. “Just like my people did to the Othra when they came to take the bronze hills.”

“We did take them,” Lekran replied with a surprisingly polite grin. “But found them worthless so gave them back.”

She laughed, shaking her head. “Your father told you many lies, sister-fucker.”

“I made Redbrother a promise, so I’ll wait till this is over before I claim your head.”

“I look forward to being amused by your attempt…”

“Shut up!” Frentis stated, very precisely. He stared at them both in turn until they lowered their gaze. “All of you, prepare your companies to march at dawn.”

They left the villa intact this time. Some of the older slaves had petitioned him to be allowed to stay, hoping to make the place their own. Frentis saw little point in attempting to compel their participation, especially since Illian advised they would be little use in a battle. He scouted ahead with Master Rensial’s troop, confirming the country as empty for miles around. The fields grew increasingly unkempt as they marched north, devoid of slaves, save a few corpses they took to be runaways from the villas they passed, all also uniformly free of occupation and some already burned by their owners.

“Told you,” Ivelda taunted Lekran with a laugh. “Pissed themselves and ran off. When we get to the town they’ll do the same.”

Viratesk came into sight after a five-day march, a square mile of brick buildings nestled in the bowl of a natural harbour. Frentis’s spyglass revealed the walls as poorly maintained, featuring several gaps and the surrounding ditch long since filled in. Also, he could find no sign of any guards on the walls or smoke rising from a single chimney.

“There’s nothing here.” He sighed, lowering the spyglass.

They found the town gates open and unguarded, the streets beyond vacant and littered with detritus that told of a hasty flight. “Some of them might have had the decency to stay and fight,” Lekran grumbled. “Just for a little while.”

“Take your company and sweep right, make for the harbour,” Frentis told him. “Draker, go left. Myself and Master Rensial will take the centre.”

It took only a short time to reach the harbour, passing by rows of vacant houses, the town’s only living occupants a few dogs busily feasting on the carcasses of slaughtered horses and goats left to rot in the streets. They found the wharf free of vessels save a single scuttled fishing boat, its mast jutting from the water at what Frentis felt to be an insulting angle.

“No bugger home, brother,” Draker reported, expression grim as he strode along the wharf. “Did find a pile of bodies in a warehouse though. All slaves, mostly older folk.”

“Culled the less valuable stock before they left.” Frentis cast a glance around the town, fighting a sense that the empty windows were all staring back in accusation. They would have lived if you had not come here. “Search every building,” he said. “Gather anything of value, especially weapons. We need anything with a sharp edge, even the smallest butcher’s knife. Lekran, your people will man the walls. You’ll be relieved at nightfall.”

He had their Chief Quartermaster oversee the disposal of the bodies, though he made a point of helping to carry them to the carts. There were about fifty in all, men and women of middling years, stripped naked as their clothes were deemed of greater value than their lives, old whip-strokes visible on most of the rapidly greying flesh. They were carted outside the walls where Tekrav had organised the construction of a huge pyre from the furniture left behind by the fleeing townsfolk. Once the bodies had all been laid upon the oil-soaked wood Frentis turned to address the gathered fighters.

“Amongst my people,” he said, “it is customary, regardless of belief, to say words over the dead. Many, if not most of these people lived knowing only a slave’s life, destined for a slave’s death. To be cast away like a lamed horse, unmarked, unnoticed, unworthy of thought or word. But now we are here to mark their passing, with words and with steel. Hard days lie ahead of us, days when our cause will seem hopeless and your heart tempted by despair. When those days come I ask that you remember what you saw here today, for if we fail, this will be our fate and no voice will be raised to bear witness that we were ever alive.”

He went to the walls to watch the pyre burn, the flames rising high in the gathering dark. “Quite the signal fire, Redbrother,” Lekran observed.

“They knew we were coming,” he replied. “And they know we’re here now. With any luck, they’ll send their forces against us.”

“And if they don’t?”

“Then we’ll see what they’ll make of a march towards New Kethia itself. The time for stealth has gone, it’s time we brought our enemies to battle.”

She has always found it odd that the spectacles never held any attraction for her. If anything, she finds them repugnant, thousands of voices aroused to bloodlust by the sight of combat that few, if any, would have the stomach to experience firsthand. For her, the joy of the fight, and the kill, has only ever come from direct participation.

But they do love this so, beloved, she tells him, feeling his disapproval. We took away their gods, but kept the rituals, for the gods were always so fond of blood.

It is the Festival of Winter’s End, though once it had been named for a long-forgotten god who demanded the sacrifice of brave souls to bless the fields and bring forth a good harvest. The arena had originally been built in honour of the old gods but all divine trappings were long since stripped away, marble statues replaced with bronze effigies of generals and Council-men, divine motifs substituted for the Imperial crest. But, however much the stage changed, the spectacles remained the same.

Revealing herself to the multitudes is a necessary chore; she couldn’t remain hidden forever, and today there are many eyes to see the Empress Elverah in all her glory. She chose the name herself. Of the many titles she has earned over the centuries, only this one gives her any satisfaction, and not a little amusement. Let them bow before a witch.

There has been trouble, of course. The sudden switch from Council rule was bound to disrupt a society wedded to the notion of stability achieved through unchanging order. Her spies, a long-established network crafted over decades, unknown to the Council’s own intelligence machinery, bring word of discontent and rebellious conspiracy from all corners of the empire. Most are quickly crushed, the plotters subjected to a protracted method of public execution, immediate and secondary family condemned to slavery and all property seized by the Empress. But, though several thousand have now suffered this fate, each day brings reports of more plots and, were she susceptible to such things, the constant threat of assassination would provoke a lesser soul to paranoia. The previous week a slave girl had contrived to poison the Empress’s breakfast of gruel, revenge for a well-loved master subjected to the Three Deaths the week before. It was a brave but clumsy attempt, easily discerned even without the song’s warning. The poison had been mixed in too great a concentration, giving off a familiar odour, and the girl must have known she was earning herself a painful end.

“Were you One in his stable?” she had asked the girl, forced to her knees with an Arisai’s blade poised to strike the nape of her neck. “He must have fucked you very sweetly to arouse such loyalty.”

The girl wept, hard convulsive sobs, but still found enough voice to answer. “He… never… touched me.”

“Then why?”

“He… raised me… taught me to read… gave me a name.”

“Really? What is it?”

“L–Lieza.”

“Naming a slave is a capital offence in itself, and your former owner was guilty of much more besides.” She waved the Arisai away and gestured for the girl to remove the breakfast. “Bring me fresh gruel, Lieza. Then you can read me the morning’s correspondence.”

Lieza stands at her side now, ready to pour wine into the Imperial cup. She is pale of face but manages not to tremble. Every morning since her failed assassination she brings breakfast and reads the Imperial correspondence whilst the Empress eats. Afterwards she sits and writes as the Empress dictates a list of names for execution. Her calligraphy is quite excellent.

I don’t know why I spared her, she replies, feeling bafflement mixing amongst his disgust. I think she reminds me of someone, but can’t quite recall who. Perhaps I’ll kill her tomorrow. Give her to the spectacles, the dagger-teeth are always hungry.

But today there are no dagger-teeth. Today it is the Sword Races. She recalls her father once telling her the origins of this, the most popular event in any spectacle. In primitive times one of the more enlightened gods, or one of his more enlightened priests, decreed that there should be no more warfare between the tribes that paid him homage. Instead, every year they would send their best warriors to compete in the Sword Races where all disputes would be settled. The rules have been refined over the succeeding centuries but the essence of the contest remains the same: a single sword is thrust into the centre of the arena and the two contesting teams stand at opposite ends, an equal distance away. At a given signal they race for the sword, combat beginning when one team member takes hold of the hilt, the winner being the team with the most men standing at the turn of a ten-minute glass. Logic would suppose that the team to claim the sword would enjoy an advantage, but expert players are still capable of turning the tide, usually by sacrificing a less-skilled team member in order to seize the sword from their opponents.

Today it is the Greens and the Blues, two of the six teams representing the six provinces of the empire. The Blues tend to attract the most favourable odds but the Greens have the most experienced players, evidenced by their tactic of forming a tight defensive bunch around their sword-bearer, forcing the Blues to mount a series of costly assaults. Within minutes ten men, four Blues and six Greens, lie dead or crippled on the sands. Sword Racers rarely have long careers though the substantial rewards afforded those who survive to retirement ensure there is never a lack of willing recruits, for these are not slaves but free men. Poor and desperate enough to risk death in front of a baying mob, but still free.

You wonder at finding me here? she asks him, bored with the contest. Why am I not in New Kethia raising an army? She notices how Lieza flinches and realises she has spoken aloud. Judging by the rigidity of the slave girl’s posture this is not the first time she has heard her Empress address a question to thin air.

His answer is faint, though more controlled than before; he has grown accustomed to taking command of his dreams. There is still time. I will wait for you.

Touching, beloved, but unnecessary. That bitch you bow to was clever, sending you in advance of her mighty fleet. Not so mighty now, I’m afraid. Just driftwood and corpses.

His thoughts shift, from uncertainty to denial, though she knows he senses the truth in her thoughts.

How do you find Viratesk? she continues, taking satisfaction from the resultant surge of alarm. Your scouts were careful but we saw them. The townspeople didn’t want to leave so I let them stay. You did think to check the sewers didn’t you?

He came awake with a shout, his hand reaching for the sword propped against the bed, finding nothing. His eyes scanned the darkness, seeing only shadows. He felt Lemera’s weight in the bed next to him, her visits a nightly ritual now, though they never did more than lie together. He nudged her gently, ready to clamp a hand over her mouth as she woke, pausing at the familiar chill to her skin. Her eyes were half-open, the lips drawn back from bared teeth in an agonised grimace. A single, neat cut stretched the width of her throat.

“You are a disappointment.”

Frentis tumbled free of the bed as a figure stepped from the shadows, a young man with the build common to the Kuritai, though he wore red armour and a mocking grin. Behind him two more resolved out of the darkness, one holding his sword. The grinning man’s hands blurred and something looped around Frentis’s neck, drawing tight to steal his breath before dragging him to the floor. Something fast and hard slammed into his stomach, doubling him over, the coil around his neck tightening ever further as his vision dimmed, the grinning man’s words following him into the blackness. “She promised us a challenge in you.”

CHAPTER FOUR Lyrna

“The Thief’s Snare,” Lyrna said, surprised at the reflective calm she heard in her voice.

“Highness?” Murel looked at her from where she was attempting to keep the shutter on the porthole in place despite the gale hammering at it like an unseen monster seeking entry.

“A rare feature of the long game,” Lyrna said. “Any piece taken by the Thief can be used by the opposing player. The snare involves sacrificing both pieces only a few moves later, giving the illusion of weakness in the centre of the board. A stratagem to be employed by only the most skilled players.” And I am an arrogant fool, she added silently.

It had begun a full two hours ago, descending in a shrieking black tide as she stood watching Lady Reva’s thirty ships approach the dim shoreline. Within minutes the world beyond the Queen Lyrna had disappeared and Iltis was dragging her towards the cabin as sailors frantically sought to secure the rigging. She caught sight of Brother Verin, standing in frozen panic on the bustling deck and gestured for Benten to pull him along.

“This storm is not natural,” she said, turning to the brother as Iltis slammed the door on the fury outside. “Is it?”

“Highness, I…” The young brother shook his head, bafflement and shock dominating his features. “Some are known to have the power to turn the wind, but this…” He blanched at her obvious consternation, stammering as he forced himself to continue. “There was… something, as the ships neared the shore.”

“What something?”

“It was faint but I felt it. A… burning you might say. It’s commonly felt when another Gifted dies, as if all their power has blossomed at once.”

She moved away from him, sitting on her bunk, lost in the enormity of her blunder. I killed Arklev too soon. Though I doubt he knew his true role. She gave herself over to contemplation as the ship pitched and groaned around her, there being little else to do. The Thief’s Snare leads to victory in no more than ten additional moves provided the player exploits the opportunity with a swift attack on the opposing Emperor.

“Lerhnah?”

She looked up to find Davoka standing over her, features softened in concern. Beyond her Murel stood back from the porthole, now open to reveal a sunlit sky. From the height of the sun she judged she had been sitting in silent meditation for some hours. “I need to speak to the captain.”

The day-to-day command of the Queen Lyrna had been given over to a Nilsaelin named Devish Larhten, a lanky veteran of the trade routes to the Northern Reaches who had also commanded a warship in her father’s fleet during the Alpiran war. She found him at the mainmast overseeing repairs to a patch of deck shattered by a falling block. Fortunately it seemed to be the only major damage they had suffered.

“Highness,” he greeted her, glancing up as she strode towards him, clearly preoccupied with his task.

“Captain, turn this ship south and make ready for battle.” She cast her gaze at the surrounding ocean, finding only four other ships within view and the shoreline no longer in sight. Scattered and ripe for harvest, she thought, suppressing a wave of self-reproach. Indulge your guilt later. “And signal those ships to close with us.”

“All in good time, Highness. We have much to…”

“Do it now!” she snapped. “The Volarian fleet is currently north of us and I have little doubt we’ll see them within the hour.”

Larhten’s gaze flicked momentarily to Iltis, who had taken a purposeful step forward. “At once, Highness,” he said before moving away and voicing a torrent of orders.

“Find Lady Alornis,” Lyrna told Murel. “She is to ensure her engines are in working order. Lord Benten, please tell Lord Marshal Nortah to ready his regiment for battle.”

Captain Larhten advised that they tack to the west for a time, bargaining they would find more Realm vessels farther from the coast. By midafternoon they had gathered another forty ships, a few missing masts and rigging but all able to make headway. Predictably, the Meldenean ships displayed the least damage and she was heartened to find the Red Falcon among them, Ship Lord Ell-Nurin waving from her bow as she came alongside. Only she and the Queen Lyrna had so far been equipped with Alornis’s fire-spewing engine, upon which she now rested a great deal of expectation.

“We could head back to shore, Highness,” the captain suggested as Lyrna stood at the rail, her eyes fixed on the northern horizon. “Pick up a few more strays on the way.”

She surveyed her fleet, finding two of the great troop-ships present as well as a good number of Meldeneans. “No,” she said. “Drop anchor and pile one of the boats with all the rags and wood you can spare, douse it with pitch to make sure it smokes, and set it ablaze. Signal the other ships to do the same.”

This time he knew better than to linger and the boat was swiftly set adrift, casting a tall, twisting pillar of black smoke into the sky, soon joined by dozens more as the other ships followed suit. “Quite the beacon, Highness,” Larhten complimented her with a bow.

“Thank you.” She returned her gaze to the north. Though it’s like to draw as many enemies as friends.

The Volarians appeared as the sun began to fade, at least a hundred masts cresting the northern horizon with more appearing by the second. Lyrna’s beacon had gathered over thirty more strays as they waited at anchor but she knew any further delay would prove fatal.

“Raise all sails, Captain,” she told Larhten. “And signal the Red Falcon to remain at our starboard side. The other ships are to follow us.”

Larhten gave a sombre nod, eyeing the Volarian fleet with well-justified but controlled trepidation. “The course, Highness?”

She gave a laugh as she moved away, making for the bow, “Towards the enemy, good sir. With all possible haste.”

She found Alornis busily checking her engine, her hands moving with a speed and deftness that seemed almost unnatural. “Any damage, my lady?”

“Had to drain water from the pipes. And the fittings require a slight realignment.” Alornis hefted a mallet and began hammering at a copper tube on the engine’s underside. “But she’ll work, Highness.”

“Good. Take yourself below. Lords Iltis and Benten will see to the engine.”

Alornis didn’t even glance up, continuing to hammer away as the Volarians drew ever nearer. Lyrna sighed and turned to Murel. “There’s another mail shirt in my cabin. Please fetch it for Lady Alornis.” She drew Davoka aside, speaking softly in Lonak, “No harm is to come to her, sister. Promise me.”

“My place is by you.”

“Not today.” She gripped the Lonak woman’s arm. “She is your sister today. Promise me.”

“You fear her brother’s wrath so?”

Lyrna lowered her gaze. “You know it’s not his wrath I fear.”

Davoka gave a reluctant nod, taking the mail shirt from Murel and striding towards Alornis. “Put this on, little one.”

Lyrna joined Lord Nortah arranging a fighting party on the deck, fifty of his best fighters equipped with broad wooden panels for shielding against arrows. “My lord, I should like to address your troops.”

He bowed and issued a curt order, the company snapping to attention with a uniform stamp of boots. She scanned their faces, gratified by their lack of fear and the devotion that continued to colour every gaze. “I said once I wouldn’t lie to you,” she told them. “And I won’t. We face a hard fight because I have made a grievous error. But I also tell you no lie when I say that this battle can be won, if you will stand with me.”

The instant shout of acclaim was enough to convince her further words were unnecessary. “Spare no enemy,” she told Nortah. “Every Volarian that sets foot on this deck must be killed before he can take another step.”

Unlike his soldiers, Lord Nortah’s agreement was softly spoken, his expression the same cautious frown he always wore in her presence. “I’ll see to it, Highness.”

She returned to the bow, taking a position on the raised platform just behind Alornis and the engine. Benten and Iltis were close on both sides of her whilst Murel stood behind, dagger in hand. Davoka crouched at the side of the engine, spear held low in readiness.

“I should fetch some shielding, Highness,” Iltis said. “Their arrows were many at the Teeth if you recall.”

“I recall very well, my lord. But that won’t be necessary.”

Lyrna watched the Volarian ships come ever closer, the leading vessel closing to a range of about five hundred yards. She glanced towards starboard, taking satisfaction from the sight of the Red Falcon alongside, a man standing ready at their own engine. She could only hope he had been properly taught how to use it. A glance towards the stern confirmed the other ships in their small fleet were following in an orderly narrow line, every deck crowded with soldiers and pirates.

The port-side ballista began to clatter as the Volarian ships closed, casting its bolts at the rigging of a small but swift warship tacking into their path. At first the arcing fountain of projectiles seemed to have no effect but they were soon rewarded by the sight of a figure tumbling from the warship’s mast to land heavily on the deck, raising an instant cheer from the ballista crew. Soon, however, the Volarian archers were able to bring their own weapons into play, a shower of arrows thumping into the Queen Lyrna from end to end. Lyrna watched a shaft smack into the planking an arm’s length away but managed to control an instinctive flinch. Fear is a luxury today. They need to see a queen.

The port ballista continued to clatter, the crewman winding the mechanism whooping with excitement at the effect on the Volarian vessel, his first bolt striking with sufficient force to pin a man to the deck. A dozen or more close-packed Free Swords fell as the archers in the Queen Lyrna’s rigging soon joined in, wreaking havoc on the warship as it veered away, littered with corpses.

A whooshing roar dragged Lyrna’s attention back to the bow where she was greeted with the sight of Alornis raising the engine to its full elevation, a stream of fire arcing towards the oncoming Volarian ship. It was one of their troop-ships, only slightly smaller than the Queen Lyrna, the archers in her rigging assailing them with a cloud of arrows as they closed at ramming speed. At first Alornis’s fire-stream fell into the sea, raising enough steam to momentarily obscure the oncoming ship. However, when it cleared, they were rewarded with the sight of a blaze covering her bow from sea to rail. The Volarian ship seemed to shudder, her course altering abruptly like a wounded boar shying from a spear-point.

Alornis turned a fierce glower on the two soldiers working the bellows. “Pump harder! I need more pressure!”

She realigned the engine as the Volarian vessel wallowed in their path, unleashing another torrent of flame that licked along her side before ascending to sweep the deck, igniting men and rigging alike without distinction. Flaming bodies began to leap from the ship, a chorus of screams reaching them through the thickening smoke along with the stench of burning flesh. Alornis faltered then, her hand falling from the spigot, the flames dying, a pale stillness seizing her features.

Lyrna moved quickly to her side, placing a hand on her shoulder and turning her. “A burden not to be shirked, my lady,” she said, taking her hand and placing it firmly back on the spigot. “To your duty, if you would.”

An arrow came arcing down to smack into the engine, its steel head shattering on the iron fittings as it spun away. Alornis barely seemed to notice, her pale face still frozen as she nodded and returned to her task, altering the angle of the engine to cast flame at the Volarian’s sails. Lyrna could see men running around the ship, buckets in hand as they fought flames that wouldn’t die. Soon her rigging was ablaze and her crew began to abandon ship with a frenzied alacrity, men trailing flames as they tumbled into the sea by the dozen.

Lyrna cast about for another victim, spying a fast-moving warship some two hundred paces off the port bow. “Tell the captain to make for that one,” she said to Murel before turning back to Alornis. “My lady, I believe your engine requires more fuel.”

By evening they had burned their way through the centre of the Volarian line, dividing their fleet in two and sowing chaos and panic in every sailor and Free Sword to witness the spectacle of a dozen warships blazing in the gathering dark. But the battle didn’t end. Although their cohesion had been lost, the Volarians fought on, ships mounting lone, often suicidal attacks, soon left burning in their wake or stormed by the Meldeneans. Only one came close enough to mount an assault on the Queen Lyrna. Her helmsman displayed considerable skill by swinging her around just beyond the range of Alornis’s device, then hauling the tiller to slam into the Queen Lyrna’s starboard side, her complement of Varitai heaving ladders into place and storming across despite appalling losses inflicted by the ballista and the archers above.

Lord Nortah’s company met them head-on before they had seized more than a few feet of the deck, attacking with a disciplined ferocity that did great credit to their months of training. The Lord Marshal himself hacked his way through the Varitai’s ranks, breaking their formation apart, fighting with an unconscious skill and precision Lyrna hadn’t seen since her days with Brother Sollis. His war-cat fought at his side, reaping death with every swipe of its claws. With the Varitai all hacked down or forced over the side, Nortah rallied his soldiers into a tight wedge and led them onto the Volarian ship, overcoming the remaining crew as they mounted a desperate stand around the mainmast. A few had evidently attempted to surrender judging by the number of unarmed men Lyrna saw cast into the sea.

“Highness!” A sailor came running from the helm, pointing to port. “Captain Larhten begs to report more ships to the west.”

Lyrna peered into the gathering dusk, making out the faint lines of tall masts. The dark brings scant relief, it seems. She looked to the east where the Red Falcon could be seen, fire spouting from her prow to engulf a Volarian troop-ship. Beyond her more Meldenean vessels were assaulting the remaining enemy line, the sky alight with a continual cascade of flaming balls as the mangonels did their deadly work.

“Tell the captain to turn west,” she told the sailor. “And signal the Realm vessels to follow us. Our allies have this matter in hand.”

Unfortunately, it was clear an unseen hand still exercised some form of command over the Volarian fleet, and felt no desire to allow her to confront the latest threat. A squadron of ten vessels separated from the central cluster of ships to plough towards them at full sail. The wind was in their favour and they managed to place themselves directly in the Queen Lyrna’s path, heaving about to face them, arrows and ballista bolts filling the air between them as they closed. Lyrna clasped her hands together and stood still as the air buzzed about her, a bolt flicking through her hair just below the ear. Iltis moved his bulky frame in front of her, holding his arm in front of his face as if shielding himself from a rain shower, grunting as an arrow grazed his forearm.

Lyrna turned a questioning gaze to Alornis as she finished refuelling the engine. “The last of the oil, Highness,” she reported, her voice as devoid of expression as her face.

“Don’t spare it, my lady,” Lyrna advised. “A blazing ship makes a bigger impression than a scorched one.”

The first Volarian ship to come into range was of considerably smaller draught than the Queen Lyrna and Alornis was obliged to depress the spout of her engine as she swept by, liberally dousing her in flame from bow to stern, heralding the now-familiar chorus of screams. Alornis managed another fulsome blast at the next ship, a considerably larger troop-ship well supplied with ballistae and archers. The stream of fire managed to sweep many from the rigging but not before they had killed a dozen or more Realm Guard and the crew manning the port ballista.

Lyrna turned to see the last dregs of fire dripping from the engine’s spout, Alornis meeting her gaze and giving an apologetic bow. Lyrna pointed her towards the now-silent ballista.

Despite the flames still licking at its ropes and sails the Volarian troop-ship maintained its course, a full Free Sword battalion assembled on deck. Lyrna was about to order Nortah to bring up the rest of his regiment but saw that the Lord Marshal had anticipated the need, the soldiers running to form ranks with remarkable precision despite the confusion all around.

The port ballista clattered into life once more, Alornis aiming whilst Davoka worked the handle. Lyrna followed the flight of one bolt as it streaked across the gap to claim the life of a Volarian Free Sword officer who had unwisely chosen to stand tall at the rail, no doubt as an example to his men. She hoped they learned the lesson well.

“Highness!” It was Larhten, calling from the helm and pointing to something beyond the Volarian ship. Lyrna blinked away the smoke-born sting in her eyes and sought to discern something through the haze. The King Malcius, she saw as the view cleared. Fitting that my brother should come to save me.

The King Malcius came on at full sail, her archers casting a shower of fire arrows at the Volarian troop-ship before she ploughed into her starboard hull with a splintering crunch. The fires now littering the sea painted the subsequent spectacle with flickering shadows, the sight of a host of steel-clad men rushing from the King Malcius to assail the Free Swords seeming unreal somehow, like something from a dream, or a nightmare.

Lyrna’s gaze was soon drawn to the sight of a burly man throwing himself into the densest knot of Volarians, his mace rising and falling with deadly effect. At his side was a taller and more slender figure wielding a longsword. She watched as together they hacked their way the length of the ship, their knights following in a thrashing mass of steel, driving the Free Swords back with such murderous zeal most chose the scarce safety of the sea rather than stay to fight on. By the time the Queen Lyrna had drawn up alongside the troop-ship the two figures were standing at her port rail, removing their helms to greet her with a bow.

“Good evening, my lords,” she called to Fief Lord Arendil and his grandfather.

“Forgive me, Highness,” Banders called back, his broad features slick with sweat. “But are we to land soon? One more week at sea and my knights are like to hang me.”

Lyrna turned to survey the scene, the sky now black and the only illumination coming from the many blazing ships. The tumult of combat had faded though she could still hear men screaming somewhere, voices calling for help in Volarian mingled with the odd gurgling sound that accompanied a sinking ship.

“Indeed, my lord,” she called to Banders. “A landing is overdue.”

The ship sat on the beach like some great wounded beast, her masts sheared away and much of her sides stripped of timber, exposing the complex web of beams that somehow contrived to hold her together. It was Benten who recognised her as the Fief Lord Sentes; his sea-trained eyes had a knack for discerning the slight differences that distinguished one ship from another. “Seems she’s been driven too far up the beach to be taken off by the tide,” he said. “It’s a marvel she’s still in one piece.”

The short voyage to the bay had yielded only five ships from the thirty that had sailed with Lady Reva, all severely damaged and barely afloat, though their precious cargo of troops and supplies were mostly intact. The Sentes brought the total to six, but she could hardly be described as seaworthy. In all just over two-thirds of the Queen’s Fleet had survived the storm, though casualties had been heavy and the battle with the Volarians had claimed at least another thousand lives. Although Lyrna saw the flush of victory of many faces, she knew the battle had in fact been indecisive, Ship Lord Ell-Nurin estimating they had captured or sunk no more than half the Volarian fleet.

“Whoever commanded them was wise enough to withdraw under cover of night,” he surmised. “One of our scout ships reported seeing sails on the southern horizon.”

She took the first boat to the shore, overriding all objections with a silent glare. The time for caution had died in the storm. For all the acclaim shouted at her from the surrounding ships as the boat wended its way towards the beach, she knew their morale would still plummet like a stone when the reality of their situation became apparent. They need to see a queen.

She was accompanied by Lord Marshal Nortah and a full company of Queen’s Daggers. Off to the north Brother Sollis led another cluster of boats filled with all that remained of the Sixth Order whilst Count Marven took his best Nilsaelins to secure the southern approaches. They were obliged to row their way through several corpses en route, Lyrna surprised to find most were Volarian, bobbing in the swell with arrows protruding from their armour.

The tide was low and the beach free of breakers as they scraped to a halt, Lyrna leaping free of the boat before Iltis could raise an objection. She heard him smother a curse as he splashed into the waist-deep water behind. She laboured through the surf towards the hulk, eyes scanning the part-ruined hull and finding numerous faces staring down at her, though there were no voices raised in awed acclaim now, most just seemed pale with exhaustion. She noticed a dark cluster of more Volarian bodies on the beach, perhaps two hundred men and horses liberally seeded with arrows.

“Thought we were easy meat,” a voice called down from the Sentes, Lyrna’s gaze finding a stocky man standing in one of the rents in the ship’s hull, holding a longbow and looking down at her with a stern regard that contrasted with the usual cautious respect shown to her by Cumbraelin soldiery. “Proved them wrong.”

Lyrna stared up at him, holding his gaze until he added, “Highness,” in a clipped voice.

“Lord Antesh,” she said. “Where is Lady Reva?”

He sagged at her words, head lowered and eyes tight closed. “I take it, Highness, you have no news of her either?”

Lyrna turned to watch the first wave of troops coming ashore, the Queen’s Daggers spreading out to sweep the dunes whilst a Realm Guard regiment grounded their boats, more following in a seemingly unending tide. “Lord Antesh,” she turned back to him, finding a man now visibly shrinking in grief. “Lord Antesh!”

He straightened at her shout, a spasm of anger flashing across his face before he forced himself to a neutral expression. “Highness.”

“I hereby name you Lord Commander of the Queen’s Cumbraelin Host. Please remove your soldiers from this ship and proceed inland. There will be a council of captains this evening where I shall require a full accounting of your numbers.”

She moved on without waiting for an acknowledgment. They followed the Blessed Lady, she knew. I can leave no doubt that they must now follow me.

The woman must have been quite beautiful in life, possessed of a dancer’s litheness and features of porcelain delicacy. But, as Lyrna had witnessed many times now, death always seemed to rob the body of beauty, bleaching the skin and leaving the features a slack echo of the soul that had once made those rosebud lips smile. Brother Sollis had discovered more bodies in the dunes a short distance away, slaves judging by their clothing, each with their throat cut. The once-beautiful woman, however, showed no sign of any injury despite the dried blood that discoloured the flesh around her eyes and nose.

Brother Lucin was the oldest member of the Seventh Order she had met so far, stick thin and almost totally bald save for a tuft of white hair that sprouted from the top of his head like a forgotten weed. He wandered around the woman’s body for a time, frowning in concentration, occasionally muttering to himself. During her fruitless search for evidence Lyrna had interviewed a number of people arrested on suspicion of Dark practices, finding them all charlatans or victims of malicious accusation. One, a charming but terrified young man, had been all too happy to explain how he would gull rich widows into parting with coin or jewels by claiming to commune with long-dead relatives, providing a demonstration not entirely dissimilar to that now performed by Brother Lucin. In recognition of his honesty, Lyrna had persuaded her father to commute the charlatan’s sentence to ten years in the Realm Guard.

“How long will this take?” she asked Aspect Caenis, failing to keep the dubious note from her voice.

“All places have history, Highness,” he replied. “Brother Lucin is obliged to sort through a haze of images to find the right event.”

“Ack!” the elderly brother exclaimed, his face drawn in a grimace of equal parts disgust and fear.

“Brother?” Caenis said, stepping closer.

Brother Lucin waved him away with an irritated flap of his bony arms. “I felt it,” he said, casting an accusatory glare at Lyrna, as if she had led him into some kind of trap. “The thing inside her. Are you trying to kill me?”

“Watch your mouth, brother,” Iltis growled, his face dark with warning.

Brother Lucin barely glanced at him. “The past is real,” he said to Lyrna. “Not some mishmash of shadows. It has power.”

“My apologies if I have placed you in danger, brother,” Lyrna replied, realising an insistence of propriety would avail her little with this one. “But our current circumstance requires that we all take risks.” She nodded at the corpse. “Was that her?”

The brother looked down at the dead woman with palpable reluctance, edging away as if in expectation she might suddenly spring to life. “There were soldiers with her. They called her Empress. She had a mighty gift, I could feel it, rushing out of her all at once to bend the wind to her will.”

“Then she’s dead,” Count Marven said. “She gave up her life to destroy us. The enemy are leaderless now.”

Brother Lucin gave the Battle Lord a withering glance. “This was just a shell, chosen for its gift. You can bet she’ll already have woken in another.”

“Why kill the slaves?” Marven asked.

“Witnesses,” Lyrna replied, looking again at the dead woman’s face. Where did she find you? Did you ever have a name of your own? “Few if any Volarians will know the true nature of their new Empress. Have the bodies taken to the pyres, I doubt they have anything more to tell us.”

“Pretence will avail us nothing now,” she told the surviving captains of her army and fleet, gathered together on the high ground beyond the beach where the troops still laboured ashore, the sands dotted with blazing pyres for the dead. “We have suffered a grievous blow. Lady Reva is missing and most likely dead as is Fleet Lord Ell-Nestra. A full fifth of our army has been lost due to my misjudgement. Accordingly, I am bound to ask if there are any here no longer willing to follow my commands.”

She scanned their faces, finding most patently baffled by the question. The Meldeneans regarded her with the same surety that had marked their attitude since the Teeth where, she knew, many believed their gods had invested her with some form of divine insight. Far from undermining their faith the events of the previous evening seemed to have cemented it; who but the gods could have snatched victory from such assured defeat?

Similarly, Fief Lord Arendil and Baron Banders exhibited no sign of distrust as did Wisdom, who had come to speak for the small Eorhil and Seordah contingent. The only clear expressions of unease came from Lord Marshal Nortah, which was typical, and Lord Antesh, still evidently in the grip of his grief. But, like the others, he remained silent.

“Very well,” she said, nodding to Count Marven. “Battle Lord, our tactical position, if you would.”

“We have a secure perimeter extending one mile inland, Highness. Brother Sollis has the Order scouting farther afield, so far there are no reports of significant enemy forces nearby although we have encountered a few cavalry patrols. We’ll gain a clearer picture when the remaining horses are brought ashore.”

“Those that are left,” Baron Banders put in. “A third of our mounts sickened and died on the ships. Horses don’t take well to life at sea.”

“This region is rich in farmland,” Lyrna said. “No doubt we’ll find replacements soon enough. Until then I’m afraid any unhorsed knight will have to fight on foot, my lord.”

“That’ll give ’em something else to gripe about,” Banders muttered, soft enough for Lyrna to safely ignore.

“The Volarian fleet?” she asked Ship Lord Ell-Nurin.

“Still no sign, Highness. But I doubt they’ve gone far. Probably licking their wounds and awaiting reinforcements.”

“Then let’s not allow them the leisure to do so. I hereby name you Fleet Lord Ell-Nurin. The freighters and troop-ships will sail back to the Realm with all dispatch to gather supplies and reinforcements. You will take every warship we have and harry the enemy without respite.”

“I shall, Highness. It would assist our efforts if Lady Alornis were to accompany us. We require more fuel for her engines and my fellows can’t quite get the mix right.”

“The Lady Artificer is indisposed. Make do as best you can.” She paused, making a point of meeting the gaze of everyone present, ensuring they saw no uncertainty in her eyes. “The army must be fully mustered by tomorrow. When it is, we march for Volar. Their Empress will no doubt be revelling in her imagined victory. I intend to disabuse her of this notion in short order.”

“Reva’s dead, isn’t she?”

Alornis wouldn’t meet her gaze, sitting listlessly on the bunk in Brother Kehlan’s tent. If the moans and occasional cries from the wounded troubled her, she gave no sign, her expression as unmoved as it had been during the battle.

“Her ship was wrecked in the storm,” Lyrna told her. “We found some survivors, but none have any word of her. I know you were close to the Lady Governess, and I too grieve for her loss. Her spirit, and her sword, will be greatly missed.”

“I always wanted to ask her about the siege, what she did. But I couldn’t, I saw how it pained her. I used to wonder how a soul so kind could do what they say she did at Alltor, for that was not the Reva I knew. Now…” She looked down at her hands, the thin, dexterous fingers moving like pale spiders. “Now I doubt she would know me.”

Lyrna reached out to smooth a wayward lock of hair from Alornis’s forehead, finding herself perturbed by the chill of her skin. “My lady, there are thousands of people now alive because of you.”

“And thousands dead.”

Brother Kehlan came to Alornis’s side, holding out a cup of something hot and sweet-smelling. “A sleeping draught, my lady.”

“I don’t want to sleep,” she told him. “I might dream.”

“There will be no dreams.” He smiled, placing the cup in her hands. “I promise.”

Lyrna joined the healer as he moved away. Despite many hours’ ceaseless work he remained alert, seemingly indifferent to the foul stenches that clouded the tent, and the blood that stained his robe. “Can you help her?” she asked.

“I can help her sleep, Highness. I can give her various remedies to calm a troubled mind. It may return her to some kind of normalcy, for a time. But I have seen this before, the malady of the spirit that arises in those pushed beyond their limits. Once it takes hold, it never really fades. I advise she be returned to the Realm as soon as possible.”

“No!” Alornis had risen from her bunk, advancing towards them, formerly placid features now rigid with determined refusal. “No. I am staying here.” Her words were a little slurred and she stumbled, Lyrna rushing forward to catch her.

“We have more fires to light together, Highness,” she whispered to Lyrna as the queen laid her on the bunk, watching as she slid into slumber, still murmuring, “so many beautiful fires.”

CHAPTER FIVE Vaelin

The Wolf People unveiled their canoes when the solid plane of white surrounding the island thinned then fragmented under the weight of the new sun. Within days all that remained were a few stubborn ice-blocks drifting in the fast-flowing current separating the isles. Like the boats fashioned by the Bear People at the Mirror Sound, the canoes of the Wolf People were all constructed from hollowed-out tree-trunks, varying widely in size. Most were capable of carrying no more than four people at once, others were of sufficient size to accommodate up to ten, but there were three of such dimensions it seemed incredible they could float at all.

“Hewn from the great red trees that grow to the south,” Astorek explained as one of the huge craft was manhandled towards a slipway in preparation for launching. “Trees that grow tall as mountains over the life-span of twenty men. Only once in a generation do the Wolf People permit themselves to take a red tree. It’s a cause for great celebration when a new big boat is made.”

The purpose of the huge craft soon became clear as Astorek led his wolves on board along with the other packs. There was a definite tension in each of the shaman as they stood amidst their wolves, faces set in concentration. The wolves all sat in placid obedience, though every once in a while one would turn towards a different pack, a low growl building in its throat before snapping back to instant placidity at an insistent gesture from its shaman. Without the shaman’s command they become wolves again, Vaelin realised, once again wondering at the fortitude of the Gifted found among these people. They use their gifts for hours yet never tire.

“It’s not strength,” Kiral said, appearing at his side with her cat in tow. In accordance with Lonak custom she hadn’t named the beast, though the other Gifted had predictably dubbed it One Ear. It was the least well behaved of the cats, prone to voicing a nightly chorus of forlorn wails and a hissing disinclination towards any human company save Kiral’s. It greeted Vaelin now with a brief snarl and kept close to Kiral’s side with a low-backed wariness.

“It’s skill,” the huntress went on, nodding at Astorek. “Born of centuries-old necessity. Our gifts are useful, but we can still survive without them. These people need their power or the ice will kill them. So they learned to control it, share it, use only as much as they need.” She smiled faintly, eyes still lingering on the Volarian. “We must seem like clumsy children to them.”

Vaelin and the Gifted were given places on one of the huge boats, whilst Orven’s guardsmen and the Sentar were obliged to crowd into the smaller craft, some newly constructed to accommodate the increased number taking part in this yearly migration. Scar trembled a little as he was led onto the canoe, pacified only slightly by a handful of berries. The warhorse had grown partly accustomed to the presence of the wolves but the proximity of so many in a confined space was clearly trying his patience.

“Calm now, old fellow,” Vaelin said, trying to soothe him with a scratch to the nose. Today, however, Scar was in little mood for reassurance, eyes wide and fixed on the silent mass of wolves as he tossed his head, teeth bared in alarm.

“Let me try,” Dahrena said, moving closer to press a hand to the warhorse’s neck. She closed her eyes, a small line appearing in her forehead as she concentrated. Scar calmed almost immediately, his head lowering, eyes blinking in placid contentment.

“I showed him the stables back home,” Dahrena said. “He thinks he’s there now.”

“Your skills grow, my lady,” Vaelin said, inclining his head.

“A little.” She turned to the nearest shaman, a lean-faced veteran standing with five wolves arranged in an unmoving circle. “Though I doubt any of us will ever match them. Some skills require a lifetime’s teaching.”

All hands save the shaman were expected to take a turn at rowing, two hours or more spent ploughing at the water with a broad-headed oar. As ever, the constant exertion gave Lorkan much to complain about, though Vaelin noted he displayed little actual strain when rowing. He seemed to be taller now, his back straighter and shoulders broader. For all his grumbling, Vaelin knew the boy he had met in the Reaches had been lost somewhere in the tide of war and the privations of the ice. Though, from his constant glances at Cara, it seemed one thing hadn’t faded during the journey.

The surrounding islands grew larger and taller the farther south they went, great mounds of snow-topped granite and thick forest from which more canoes would emerge as they neared. There was little celebration in the greetings exchanged between the Wolf People, some waves or nods of respect between shaman, a few calls from old friends, but for the most part they formed their ever-growing convoy with quiet efficiency. Vaelin also found it strange none seemed particularly surprised or perturbed by the presence of so many outsiders, most just eyeing his motley company with grim acceptance.

“They knew we would be travelling with you,” he said to Astorek during his twice-daily rowing shift. The shaman spoke little on the water, his face set in a mask of constant concentration as he worked to keep his wolves in check.

“Hawks can do more than kill,” he replied, jerking his head at the sky where a great swirling flock of spear-hawks kept track of the convoy. At night they would descend to the forest of perches that sprouted from the canoes, gobbling down the slivers of meat provided by their shaman, most of whom seemed to be women.

“They carry messages?” Vaelin asked. “But your people have no writing.”

“No, we have no books.” Astorek pulled something from a pocket in his furs and tossed it to Vaelin; a length of elk bone, etched from end to end in straight cuts along a single line. “Each mark represents a sound,” Astorek explained. “Put them together and you have a word.”

“What does it say?”

“‘Long Knife is shaman of thirty wolves.’ Many Wings carved it when I reached manhood and sent copies to all the settlements. It’s the only time I’ve seen any of my people indulge in boasting.”

Vaelin glanced around at the other packs on the canoe, noting how small they were in comparison, none numbering more than a dozen. “It must be a trial to command so many.”

“Command is not really the right word. They… accept me.”

Vaelin looked closer at Astorek’s pack, seeing how their gaze was uniformly fixed on him, enthralled and barely blinking. “They can hear it,” he realised. “The echo of the wolf’s call. It’s still in you.”

Astorek’s expression flickered in momentary discomfort, one of the wolves turning towards Vaelin with a snarl burgeoning on its lips. It calmed as Astorek reached down to play a hand along its head, gazing up at him in wide-mouthed adoration. “They can hear it in you, also, Raven’s Shadow. Some things never fade from a man’s soul.”

They rowed south for three days, gathering ever more Wolf People on the way. By the time the broad coast of the mainland came into view Vaelin estimated their total number at well over a hundred thousand. More were waiting on the shoreline where settlements could be seen amidst the trees, the dwellings larger and covering more ground than those on Wolf Home.

“Why not live here all the time?” Cara asked Astorek as they neared the shore. “It seems a more comfortable place.”

“The elk roam south in the winter,” he replied. “Too far for us to follow, leaving a frozen wilderness in their wake. But in the isles walrus and whales appear when the ice forms.”

The evening saw a celebratory feast where the last of the winter stocks were consumed. The Wolf People clustered around several huge fires to roast their meat on skewers and share horns of pine ale, clicking away in their indecipherable tongue as they exchanged tales of winter hardship. Despite the generally convivial air Vaelin knew this to be a muted affair, noting the many faces regarding him with tense expectation. As they had no word for lie these people also had no word for secret. They had been making pilgrimage to the painted cave for centuries and knew his face, and his name.

He sat with Dahrena away from the main throng, building a smaller fire so they could share a supper of walrus stew. He did the cooking, slicing the meat into strips and seasoning it with herbs and the last of the salt he had carried from the Realm. “I knew brothers who would rather abandon their sword than their salt,” he told her, with only slight exaggeration. Life in the Order made most brothers skilled in the art of campfire cookery, and appreciative of the precious comfort offered by a small amount of seasoning.

“Do you ever miss it?” she asked, accepting a bowl of stew. “You were raised to a life in the Order. It must have been hard to leave it behind.”

“I had already lost my brothers by the war’s end, along with much else. There was nothing to return to.” He settled beside her and they ate in silence for a time. As ever the sensation of shared understanding banished his worries with comforting ease. When he was with her it was almost as if his song had returned, her moods being so easily read. He could see it now, the faint tension in her face as she ate, the way her eyes strayed constantly to his face.

“You worry for the future,” he said.

“The world is in chaos,” she replied. “Worry seems appropriate.”

“Were I still a man of the Faith, I might quote a pertinent catechism about the virtues of hope.”

“You believe the queen’s invasion will succeed?”

“I believe in her. She is… more than she was.”

“And if we do succeed, what then?”

“We return to the Reaches, where I suspect we’ll spend much of our time protecting them from gold-hungry idiots.”

“That is your ambition? Just the tower and the Reaches?”

“The tower, the Reaches”—he reached out to take her hand—“and you. Also, the peace to enjoy them.”

She smiled, but he saw it was forced. “Father wanted peace too, and hoped to find it in the Reaches.”

“Caenis told me he had been exiled for questioning the King’s Word. I always assumed it was because he had refused to do what my father did in the Meldenean Isles.”

“A climax to a long argument. Father began his career as a guardsman in the Al Nieren House Guard, when the Asraelin noble families feuded endlessly over the Lord’s Chair. He told me once Janus had promised him peace, in the days when the Red Hand had finally faded. They were both little more than boys then, facing an onslaught of a dozen houses allied against them, the Al Nieren line having been weakened by the plague and seemingly ripe for plucking. ‘We’ll kill all these fools together, Vanos,’ Janus had said. ‘Then we’ll make a Realm.’

“And they did, year after year of war, the other houses shattered and brought low, the fiefs hammered into submission, all on the promise of peace. A peace that failed to appear with the birth of the Realm as Janus turned his gaze to foreign lands. So, unable to face another war, Father begged for release, imagining he might find an untroubled retirement in the Reaches, far away from the Realm’s troubles and Janus’s ambition. But war still found him when the Ice Horde came.”

Vaelin squeezed her hand tighter. “With this war won there will be no one left to fight.”

“I see the queen, as you do. I met her once before, all those years ago when Father took me to the Realm. And you are right, she is greatly changed. But I still see in her what Father did, that day as she took us on a tour of the palace gardens, all laughter and charm. Father smiled at her witticisms, accepted her flattery, and made a gracious farewell. As we rode away his smile faded, however, and I heard him say, ‘And I imagined Janus to be ambitious.’ It may have changed but it hasn’t gone, Vaelin. When she’s done with this war, what then? What will sate her when she’s conquered an empire? What more will she ask of you?”

You’ll kill for your faith, for your king, and for the Queen of Fire when she arises… Words from a long-remembered dream. Perhaps not all prophecy is false. “I think she is wise enough not to ask for what I won’t give.”

Astorek came to fetch them to council in the morning, tracing a path into the forest until they arrived at a tree so large Vaelin at first wondered if it wasn’t some shaman-conjured illusion. The trunk was covered in reddish brown bark and stood near thirty paces wide at the base, ascending to well over two hundred feet in height, the top lost somewhere above the forest canopy.

“The name loses much in your tongue,” Astorek said. “Wolf Lance is the closest translation. The oldest great tree known to us. Even the grandfathers of our grandfathers couldn’t remember it a sapling.”

The base of the trunk featured a large, cave-like hollow where a number of Wolf People waited, standing in silent regard as Astorek led Vaelin inside. He made no introduction, simply standing to one side as they stared at his face, recognition and disquiet evident in every gaze. The silence stretched as he stood there, wondering if there was some ritual observance he had failed to make, until Wise Bear came to his side, speaking softly, “They want your words.”

“Words?”

Wise Bear gave the assembled Wolf People a tight smile, resembling a parent apologising for an ill-mannered child. “Words of war. They expect you to lead them.”

His gaze roamed the assembled council, finding Whale Killer among them, the others also marked as elders from their various accoutrements: necklaces of bone or beads, a knife with an ornately carved handle. Only those ice folk of sufficient age and influence had the time or opportunity to accumulate trinkets. “There are no shaman here,” he observed to Astorek.

“Shaman are forbidden leadership,” he said. “Too much power sickens the soul. A lesson the Cat People never learned.”

Vaelin nodded. “How many warriors do they command?”

Astorek conversed briefly with the council, receiving clipped but swift responses. “We do not reckon numbers as you do,” he reported. “But perhaps a quarter of every island’s people are of age to fight.”

Little over twenty thousand. Hardly the Queen’s Host, but they do have their wolves and their hawks. “Have they seen any sign of the Volarians?”

“Scouts were sent south with the first thaw,” Astorek related. “As they are every year. They will return when the Volarians cross from the hill country into the plains. They usually come when the sun rises higher, some two months from now.”

Vaelin recalled No Eyes’s words on the ice; I am patient and I suspect you still have far to go. “They will come sooner this year, and we cannot afford to wait. Your people must gather their warriors, and all their wolves and hawks, and come south with me.”

The unease of the elders deepened visibly as Astorek translated, though no words were spoken as they exchanged wary glances. Even after a lifetime’s belief, Vaelin surmised, still hard to trust your fate to paint daubed on a wall centuries before.

Finally, one of the elders spoke, a stooped old man leaning heavily on a staff, his voice thin and strained, but still capable of commanding deep respect from the way Astorek related his words with precise solemnity. “Far Walker, oldest and wisest of the Wolf People, asks what promise the Raven’s Shadow can offer. Are the words of the Great Boat People made true?”

“I can offer no words regarding your beliefs,” Vaelin replied. “And any man who leads others to war on a certain promise of victory is either a fool or a liar. I offer a chance to defeat your enemy and prevent their coming again. Nothing more.”

The old man spoke again when Astorek finished his translation, moving closer to stare up at Vaelin, his ancient features alternating between confusion and wonder. “As a child I would ask the elders, ‘When will the Raven’s Shadow come?’ Over and over I would ask them, for I knew he had not come in the time of my parents, or grandparents, or throughout the many Long Nights before then. ‘Not as long as you live, little one,’ they would tell me, and so I would sleep well, knowing your time would bring great torment and trial for the Wolf People, but I would be spared the sight of it.”

He continued to stare at Vaelin for some time, finally speaking a short question in a soft rasp. “How will you defeat our enemy?”

“With your warriors, your shaman, your wolves and your hawks. With the steel of the soldiers I command, and the fierce skill of the allies who followed us here.” He paused to glance at Dahrena and the Gifted who lingered at the edge of the hollow. “And the courage of bright and powerful souls.”

Far Walker lowered his gaze and turned away, stalking back into the depths of the tree with a weary stride. He spoke again before the shadows swallowed him, the words causing an instant gasp of shock from the other Wolf People. Some called after him, urgent questions cast into the dark, but there was no answer.

“What did he say?” Vaelin asked Astorek, who stood gaping in the old man’s wake.

“His will,” the Volarian replied in a tone that discouraged further questioning. He turned his gaze to the other elders, asking a question to which they all responded with a series of nods, some more reluctant than others. “We will come with you,” Astorek said.

Dahrena sat amidst a circle of fires, eyes closed and face growing paler by the minute as Marken, Lorkan and Cara worked to keep the flames high. Vaelin remained at her side, keeping a seal fur wrapped tight around her slender form until she gave the shudder that signified a return. She sagged against him, groaning as he rubbed her shoulders. “You might think this would get easier with practice.”

Cara handed Dahrena a cup of warmed pine ale, which made her cough a little but also restored a pinkness to her cheeks. “They’ve yet to reach the hills,” she told Vaelin. “But they’re coming, a great host led by seven generals. I could see them riding out ahead, their souls so dark it seemed as if they swallowed the light, and they were all the same. I’ve only seen one like it before. On the ice.”

“No Eyes,” Vaelin said and she nodded. Seven souls, all the same, he thought. The Ally sends the Witch’s Bastard with an army. How much does he fear what we seek?

The Wolf People insisted on a full week of hunting before setting out. Despite the thaw, life on the northern tundra remained precarious throughout the year and stores were needed for the people who would be left behind when the warriors started south. Astorek invited Vaelin and Kiral on his expedition, each shaman being required to lead a hunting party, though he forbade him from bringing Scar. “We hunt on foot, the elk will feel his hooves through the earth.”

They trekked east for a day with twenty hunters, Astorek’s wolves ranging ahead in a wide arc, pausing constantly to raise their snouts and sniff the air. The wolves would often spur into a run, disappearing over the horizon for an hour or more, but were always found waiting for them a short while later. Their direction changed frequently, veering north then south without warning.

“How far can they travel before you lose them?” Kiral asked the shaman, who seemed puzzled by the question.

“The bond goes deep, so deep distance means nothing. They could be on the other side of the world and I would still feel them.”

He stopped, straightening as the wolves came to a halt, all crouched low, noses pointed to the south west. The Wolf People all dropped to the ground as one, Vaelin and Kiral sinking down at Astorek’s side as he raised a hand to the air, turning it to gauge the wind. He gave a brief jerk of his head and the wolves immediately streaked off towards the south, moving in a tight bunch. “They will bring them to us.”

The hunters crawled forward until they formed a line parallel to the shaman, lying prone with spears in hand. The grass that grew on the tundra was stunted, providing little cover but also a clear view of the horizon. Each hunter carried three spears, all with barbed iron heads, Vaelin noting the scratchlike script with which they had decorated the hafts. Every spear had its own story, it seemed.

“Ever hunt the great elk?” Kiral asked, notching an arrow to her bow.

Vaelin shook his head, readying his own bow. His arrows were all suited for war rather than hunting, narrow and pointed to pierce mail or armour, so Kiral passed him three of her own, barbed like the hunters’ spear-heads but fashioned from the same unbreakable black glass used by the Seordah. “One won’t suffice,” she told him. “Ignore the flanks and aim for the neck.”

He heard them before he saw them, a thunderous tremor reverberating through the ground accompanied by the faint yelping of wolves. When the leading elk came into view it seemed at first as if a tree had suddenly sprouted on the skyline, a broad-branching silhouette bobbing as it grew in size, a small forest springing up around it. He had seen the Eorhil sporting fragments of elk antler and gained an appreciation of their size from the Wolf People’s cave painting, but the sight of a living beast was truly impressive. The first stag to appear had antlers fully ten feet across, the animal itself standing almost as high as two men, raising a thick cloud of dust as it sped towards them, head low, the tips of the antlers as long as sword blades.

When the elk were within thirty paces the hunters rose as one, their spears flying free in quick succession, the lead stag and two others tumbling to the ground in a mass of flailing hooves and shattered antlers. The rest of the herd veered away from the danger, streaking off to the north with the wolves in pursuit. One of the wounded stags managed to rise, snorting and swaying its part-broken antlers about, before charging directly at the nearest hunter. Kiral sent an arrow into its neck, Vaelin following with two more, but the animal barely slowed, antlers scraping the ground as it bore down on the hunter. However, it transpired he had little need of their help, sprinting forward at the last second to leap over the stag’s head, revolving in the air to plant both hands on its neck and vault himself over it in a somersault that would have impressed any acrobat.

The stag snorted and wheeled about, trailing blood and bellowing in frustration before Kiral finished it with a carefully aimed shaft through its eye, a feat of archery Vaelin doubted even Reva could have matched. Vaelin moved to Astorek as the hunters fell to butchering their prey, long knives flashing as they gutted and dismembered the carcasses with automatic speed. He could see the wolves a hundred paces off, clustered around another carcass, their usual placidity vanished as they squabbled and snapped at each other, white fur besmirched with gore from snout to tail.

“Their reward,” Astorek said. “Isn’t good to bind them too tight. Sometimes they need to remember what they are.”

In the distance a dust cloud told of the remaining elk continuing their flight. “You don’t take them all,” Vaelin observed.

“If we do, there’ll be none to take next year.”

“When we come to fight the Volarians it will not be a hunt, but a battle. None can be allowed to flee. We will take them all.”

“You imagine I have some scruple about killing my former people? It’s nothing I haven’t done before.”

“This will be different. This time they are led by something far worse than an overambitious general.”

Kiral approached, wiping gore from her arrows and casting a cautious glance at the shaman. “Lord Vaelin speaks true,” she told him. “I feel your compassion. But it will kill you when we face the Ally’s favoured dog.”

Astorek frowned, shaking his head in bafflement. “Ally?”

“And it lives in this… beyond place? A place beyond death?”

Vaelin struggled to formulate a precise answer. Explaining the concept of the Beyond to someone raised without any form of faith was proving difficult. Also, unlike the people who had adopted him, Astorek felt no worshipful tendencies towards the green fire that continued to flicker in the night sky, though its light was now just a dim glow on the northern horizon. “One of nature’s many mysteries,” was his only opinion.

They had begun the march the day before, the Wolf People’s warriors gathering together in loose affiliation and moving south without particular order or ceremony save brief, intimate farewells to family. However, there were some who would neither be travelling south nor staying on the tundra. Vaelin watched as a group of people gathered on the shoreline, men and women of advanced age each with his or her own canoe carrying only a small stock of provisions. He saw Far Walker among them, handing out various items to a group of younger folk he took to be the elder’s children or grandchildren: a knife, a necklace, a spear. They all accepted the gifts in silent respect, the youngest sniffling as the old man climbed alone into his canoe and pushed away from the shore, paddling off towards the north without a backward glance. His will, Vaelin thought.

Later he joined Astorek at the head of the army, leading Scar at a walk as the shaman sent his wolves ahead to scout their line of march.

“I realise it may be hard to credit,” Vaelin said. “But I have been there, and heard his voice. Much as I would like to dismiss him as a figment of legend or delusion, his hunger for our destruction is all too real.”

“I thought you had to die to gain entry to the Beyond.”

Vaelin turned his gaze to the horizon. Talking of what had happened at Alltor was never easy, perhaps because so much of it still escaped his understanding. “You do.”

“Then how do you come to be here?”

Vaelin glanced back at Dahrena, laughing with Cara as their cats rolled together in a play fight a short way off. “I have always been greatly fortunate in my friends.”

Another week’s march brought them in sight of the mountains, a range of steep-sided ridges and peaks stretching away south for as far as they could see. The valleys seemed rich in pine but the peaks were mostly bare granite, painted a pale blue in the haze. Off to the east a dim orange glow could be seen beneath a low bank of dark cloud. “Fire mountains,” Astorek said. “Even the tribesfolk don’t go there.”

“Do your people trade with them?” Vaelin asked. “Speak their language?”

“They speak Volarian, of a sort. Difficult to make out for the less-attuned ear. And no, there is no trade between us. They keep to their hills fighting their endless feuds, or the Volarians when they come to fill their slave quotas, rarely venturing across the tundra.” Astorek glanced up at the ever-present swirl of spear-hawks as a group separated from the main flock to fly towards the hills. “Mother will warn of any who come to greet us.”

But there was no one waiting as they crested the foothills, the heights ahead free of any sign their way might be barred. “My people would do the same,” Alturk said, eyes narrowed as he scanned the silent hills. “Allow us to enter, march on until we imagine ourselves safe then attack in the night.”

“There are no eyes on us,” Kiral said with a note of certainty. She turned to Vaelin, her expression grave, “But someone comes. My song is clear: we should wait.”

They camped on a series of hills affording good views of the surrounding country, the spear-hawks providing constant vigilance and the wolves kept in tight packs on the perimeter. But still the hills remained silent. As night fell the glow of the eastern fire mountains grew bright, occasional flashes of lightning threading through the smoke they cast into the sky.

“So Nishak’s arm reaches around the world,” Alturk observed in a rare fireside comment, his gaze lingering on the distant fires. He had recently abandoned his usual practice of eating and sleeping away from the main body of the company, his head once again shaven to stubble. The contempt still felt by some of the Sentar was evident in their faces, but others showed a grudging resumption of respect.

Looking around the company, Vaelin noted how they were mingled now, guardsmen and Lonak sitting alongside each other with a natural ease, the Gifted among them, their cats snapping at the scraps tossed to them by the warriors. The ice was a forge, he decided, recalling distant days spent watching Master Jestin at the anvil, the three rods of an unborn sword gradually melding under his ceaseless hammer. It beat us into something new.

“Did you really hear his voice?” Dahrena asked.

Alturk’s gaze lowered in discomfort, though there seemed to be no anger in him, just regretted memory. “I heard it, a sound that could only have come from the mouth of a god.”

“The Cave of Mists,” Kiral said. “The Mahlessa told me only one other besides her has ever seen it.”

“It was the Mahlessa who guided me to it. Though my club and my knife had made me Tahlessa of the Grey Hawks, husband to six wives and father to a fine son, I was still a youth dreaming of greatness, a greatness I thought I would find in the Cave of Mists where the voices of the gods are said to still echo. So I went to the Mountain and asked for guidance from the Mahlessa. I was not permitted in her presence, for no man is worthy, but she gave me a guide and sent us forth with words I thought a blessing but later knew as a warning—‘There is only truth to be heard from the gods.’”

Alturk paused to regard Kiral with a faint grin. “My guide was a woman of grim aspect who spoke rarely except to voice insult, calling me a fool, and a braggart, and son to a mother who had clearly spread her legs for an ape. Were she not a Servant of the Mountain I would have pitched her from the highest cliff, as she well knew.”

“You would have tried,” Kiral said in a hard voice.

“Your blood-mother was the harshest-tongued woman I ever met,” Alturk returned. “And I married the worst six bitches in the mountains.”

“And wanted her for the seventh.” Kiral returned his grin. “Only she had more sense.”

Alturk grunted and waved a dismissive hand. “In any case she guided me to a cave, a small gap in the side of an unremarkable mountain. ‘You’ll die in there, ape-spawn,’ she told me, then walked off with no other word spoken. I could feel the heat flowing from the cave, knowing that what lay beneath would prove the greatest trial. But I wanted so much to hear Nishak’s voice, I knew he had great things to tell me.

“At first all was blackness, my torch the only light as I climbed ever lower. Sometimes the walls of the cave would fall away, leaving me crouched on a narrow ledge with the void all around, not knowing if a single stumble would send me tumbling to my death. Then I came to the bridge, in truth a narrow arch of rock spanning a great chasm, with a fierce torrent of water falling like a curtain halfway across. On the far side there was only blackness. The test was clear, if I went on my torch would die in the torrent and I might never find my way again. The gods are wise in their tests, choosing only those worthy of their voice, for a coward would have turned back.” Alturk paused, the softest laugh escaping his lips. “And only a fool would have gone on. And I did.

“The bridge was slippery, the water chill as ice, and all became dark when it claimed my torch. I dropped to my belly and crawled, feeling my way forward until the narrow bridge became broad rock and ahead, the faintest glimmer of light, drawing me ever onward. The light grew as I neared, the walls of the great cavern I had entered giving off a green glow and in the centre a pool of roiling water, constantly bubbling and birthing a fine mist. At first I found the smell of it harsh and like to turn my stomach but the scent faded as I drew close to the pool, as close as I dared for its heat was vast… And I heard it, low at first, like a tremor in the earth, but building, becoming clearer and stronger until I felt my ears might burst from it.

“I knew then I was a fool, a bug crawling across the feet of a giant, for what would such a voice have to say to a speck such as I? But… he did. ‘Do you know who speaks to you?’ he asked me and through my fear I babbled his name. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I who gave the gift of fire to all mankind. I who saved you from the all-dark. I who has succoured you with warmth for all the ages. For I am the most generous of gods, and yet you always ask for more.’

“I would have fled if my legs had not failed me, left me crawling on the cave floor like the bug I knew myself to be. I begged him, like a captured Merim Her facing the just knife, I begged and wailed and soiled myself in fear. But Nishak knows neither pity nor anger, he is generous but his gift can burn as well as succour, for truth is a flame that burns deep. ‘I know what you came for, Tahlessa of the Grey Hawks,’ he told me. ‘Your mind is so easily picked apart. So much anger, so much ambition, and what’s this? A child you imagine worthy of a great future, a child you believe will lead the Lonak against the Merim Her. Look closer, see more.’

“And through the fog of memory I saw it; the boy’s cruelty to all around him, the time I had found him with a strangled pup, the older boy who had fallen to his death when they climbed together, the lies I deafened myself to as he told of an accident, a missed handhold that led to a broken neck. I saw it all.”

Alturk’s head slumped in shame, his craggy features so steeped in sorrow even Kiral seemed discomforted by it, wincing and averting her gaze. “Instead of accepting this gift,” Alturk went on, “I raged at Nishak, finding the strength to stand. ‘My son has greatness in him!’ I cried. ‘He will sweep the Merim Her into the sea.’ And Nishak laughed, long and hard. ‘Think on that when you kill him,’ he said. ‘Now go.’

“All became silent save the roiling of the water. I lingered a while longer, calling for Nishak to return and take back his lies, but he had no more words for such an ungrateful bug. I found another passage from the cavern, narrow and winding, but also lit with the same green glow. After hours uncounted it brought me back to the world above, which now seemed so very cold.”

Alturk fell silent, looking towards the distant fires with the eyes of a tired man soon to confront the twilight of his life. He didn’t turn when he spoke again, though it was obvious to whom he addressed his question, “That thing the Mahlessa freed you from. Did it find him or did he find it?”

“The Sentar had already been reborn before I was… taken,” Kiral said. “Your son had been one of those who remade it, finding others of similar mind, hungry for blood and seeking to justify their cruelty. He hated the Mahlessa for his disgrace, claiming he could have killed the greatest of the Merim Her but for her weakness, for she was old, and corrupted by the ages. But they were few in number and their plans chaotic, being possessed of a shared madness. To fulfil their mission the Sentar needed leadership, and found it in me.” She grimaced, her voice taking on a note of apology, “You would always have had to kill him, Tahlessa. Only truth can be heard from the gods.”

He was roused by one of the wolves, a huge male with an insistent tongue and foul-smelling breath. It jumped back a little as Vaelin jerked awake, dagger in hand, angling its head at him in curiosity before voicing an impatient yelp.

“What is it?” Dahrena groaned at his side, her pale and bleary-eyed face appearing above the furs.

“I think someone has finally come to welcome us,” he said, reaching for his boots.

Astorek, Kiral and Wise Bear waited at the foot of the south-facing slope, a line of wolves spread out before them and a cluster of spear-hawks overhead. “How many?” Vaelin asked, coming to Kiral’s side.

“Just one.”

Vaelin peered into the distance, picking out a single figure, hooded and cloaked, striding towards them without any apparent alarm at the cloud of spear-hawks descending to circle him at head height. Vaelin went forward to welcome him as he came to a halt before the line of wolves, a man of average height, broad but not overly muscular, drawing his hood back to reveal lean but deeply lined features, and eyes that spoke of a depth of experience Vaelin now knew to be vast.

“Ah,” said Erlin. “I thought it might be you.”

CHAPTER SIX Reva

She awoke to pain, a fierce, piercing ache in her right hand, banishing the blackness with a persistent, pulsing agony. She groaned, shaking her hand, but the pain flared rather than faded. She winced as her eyes opened, sunlight sending a bolt of white fire into her brain. For a time all she could see was a faint yellow blur, her ears constantly assaulted by a roaring hiss. Forcing herself to blink, she managed to focus, the yellow blur resolving into a beach, the roar the rushing waves that jostled her, and the pain in her hand the result of a small red crab attempting to eat her thumb.

She pinched its claw and tugged it free, tossing it into the surf, gritting her teeth against the sting of salt in the wound but finding herself oddly grateful for the sensation; it confirmed she was, much to her surprise, alive. Barely able to move and lying prostrate on a beach whilst waves pounded her, but still undeniably alive.

Why? she asked the Father, more curious than angry. You cannot think I deserve to live. You cannot reward one whose lie has killed so many.

The voice was so unexpected, and shocking in its volume, she thought for an instant the Father had actually deigned to respond. Her heart calmed when she realised the voice called out words she couldn’t understand, her still-cloudy vision finding the owner, a hulking shape in black labouring through the surf towards her. The details of his garb became clear as he neared, a black leather jerkin, a silver medallion worn around the neck, and a whip on his belt. Overseer.

She let him take hold of her hair and haul her free of the water, keeping her features slack and uncomprehending as his brutish face came closer, eyes moving over her in expert appraisal. He called over his shoulder to an unseen companion, confirming he wasn’t alone. She kept her eyes half-open as he dragged her from the sea, counting six more shapes standing on the beach, and many more lying prostrate and unmoving.

The overseer dumped her on the sand where she forced herself to remain limp and immobile, breathing deep but soft, gathering strength. They made the mistake of waiting several minutes before returning to examine their catch, the overseer who had found her pulling her onto her back as his companions gathered round. She counted two with spears as her head lolled to one side, the others with short swords. The overseer pulled up her blouse, revealing her breasts as he voiced a question to his companions. There were a few murmurs of agreement, one of them adding something with an appreciative cackle.

“My friend… like you,” the overseer said in broken Realm Tongue, taking hold of her face and turning it so she could see his leer. “Want to… fuck you. Might lower the price… But I owe him. You… want fucked, pretty thing?”

It was really the smile that killed him, not so much the blow, making him frown in puzzlement at her welcoming, lustful grin, drawing back in surprise just enough to expose his throat. Vaelin had taught her the blow; the priest’s lessons in unarmed combat had never been so thorough, nor so effective in practice. Her stiff fingers drove into the overseer’s neck with enough force to crush his larynx, leaving him writhing on the sand, bloody froth gouting from his mouth. Reva rolled on the sand, dodging a plunging spear-point then grabbing the haft before its owner could withdraw for another try. She flicked a kick into his face, sending him reeling, then surged to her feet with his spear in her hands.

She whirled as they closed, the spear-point slashing the disarmed spearman across the eyes, another the face. The second spearman came at her with an overextended thrust, indicating a level of expertise best confined to abusing helpless captives. She parried the thrust without difficulty, deflecting the spear with the haft of her own and spinning to slam the blunt end into the back of his neck which snapped with a gratifying crack.

She stood watching the others as they dithered, casting wary glances at the man she had blinded, screaming as blood seeped through the hands he held to his face. “Come on!” she whispered as they exchanged uncertain glances. “You cannot think I deserve to live.”

A horn sounded somewhere close by and Reva’s eyes found a group of horsemen cresting the dunes a few hundred paces distant. She turned to see more riders approaching from the north end of the beach. Any thought she might soon be rescued faded at the sight of the slavers’ evident relief.

The lead rider pulled up next to the body of the overseer with the crushed larynx. The riders differed from other Volarians Reva had seen, clad in red breastplates and greaves. She would have taken them for Kuritai but for the patent amusement on the leader’s face as he regarded the overseer’s corpse, an amusement shared by the thirty or so riders at his back.

The slavers greeted the red-armoured man with a babble of outrage, suddenly less cowed now there were other eyes to witness the scene. The rider ignored them, shifting his gaze to Reva, his grin growing wider. He held up a hand to silence the slavers then asked a question, raising his eyebrows at the response, the slaver with the slashed face seeking to staunch the blood with a rag as he gesticulated at her, voice shrill with fury.

The man in red armour, however, seemed unmoved by their entreaties, reclining in his saddle and nodding at Reva as he voiced a short command. The slavers’ confidence visibly waned on hearing his words, casting wary glances in her direction, fidgeting in uncertainty. The rider spoke again, voicing a single word, the other riders all drawing swords with identical speed and fluency. The leader pointed his own sword at the slavers then at Reva, repeating his first command with slow deliberation.

The slavers, now pale of face and shrinking from the many blades surrounding them, began to advance towards Reva in a slow crouch. She saw little point in prolonging the encounter, choosing the tallest and sending the spear into the centre of his chest, then sprinting forward, rolling under the wild slashes of the remaining slavers to claim his sword. After that, the others offered no more challenge than a light practice.

Crouched in her chains in the back of a caged wagon, two of the red-armoured Volarians standing close by, she forced herself to watch as the other captives were inspected. She had managed to scar one of them back on the beach, throwing her sword at the first to come close. He dodged with an uncanny swiftness, but not before the spinning blade had left a long cut on his jaw. She had expected death to follow quickly but the scarred man seemed to find the event as amusing as his companions. They were already greatly entertained by her treatment of the slavers, slapping their hands to their breastplates in appreciation when she killed the last one, a gangly man who had tried to flee only to be kicked back to face her. He hadn’t lasted long.

She had started to run, intending to leap at one of them, pitch him from the saddle and ride clear, but soon found herself flat on her face with a mouthful of sand, a cord tightening about her leg. She thrashed, trying to tear free but another cord wrapped itself around her wrist. The rider who had spoken to the slavers dismounted to crouch at her side as she struggled, smiling in warm appreciation as he smoothed a hand across her face, speaking a single word in Volarian, “Garisai.”

They bound her from foot to shoulder, banishing all thought of escape, heaving her onto the back of a horse to be carried a few miles to this camp. They had been greeted by more slavers under the command of an overseer who displayed a strangely cowed demeanour in the presence of the red-armoured men, his head bowed as the leader gave curt instruction and Reva was placed at their mercy. She had steeled herself for further suffering, seeing the hatred in the faces of the slavers as they chained her, one holding a knife to her throat, two more standing with spears no more than an inch from her chest as the shackles were snapped into place. But whatever vengeful thoughts they harboured, it seemed their orders forbade any mistreatment beyond some rough handling as she was hauled into the caged wagon. But, as she surveyed her new surroundings, it became clear she was not to be spared all forms of torment.

She had to strain against her chains and crane her neck to see it, but with sufficient effort could view the spectacle of other captives being brought in and subjected to the slavers’ attentions. Their injunction against harming her clearly didn’t extend to the other prizes claimed from the shoreline. The first was an archer judging by the breadth of his frame, stumbling to his knees before the overseer who bent to view a deep wound in the man’s chest before standing back with a dismissive wave. Another slaver came forward, curved dagger in hand, and slit the archer’s throat before Reva formed sufficient thought to cry out in protest.

She refused to look away as more were brought in, though her body ached from the strain. They were mostly Cumbraelins, with a few Realm Guard, slaughtered or spared depending on their injuries. The storm had evidently wrought considerable damage for it seemed more were discarded than spared. She resisted the faint seed of hope nurtured by the fact that neither Antesh nor Arentes were among the prisoners. Lost to the sea or slaughtered on the shore, what difference does it make? I killed them all regardless.

The last captive provided the hardest trial, a slender figure with cropped hair, moving with a straight back despite her shackles, refusing to be cowed by the men who towered over her. “Lehra!” Reva called out, slashing her chains against the bars of the cage. A slaver thrust his spear-butt through the bars to push her back, then stepped away at a harsh glower from one of the red men. Reva strained to see Lehra again, finding the Scarred Daughter standing with a smile as she beheld the Blessed Lady, eyes shining with undimmed awe. “I knew the Father would spare you, my lady!” she called, voice bright and joyous.

The overseer grunted a curse, raising a hand to deliver a cuff to the girl’s face. Lehra didn’t shrink from it, instead angling her head and opening her mouth wide as the slaver’s hand connected with her face, biting down hard. A girlish shriek erupted from the overseer’s mouth as he tried to tear himself free, but Lehra held on, even as the other slavers assailed her with whips and cudgels, shaking her head like a terrier as she worried at the flesh, stopping only when a spear was thrust through her back, pinning her to the sand.

Reva heard a woman screaming somewhere, feeling a hard thumping in her forehead and a warm trickle of blood cascading down her face. A Volarian voice barked at her and she felt rough hands pulling her back from the bars, now bloody from where she had pounded her head against them. She heard the woman’s screams fade and choked over the sudden catch in her throat. She found herself staring up into the face of the red-armoured man from the beach, the one who seemed to command the others. His grin was gone now and he regarded her with an expression of faint puzzlement, head tilted like a cat regarding a shiny novelty.

His face dimmed and she knew that fatigue, pain and despair were conspiring to drag her into unconsciousness. She found enough hate to keep it at bay a moment longer. “I am the elverah,” she told the red man in a hoarse rasp. “I have killed more of you than I can count, and I am far from done.”

She awoke to find herself no longer alone in the cage. The face of the man slumped opposite her was concealed by a lank cascade of blond hair, swaying with the motion of the wagon. Reva could tell he was tall, and no stranger to work or war judging by the strength evident in the scarred and powerful hands resting on his knees, the shackles tight on his well-muscled wrists. Reva sighed, not for the first time wondering at the Father’s inexhaustible supply of trials for a sinful soul.

“Wake up, my lord,” she said, kicking out to nudge his bare foot. Like her, his boots had been taken.

The blond man stirred but failed to wake, voicing only a faint grunt. Reva kicked him again, harder. “My lord Shield!”

His head jerked up with a shout, blue eyes wide with alarm and, she noted to her dismay, not a little fear. His panic faded at the sight of her, though his survey of their surroundings provoked a barely concealed moan of despair. “I dreamed I died,” he muttered, head slumping. “It was a good dream.”

“They took you on the beach?” she asked.

His head jerked in affirmation. “A dozen or so of us. I managed to cling to some wreckage in the storm with a few others. We swam to shore at first light. We were heading north, making for the landing site, then they came.”

“The slavers?”

“No, the others.” The Shield’s hands tightened into fists, his chains giving off a faint rattle.

“The men in red armour?”

“We had no weapons. Nothing to fight with.” A strange guttural sound escaped him and she realised he was laughing. “So they gave us swords. Each of us, given a sword by our enemies. I fought so hard… But I couldn’t save them. When it was over they killed the wounded and took me, the only one left, too spent to even stand. They seemed to find me… entertaining.”

“Garisai,” Reva murmured.

The Shield’s head came up again, his gaze suddenly bright. “What?”

“One of them called me that when they took me. You know what it means?”

He leaned back, some vestige of his old humour showing in the sardonic twitch of his brows. “Yes, it means we would have been fortunate if they’d killed us.”

The succeeding days in the wagon took on a dreadful monotony. They were never allowed release from the cage; their food, consisting of two bowls of gruel a day and two cups of water, was shoved through a slat in the wagon’s iron-braced sides. No utensils were provided so they were obliged to eat with their fingers. They had been provided a bucket for bodily waste, emptied whenever they stopped by means of a collaborative effort to tip the contents out through the bars. They had learned to wait until the slaver driving their wagon had stepped down from the board as he took great delight in spurring the oxen on a step or two in order to douse them in their own filth.

“Redflower,” the Shield observed on the morning of the tenth day, gazing at the passing fields of crimson blooms. “Puts us perhaps forty miles from Volar.”

“You know this country?” Reva asked.

“Came here as a boy sailor many years ago. Merchant vessel, before I saw the wisdom, and profit, of a pirate’s life. The Volarians grow the best redflower, and it always brings in decent coin, if you can stomach their ways long enough to strike a deal.”

“Your hatred was birthed before the war, then?”

“Hatred? No, merely vague disgust in those days. My people are rich in faults, I know, but slavery has never been amongst them. Any Meldenean captain found to have carried slaves would soon find himself shunned and shipless.”

Reva looked up, feeling the wagon begin to slow, her gaze drawn to the driver staring at something ahead. It took a moment for the object of his interest to come into view, a tall pole set alongside the road, topped with a protruding beam in the manner of a gallows. Suspended from the beam was something so mangled it took a moment for Reva to recognise it as a corpse. The legs were blackened and charred to stumps, the stomach cavity open and empty, and the head… The face was probably male, rendered into an ageless cracked leather mask by decomposition, but the teeth bared in a wide, frozen scream, testifying to the agony with which this man had met his end.

The driver murmured something to himself, looking away from the sight and snapping the reins to urge the oxen to a faster pace.

“The three deaths,” the Shield translated. “An agonising poison first, then burning, then disembowelment. Traditional Volarian punishment for treason, though it hasn’t been used for many years.”

Reva glanced up as another pole came into view, the corpse that dangled from it similarly abused, though this one’s eyes had been put out. She asked Ell-Nestra if this held any significance but he shrugged. “Only that someone enjoys his work, I suspect.”

By the time night fell they had counted over a hundred poles, ten for every mile they covered.

Volar came into view the following morning. Reva raised herself into a back-straining crouch to get a better view as they crested a hill a mile or so west of the Imperial capital. The road, flanked on both sides with more corpse-bearing poles, became an unerring straight line at the foot of the hill, drawing the eye to the western suburbs, consisting of tree-lined rows of one- or two-storey houses. Volar appeared to have no walls or defensive fortifications, the Shield explaining they had been swallowed up by the city’s growth centuries before.

“The largest city in the world, or so it’s said,” he told her. “Though I’ve heard there are a few in the Far West that might also claim the title.”

The height of the buildings grew as they moved deeper into Volar, plush individual dwellings giving way to close-packed streets and tenements. Mazelike avenues stretched away from the road, reminding her of Varinshold’s less salubrious districts, now of course razed to the ground.

“She wanted to burn all of this,” the Shield said softly, frowning as he gazed at the passing streets. “And we would have helped her wield the torch.”

Reva’s thoughts flashed to Lehra, as they often had during this dreadful journey. She had been one of the free fighters to emerge from the forest country south of Alltor, leading a group of a dozen other girls, all freed from the slavers’ clutches by their own agency, steeped in blood and hungry for more. Reva recalled how they had gathered around her, sinking to their knees in unbidden respect; the tale of the Blessed Lady had already flown far and seeing her in the flesh seemed a confirmation of a cherished legend, a sign that their sufferings had not been in vain. The awe in Lehra’s eyes that day had been no less bright than the moment she died. Her voice was so full of joy… She died believing my lie.

“The barest chance is all I need,” she muttered to the Shield. “Just one chance at freedom and I’ll burn this place to the ground.”

He slumped back down, voice faint and bitter, “It was all a madwoman’s dream, my lady. And she made us mad with the sharing of it. Look at this place. How could we have thought to bring down an empire capable of crafting a city like this?”

“We crushed an army that should have crushed us,” Reva pointed out. “Their cities may be strong but they are weak, their souls blackened and sickened by ages of cruelty.”

He lifted his wrists, jangling the chains. “And yet, here we are. Brought here to die for their amusement.”

“‘Despair is a sin against the Father’s love, for it is but indulgence, whilst hope is a virtue of the stronger soul.’”

“Which one is that?”

“The Third Book, The Book of Struggle, Verse three, Trials of the Prophets.” She realised the Book of Reason had been absent from her thoughts since her capture. And why not? Reason will not avail me here.

The Volarians seemed highly fond of statuary, bronze warriors for the most part, standing amidst the cascading fountains and neatly kept parks that greeted them once they cleared the cramped outskirts. However, the most salient feature of the city’s inner region was the towers, great marble structures of hard-edged symmetry rising on all sides. Strangely this district seemed mostly empty but for the huddled forms of slaves tending the parks or scrubbing bird droppings from the statues. Reva supposed the absence of citizenry might be explained by the sight of the bodies that hung from the towers by the dozen. Some had clearly been strung up whilst still alive judging by the red-brown streaks that adorned the high walls.

“Their Empress seems keen to make an impression,” the Shield observed.

The wagon train drew up to the largest structure they had yet seen, a tall oval-shaped wonder of red and gold marble. It stood fully seventy feet high, constructed in five tiers, and differed markedly from the other architecture she had seen. There was little evidence of the Volarian liking for straight edges here, the tiers constructed from elegant arches and gently curved columns resembling the stem of a wineglass.

“The great arena of Volar, my lady,” Ell-Nestra said. “Enjoy the view, it’s unlikely either of us will see another.”

A tight circle of red-armoured men surrounded the wagon whilst the driver unlocked the cage, standing well back and ordering them out with near-frantic impatience. From his guarded expression and the sweat sheening his face Reva surmised he was keen to be away from their guards. She climbed out with difficulty, legs and back aching with every movement. She had tried to flex her muscles during the journey but such prolonged constraint was bound to weaken even the strongest body. The Shield groaned as he stepped down, sinking to his knees with teeth clenched.

“Stand up.” The voice was uncoloured by any anger or threat, the words spoken in unaccented Realm Tongue. Reva looked up at a man perhaps forty years in age, dressed in a plain black robe, his dark hair, greying at the temples, drawn back from a smooth forehead and lean, inexpressive features.

The Shield glanced up at the black-clad, squinting in the sun. “Can’t see a whip on you,” he said.

“I do not require a whip,” the man replied. “You obey me or you die.”

Ell-Nestra jerked his head at the arena behind them. “Here or there, what difference does it make?”

“In there you have a chance of life, at least for a time.” The black-clad’s eyes went to Reva, narrowing in careful appraisal. His gaze was intense but she saw no lust in it, also, she noted with surprise, no hint of cruelty. “My name is Varulek Tovrin,” he told her. “Master of the Great Volarian Arena and Overseer of Garisai, by the gracious consent of the Empress Elverah.”

He turned and beckoned to a pair of red-armoured guards, Reva noting the mass of tattoos that covered his hands from fingertip to wrist. They were unfamiliar in design, much more dense and intricate than those worn by the queen’s Lonak woman, and she could only wonder at the hours, and pain, endured to craft such a complex web into his flesh. He caught her scrutiny and his expression transformed into something shockingly unexpected: sympathy. “She wishes to see you.”

The chilled stiffness of the wind grew with every rhythmic heave on the gondola’s ropes, the hundred slaves below moving with well-drilled uniformity as they hauled her towards the tower’s summit. She was flanked by two of the red-armoured men but they seemed content to allow her to turn about and take in the view, the majesty of the city revealed in full, a true wonder that made Alltor and Varinshold seem like no more than a mean clutch of stunted hovels.

Viewing the pristine orderliness of the vast conurbation laid out before her, she was forced to concede it was the most impressive example of human creativity she would ever witness, every street, park, avenue, and tower arranged according to precise rules of form and function, with hardly a curve to be seen. But the small, dark specks that covered the smooth flanks of every tower in sight told a different story. Volar was a lie, a facade of precision and beauty covering a vile truth.

The gondola halted at a balcony perhaps twenty feet short of the tower’s pinnacle. A female slave of distracting beauty greeted Reva with a formal bow, turning to lead her inside, the guards following close behind. The interior was dimly lit with a scattering of oil lamps, silk drapes of various hues covering the windows and painting the decor a colourful melange that swayed as the wind swirled around the tower. Despite the gloom and the confusion of colour, it took Reva only a second to find the Empress, her eyes long attuned to seeking out the greatest threat in any room.

She sat on a stool before a small table, wearing a plain gown of white, her bare feet poised on the marble floor, toes flat and heels elevated, like a dancer. In one hand she held a length of fabric constrained in a circular frame of some kind, her other hand wielding a needle and thread. Her face was shadowed, the elegant profile drawn in intense concentration as her hands worked the thread through the fabric. Reva’s gaze took in the sight of a dozen or more frames scattered about the floor, each adorned with a mass of irregular, clumsy stitches. Some were ripped and the frames that held them shattered. Reva wondered why the slave girl hadn’t cleared them away.

“You have been using my name,” the sewing woman said, not glancing up from her task.

Reva said nothing. Hearing the slave girl’s suppressed whimper, she turned to find her face tense with warning and barely suppressed tears. She gave an almost imperceptible shake of her head, eyes bright with a silent plea. I’ll find no mercy here, in any case, Reva wanted to tell her. But thank you for your concern.

“So, Lieza likes you.”

Reva turned to see the woman now addressing her directly. Her hands were enfolded in the fabric, a bright spot of blood spreading out from the needle embedded in the woman’s finger. If she felt it, she gave no sign, offering Reva a smile of apparently genuine warmth as she rose and came closer.

“I can sense her very deep regard,” she said, halting just beyond the reach allowed by Reva’s chains. She was taller than Reva by a few inches, her form toned and athletic. She appeared little more than twenty years in age but one glance at her eyes and Reva knew she was in the presence of something far older. Something, she knew with grim certainty, that possessed a gift Vaelin had lost at Alltor.

“But is it returned, I wonder?” The woman angled her head, eyes closed as if listening to something, her smile becoming faint, wistful. “Ah. So sorry Lieza dear, but her heart is taken by another. She does feel a flicker of lust for you though, if it’s any consolation. Love may claim our hearts but lust will always claim our bodies. It is the traitor that lurks in every soul.” She opened her eyes again, smile gone as she frowned in sudden confusion. “Did I say that? Or did I read it somewhere?”

She stood in apparent bafflement for some time, unmoving but for a spasming tension to her face, eyes shifting from side to side in rapid jerks, mouth moving in an unheard dialogue until, as abruptly as it had begun, the confusion faded.

“Embroidery,” she said, holding up the frame with its inexpert needlework, Reva noting the multiple brownish stains on the material and the dried blood on the Empress’s fingertips. “The wealthy women of Mirtesk were renowned for it. My father thought it the most productive use of time for a young lady of good birth.” The Empress looked at the fabric, sighing in frustration. “But not in my case. It was the first of Father’s many disappointments. Still I am improving, don’t you think?”

She held out the frame for Reva’s inspection. Amongst the bloodstains Reva made out some green and red thread tightly bunched into what might have been a rough approximation of a flower.

She said, “A blind ape could do better.”

The slave girl, Lieza, gave another involuntary gasp, eyelids blinking rapidly as she lowered her gaze, unwilling to witness what came next. “Oh stop mewling,” the Empress told her, rolling her eyes. “Don’t worry, the object of your fascination has many lively days ahead of her, I’m sure. Just how many is up to her of course.”

Her gaze swivelled back to Reva, a new focus lighting her eyes. “A few of my soldiers survived Alltor, did you know that? Suffering great travails and privation to make it to Varinshold before it fell. General Mirvek, always a punctilious fellow, was assiduous in compiling their accounts before having them executed. Such wild talk would only unnerve his men after all. You see, these men spoke of a witch at Alltor, a witch made invincible by the power of her god, wielding a sword that could cut through steel and a charmed bow that never missed. One even claimed to have met her and, half-mad though he was, he did provide a fulsome description.”

Reva recalled the prisoner they had hauled from the riverbank the morning after the first major assault was driven back, a twitching, wide-eyed wreck of a man. It was strange, but she found herself regretting his death. The Volarians had been monstrous, but that scared, wasted soul had no more threat to offer than a starved dog.

“Elverah,” the Empress went on. “They stole my name and gave it to you. I should be angry. You know its meaning?”

“Witch,” Reva said. “Or sorceress.”

“‘Sorceress’ is a silly word, meaningless really since sorcery is just fable. Incantations scribbled in ancient books, foul-smelling concoctions that do nothing but churn the stomach. No, I always preferred ‘witch,’ though the meaning changes a little in the dialect of the people who named me Elverah. You see, they afforded authority to those with the greatest power, regardless of its source. Be it skill in arms or what your people call the Dark. Power is power, so the name Elverah could also be translated as ‘queen.’” She gave a soft laugh. “When my soldiers called you a witch, they were also calling you a queen.”

“I have a queen.”

“No, dearest little sister, you had a queen. I expect to receive her head shortly, should my admiral recover her body from the sea.”

Reva fought to contain the upsurge of rage and uncertainty. Everything you feel tells her more, she admonished herself. Feel nothing. But it proved a hopeless cause, for thoughts of Queen Lyrna’s demise inevitably led to images of one who had not been with her.

“Ah.” The Empress said with a weary sigh. “And so he comes to plague us yet again.” She regarded Reva with a raised eyebrow, her mouth slightly twisted in faint annoyance. “I hear he marched an army the length of your Realm in less than a month just to save you. What will he do now, I wonder?”

Feel nothing! Reva filled her mind with calming images, joyfully coiling in the dark with Veliss… Ellese stumbling about the gardens with her wooden sword… But it all faded in the light cast by a single thought, bright with certainty: He will come here, free me and kill you.

The Empress’s face twitched again, all humour faded, and when she spoke her voice was flat, emotion vanished by the coldest logic. “He has a singer with him, doesn’t he? I can hear her. Her song is strong, but dark. Stained by too much innocent blood. But I expect you know how that feels.”

She stepped closer, the framed fabric dropping from her hand, raising blood-smeared fingers to caress Reva’s face. “It has been over a century since I enjoyed a woman,” she continued in the same empty voice. “A sweet girl from some northern town, the family newly risen to the red. Raised in indulgence, she found fascination in extremity, taking wicked delight in my many tales of murder. I doubt she found her own so delightful, though I made it quick.”

Feel nothing! Reva’s cheek bunched under the Empress’s touch, provoking a treacherous tremble in her flesh, the shackles taut between her wrists.

“But,” the Empress said, tracing a fingertip along Reva’s chin, “since my return I find there is scant allure in any flesh, and all that once gave me joy is now but a dim remembrance. I didn’t understand it before, the Ally’s need. But now it becomes clear, endless years of awareness uncoloured by feeling, save the hunger for it to end. Worse than any death.”

Unable to bear it any longer, Reva jerked her face away from the Empress’s touch, her cheek stinging as if she had been slapped. “You should kill me,” she grated. “Here and now. If you are wise, you will not allow the slightest chance I might loose these chains.”

She heard Lieza take an involuntary step backwards, her breath now coming in ragged, panicky gasps.

“And where would be the entertainment in that?” the Empress asked, her voice regaining some expression. “My people do love their spectacles so, and they’ll find plenty to bay at in you, I’m sure…”

Abruptly, the Empress fell silent, all expression fading from her face as she raised it, turning towards the western wall. Just for a second a spasm of naked anger crossed her face, the elegant features drawn in frustrated rage, but then softening as she hissed a soft breath. “It appears, little sister,” she said to Reva, “I have an admiral to execute. Your queen clings stubbornly to her head after all. Still, I’ve no doubt she’ll provide as much entertainment as you, in time.”

She turned to the guards, “Return my little sister to Varulek, and give him this one too.” She flicked a hand at Lieza. “They are to be confined together, I’m keen to provide my new sister with all comforts, in between spectacles. Tell him I think the tale of Jarvek and Livella would make for a fine introduction. The crowd always do appreciate the classics.”

She moved away, casting a final command over her shoulder, softly spoken but dark with intent, “And tell the overseers in the vaults to finish preparing my new general.”

CHAPTER SEVEN Frentis

He clawed at the cord, fingers digging into his flesh as he sought to gain enough purchase to snap it. The red-armoured man laughed and drove another kick into his belly, forcing the air from his body, the cord stifling an involuntary shout. “No more now,” the man cautioned with a grin, looming closer. “She doesn’t want you damaged.”

He placed a booted foot on Frentis’s chest and forced him to the floor, his two companions coming forward with shackles. “She said to tell you,” the man with the cord went on, pressing harder with his boot, “you can choose which one of your friends gets to live. Just one though.”

Frentis tried to kick out at the man crouching at his feet, but he dodged the flailing foot, catching his ankles and bearing down with a crushing weight. The other one had already taken hold of his arms, pulling them over his head and snapping a manacle over his right wrist.

“Can’t think why she wants you so badly,” the grinning man said, eyes tracking over Frentis’s prostrate form with calm disinterest. “When she could have any one of u—”

A sudden crash of breaking glass and the grinning man appeared to have grown a crossbow bolt from his temple, head swivelling as his lips slackened to mumble gibberish before he collapsed facedown on the floor. The window opposite exploded as Illian propelled herself through it feet-first, landing astride Lemera’s corpse with sword drawn. She flicked a cut at the man holding Frentis’s arms, leaving a deep wound on his forehead as he dodged away with a remarkable swiftness. His companion avoided her next blow altogether, rolling and coming to his feet with sword drawn in a perfect backward somersault. However, they had both been obliged to release their hold on Frentis.

He came to his knees in a whirl, the chain manacled to his wrist blurring like a whip as it caught the man nearest him about the legs. He jerked it tight, bearing his enemy to the floor, then leapt, bringing both feet down on his head, the neck snapping with a crack. Frentis claimed the man’s sword and turned to find Illian engaged in a desperate struggle with the other, her sword moving in frantic swipes as he drove her back, her face a picture of frustration whilst the red-armoured man wore the same maddening grin as his fallen comrade. Frentis whipped his chain at him, causing him to dance aside with a speed that would have shamed even a Kuritai, but leaving enough room for Illian to thrust at his neck. He parried the blow with consummate ease but had no counter for the stroke Frentis delivered to his leg, the blade sinking deep enough to grind on the bone. The man swore, but his face betrayed no anger, just amusement and even admiration, inclining his head at Frentis in appreciation even as Illian’s sword point pierced his throat.

“Brother!” she rushed to his side, eyes scanning him for injury.

“I’m unhurt.” He moved to the corpse of the man with the broken neck, finding a key for the manacles tucked into his boot. “You were guarding my room?”

“We take turns. There’s a comfortable ledge on the roof outside.”

His gaze went to Lemera, framed on the bedsheets in a spreading blossom of dark blood. I choose to die free…

“I know you didn’t break your oath, brother,” Illian said, following his gaze. “She told me she found comfort sleeping at your side.”

Frentis hauled on his shirt and trews and reached for his boots. “What’s happening outside?”

“All quiet. I had no notion of any alarm until I heard the struggle.” She went to the first man she had killed, crouching to extract her bolt from his skull with a grinding squelch. “What are they?”

“They’re called Arisai. And I’ve little doubt there are more.” He retrieved his sword and rushed to the window, eyes tracking across the empty streets below to the walls where the sentries strolled on the parapet. Nothing, no indication of any threat. You did remember to check the sewers… His eyes went to an iron-covered drain in the cobbled street below. Waiting. Commanded to ensure they fulfilled their Empress’s mission above all else.

He shuddered at the realisation he would now be shackled and his people facing slaughter but for her warning, a warning he knew had been no mistake. She wanted them to fail. He glanced back at the silent room of corpses. And they don’t know they have.

“Fetch Draker, Lekran and Master Rensial,” he told Illian, going back inside. “And Tekrav. Be quiet but quick.”

He hung between Lekran and Rensial, head slumped, the chains on his ankles rattling on the cobbles as they bore him towards the iron drain cover in the shadow of the town’s main warehouse. Unlike Lekran and Rensial, Draker’s red-enamelled breastplate didn’t quite cover his frame, obliging him to keep to the shadows as he followed. Frentis was certain the Arisai would be watching carefully, his albeit brief experience convincing him of the dangers of underestimating their abilities whilst also giving a clue to a potential weakness. The way they smile. They take joy from battle, from killing, and joy can make us overeager.

A red-armoured shape resolved out of the shadows as they approached the drain, Frentis looking up at him with half-closed eyes, gratified by the welcoming grin. “No trouble then?” he asked in whispered Volarian, unwisely keeping his gaze on Frentis as they came closer.

“None,” Lekran agreed, he and Rensial dumping Frentis at the Arisai’s feet.

“Thought he might’ve done for one of you at least,” he said, drawing a dagger and crouching to tap the pommel three times on the drain cover.

Lekran glanced down at Frentis, his own grin now genuine. “His legend greatly exceeds his skills, it seems.”

The Arisai grunted and moved back as the drain cover was hauled up and to the side by unseen hands, beckoning impatiently at Lekran. “Get him below, we’ve work to do.”

“No,” Lekran told the Arisai, drawing his gaze as Master Rensial stepped behind him. “You’re done now.”

Rensial’s dagger flashed across the Arisai’s throat, leaving him kneeling on the cobbles, blood seeping through his fingers as he coughed a laugh of appalled surprise. An Arisai’s head emerged from the drain, hands clutching the sides to haul himself free, falling back in a cloud of blood as Lekran’s axe swept down.

“Come on you lazy buggers!” Draker called, running from the shadows and gesticulating wildly as Tekrav appeared at the far end of the street with a dozen or so of his porters, each rolling a barrel.

Lekran raised a bugle to his lips and sounded a single long pealing note, the town coming to life around them as the rebels answered the call, torches flaming and people running to preallocated stations, weapons in hand.

Frentis risked a glance at the blank opening of the drain, jerking his head back as a knife came spinning out of the blackness, missing him by the width of a hair. He could hear the multiple splashes of many feet running through water, but no voices, no sign in fact of any alarm or panic, provoking him to an uncomfortable notion: Perhaps they can’t feel fear.

“How much?” Tekrav asked, dragging his barrel to a halt at the drain’s edge.

“All of it,” Frentis said.

Tekrav turned the barrel about and Lekran brought his axe round to smash the lid, lamp oil gushing forth into the drain. They tipped the barrel up to empty the contents and followed with another, the other porters sweeping by to trundle their own barrels to every drain in the town.

Frentis looked up at the warehouse roof where Illian now stood, waving a torch to confirm all the drains were now surrounded by at least one company of fighters. “No reason to wait,” he told Tekrav.

The Chief Quartermaster stepped forward, face grim but determined as he raised a flaming torch. “For Lemera,” he said. The torch disappeared into the hole, birthing an instant column of yellow flame at least ten feet high. It subsided to a modest-sized blaze after a few seconds, Frentis straining to gauge the results. Nothing. Not a single scream.

He left Draker and his company guarding the flaming drain, running with Lekran and Rensial to the next one where Ivelda and half the Garisai clustered around the opening, watching as the porters poured more lamp oil into the sewers. A strong stench of burning oil rose from the opening along with a thickening pall of smoke, but it remained eerily silent. “If they’re down there, brother,” Ivelda said, “they know how to die quietly.”

Frentis turned as a shout came from the hole, seeing one of the Garisai reeling away with a dagger embedded in his shoulder as a figure erupted from the drain, launched by his comrades to rise five feet in the air amidst a glittering cascade of water and oil. His sword began to flash as he landed, hacking down a Garisai and wounding another before a pole-axe cleaved into his chest. Two more Arisai were propelled from the drain in quick succession, oil flying from their spinning forms as they hacked and slashed, seeking to drive the Garisai back from the hole. One was quickly cut down but the other fought on, blocking thrusts and inflicting wounds with deadly precision. Frentis ran in, sweeping aside the Arisai’s blade to deliver a kick to his breastplate, sending him sprawling back towards the drain. The man clung on however, arms and legs spread, his comrades’ hands reaching up from below to propel him back to the fight, his grinning face fixed on Frentis in direct challenge.

Frentis snatched a torch from one of the Garisai and tossed it onto the Arisai’s chest, stepping forward to stamp down as the flames engulfed him, returning him to the oil-soaked sewers. The column of fire was taller this time, the blast of heat singeing the hairs on Frentis’s arms as he reeled away.

A rising tumult drew his attention to the dockside where he could see a dense knot of fighters attempting to contain a group of Arisai emerging from one of the larger drains fringing the wharf. Weight of numbers managed to keep the red men at bay but more and more were clambering free by the second, claiming lives with every sword stroke.

“Your people with me,” Frentis told Ivelda. “This will be a long night.”

By morning Viratesk lay under a cloying pall of grey-black smoke, every brick and tile as besmirched as the dazed rebels who wandered the streets or sat stooped in exhaustion. Frentis passed many huddling together, a few weeping from the strain of the night-long battle, most just leaning against each other, the eyes wide, blank holes in soot-covered faces.

“Seven hundred and eighty-two dead,” Thirty-Four reported. “Four hundred wounded.”

“How many of them?” Lekran asked, running a cloth over the blade of his axe. Although he was even more blackened than everyone present, the tribesman’s axe gleamed with a polished sheen.

“We counted just over a hundred bodies,” Thirty-Four replied. “Though, judging by the smell, many more perished in the sewers.”

“Seven to one,” Draker muttered, casting a wary glance at Frentis. “That’s bad odds, brother.”

“When were our odds ever good?” Frentis turned as Weaver approached, their only captive at his back, tightly bound by several chains. The Arisai was shaking his head, uttering a soft, wry laugh as the freed Varitai around him looked on with uniformly sorrowful expressions.

“It won’t work,” Weaver stated. “Not on him.”

“The binding is too strong?” Frentis asked.

“His binding is less constricting than the Varitai. He is… wrong. Twisted, in mind and body. Were we to remove his binding, we would be unleashing something terrible upon the world.”

“Then let’s wring what we can from him and have done,” Lekran said, nodding at Thirty-Four.

“He’ll tell you nothing,” Weaver replied. “Any torment you visit on him will be just another amusement.”

“Can you heal him?” Frentis asked. “Mend his twisted soul?”

Weaver glanced back at the Arisai, hands clasped together, his face betraying the first sign of fear Frentis had seen in him. “Perhaps,” he said. “But the consequences…”

“Something comes back,” Frentis said. “Every time you heal someone, they give something back.”

Weaver nodded, turning to him with a tight smile. “If you wish me to try…”

“No.” He moved towards the Arisai, drawing the dagger from his belt. The man’s amusement deepened at Frentis’s approach, his laugh rich with genuine mirth.

“She did say you would prove interesting,” he said.

“Does she give you names?” Frentis asked him.

The Arisai shrugged. “Sometimes, those of us she bothers to recognise. She called me Dog, once. I quite like it.”

“You know she sent you here to die?”

“Then I am pleased to have served her purpose.” The man met Frentis’s gaze with steady eyes, fearless, even proud, but still mostly just amused.

“What did they do to make you this way?” Frentis asked him, surprising himself with a sudden flare of pity. Weaver was right, this man had been born to a life that twisted him into something far from human.

The Arisai’s grin turned into a mocking snicker. “Don’t you know? Your time in the pits taught them so much. For generations they bred us, trained us, tried different bindings to make us the perfect killers. It never worked, our forebears were either too wild or too much like the Kuritai, deadly but dull, requiring constant supervision. My generation was no different, yet another failure. Ten thousand Arisai destined for execution, after they had bred us with suitable stock of course. Then came you, our saviour, a shining example of the advantages of cruelty, the discipline and cunning inherent in the soul of a true killer. When she sent us here she told us we would be meeting our father, and I must say, I do find it a privilege.”

“So,” Frentis mused, “there’s at least nine thousand more of you?”

For a moment the Arisai lost his smile, frowning in consternation like a child fumbling for an answer to an awkward question. “Not perfected after all,” Frentis observed, moving behind him, dagger poised at the base of his skull. “What do you know of the Ally?”

Dog brightened once more as the point of the blade touched his flesh, laughing with a wry shake of his head. “Only the promise she made us on his behalf the day she led us from the vaults; ‘All your dreams will be made flesh.’ We had been waiting so long, and had many dreams. Should you chance to see her again, father. Please tell her I—”

Frentis thrust the dagger in up to the hilt, Dog the Arisai arching his back and convulsing before slumping lifeless to the ground. “I’ll tell her,” Frentis assured him.

Why?

The question comes to her without warning, causing her finger to slip yet again, another spot of blood spreading across the taut fabric. She regards the needle embedded in her finger with cold understanding; the flesh is like ice, devoid of pain. The needlework is poor, a child’s fumbled attempts to mimic adult skill. It is tempting to blame the shell and its numbed digits, but this particular craft has always been beyond her. The memory is dim, as are all her recollections of childhood, but there was a woman once. A kindly woman, with a face of feline beauty, who could sew with amazing skill, her fabrics adorned with a clarity and art that could match the finest paintings. They would sit and sew together, the woman guiding her small hands, pulling her into a kiss when she did something right, merely laughing at her frequent mistakes. She is sure this memory is real, though for some reason her thoughts continually shy away from the woman’s name, or her fate. Instead they always shift, becoming darker and she finds herself abed, whimpering as she stares at her bedroom door…

A squeal of ropes and gears draws her gaze to the balcony. I have an exalted visitor to greet, my love, she tells him. An Empress shouldn’t neglect her duties.

Why? The thought is implacable, irresistible in its demand.

You know why, beloved, she tells him.

Images swirl and coalesce in her mind, another precious gift captured by his sight: flames erupting from the sewers of Viratesk, the Arisai fighting, killing and dying with all the fury she expected. One, ablaze from head to foot, whirls in a welter of flame, still killing and laughing even as the arrows slam home.

I know you have nine thousand more, he tells her. Where are they?

Her hands clutch the embroidery as delight surges through her, the wonderful resumption of their lost intimacy. This was how it had been during their journey, the joyful mingling of hate and love, every murder eroding the walls between them. She realises her heart is thumping, faster and faster like a trapped beast raging at its cage. Until now she had thought this shell incapable of all but the most rudimentary feeling, but he, of course only he, can bring it to life.

The gondola jerks to a halt outside the balcony and she glimpses her guest. She feels his alarm flare at the sight of her, causing her to wonder if jealousy might lead her to pitch this pretty thing from the top of the tower. However, a note from the song as the girl’s gaze sweeps over Lieza tells her such suspicions are misplaced.

Leave her be! he shouts in her mind. Touch her and you’ll never lay eyes on me again. I swear it.

She resists the impulse to wallow in his rage and allows her heart to calm, trying to colour her response with cool detachment. The sooner you come to me the greater the chance of her survival.

She winces a little, feeling the reforged connection between them strain as he masters his anger. When he returns his thoughts are dark with reluctant acceptance. The Arisai, he presses. Where are they?

I can tell you where they are not. She finds she has to stifle a giggle. New Kethia.

“Idiots,” Draker said, watching the Volarian column with a practised eye. “They ain’t even scouting their flanks.”

“Why would they?” Frentis asked. “They’re expecting nothing more than a victory march when they reach Viratesk.”

“Just over four thousand,” Thirty-Four said, returning the spyglass to Frentis. “Only one battalion of Varitai and a scattering of Kuritai. The rest are a mix of Free Sword mercenaries and conscripts from New Kethia. By my calculation, the bulk of the military strength left in this province.”

“Idiots,” Draker repeated, shaking his head.

The country west of Viratesk was largely devoid of the heights and forests Frentis had always found so useful. However, Master Rensial’s scouting along the coastal road to New Kethia had identified a broad depression in the farmland six miles to the west, too shallow to be called a valley but the southern rise sufficiently high to conceal the bulk of their army. The height of the crops was another advantage, tall enough to hide their archers, and dry enough to catch fire at the first lick of flame. The cavalry at the head of the Volarian column had evidently failed to take account of the mile-long strip of barren ground scorched into the rise and running parallel to the road, a hundred yards wide and the product of a morning spent in careful burning. The many farmhands in the army advised that such firebreaks were a common feature of Volarian agriculture and unlikely to draw undue attention from those who had never worked the land.

“Some are bound to make it through,” Frentis told Illian and Draker. “If outnumbered, fall back and form a defensive circle.” He met Illian’s gaze, speaking with grave authority. “The issue will be decided on the flanks, so there is no need for excessive courage.”

He saw her suppress a sullen grimace and force a nod. “Of course, brother.”

He left them crouched amidst the tall corn-stalks and made his way to the lee of the rise where Master Rensial waited with their mounted contingent. The Volarians found little reason to educate slaves in riding but some knew horses from their previous lives, mostly Realm folk and a few Alpirans, enough to form a company of light cavalry some three hundred strong. Another thousand infantry were crouched a little farther back, mostly those lacking decent weapons, though some bore the swords and daggers taken from the fallen Arisai. The bulk of their infantry were with Lekran and Ivelda on the left flank, ready to charge in the Garisai’s wake when the time came.

Frentis mounted a stallion captured in the hill country, well trained like most Volarian cavalry horses, but lacking the speed and aggression of an Order mount. Still, Master Rensial had been diligent in training both riders and horses so he was confident the animal wouldn’t shy from the charge. He nudged his heels to the stallion’s flanks and trotted to the crest of the rise. The Volarians would be sure to see him outlined on the skyline but it was of little matter now their lead company had drawn level with the end of the firebreak. Frentis drew his sword and raised it above his head, the archers in the cornfield standing at the signal, bows drawn. He could see a rider at the head of the column wheeling his horse about, waving frantically at the bugler, all too late.

Over four hundred arrows rose from the cornfield and arced down into the centre of the Volarian column, raising a tumult of shouted alarm and discordant bugling. Apart from the initial chaos, however, the effect of the volley was minimal, claiming barely a dozen soldiers before their officers managed to whip them into reasonable order. As usual, the Varitai were first to form ranks, three battalions assuming a defensive formation in the space of a single minute. Frentis was pleased to see they had been placed in the centre of the column, meaning the flanks would be held mostly by Free Swords and recently pressed conscripts. Draker had it right, he concluded. These men are commanded by fools.

The archers kept up their barrage without pause as the Volarian line took shape, continuing to loose as a chorus of bugles pealed out the signal for a general advance. Frentis had no need to issue further commands, the archers having been well drilled in what to do next. Even though the corn was tinder dry, Frentis had taken the precaution of liberally scattering oil-soaked bundles of kindling about the field, providing aiming points for the archers which their fire arrows soon found with creditable precision, birthing an instant conflagration. They had strict instructions to loose five arrows in quick succession then run for the firebreak, though some continued to let fly even as they retreated from the smoke-shrouded field. The inferno took hold almost immediately, a bright wall of flame stretching the length of the advancing line and birthing a thick curtain of black smoke that concealed all from view.

Frentis turned and nodded to Master Rensial then kicked his stallion into a gallop. They had burned a broad avenue through the corn on either side of the main firebreak, wide enough to accommodate a charge by a full company of cavalry quickly followed by a thousand infantry. Even so, the thickness of the smoke made for an unnerving ride, his horse voicing a whinny of protest at the proximity of the flames. Frentis kicked his flanks again, spurring him to a faster gallop and they drew clear of the smoke, finding himself confronted by a pair of startled Volarian cavalrymen. He rode between them, slashing left and right, hearing simultaneous shouts of pain before charging on.

All was confusion now, the smoke descending and lifting according to the whim of the wind. When it cleared he cut down any Volarians within reach, when it thickened he charged on, his only indication of the progress of the battle coming from the screams of pain and fury on all sides. He caught occasional glimpses of Master Rensial, killing with typical artistry, his horse seeming to dance at his slightest touch of the reins, confounding those unwise enough to challenge a man Frentis now knew to be the finest horse-borne warrior in the world.

The Volarians proved to be a mixed bag, some fleeing at the first sight of Frentis, others immediately rushing to confront him. As the smoke thickened once more he found himself assailed by a mounted Kuritai, apparently unconcerned by the diminished view, charging at him on a fine stallion two hands taller than his own. Frentis twisted in the saddle as the Kuritai closed, his sword sweeping down to cleave into the neck of Frentis’s stallion. He leapt clear as the animal screamed and reared in a fountain of blood, landing nimbly on both feet and casting a throwing knife at the Kuritai. It struck home, sinking into the slave-elite’s face just above the jaw, but failed to divert his charge.

Frentis rolled, trying to slash at the charging stallion’s legs as it thundered by. But the Kuritai was too skilled a rider, angling the animal’s course at the last moment to avoid the blade. Frentis threw another knife as the Kuritai wheeled for a second charge, the steel dart sinking into his horse’s rump and causing it to rear. Frentis sprinted forward, leaping and slashing, the Order blade cleaving through the greave on the Kuritai’s wrist. He tumbled from the saddle, rolling to his feet and whirling to face Frentis with sword levelled, blood still jetting from the stump of his severed hand. Frentis heard a familiar snarl behind him and sank to one knee, Slasher and Blacktooth leaping over to attack the Kuritai with well-honed precision, the bitch fixing her jaws on his legs whilst her mate tore at his throat.

He didn’t wait to view the spectacle, running through the haze in search of further opponents. His ears were soon assailed by a great roaring followed by the multiple clang of clashing weapons, his ears leading him to the sight of his infantry tearing apart a battalion of Free Swords. They had evidently charged headlong into their line, given the way it had bowed and broken in the centre, hacking and stabbing with their axes and scythes, every face lit with a desperate fury.

The Free Swords tried to stand their ground for a time, bunched together in compliance with the shouted orders of their officers, many freed slaves falling to their short swords, but their line had been broken and, unlike those they fought, they still entertained notions of long lives and families. After another few moments’ frenzied resistance they began to break, men turning and sprinting into the smoke, at first singly or in pairs, then a dozen at a time. One ran in Frentis’s direction, skidding to a wide-eyed halt and landing on his backside, his sword apparently already dropped. Frentis paused to regard the man, taking in the terror in his quivering face, the unintelligible pleas spouting from his lips, and pointed sternly towards the west. The Free Sword gaped up at him for a second more then scrabbled to his feet, sprinting away, still begging for mercy.

“Form up!” Frentis called to the milling freed folk, some still stabbing away at the Volarian dead. “Gather weapons and form up!”

Through a judicious mix of shouts and jostling he managed to reimpose some order, those appointed as sergeants returning to their senses at the sight of him and forming their companies into an offensive line, many now armed with swords and cavalry lances.

“Keep at it until you clear the smoke,” Frentis ordered, turning and striding towards the Volarian centre. The line held until they heard the sound of further combat, unquenched bloodlust raising a cheer from the freed folk as they broke into a spontaneous charge. Knowing they would be deaf to further orders, Frentis charged with them, the smoke parting to reveal a solid wall of Varitai, blank faces regarding them above levelled spears.

He leapt at the last moment, his sword sweeping aside an upraised spear, boots impacting on a Varitai’s breastplate, propelling the man backwards. He landed clear of the Volarian line and turned, hacking down two Varitai in quick succession, his sword finding gaps in their armour with deadly accuracy. The freed folk were quick to spot the opportunity, piling into the gap in a dense mass of thrashing men and women. The useful panic that had gripped the Free Swords was absent here, however, the Varitai falling back in response to a strident bugle call to form another defensive formation twenty yards on. Frentis could see two figures in the centre of the shrinking circle of Varitai, a burly man with a bugle raised to his lips, a veteran sergeant judging by his armour, and a slighter figure with the plumed helm of a junior officer.

“Hold!” Frentis held up his sword as the freed folk gathered themselves for another charge. The rage had gripped them all now, every soot-streaked face alive with a desperate thirst for more blood, gore-covered weapons in every hand, trembling with anticipation.

“We can take them, brother!” a woman called out in hoarse Realm Tongue, dagger in one hand and short sword in the other, both red from tip to hilt. It took a moment for Frentis to recognise this panting, black-faced figure as Lissel, the former chandler from Rhansmill.

“You’ve done enough for today, mistress,” he told her. And we have losses to make good, he added silently. “You’ll find Sister Illian and Weaver on the rise, please fetch them here.”

He moved around the near-perfect circle of Varitai, peering through the fading smoke to confirm the defeat of the Volarian left flank. Free Swords were running in all directions and the Garisai advancing in good order towards the Varitai, Ivelda and Lekran at their head. Frentis held up a hand to halt them in place, turning to quickly count the remaining Varitai. Three hundred. Double the number already in the army.

“Brother.” Illian came to a halt at his side, crossbow in hand. He took in the sight of a bandage on her forehead, the wound just below the hairline and still leaking blood. “Kuritai,” she said with a shrug.

He nodded, turning back to the Varitai. “Wait for my order.” He strode closer to the circle of slave soldiers, gaze fixed on the two figures in their centre. The burly sergeant stood stock still and back straight, staring at Frentis, grizzled face showing a stern defiance he couldn’t help but admire. The officer at his side was at most half the sergeant’s age and considerably less defiant, eyes constantly roaming the surrounding freed folk, face pale with terror.

“You’re alone,” Frentis called to the burly man across the ranks of immobile Varitai. “Your officers are dead or running back to New Kethia. If you want to join them, give the order for these men to lay down their arms.”

The sergeant’s face twisted into a disgusted grimace and he spat on the ground, speaking but one word, laden with contempt, “Slave!”

Illian’s crossbow bolt smacked into the sergeant’s breastplate just left of the sternum. At such close range it had little difficulty penetrating armour and bone to find the heart.

“And you, Honoured Citizen?” Frentis called to the young officer, now gaping at the fallen sergeant, the tears streaming from his eyes making him appear no more than a child lost amidst a field of dangerous strangers. After a moment he mastered himself sufficiently to retrieve the bugle from the sergeant’s body. The call he sounded was faltering and thin, but evidently sufficiently clear. As one the Varitai laid down their weapons and stood in ranks, every face expressing no more emotion than a stone.

“Can you heal so many?” Frentis asked Weaver as the healer appeared with his freed Varitai.

Weaver gave a soft laugh, surveying the neat ranks of slave soldiers with his now-habitual sad smile. “You talk as if I have a choice, brother.”

New Kethia burned. Tall columns of smoke rose from its close-packed streets, most of the fires seemingly concentrated around the docks where a number of ships could be seen drawing away from the harbour. They were all low in the water, one so heavily laden it capsized on reaching the harbour mouth, tiny antlike figures scuttling over its hull as it rolled in the waves. To the south a long line of people were streaming from the city gates, Frentis’s spyglass confirming the vast majority as grey-clads, stooped and burdened with various household items, dragging wailing children in their wake, confusion and fear on every face.

“They might’ve waited till we got here,” Draker grumbled.

“One less battle to fight,” Frentis said. They had encamped amidst a large collection of ruins on a low plateau just under a mile east of the city, Thirty-Four naming the place as the site of Old Kethia, destroyed centuries before in the Forging Age. The former slave returned from his reconnaissance in late afternoon, he and Master Rensial having been sent ahead in the morning.

“It seems news of our victory had a dramatic effect,” Thirty-Four reported. “The governor hatched a plan to execute every slave rather than allow them to fall into our hands. Given that the city’s slaves outnumber the free population by a factor of two to one, this proved an unwise course of action. The riots have been raging for three days, thousands have died, more have fled.”

“The slaves hold the city?” Frentis asked.

“Only a quarter.” Thirty-Four pointed to a district that appeared even more shrouded in smoke than the others. “Lacking arms, their losses were heavy. We picked our way through to contact their leaders.” He turned to Frentis with a smile. “It seems they have heard much about the Red Brother, and are eager for his arrival.”

“One less battle,” Draker muttered, getting to his feet.

“Why was this done?”

The body hung from a pole in New Kethia’s main square, the feet reduced to blackened stumps, stomach torn out, and the face frozen in an agonised scream. Despite all the mutilation visited upon the corpse Frentis could still recognise the features. I’ll suffer every torment for a thousand years, Varek had said. From the state of him Frentis doubted he had lasted more than an hour.

New Kethia’s Deputy Treasurer, a pinch-faced black-clad who seemed equal parts baffled and terrorised by his continued survival, had to cough several times before finding the voice to speak. “The Empress’s orders,” he said, the tone wavering despite his efforts to master it. “They arrived before he did.”

Didn’t like what he said to me, Frentis decided, feeling an odd sense of disappointment. Varek had seemed so determined, it would have been interesting to see how far his quest for vengeance would have taken him. But he was one of just several thousand corpses littering this city, bloating in the sun and birthing clouds of flies that swarmed amidst the burgeoning stench. Thousands of stories snuffed out before the ending.

It had taken a day and a night of hard fighting to win the city, Frentis leading the infantry in a slow but inexorable advance towards the docks whilst Lekran and Ivelda took charge of the surviving rebels. They had been obliged to fight from street to street, their opponents a mix of Free Swords and townsmen, capable of furious resistance now their homes faced destruction. But they were too few and too badly organised to prevail, their barricades ramshackle constructions crafted by hands unused to work. Frentis soon evolved a tactic of seizing the surrounding rooftops and assailing the defenders from above, forcing them back whilst the barricades were torn down. They had made a final stand of sorts at the docks, a few hundred sheltered behind stacked barrels and crates, refusing all calls for surrender. It was Weaver’s freed Varitai who finished it, simply pushing the barrels over and storming in to club down the defenders.

What was left of the governor had been roped to the base of the pole; unlike Varek his face was truly unrecognisable. The man had been a general before entering politics, choosing to meet his end on the steps of the governor’s mansion with a few loyal guards. Unfortunately his heroics hadn’t secured him a speedy end, the great mob of slaves sweeping aside all resistance as they stormed the mansion in the final attack, but possessing enough presence of mind to ensure the governor was taken alive. Having witnessed the horrors wrought by the governor’s attempts to cull the slave population Frentis felt no inclination to interfere in his protracted, and inventive, punishment.

“The Empress is a monster,” the Deputy Treasurer added, a faint, hopeful ingratiation in his tone.

“She is Volarian,” Frentis replied. “As the only Imperial official left in this city, I require you to act as liaison to the surviving free populace. You will find them quartered under guard at the docks. Inform them that, as free subjects of the Unified Realm, they are afforded the protection of the Crown and I personally guarantee the safety of all those innocent of any part in the atrocities committed here. However, all property formerly owned is forfeit to the Crown as spoils of war. By the Queen’s Word slavery is now outlawed in this province and any found to be engaged in it subject to summary execution.”

He walked away as Draker led the black-clad towards the docks. “Don’t sniffle now, there’s a good fellow. Don’t you know how lucky you are to greet a new dawn in the Greater Unified Realm?”

Picking his way through the streets, all strewn with bodies and the myriad wreckage of a shattered city, Frentis found himself recalling a dream, or what he now understood to be the beginning of his connection with a soul the Deputy Treasurer thought monstrous. I would have been terrible, she had said as they gazed on a shoreline awash in corpses. But terrible as fate would make me, I am not him.

He paused at the sight of a mother and child, crumpled in death outside a baker’s shop. The little girl’s eyes were open, her head lying close to her mother’s, the mouth slightly agape as if frozen in some unheard final question. Seeing the wounds on the mother’s arms, earned no doubt as she tried to shield the girl from the frenzy of blades that killed them, he couldn’t suppress the notion that he and the Empress were conspiring to make that sea of death a reality.

“Brother?” It was Illian, regarding him with an expression that bordered on amazement. He felt the dampness on his cheeks and quickly wiped the tears away.

“What is it, sister?”

“The Garisai found a few hundred grey-clads hiding in the vaults beneath the merchants’ quarter. The city slaves are clamouring to get at them. It could turn ugly.” She forced an uncertain smile, eyes still lingering on his. Frentis’s gaze went to the cut on her forehead. Thirty-Four had done a typically precise job of stitching it closed but the scar would be deep, and long. “Stopped itching, at least,” she said, her fingers going to the wound.

No uncertainty in her, he surmised. All this death and she remains undaunted. She was right, the Order is the best place for her.

“I’ll be there directly,” he said. “Tell Draker to form the free folk into a working party to clear these bodies. They’ll be paid in bread, we shouldn’t expect them to work for nothing.”

CHAPTER EIGHT Lyrna

They soon began calling it the Mud March, a name Lyrna somehow knew would persist into the history of this campaign, should there be any scholars left to write it. The rain started the day they began the inland march and didn’t let up for the following two weeks, turning every track into soft, clinging mud, trapping feet, hooves and cart-wheels until the army ground to a halt having covered less than a hundred miles.

“The price, Highness,” Aspect Caenis explained at the council of captains. “The crafting of such a storm created a great imbalance in the elements.”

“How long will it last?” Lyrna asked.

“Until the balance is restored. A day, or a month. There is no way to tell.”

“Is there none in your Order who can assist us?”

He gave a helpless shrug. “The girl from the Reaches was the only soul I ever met who held such a gift.”

Lyrna ignored the pointed implication in his words, knowing he still chafed over her refusal to compel the Gifted from the Reaches to join his Order. In some ways she was finding Aspect Caenis just as unyielding as the unmourned Tendris.

“We need a road, Highness,” Count Marven insisted. “Volarian roads are famously well-made, and immune to the elements.” His finger tracked across the map to a line twenty miles north. “This one serves the northern ports. It’s a four-day diversion from our intended line of march but it should save us weeks of slogging through mud.”

Although she disliked the notion of abandoning the direct approach to Volar, Lyrna could see no alternative. She was about to confirm the order when a rarely heard voice spoke up.

“That would be a mistake, Highness.”

Lord Al Hestian stood near the rear of the tent, a gap on either side of him as none of her captains seemed to relish proximity to the man now referred to as the Traitor Rose. She had tended to exclude him from these meetings but the impressive performance of his men during what had quickly been dubbed the Battle of the Beacon, and the recent loss of so many captains, provoked her to a change of heart. She had spared him for a reason, after all.

“How so, my lord?” she asked, seeing Count Marven stiffen. Of all her captains, he seemed to harbour the greatest enmity towards Al Hestian, something she assumed had been born of their time in the desert war.

“The obvious line of march should always be avoided,” Al Hestian said. “The road will be patrolled, policed. Word of our position will be conveyed to Volar within days. If we are to send forces north, they should only be diversionary.”

“Whilst we continue to wallow in mud,” Count Marven said.

“No rain can last forever, Dark-born or no. And if we can’t march through it, neither can the enemy.”

“Time is the true enemy,” Lyrna said. “Every day of inactivity allows the Empress leisure to gather forces at Volar.” She straightened and nodded at Count Marven. “Battle Lord, issue orders to change the army’s line of march come the morning. My lords, to your duties.”

Alornis was drawing again when she returned to her tent, the charcoal stub moving with feverish industry across the parchment as she hunched over her easel. During the day she would tinker with the cart-mounted ballista, all the time barely saying a word, but at night she would draw. It was only when she worked that her face took on some animation, tense with concentration and eyes lit with memory, though, judging by the nature of her drawings, Lyrna divined they were memories best left alone. Burning ships, burning men, sailors screaming as they flailed in a storm-tossed sea. Page after page of expertly rendered horror produced in a nightly ritual of self-flagellation.

“Did she eat something, at least?” Lyrna asked Murel, shrugging off her rain-soaked cloak.

“A little porridge only, Highness. Though Davoka had to practically force it on her.”

She went and sat by Alornis for a time, the Lady Artificer acknowledging her presence with a barely perceptible nod, her charcoal continuing to move without interruption. Lyrna took some heart from the fact that this sketch differed from the usual finely crafted carnage, a portrait of some kind. Alornis set out the basic shape of the face with a few expertly placed lines then began to detail the eyes, dark eyes, narrowed in judgement and reproach, eyes she knew well.

“Your brother loves you,” she told Alornis, reaching out to still her hand, feeling it tremble.

Alornis didn’t look at her, eyes still fixed on the picture. “It’s my father,” she whispered. “They had the same eyes. He loved me too. Perhaps, if the Faith has it right, he still sees me. It could be that he loves me more now, for we are the same are we not? He too once killed thousands by fire. Sometimes he would dream of it, when he got older and the sickness came, thrashing in his bed and calling out for forgiveness.”

Lyrna resisted the impulse to shake her, slap her, try to force a return of the bright, sweet girl she had met in Alltor. But looking into her confused eyes she knew that girl had gone, consumed by fire along with so many others. “Take your sleeping draught, my lady,” she said instead, gently but firmly tugging the charcoal from her fingers. “Hard marching tomorrow, you need your sleep.”

They made the road in three days, the rain slackening a little by the third day, though the going was scarcely any better to the north. Brother Kehlan reported numerous cases of men falling out on the march due to a condition known as “guardsman’s foot,” an affliction brought on by constant immersion in water whereby the skin became like a sponge. Soon almost every wagon was laden with grey-faced soldiers, their feet bound in bandages wrapped in canvas to keep the rain off. So it was with considerable relief that they first set foot on the road, a truly remarkable example of human construction that shamed the dirt tracks typical in the Realm. Malcius, if you had seen this, Lyrna thought, noting the gentle curve to the road’s surface that allowed the rain to flow off to the sides. You would have scraped the treasury clean to cover the Realm in such wonders.

“Should do thirty miles or more a day on this,” Count Marven said with a satisfied grin, stamping a boot to the brick surface. “More when the rain lifts.”

“Be sure to scout all approaches,” Lyrna said. She was reluctant to tell her Battle Lord his business but Al Hestian’s counsel had instilled a lingering caution. They were certain to meet the enemy somewhere along this road; the only question was in what strength.

“Of course, Highness.”

The rain finally began to abate three days later, revealing a pleasing landscape of rolling hills and broad valleys, lush with grass and little sign of habitation save the occasional small villa, all of which proved empty of occupants.

“All livestock slaughtered and crops burnt,” Brother Sollis reported two days later. He had led his brothers on a wide-ranging reconnaissance in force, finding no sign of the enemy but ample evidence their approach had been detected. “All wells spoiled with carcasses. A few bodies here and there, mostly old people, slaves by the look of them.”

“Was there ever a more vile race than this?” Lord Adal said, shaking his head. He had taken the North Guard south on a similar mission, returning with equally grim tidings.

“So,” Lyrna said, “we have no forage.”

“Our existing supplies should last us to Volar, Highness,” Brother Hollun advised. “Where no doubt we will find more, once our… business is concluded.”

“If I might enquire, Highness,” Lord Nortah said, “as to the exact nature of our business in Volar.”

Lyrna met his gaze, finding his usual willingness to return the scrutiny in full measure. “We will exact justice for the wrongs visited upon the Realm,” she said. “And ensure they will not be repeated.”

“Yes, as you have stated before. However, I should like to know how this justice will be administered. Do you intend to hold trials, perhaps?”

“I don’t recall any trials at Alltor,” Lord Antesh said, regarding the Lord Marshal with a harsh glower. “And I know there were none at Varinshold.” He rarely spoke at council and kept to his own troops when on the march. The Cumbraelins had taken on a uniformly grim demeanour since the loss of Lady Reva, along with her aged guard commander and so many of their countrymen. Whenever she toured their ranks Lyrna found herself greeted with curt nods or barely concealed resentment; she had sent their Blessed Lady to her death, and they knew it. However, any anger they might have felt towards their queen was greatly outshone by their burning hatred for the Volarians, birthed at Alltor and a thousand other nameless atrocities, now stoked to greater heights by a feral hunger for retribution. Lady Reva had been their link to the Father’s love and guidance, surely He would bless all efforts to avenge her passing.

“There were no trials at Alltor,” Lord Nortah returned, “because the Volarians are a disgusting, pestilent race raised in cruelty and murder. We, on the other hand, imagine ourselves a people of reason and compassion, or are our virtues to be cast aside now?”

“Courage and fortitude are equal virtues,” Baron Banders pointed out. “Our people look to us to secure their future. It won’t be done with a soft heart.”

“I have journeyed the length of the Reaches and the Realm,” Nortah said. “Taking more lives in the space of a few months than I did in all my years in the Order. I have led my regiment through battle, fire and hardship because I thought it just and right… and my wife told me it was necessary. But I do not wish to look into her eyes when she beholds a man who took part in wholesale murder.”

He turned to Aspect Caenis, whose eyes remained fixed on the map, unwilling to meet his brother’s gaze. “And you, brother? Are you content for the Faith to be stained with innocent blood?”

The Aspect didn’t reply immediately, lowering his head for a moment’s silent contemplation. When he finally opened his eyes and spoke, his tone was regretful but also certain. “The Empress and her empire are merely tools for a greater enemy. We all know this, though often we dare not speak of it. Knowing the nature of this enemy, I see the only path to his defeat in employing all measures at our disposal. If that makes us murderers, then I accept the name and the guilt. For if we fail, brother, there will be no wife for you to return to.”

“I cannot believe the path to victory lies in staining our souls so black we become indistinguishable from those we fight.” Nortah looked to Brother Sollis, voice strained now. “Master? Surely you see the Faith compels us to a more reasoned course. The Order has always sought to defend the defenceless.”

“And to preserve the Faithful,” Sollis replied, his tone no less certain than the Aspect’s. “Should we fail here, the whole world may fall to ruin. The Faith gave its support to the queen’s course in full knowledge of the import of this mission. We cannot afford virtue now, brother.”

“And I,” Antesh grated, face flushing red, “did not come to these shores to leave the greatest soul in Cumbraelin history unavenged.”

“Vengeance is not justice!” Nortah’s fists thumped the table as he leaned forward. “And if Lord Vaelin were here…”

“He is not,” Lyrna stated, her voice soft but implacable. “I am here. And I am your queen, my lord.”

She watched the Lord Marshal master himself, knowing he was fighting to keep unwise words from his lips. Of all of us, she thought, he stands immune from the lure of vengeance. The realisation stirred a flare of envy, a yearning for a part of her lost somewhere amongst the flames.

“You are a good man, Lord Nortah,” she told him. “The Realm is enriched by your service. And so I give you my word as your queen that this army will do all it can to spare innocent blood. But, be assured that when we reach Volar I will see it destroyed down to the last fragment of stone and the earth salted so that nothing grows amidst the ruins. If you have no stomach for this course, you are free to resign your command and depart without disfavour.”

Lord Nortah lowered his head, teeth gritted as he hissed a sigh. “No innocent blood,” he said, head still lowered. “You promise me?”

Lord Iltis bridled with a growl, “The Queen’s Word is given, and not for you to question, my lord.”

Nortah’s head came up, his eyes blazing at the Lord Protector for a second before casting his gaze around the other captains. Lyrna wondered if he thought himself the only sane man in an army of maddened souls. As his gaze settled on her, he spoke again, his voice the flat, precise promise of a very dangerous man, “Your word may not be for me to question, Highness, but I will hold you to it nonetheless.”

Another week of marching took them from the pleasing hill country and into a broad dusty plain, its only feature of interest a long river stretching away east in a winding course roughly parallel to the road. “At least we won’t be taken unawares,” Count Marven commented, peering at the barren vista. “You couldn’t hide a single horse out here.”

The following day saw a dim, jagged shape appear on the haze-covered horizon, resolving into a strange sprawling building adorned with multiple tall spires. It sat in a wide bend in the river, the size of a small town, but absent any dwellings. Instead it consisted of a series of pyramidal structures arranged in a spiral, all topped with towers of ascending height, the tallest rising to at least two hundred feet.

“A fortress?” Benten wondered as they closed to within a half mile of the building.

“No defensive walls,” Iltis said. “And no one to hold them if there were.”

There was no sign of any response to their approach, the varied structures devoid of light and movement. Lyrna turned at the sound of a galloping horse, finding Wisdom reining in at her side. Lyrna had left Arrow back in the Realm, unwilling to subject her to the possibly deadly discomforts of the ocean crossing, and discovered her new mount wandering near the dunes when they landed. It was a handsome stallion with a coat of pure black, so finely bred Lyrna wondered if it hadn’t carried the Empress to the shore the day she crafted her storm. She named him Jet in honour of his colouring.

“Great Queen,” Wisdom said, a habitual greeting that always left Lyrna wondering if she wasn’t being mocked. “Impressive isn’t it?” the Eorhil elder went on, gesturing at the building.

“Indeed,” Lyrna agreed. “I would be more impressed if I knew what it was.”

“Navarek Av Devos, which means Portal of the Gods in your tongue. The last great temple of the Volarian gods. The only one to survive the Great Cleansing, I suspect because of its size and remoteness.”

Lord Adal’s North Guard rode ahead to inspect the temple, finding it deserted but for a colony of nesting vultures. At Marven’s suggestion Lyrna agreed the army would camp there for the night; the temple lacked fortifications but still had roofs aplenty and she knew many of her soldiers would appreciate a night under cover of stone rather than flimsy canvas. There was room enough for about half the army, Marven posting the remainder in a wide defensive arc anchored on the river. The temple extended up to and beyond the riverbank where a long row of monstrous statues lowered their heads to the waters. They were mostly impossible combinations of various beasts, a tiger with the head of a lizard, a great eagle with a long scaly tail. There were also two human figures amongst them, improbably muscled warriors kneeling to lower a hand to the swift-flowing current.

“Gods of some kind?” Lyrna asked Wisdom as they toured the city. She couldn’t help a certain fascination in the sheer eccentricity of the place; to construct such a vast building with no practical purpose whatsoever was both baffling and delightful, as well as providing an appreciation of the long history of the people she had come to fight. They were not always as they are now.

“The fifty guardians of the gods,” Wisdom replied. “Crafted from all the beasts of the earth to fight an eternal battle against the Dermos, denizens of the great fire pit beneath the earth, the eternal enemies of all humanity.”

Lyrna’s gaze was drawn to the largest of the statues, a broad-backed ape of some kind, with a long serrated tail and arms as thick as tree-trunks. Murel’s mouth twitched in suppressed laughter as she switched her gaze between Iltis and the statue. “How did they manage to capture your image long before you were born, my lord?”

She smiled sweetly at his baleful glower, pressing a fond kiss to his cheek before dancing away.

“That’s Jarvek,” Wisdom said. “Long held to be the greatest of the guardians, until the shadow folk tempted him into all-consuming lust for a human queen. He bore her away to his lair far beneath the earth but, before he could inflict his vile desires upon her, she was rescued by her sister, Livella, the warrior maiden who carried a spear blessed by the gods.” Wisdom pointed to another statue nearby, a tall female figure on a plinth, standing straight and proud with spear in hand. The sight of her provoked a fresh burst of laughter from Murel.

“First his lordship, now you, my lady,” she said, pointing at Davoka. “This place is truly uncanny.”

Davoka merely gave a faint grin, casting a critical eye over the statue’s improbably generous proportions. “A woman made like her would spend her days falling over.”

“Statues of guardians, statues of heroes from myth,” Lyrna said. “Where are the gods?”

“You will not find them here,” Wisdom replied. “The gods were considered so divine that for a human to attempt to capture their image was considered blasphemy. Even their names were known only to a small, select priesthood. Those wishing to seek the aid of the gods would petition the priests who would in turn petition the requisite god. For a price, naturally.”

Iltis and Benten drew their swords at a sudden shout from the centre of the temple, soon transforming into a scream that echoed from the granite walls. Lyrna shrugged off Iltis’s objections and went to investigate, making her way to the circular space in the centre of the temple where she found Aspect Caenis crouched over Brother Lucin. The elderly Gifted lay on his back, face contorted in a grimace of pain and horror, foam frothing on his lips.

“He had a yen to see this place before its abandonment,” the Aspect explained, holding the brother down as he convulsed.

“An unfortunate decision,” Wisdom commented, pointing at a squat stone plinth nearby. “The gods were generous, but also thirsty.”

The plinth was three feet tall, narrow and rectangular with a semicircle carved into its upper edge. Positioned at its base was a bowl-shaped indentation in the stone floor from which numerous channels led off towards the surrounding pyramidal structures.

Brother Lucin’s convulsions subsided, the old man’s eyes fluttering open, wide with shock at whatever they had witnessed.

Blood, Lyrna thought, eyeing the plinth. It had been scrubbed clean by centuries of wind and rain, but she knew it had once been red. Always blood with these people. Once spilled to sate the conjurings of their own imagination. Now drunk to banish the spectre of death. Killing their gods didn’t change them.

She hadn’t dreamt since the Battle of the Teeth, spending every night in a deep, untroubled slumber. She would have liked to imagine it the sleep of a just and contented soul, but knew it had more to do with simple exhaustion, each day being so full. So it took some time to realise that her bare feet were not really treading on the temple’s stone floor, taking her towards the plinth with a slow but steady stride. It was red now, as it had been when this place commanded the faith of so many deluded souls, slick with blood from top to bottom, the bowl-shaped indentation brimming with it, the channels taking the offering to the silent houses of the gods.

A woman of dreadful appearance stood next to the plinth, knife in hand. She wore a besmirched blue dress, the bodice and skirt stained to blackness, though Lyrna could see it had once been a fine garment, worthy of a princess in fact. But it was the woman’s face that commanded her attention, raw and freshly burnt, faint tendrils of smoke still rising from the charred flesh.

“I have been waiting,” the burnt woman said, fixing Lyrna with a fierce gaze, her tone full of admonishment.

“For what?” Lyrna asked in mystification.

“You of course.” The woman beckoned impatiently at something in the shadows and a young man stepped into the light, short of stature but possessed of delicate good looks. “Your worshippers are keen to make offering.”

Lyrna watched the young man kneel at the plinth, his gaze locked on hers, face expressionless. “I kept my promise,” Lyrna told him, unable to keep the tremble from her voice. “I found your mother. She travels with my army, a sister of the Seventh Order, come to win justice for her son.”

Fermin smiled, his lips widening to an impossible extreme, revealing long rows of triangular teeth, the teeth of a shark.

The burnt woman’s knife flashed and Fermin’s throat gaped open, blood gushing forth in a torrent, cascading down the sides of the plinth to fill the bowl. The burnt woman shoved the body aside and beckoned again, another figure coming forward. He was taller, well-built, his scarred face telling of a hard life, though his smile was the same one that came to his lips when the ballista bolt speared him through the back. It was still there, the steel head protruding from his chest, scraping over stone as he knelt.

“You had a choice.” Lyrna knew the words a lie even as they spilled from her lips. Harvin, however, seemed to find her dishonesty amusing, for he laughed as the knife flashed again.

“I didn’t do this,” she insisted as the burnt woman pushed the body away and beckoned again. “They served me willingly.”

“As they should,” the burnt woman said. “Mortals live only to serve their gods.”

Furelah came next, bowing to Lyrna with a dagger in each hand, her face and hair slick with seawater, eye sockets empty, the surrounding flesh partly eaten. Just before the knife opened her throat a small crab crawled from the black circle of her eye, its pincers snipping at Lyrna as if in accusation.

She tore her gaze away from the spectacle, but found no relief. The temple was crowded now, a long line of people, a few she knew, most she didn’t. The Meldenean archer who had tumbled from the rigging at the Teeth, a Seordah woman who had fallen at Varinshold, and so many others. Eorhil, Nilsaelins, Cumbraelins, like Furelah, all dripping brine, their flesh partly claimed by the sea…

“I HAD NO CHOICE!” she railed at the burnt woman, falling silent at the sight of the figure now kneeling at the plinth.

“Choice?” Malcius asked. His head was cocked at an obscene angle, though his face was kind, his smile rich in affection and sympathy. “Choice is not the province of those who presume to rule,” he told her. “The world is yours to make, my sister. As I always knew it would be. Don’t you think it would have been kinder to kill me sooner, before I took the throne? Didn’t it ever occur to you? A small drip of poison in my wine cup? It would have been such an easy thing.”

“No,” she said in a whisper. “You were my brother… I once did a terrible thing for you.”

“You set me free to preside over the destruction of my Realm, the murder of my wife and children.” He raised his arms as the burnt woman stepped closer. The knife didn’t flash this time, instead she pressed it to his flesh with delicate, even loving tenderness, her other hand cradling his head to her breast.

“Do not turn away now, Lyrna,” Malcius said as the blade traced across his throat. “For the gods are always thirsty…”

She came awake at Murel’s gentle prodding, the lady starting visibly at Lyrna’s wide-eyed stare. “The Battle Lord sends word, Highness,” she said. “A Volarian host approaches from the east.”

She found Count Marven at the temple steps, the plain beyond him busy with soldiers forming ranks and riders galloping to their companies, a thick pall of dust rising to shroud the morning sun. “Brother Sollis estimates their number at sixty thousand, Highness,” the Battle Lord reported. “Almost all Free Swords, which is unusual. They approach in good order though.”

Sixty thousand. Little over half our number. The Empress makes a desperate gamble to stem our advance, perhaps? “Take no risks, my lord,” she told Marven. “We cannot afford significant loss.”

“Battle is always a risk, Highness. But I’m confident this matter will be settled come noon.” He bowed and went to his horse, galloping off and soon lost in the morass of men and dust.

Lyrna looked up at the tallest tower in the temple. She was tempted to spare herself the sight of the battle, the dream having dispelled any desire to witness more bloodshed, but it seemed cowardly to turn her sight from the army now. “My lady, see if you can find a spyglass,” she told Murel, making for the tower.

Ascending the tower proved a trying business, her legs aching with the effort as she forced herself up the narrow steps without slacking the pace, Iltis and Benten huffing along in her wake. It was hard not to be distracted by the tower’s internal decoration. Every surface, including the steps beneath her feet, was adorned with some ancient Volarian script, the symbols at the lower levels carved with a delicate precision and elegance that faded the higher she climbed, so that by the time she reached the top the symbols were a confusion of haphazard etchings, seemingly carved by some random feverish hand. She made a note to ask Wisdom as to the meaning of it all when time allowed.

The top of the tower consisted of a crenellated spike ascending from a flat granite platform a dozen feet in diameter. Like the steps the surface of the platform was adorned with more writing, so wildly confused she knew she looked upon the work of a maddened soul. The platform held no balustrade or shelter of any kind, a hard, cutting wind whipping Lyrna’s hair about as she stepped free of the staircase. Benten ventured forward to peer over the unguarded edge before making a hasty, slightly pale-faced retreat. “Best stay close to the centre, Highness,” he advised.

Lyrna looked to the east, seeing two great walls of dust edging towards each other across the plain. The pall lifted sometimes to reveal the marching regiments and provide some clue as to Marven’s dispositions. He had placed a solid line of Realm Guard on his left, close to the river, which would prevent any flanking move in that direction. The centre was held by a mix of Nilsaelin and Realm Guard infantry whilst the bulk of the cavalry moved in parallel to their line on the right flank. Behind the main body were four more regiments of infantry and the Renfaelin knights, though only two-thirds were horsed, the remainder obliged to suffer the indignity of walking to battle.

“Quite a sight, Highness,” Iltis said with a rare grin.

She had seen her fill of battle, but as only a participant, and seeing one unfold at such remove provoked a strange sense of guilt, as if she were a spectator at some bloody entertainment. “Indeed, my lord,” she replied, forcing a smile. “Quite a sight.”

Murel appeared at Lyrna’s side, sagging and out of breath. “With Brother Hollun’s compliments, Highness,” she gasped, holding out a spyglass. Lyrna took it, extending it to full length to train the lens on the Volarian host. It took several moments before the dust faded sufficiently for her to make them out, finding their ranks were arranged in neat order, the Free Sword battalions marching in a steady rhythm. Like Marven, their commander had seen the wisdom of anchoring the left flank on the river, with most of the cavalry on the right. However, she could tell their line was stretched thin, the infantry moving in ranks only two men deep so as to form a front wide enough to match that of her army. She raised the spyglass, the dust shifting enough to allow a view of their rear.

“No reserve,” she murmured. Does she seek to bleed us? Spend the lives of an entire army to reduce our numbers? Even for a deranged mind it seemed a facile strategy. Why not gather enough force to meet us in equal numbers farther down the road?

Marven halted the army three hundred yards short of the Volarians, Cumbraelin archers moving forward to form three dense ranks in front of the line. The storm had left her with only a third of the number that had sailed at the Blessed Lady’s behest. However, the arrow-riddled corpses she had seen at Alltor had provided ample evidence of what even a small number of skilled longbowmen could do, and she had over three thousand. Added to the archers were the twelve cart-borne ballistae now being wheeled forward. Lyrna checked each one with the spyglass to ensure Alornis had not somehow contrived to escape Davoka’s care, breathing a soft sigh of relief at her absence. She had given the Lonak woman stern instructions to bind the Lady Artificer hand and foot should she try to join the battle and hoped it hadn’t proved necessary.

A ripple went through the loose ranks of the archers as the Volarian line came to within two hundred paces, the spyglass picking out men standing with bows drawn and raised high, each with a thicket of arrows thrust into the earth around his feet. They loosed as one, the arrow storm thick enough for her to discern the flight of the shafts, a dark arching cloud forming between the archers and the Volarians. Their line seeming to shimmer under the weight of the assault, the centre taking the brunt of the punishment.

The ballistae were soon adding to the barrage, at least twenty men falling to the first volley, the ranks of the central battalions thinning with every step. Lyrna watched as a battalion was decimated, trailing a dozen or more dead and wounded every ten yards, until it inevitably began to slow, marching men faltering as their comrades died around them. She watched an officer wheeling his horse about at their rear, waving his sword and shouting unheard exhortations until a ballista bolt punched through his breastplate with enough force to carry him clear of the saddle. The battalion slowed further, halted, then broke, men dropping weapons and turning to flee, bowed low under the unending deadly rain.

Lyrna couldn’t hear the shout that must have erupted from the Cumbraelins then, but knew it would be a savage expression of vengeance barely satisfied. They surged forward in an unbidden charge, discarding bows to draw swords and axes, pelting towards the gap in the Volarian line. Not a man to miss an opportunity, Marven gave the signal for an immediate advance, the entire Realm Guard moving forward at the run, the cavalry on the right spurring to an immediate charge. Lyrna saw the Cumbraelin assault strike home before the dust grew too thick to see more. She had a glimpse of the Volarian centre fragmenting under the fury of their onslaught but soon the entire field became a mass of roiling dust and the vague, flickering shadows of men in combat.

“Well,” Iltis commented. “That was a piss-poor show.”

“Highness.” Lyrna turned at Murel’s soft but insistent call, seeing her point to something to the north, another dust cloud on the far bank of the river. Lyrna trained the spyglass on the base of the cloud, discerning a mass of horsemen moving at the gallop.

“Cavalry,” she murmured, watching the horsemen come closer, noting their armour was red instead of the usual Volarian black. Also it was a sizeable force, over five thousand by her reckoning. The Empress sends her Arisai, she mused, recalling Brother Frentis’s description from one of his dream visions. Why not send them with her army?

“The river’s too deep to ford for miles around,” Benten said. “Even if they have boats, the battle will be over before they can make a crossing. The archers will cut them to pieces.”

Lyrna felt a certain unease build in her breast as the red-armoured horsemen came closer, their course becoming more clear as they neared. She had expected an attempt on the army’s flank, presuming they had some means to cross the river, but instead the horsemen were riding directly towards the temple, towards her.

“How many guards did Count Marven leave us?” she asked Iltis.

“Two regiments, Highness. The Twelfth and the Queen’s Daggers.”

Lyrna moved closer to the platform’s edging, looking down at the temple below. Lord Nortah had clearly spotted the horsemen and was arranging his own company of archers at the riverbank. As if sensing her scrutiny he looked up, gesturing at the onrushing cavalry with a baffled shrug. Why would they charge just to mill about on the other side of the river? The river…

She trained the spyglass on the fast-rushing current, seeing only churning water, grey with silt. It was when she lowered the spyglass that she noticed something odd about the waters, how the current seemed marginally faster as it neared the temple, the waters slightly paler in colour. “There’s something under the water,” she whispered, knowing it was far too late.

The lead company of horsemen galloped towards the far bank and plunged into the river without pause, their horses sinking no more than two feet into the water, churning it an instant white as they continued their charge. Before Iltis grabbed her hand to drag her to the stairwell she had a glimpse of one of the red-armoured men, a blazing smile on his face as he neared the southern bank, laughing at the meagre volley from Lord Nortah’s archers.

Davoka waited at the bottom of the steps, face grim and spear already bloodied. Alornis was at her side, staring in white-faced immobility at the carnage unfolding in the temple. The noise was near deafening, colliding metal mixed with the screams of the dying, the roaring challenge of those still fighting and the laughter of the men who had come to kill her.

On emerging from the stairwell, Lyrna glimpsed one of the Queen’s Daggers, a hulking fellow heaving an axe, shouting in rage with every blow as his red-armoured opponent danced aside and slashed repeated and precise cuts into his face. Beyond them the temple was a tumult of whirling combat and steel, Lord Nortah just visible amidst the fury, hacking down an Arisai and dragging one of the Daggers to his feet, voice raised as he attempted to assemble a defensive formation. Despite his skill, Lyrna could see his survival owed much to Snowdance, the war-cat a blur of claws and teeth as she took down one enemy after another, apparently numb to the wounds they slashed into her sides.

“We must…” she began, starting forward.

“NO!” The Lord Protector’s considerable fist closed over her arm, tearing Lord Nortah from sight as she was dragged away.

“Lord Nortah!” she protested, trying to wrestle free.

“Will die here defending you, Highness.” Iltis pushed her against a wall as an Arisai appeared from around a corner, voicing a delighted laugh as he thrust at the Lord Protector with a narrow-bladed sword. Iltis twisted aside, the Arisai’s blade tip shattering on the stone, though he still retained enough steel to parry Iltis’s overhead counterblow, but insufficient speed to dodge Davoka’s spear thrust to the groin. Iltis shoved the corpse aside and took hold of Lyrna’s arm once again.

“The horses are tethered on the western edge of the camp,” he said. “Should I fall, Highness, do not linger.”

Two more Arisai appeared to block their path, Davoka and Iltis instantly charging forward to meet them. This part of the temple was mostly narrow walkways threading a complex course between the various pyramidal structures, constricting the movements of the combatants, though it seemed to favour Iltis. The hulking lord locked the hilt of his sword onto an opponent’s, bearing him down with his bulk, slamming a knee into his chest to wind him before smashing his unarmoured head against the wall, again and again until the skull cracked like an egg.

Davoka’s assailant managed to fend off her precise jabs with apparent ease, voicing a laugh that died as Lyrna sent her dagger spinning into his neck. A clash of steel at her back made her turn, seeing Benten, backed against a wall, sword moving with frantic speed as he tried to fend off two Arisai. Murel, crouched at Lyrna’s side, uttered a screech of rage and launched herself at the nearest foe, her dagger sinking into his arm. The Arisai tore his arm away before she could retrieve the blade for another blow, slamming a punch into her face that sent her reeling, advancing towards her with a broad grin, then collapsing as Benten’s sword cleaved into his neck. The other Arisai lay dead at his feet but the young lord’s hand was clamped over a wound in his side, the blood flowing thick through his fingers.

“My lord!” Lyrna rushed towards him, finding herself restrained by Murel. The girl’s eye was swelling shut and she seemed a little unsteady on her feet, but still had enough strength to prevent Lyrna from going to Benten’s side as three more Arisai appeared, one sparing a brief glance for the wounded lord before laying his throat open with a swift, efficient slash.

“Lerhnah!” Davoka’s hand gripped her shoulder, pulling her along, the world becoming a blur of frenzied combat. Iltis led the way, attempting to find a course through the maze of stone, now littered with corpses at every turn. Davoka guarded the rear, pausing to spear any pursuing Arisai who came within reach. At Lyrna’s side Murel had hold of Alornis’s hand, the Lady Artificer’s face betraying scant notice of the surrounding horror.

Iltis gave a shout of frustration at finding their way blocked again, ducking under a sword swing and delivering a counter that left his assailant giggling as he regarded his severed fingers. The Lord Protector cast around, his features betraying a panic Lyrna had thought beyond him. It was his fear that restored her, banishing the sight of Benten, the blood flowing from his gaping neck to soak the temple floor. The gods are always thirsty…

“To the centre, my lord,” she told Iltis. “At least there are allies there.”

He hesitated a moment then gave a shallow bow. “I crave forgiveness for my failure…”

“Time is against us, my lord.” One of the Queen’s Daggers lay nearby, a lean, dark-haired woman, her hatchet cradled in her arms as if clutching a beloved infant. Lyrna bent to retrieve the weapon and nodded at Iltis to proceed.

They were obliged to fight their way through to Lord Nortah’s surviving defenders, perhaps fifty of them in a tight circle in the centre of the temple, ringed by a growing wall of dead. Iltis hacked down an Arisai from behind, laying about on either side with great two-handed blows of his sword, carving sufficient passage for Lyrna and Murel to force their way through with Alornis between them. Iltis tried to follow but fell as an Arisai delivered a kick to his legs, others closing to finish him but reeling back as Davoka landed in their midst, spear whirling to claim eyes and outstretched hands. She paused to haul Iltis to his feet, the Lord Protector barrelling through the throng of red-armoured men as she followed close behind, spear still whirling.

Lyrna was quickly conveyed to the middle of the formation where she found Snowdance slumped on her side, ragged flesh dangling from her claws, fur matted with gore and the stone beneath slick with blood. Despite her injuries the cat’s great yellow eyes stared up at Lyrna as bright as ever. She even uttered a soft purr as Alornis knelt to run a hand over her head.

Lyrna looked up as the cacophony suddenly abated, the clash of weapons fading to leave only the groans of the wounded. The Arisai were thick on all sides but seemed to have retreated somewhat. Many were wounded, some grievously so, missing eyes or standing with gaping wounds to the face or blood flowing freely from rents in their armour, but they were all smiling, not in mockery, or cruelty, but joy.

This is what they were made for, Lyrna thought, her eyes playing over the sea of happy faces. A new race born to delight in slaughter. The Volarian bred to perfection.

Around her the Queen’s Daggers all stood, drawing breath in ragged gasps, tensed for the next assault. Most had bloody scars, some wide-eyed in shock or grief. But still no fear, she saw, seeing how their ranks tightened around her, many casting furtive glances as if fearing her disapproval. The Empress made something vile, she decided. I made something great.

“We make them happy it seems,” she said, rising from the war-cat’s side. She raised her hatchet above her head, the gore-covered blade evidence its owner had died hard, as she intended to do. “Stand with me and we’ll make them weep!”

As one the Queen’s Daggers roared, a savage blast of defiance and bloodlust, waving their weapons at the Arisai and voicing taunts rich in obscenities. “I’ll feed you your balls, you grinning fucker!” a stocky man with a halberd spat at the nearest Arisai, who seemed to find this even more cause for amusement.

Lyrna met Lord Nortah’s gaze, reading a grim certainty in his expression. He glanced down at Snowdance, her eyes closed now, and his face spasmed in mingled rage and grief before he straightened. “We are taking our queen out of here!” he told his soldiers. “Assault formation!”

The response was immediate, the Queen’s Daggers moving with the unconscious precision born of months of training, ordering themselves into a wedge shape in the space of a few seconds. Nortah raised his sword, preparing to give the order to advance, then paused at the sight of some commotion in the ranks of Arisai. The throng parted to reveal a tall figure, armoured in red as they were, but his face that of a much older man, the features long and lean, thin lips and pale blue eyes. Also, unlike the Arisai, he wore no smile.

Lyrna saw Nortah’s sword arm sag as he gaped at the tall man, face drawn in mystification. “Aspect?”

CHAPTER NINE Reva

“Why you not… afraid?”

Lieza’s Realm Tongue was adequate but not accomplished, though considerably better than Reva’s Volarian. She sat on the only bed, knees drawn up and clasped in her arms, eyes bright as she watched Reva go through her scales. On the first day of their confinement Varulek had provided her with a wooden short sword and some intently spoken advice, “Ready yourself with all vigour. The arena cares not who you were, only what you might be.”

Their quarters consisted of a windowless cavern-like chamber providing more than ample room for practice. Reva danced across mosaic-tiled floors, dodging between elegant pillars of black marble veined in white. The walls were decorated in faded paintings depicting various beasts and men in combat and she noted how Lieza did her best not to look at them. At the far end of the chamber a large bath was inset in the floor, supplied with hot water via some hidden contrivance of pipes. Besides the bed, however, there was little in the way of furniture, or anything of sufficient weight to make a decent weapon. Even her wooden sword was made from sandalwood and like to shatter at the first contact with anything substantial.

“Fear kills,” Reva told the slave girl, spinning through a final combination of parries and thrusts. “You’d fear less if you trained with me.”

The scale was her own invention, a much modified variant of one of Vaelin’s Order standards, designed for confronting the Kuritai. Although from what Lieza told her of the spectacles Reva concluded a contest with the slave-elite might be preferable. She had quizzed the girl closely for several hours, leaving off only when she began to cry, tears flowing as she stumbled over a description of some kind of cat with teeth like daggers.

“I not a… fighter, like you.” Lieza hugged herself closer, resting her head on her knees.

“Then what are you?” Reva asked.

“Slave.” The girl spoke in a murmur, not raising her head. “Always just slave.”

“You must have skills, abilities.”

“Numbers, letters, language.” Lieza’s shoulders moved in a shrug. “My master taught me much. Won’t help here. I am Avielle, you Livella.”

“And they are?”

“Sisters. One weak, one strong.”

Reva grunted in annoyance, going to the bed and grabbing the girl by the wrists, hauling her to her feet. “Look at me!” She took hold of her chin and raised it, shaking her until her eyes opened, wet and bright with alarm. “Enough of this. Whatever waits for us here will need all our strength, yours and mine, if we are to survive it.”

The girl sagged, tears flowing once again. “I not like you…”

Reva drew a hand back to slap her. Beat some spine into her, make her practice and beat her every time she falters. She’ll learn quick enough if I put some bruises on those perfect legs, the miserable, fatherless sinner…

Her hands gave an involuntary spasm, allowing Lieza to sink back onto the bed, head slumped in misery. “I’m sorry,” Reva said, retreating from the weeping girl, her heart thumping.

A jangle of keys came from outside the thick iron door. It swung open on squealing hinges to reveal Varulek with two Kuritai at his back. His eyes tracked from Reva to the still-weeping Lieza. “I have been instructed to punish this one if she fails to please you,” he said.

“She pleases me well enough,” Reva told him. “What do you want?”

He stood back from the door, inclining his head in a surprisingly polite gesture of respectful invitation. “The blond man fights today. The Empress thought you would like to see it.”

Her initial thought was to refuse, having little desire to witness the Shield’s murder. But she would find no opportunity for escape here, and perhaps the pirate deserved his end to be witnessed by at least one ally. She tossed the wooden sword onto the bed next to Lieza. “At least try,” she said quietly, placing a hand on her shoulder. “Copy what you saw me do.”

The girl’s head bobbed in what might have been agreement and Reva went to the door, noting how the Kuritai maintained no more than a six-inch gap between themselves and Varulek. He fears me, she decided, depressed by continual evidence the Master of the Arena was no fool. He remained unmoved by the insults she cast at him, was always just out of reach and ensured her wrists were shackled on the rare occasions she was permitted out of the chamber.

She kept still as one of the Kuritai held a knife to her throat, the other snapping the manacles to her wrists. She calculated dispatching one would be relatively simple, hook the chains over his throat and snap his neck, but had yet to formulate a manoeuvre that would prevent the other killing her a heartbeat later. Also, she considered it unlikely Varulek would simply stand idle and watch her escape. Although he was of average proportions, she could tell from his bearing and the evident strength in his tattooed hands, he was no stranger to combat. Once a soldier, perhaps?

“Your quarters are acceptable?” he asked, leading her along the passage. They were deep in the bowels of the arena, the passage leading to a long flight of stairs ascending in a curving arc in line with the giant oval of the arena.

“A table and chair would be nice,” she said as they began the climb.

“Also easily broken and the legs used for clubs,” he replied. “So, sadly, I must refuse.”

She concealed a sigh of frustration, wondering again at the Father’s liking for placing obstacles in her path. Why not allow me a stupid gaoler? she asked him. If it is your object to punish me, attempting to escape this place will certainly achieve such an end in short order. There was no answer, of course, the Father as deaf to her entreaties as he had always been, though now at least she discerned a reason. I lied in your name. I cannot think I deserve to live.

“Some books for the girl, then,” she said. “I think she would appreciate a distraction.”

“I’ll see to it.”

They climbed in silence for a time, passing by several sentry platforms, each home to a pair of Kuritai standing with their typical blank-eyed immobility. The higher they went the more ornate the surrounding structure became, bare, unplastered brick giving way to smooth walls decorated with mosaics and the occasional relief sculpture. She was surprised to note that most of the decoration showed signs of unrepaired vandalism: unfamiliar script chiselled away or motifs subjected to shattering hammerblows. From the colour of the stone she deduced this to be ancient damage.

“This is a very old building,” she observed as they neared the arena’s ground level, the narrow passage echoing with a low-pitched hum, growing with every step. It was a sound she knew well enough, similar to the collective shouts of the archers on the walls of Alltor when they called for the Volarians to march into yet another arrow storm, the baying of many souls hungry for blood.

“Indeed,” Varulek replied. “The oldest building in the city, in fact. Product of a less enlightened age.” She detected a new inflection to his normally uncoloured voice, a faint but clearly discernible note of contempt.

“Less enlightened?” she pressed.

“So the Imperial historians have it.” She saw how his eyes lingered on a statue as they crested the final step and emerged onto the broad arched walkway leading to the arena proper. It was a bronze figure typical of the many she had seen on her journey here, a man, as they usually were, holding a short sword aloft in a gesture of heroic defiance. She could tell from the lustre of the bronze the statue was relatively recent, but the plinth on which it stood was far older, a finely carved cylinder of red-gold marble, an iron plaque hammered onto its side with little regard for the stone, which was cracked and chipped in several places.

“Someone else stood there once,” she said. “Who was it?”

Varulek turned his gaze away from the plinth, lengthening his stride. “Savorek,” he said in a flat voice. “Greatest of the guardians.”

“Guardians of what?”

He led her to another staircase, this one leading to the upper tier. He remained silent until they had climbed the stairs, and the hum of the crowd became a ceaseless cacophony, almost drowning his reply, but she caught it, “All that was taken from us.”

He led her through a series of hallways, their path lined with guards every ten paces. They were mostly Free Swords here, though their armour and weapons were of a less uniform appearance than the conscripts she had fought in the Realm. Despite their lack of uniformity, however, she noted they all shared the same expression: eyes wider than normal, faces pale and jaws bunching intermittently. They’re all terrified, she realised, her gaze going to the balcony ahead where a slender figure sat in silhouette on a cushioned bench.

The Empress rose to greet her as she was led out onto the balcony, her smile disconcerting in its genuine warmth. She came close, leaning to press a fond kiss to her cheek. “Little sister, how nice of you to come.”

Reva clenched her fists at the closeness, disliking the fact that the Empress’s perfume was a subtle delight to the senses. But any violent impulse was checked by the sight of the five Arisai on the balcony, each greeting Reva with a welcoming grin, infuriating in its familiarity. They think they see one of their own, she thought, sickened by the realisation.

The Empress moved back, turning to Varulek and waving an impatient hand at the crowd. “Shut them up.”

The black-clad moved to the balcony’s edge, raising a hand to unseen eyes below. Almost without pause there came the sound of many trumpets, the notes forming a strident tune rich in implacable authority. The crowd instantly fell to an absolute silence, unbroken by even the faintest cough or wayward call, as if every soul present had taken a breath in unison and feared letting it out.

“Honoured Citizens and sundry scum!” the Empress called to them, moving forward until her bare toes protruded over the edge of the balcony, her voice carrying with almost unnatural ease to the farthest reaches of the arena. “Before I delight your pestilent hearts with yet more blood, I should like to introduce a distinguished guest from across the ocean.” She gestured to Reva, her lips formed in the encouraging smile of an elder sibling. Reva remained still until one of the Arisai gave a pointed cough, stroking his chin with an apologetic grimace, his other hand resting on a dagger at his belt. She moved slowly to the Empress’s side, flinching as she took hold of her manacled wrist and raised it high.

“I give you Lady Governess Reva Mustor of Cumbrael!” the Empress called again. “Many of your sons and husbands no doubt met their end at her hands, deservedly so I might add. Still, even though none of you are worthy to kiss this woman’s feet, I have still ordained that she will entertain you here in due course. Is not your Empress generous?”

Her grip on Reva’s wrists tightened as she stood there, face set in a mask of profound malice. She stood regarding the crowd for what seemed an age, eyes scanning every silent row, darting about as if in search of the slightest expression of disloyalty. Finally she grunted and released Reva, moving back to her bench and gesturing irritably at Varulek. “Get on with it. Little sister, come sit by me.”

The trumpets pealed forth once more, a less strident tune this time, almost joyful. The crowd’s murmur rose again as Reva slumped next to the Empress, hearing no cheers amongst the tense babble of thousands exchanging fearful whispers.

A slave brought tea in small glass cups, along with a selection of finely crafted cakes, each a perfect cube of variously coloured icing topped with a tiny gold-leaf motif of some kind. “My crest,” the Empress said, holding up one of the cakes for Reva’s inspection, the crest revealed as a tiny dagger within a chain circle. “Death and servitude, my two gifts.” She laughed and popped the cake in her mouth, frowning in consternation as she chewed, her face betraying no more enjoyment than if she were eating plain bread.

Reva turned her attention to the arena, finding the balcony offered a near-complete view of a great sand oval. She judged it perhaps two hundred and fifty paces wide and near four hundred long. The sand was tended by a number of slaves, busily raking over numerous dark patches, no doubt evidence of some earlier slaughter. Her gaze tracked over the crowd, noting how the pitch of their mingled voices had changed, the fear giving way to a collective buzz of anticipation. They fear her but can’t resist what she offers here, she decided with a surge of contempt.

“Yes, horrible aren’t they?” the Empress commented, sipping tea.

Reva swallowed a sigh. Feel nothing. Think nothing.

“Do you hate your people as I hate this lot?” the Empress went on. “Their gullibility must be trying at times.”

Reva knew she was being baited, this thing attempting to stoke an anger that might reveal some new insight. But she found her thoughts free of rage as they turned to her people, her trusting, believing people. “They fought off your finest army for months,” she said. “Starved and shorn of hope, they gave blood and life to save each other. Your people rejoice in cruelty and make murder an entertainment. I’ll reserve my hate for them.”

“And your guilt for yourself.” The Empress took a bite from another cake, raising her eyebrows in faint disappointment. “All tastes like ash,” she muttered, tossing the cake aside.

Reva tried to ignore the weight of the Empress’s gaze as she concentrated on a new commotion in the arena. Two groups of men were emerging from doors at opposite ends of the oval, the initial upsurge in cheers from the crowd soon fading as their condition became clear. They were all naked, most of middle or advanced years, pale and trembling under the scrutiny of the crowd, some with hands clasped protectively over their genitals, others standing in apparent bafflement or shock.

“Pardon me a moment, little sister,” the Empress said, getting to her feet once more. She moved to the balcony’s edge where an Arisai waited, bowed to one knee as he proffered a short sword. “As yet more proof of your Empress’s boundless largess!” she called, her arm sweeping in a grandiloquent gesture from one end of the arena to the other. “I add another two teams to the venerable Sword Races. To my right the Honourable Company of Traitors, to my left the Exalted Order of Corrupt Officials. Both have earned my displeasure with their disloyalty and greed, but my compassionate, womanly soul compels me to mercy. There will be only one victor of today’s contest, permitted to live out his days in slavery and his family spared the three deaths.”

She took the sword from the kneeling Arisai and threw it into the centre of the arena. Reva couldn’t help but be impressed by the skill of the throw, the sword sinking into the sand up to the hilt. The Empress turned away as the trumpets blasted a short note, the crowd’s murmur now a mingling of dismay and confusion.

The two groups of naked men stood immobile as the note faded, exchanging wary glances or looking up at the crowd with tear-stained faces, bereft of all but the faintest hope. For a time it seemed as if they would just continue to stand there, anchored by terror, until a group of Varitai archers positioned on the upper tiers sank a volley of arrows into the sand around their feet. One of the naked men immediately broke from the group, sprinting towards the sword in a surprising turn of speed for a fellow with such an extensive belly. Several men began running in his wake, provoking their opponents into belated motion. Soon both groups were pelting towards each other in a stampede of flabby, sweat-soaked flesh, voices raised in desperate challenge. The plump man was first to the sword, scooping it up and flailing at the onrushing team as they closed, a bright plume of blood appearing in the mass of colliding flesh. The plump man was soon lost to sight, sinking under a forest of flailing limbs as the combatants thrashed at each other with inexpert ferocity. The sword appeared again, held aloft in the hand of a stick-thin old man with straggly grey hair. He stabbed down at the surrounding throng again and again, eyes wide with madness, before he was dragged from view.

“Don’t waste your pity,” the Empress cautioned Reva, taking her seat once more. “Black-clads all, and not a man among them without blood on his hands.” She moved closer, voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, as if they were two girls exchanging gossip. “So, are you enjoying Lieza? Don’t you find her the sweetest thing?”

Reva determined not to answer, keeping her gaze on the now-diminished throng of battling unfortunates. Many were lying on the sands, too injured or exhausted to fight on, but a dense knot of them were still struggling in the centre of the arena, a tight revolving scrum of reddened flesh with the sword at the centre.

“I can provide a replacement,” the Empress went on. “If she’s proving not to your… taste.”

Think nothing. Feel nothing. “She… is acceptable to me.”

“I am glad. You are the Most Honoured Garisai after all. The quarters you were given have traditionally been reserved for the most exalted of champions. In ages past the Garisai were not slaves you see, but free men and women, come to honour the gods with blood and courage. The undefeated would be raised to great status, lavished with all comfort and pleasures, for the gods favoured those who could slake their endless thirst.”

“What happened to them?” Reva asked, watching as a group of five survivors surrounded the man who now held the sword, edging closer as he attempted to ward them off with clumsy jabs, face grey with exhaustion. “Your gods.”

“We killed them,” the Empress replied, returning her attention to the arena as the contest neared its conclusion. The man with the sword hacked down a tall but aged opponent before the others closed in and bore him to the ground, fists rising and falling in a frenzy until one broke free with the sword, immediately turning to hack at his former allies, voicing a feral scream with every blow. The crowd had fallen silent once again and the man’s rhythmic fury reverberated across the ascending tiers, coming to a ragged stop as he finished his last victim and slumped to the sands, weeping, his sagging, barely muscled torso red from neck to waist.

The Empress squinted at the slumped figure for a moment. “One of the corrupt,” she mused, before turning to Varulek. “Make sure he finishes the wounded, then send him to the mint. Hauling sacks of gold and silver for the rest of his days might educate him in the true value of money.”

She reclined, reaching out to trace her fingers through the tresses of Reva’s hair that had escaped her long braid. “The gods,” she said in a reflective tone, “were of no more use to a people willing to embrace a great future, a destiny that could only be fulfilled by unity and unclouded reason. Or so my father once told me.”

“They weren’t real,” Reva said. “Your gods died whilst the World Father endured.” She watched as a pair of Arisai dragged the lone survivor to his feet, pushing him towards the prostrate form of a man with a gaping stomach wound, one hand clutched to his spilling guts whilst he raised the other in a vain plea for mercy. “You built a nation of horrors.”

“And what is your nation, little sister? A perfection of civilisation? I’ve seen it, and I think not. You grovel to a dream scribbled down centuries ago, pursuing your endless quarrel with those who in turn grovel to the imagined souls of the dead.”

“A quarrel now ended, thanks to you.”

“And to you, Blessed Lady. She who speaks with the Father’s voice.” She issued a soft laugh as Reva’s unease deepened. “Oh yes, I can see it. You lied. Thousands followed you here to their deaths, all because of the words you spoke on behalf of a deaf-mute god. And though you have never truly heard his voice, still you fear his judgement.”

She leaned closer, Reva keeping her gaze fixed on the arena and the final man, tottering like an infant as he went from one maimed figure to another. “Let it go, little sister,” the Empress whispered, her tone urgent with honest entreaty. “I can show you so much.”

Reva watched the last of the wounded meet his untidy end before the Arisai dragged the survivor from the arena, suspended between them, head thrown back as he gabbled in a madman’s voice. “I’ve already seen enough,” she said.

The Empress’s breath ghosted across her cheek as she gave a small sigh, pressing a kiss to her skin before leaning back. “I find I must disagree, my lady.”

It took the better part of a half hour for the slaves to clear the bodies from the arena and rake the pooled blood from the sand. The Empress remained silent throughout, her face taking on an oddly vacant cast as she sat with dimmed eyes. Occasionally her lips would move in a silent murmur, her brow creasing in confusion at some inner puzzlement, at times her features tensing into a mask of such sorrowful bafflement Reva found herself suppressing a pang of pity. This thing is mad, she realised. A mad Empress for an empire built on unclouded reason.

The trumpets sounded again and the Empress blinked, straightening to view the figures emerging from a door in the arena wall. There were two of them, both tall, one blond, the other dark-haired. The blond man carried a short sword whilst his companion bore a spear. They wore trews of leather but no armour, standing bare-chested as they stared up at the surrounding tiers. Unlike the unfortunate black-clads who preceded them their faces were void of any entreaty, tense certainly, but unwilling to beg.

The crowd regained some animation at the prospect of more familiar entertainment, numerous voices raised in scorn or appreciation, the horror of the Sword Race seemingly forgotten. Reva’s wrists chafed on her manacles as her fists clenched, her gaze going to the Shield’s face. His beard had been sheared away, revealing the fine-chiselled features she knew had captured the attention of many a Realm-born lady. She saw his recognition as his gaze went to the balcony, lowering his head in a momentary greeting. Reva shifted her gaze to the dark-haired man, finding him a youth of no more than twenty years, face rigid with controlled fear, fear that vanished as he caught sight of her. The rush of recognition was almost sickening, Reva finding herself on her feet as the tall young man sank to his knees, his spear held aloft in both hands. He shouted something, lost amidst the crowd’s feral baying, but she knew the meaning well enough. I rejoice at the sight of you, Blessed Lady.

“You know the younger one too?” the Empress asked, her gift reading Reva’s feelings with execrable ease.

Reva didn’t know why she bothered to answer. Perhaps because she wanted him to have some form of memorial, someone to speak his name before he died. “Allern Varesh,” she said, the words grating from a dry throat. “Late of the Riverlands and Guardsman to House Mustor.”

“So much guilt.” The Empress laid a sympathetic hand on her shoulder, drawing her close. “You need to accept who and what you are.” She flicked a hand at the kneeling Allern. “He and his kind will never reach our heights. Nature has ordained them our servants. A truth I believe your queen realised long ago.”

She gave Reva a final hug and moved to the balcony’s edge once more, the crowd falling to instant silence at the trumpets’ blast. “In days long past!” she called. “When this empire was fractured by superstition and delusion, this day was known as the Feast of the Fallen Brothers. A celebration of the final battle fought by the only mortals ever to be raised to the holy state of Guardianhood. I give you Morivek and Korsev!” She extended an arm to the Shield and Allern, the youth now raised to his feet, gaze still fixed on Reva, smiling now and seemingly deaf to the Empress’s words or the burst of cheering from the crowd.

“Rejoice as they battle the most deadly of the Dermos,” the Empress intoned, raising a hand to a gate at the western end of the arena. “The Harbingers of the Fall!”

The gate swung open as the trumpets pealed once more, the crowd erupting into cheers at the sight of the creatures entering the arena. Reva initially took them for relatives of Lord Nortah’s war-cat but quickly realised they were another breed entirely, leaner of body and not so tall. Also their colouring was different, the fur striped in yellow and black from neck to tail. But the main difference was their teeth, each possessed of a pair of daggerlike fangs which they bared continually as they strained against their chains. There were nine of them, chained in groups of three under the control of a handler, large men in leather armour clutching the cats’ chains in one hand and a long whip in the other.

“Dagger Teeth,” the Empress said, returning to Reva’s side. “Said to have been spawned in the fire pit by the Dermos and sent forth to herald the impending fall of mankind. The old priests were always foreseeing the end of everything, great calamities and plagues that could only be averted by yet more obeisance to the gods, and tribute to the temples naturally.”

Reva tried to calm her heart as the handlers allowed their eager charges to prowl closer to the two men in the centre of the arena, the cats hissing and writhing against their bonds, seemingly maddened by a desire for blood.

“They’re bred from the most vicious kittens,” the Empress went on. “Kept in a perpetual state of near starvation. The arena is the only place with which they associate a glut of meat. Hence their eagerness.”

Allern and the Shield moved closer together, the young guardsman favouring Reva with a final bow before taking on a fighting stance, crouched low with the spear held level with his chest. Arentes taught him well, she thought, losing the battle to control her heart, sweat beading her skin as it thumped against her chest.

“Don’t,” she said in a whisper, forgetting all pride and defiance, knowing this to be something she couldn’t witness. “Please.”

“You ask a favour, little sister?” The Empress put her hands on Reva’s shoulders, turning her so they were face-to-face. “What will you give me in return?”

“I’ll fight,” Reva breathed. “In their place.”

“You’ll fight here in any case. And I promised my dreadful people a spectacle. What else can you offer?” She drew Reva into an embrace, her breath soft against her ear. “When my beloved comes to me, we will bring down the Ally and all the world will be ours. Come with me, little sister. I will give you the Realm to rule in my name. Keep your World Father if you like, I don’t care what lies you tell. Take these two as your servants, with the right conditioning they will be fierce indeed. You could destroy all other creeds, banish forever the heretic faith, bring the love of the Father to all corners of the Realm.”

She stepped back, smiling fondly as she stroked Reva’s cheek, thumbing away the single tear that escaped her eye. “Isn’t that what you always wanted?”

Reva looked at the arena, seeing how the handlers had manoeuvred the cats into a circle around Allern and the Shield, edging ever closer.

“You have a gift,” Reva said to the Empress. “A song that tells you the feelings of others.”

“It tells me many things.”

Reva turned back, meeting her gaze. “What’s it telling you now?”

There was a flicker of alarm in the Empress’s face, her mouth twitching in a mingling of amusement and frustration as she began to draw back, a fraction too late.

Reva’s head snapped forward, slamming her forehead into the Empress’s mouth, sending her reeling back. The Arisai responded immediately, swords hissing from scabbards as they closed on all sides, save one. Reva sprinted for the balcony’s edge and leapt.

CHAPTER TEN Vaelin

Dahrena returned to her body with a shout, doubling over as her face tensed in distress. Vaelin pulled her close, holding her until the shudders subsided. She had flown for only a short time, at her own insistence since the mountain folk continued to make no appearance, so he deduced her anguish was not due to the depredations of her gift.

“They’re in the mountains now,” she said, looking up at him with pale intensity. “Killing all they can find. He knew, Vaelin. He knew I saw, and he laughed.”

He gathered the Wolf People elders to hear her full report, watching the last vestige of hope fade from each face; the Raven’s Shadow had truly fallen and the long-promised tribulation had arrived.

“There are many Varitai among them,” Dahrena said, “Kuritai too. The Free Swords are not so numerous, mostly cavalry, and their souls are troubled, flaring red with suspicion and fear. They entered the mountains two days ago, I saw evidence of a battle and the remnants of a settlement. All were slain, young folk and old, no captives were taken. They do not come for slaves.” She paused, eyes closed as she forced herself to recall the memory. “Things were done to those they took alive, their torments were many and prolonged.” Her gaze met Vaelin’s. “He wanted me to see.”

“Where are they now?” he asked her.

“Moving to the north-east. They’re maintaining a close formation, mounting few patrols. I saw many souls gathering to oppose them, but in small groups, none with the strength to halt their advance.”

“Then they will need our aid,” Vaelin said.

“No.” The hooded man was the only one present to be seated, perched close to a campfire that he prodded with a sturdy walking stick.

“You have advice to offer, Master Erlin?” Vaelin asked him.

“Just obvious fact, brother.” Erlin sighed and drew back his hood, offering Dahrena a smile rich in sympathy. “They have more than twice our number, do they not, my lady?”

She shot a guarded look at Vaelin and nodded.

“The tribes would have to unite to have a chance against them,” Erlin said, turning to Vaelin. “And they won’t. I tried to warn the chieftains but they wouldn’t listen, thinking this just another slaving campaign. Every few years the Volarians come, sometimes they can be bought off with ore and captives taken from the other tribes, sometimes they fight them so the young warriors can earn their first scars. It’s been going on for over two hundred years now and is almost ritual. They do not understand what they face. By the time you join battle they’ll be defeated and scattered.”

Erlin turned back to the fire, Vaelin noting the whiteness of his knuckles on his stick as he prodded the embers. He’s afraid, he realised. What could scare a man who cannot die?

“You are known to the tribes,” he said. “You can guide us to them? Speak for us?”

“They do not speak as one. When the tribes are not fighting each other they fight amongst themselves. By the time we had negotiated with all it will be too late. In any case, they will see you and these people as just more enemies to fight.”

“You expect me to sit here and ignore a slaughter?”

“The Ally’s creature is trying to draw you out, surely you see that. And you did not come here for war, you came for the knowledge you imagine I hold. The key to defeating the Ally.”

Vaelin frowned at the sardonic note in Erlin’s voice, the tone of a man facing an all-too-predictable outcome. “This has happened before?”

“There have been a few over the centuries. Scholars, kings”—he gave Vaelin a brief, regretful grin—“warriors. All facing the unhappy truth of the Ally’s existence, guided to me by ancient lore or gifted power. Though none found me in times quite so troubled as these.”

“The Ally means to make an end. This time it will be different.”

Erlin sighed and got to his feet. “Then I had best show you what I showed them, brother.” He pointed his stick towards the east where the black clouds hung low over the peaks. “Though I doubt these folk will find the climate to their liking.”

The hills remained stubbornly empty as they marched east, tracking through valleys devoid of life save a few elk that scattered at the first tinge of their scent on the wind. “The mountain folk are miners,” Erlin explained. “Digging copper and tin from the mountains which they trade to the Volarians, despite their perpetual difficulties. There are few seams this far north and any scouts will be preoccupied with this latest incursion.”

“You have lived here a long time?” Vaelin asked.

“Six years this time, though I once lingered for nearly three decades. That was two centuries ago, when the people here were not so fierce.”

“What kept you here?”

“A widow with several children. She had a harsh tongue but a kind heart and didn’t seem to mind if I stayed and played the husband. When she passed the children had grown and the Volarians were mounting their first slaving operations. I thought it best to move on. Though I am always drawn back.”

“By what?”

Erlin’s expression clouded as he paused to regard the fire mountains in the distance, their fiery glow brighter now, and the sky above ever more dark. “In good time, brother.”

In the evening Lorkan, Cara and Marken gathered around Erlin, keen for stories of his travels. Cara’s memory of him was the dimmest of the three but she still recalled his tales from her childhood sojourn to the Fallen City. “Did you return to the Far West?” she asked. “To the temple above the clouds?”

“Indeed I did.” He glanced up at the Sentar who had also gathered round. They seemed to be amongst the few people with whom he had little experience and found their endless hunger for a story a surprising contrast to their fierce reputation. “Though I stayed only one night.”

“Was she there?” Cara pressed. “The Jade Princess?”

“She was, and as lovely as ever. Unmarked by age and still singing her beautiful song. I was glad I made the effort to hear it again, though the journey was harder than before. Even the land of the Merchant Kings is not immune to strife.”

“Jade Princess?” Vaelin asked.

“The only soul I have met who has lived longer than I. Consigned to the temple above the clouds five hundred years ago by the Merchant Kings, who still make pilgrimage to seek her counsel, imagining she has the ear of Heaven. I think she finds them greatly amusing, though it’s difficult to tell. Her moods are often as inscrutable as her words. But her song…” He closed his eyes in remembrance of something blissful. “Uncounted years spent in practice of voice and harp. I alone have been blessed to hear it more than once in a lifetime.”

Vaelin saw Kiral shift in discomfort and knew what her song told her; this was a man fully expecting never to hear the Jade Princess again. We bring his doom, that’s what he fears.

“I heard a story once,” he said to Erlin. “A tale about a Renfaelin knight saved from death by a boy with the power to heal, travelling in company with a man who couldn’t die. The knight related how this man sought to preserve the Gifted in the hope that one would be born to the Realm with the power to kill him, for he was tired of his endless life.”

“Tired?” Erlin reclined a little, pursing his lips in contemplation. “Life is endless sensation, ceaseless change and boundless variety. We are not made to tire of it, and I haven’t. But I have always known it would end, as many years as I have had, I cannot endure forever, nor should I. The Jade Princess knew that, the first time I sought her out, hoping for an answer, a reason why I stayed young whilst others aged, why those around me perished from plague or sickness and I did not. She gave no answer, as is her wont. Many who climb the treacherous path to the temple are often sent away disappointed, and even those to whom she chooses to speak find her words opaque, often beyond their ability to decipher. But though she gave no answer, she did allow me to hear her song, and that was answer enough. There is a flaw in it, you see. Small, barely perceptible to the untutored ear, but to one as long-lived as I, as jarring as an apprentice minstrel stumbling over his first chords. It’s but a brief sequence of notes, so complex as to be beyond the skill of perhaps all who ever held a harp, even her. Her song is not perfected, she hasn’t finished, perhaps she never will.”

A three-day march brought them in sight of the only settlement they had seen, a small cluster of stone houses at the foot of a flat-topped mountain. The air had a faint sulphurous tint and the sky above continually shrouded in roiling grey cloud, darkening to black in the east where the fire mountains raged ever brighter. Erlin had them halt a mile short of the settlement where a number of figures could be seen running from the dwellings, perhaps a hundred, all armed.

“The Laretha don’t have many visitors,” Erlin said. “They’re small in number and living so close to the fire mountains provides a certain security.” He turned to Vaelin, gesturing towards the settlement. “They’ll expect to parley with the chieftain of this new tribe.”

Vaelin asked Astorek to join him as they followed Erlin towards the settlement where the warriors stood in a thin but steady line. They were mostly men, all armed with either an axe or a long, narrow-bladed spear. They all wore calf-length kilts of leather, decorated with various painted symbols, and breastplates of bronze that gleamed dully in the muted daylight. A stocky man of middling years stood in the centre of their line, an axe clutched in either hand, long greying hair tied back from his face in thick braids. His rigid posture seemed to relax a little at the sight of Erlin, but his countenance remained fierce with suspicion as he scanned Vaelin then darkened into rage at the sight of Astorek. He raised both axes as they neared, his people immediately adopting a fighting stance on either side.

“Pertak!” Erlin called to the stocky man, smiling in welcome then gesturing to Vaelin and Astorek as he spoke on.

“He says he brings many allies to the Laretha,” Astorek reported. Vaelin noted the deep unease on the shaman’s brow. “This is foolishness, Raven’s Shadow. These people offer only death to outsiders.”

Vaelin nodded at Erlin, now approaching the chieftain with arms spread. “But not to him.”

Erlin halted a few feet short of the chieftain, his words soft and lost to them, though the tribesman’s countenance lost some of its fierceness, if none of its suspicion. After a few moments Erlin turned and beckoned them forth. “Pertak, Chieftain of the Laretha, demands tribute if you are to besmirch his lands with your presence,” he said, though Vaelin had yet to see the stocky man speak.

“Tribute?” he asked.

“A symbolic offering only,” Erlin explained. “If he allows you to stay without it he appears weak and one of the younger men will challenge him.”

The chieftain spoke, pointing one of his axes at the assembled ranks of ice folk and voicing a guttural demand. Vaelin followed its course to find the axe pointed to where Dahrena stood holding Scar’s reins. “He wants my horse?”

“Ah, no.” Erlin gave a tight smile. “He wants your woman.”

“That is not acceptable.” Vaelin’s hand went to a pouch on his belt, loosing the ties to extract a stone, a finely cut ruby of medium weight given to him by Governor Aruan at the Linesh dockside barely two years ago, though it seemed like many more now. There had been times when he had been tempted to sell it, especially when on the road, Reva being so constantly hungry, but the blood-song had flared in warning whenever he considered it. He hoped this was why.

The chieftain dropped one of his axes to catch the gem as Vaelin tossed it to him, eyes wide with instant fascination. The warriors on either side of him forgot their discipline to crowd round, every face lit with an enthralled greed. Pertak snarled something, raising his remaining axe in warning, and they shrank back, though their gaze returned continually to the ruby.

Pertak spoke again, directing his question to Vaelin as he held the ruby up to the light. “He wants to know what power it holds,” Astorek translated, a faint note of contempt colouring his voice.

“The mountains are rich in ore,” Erlin said, “but not gems. They have a certain irrational regard for them.”

“Tell him it has the power to capture men’s souls,” Vaelin said. “He really shouldn’t stare at it for too long.”

A brief gleam of fear shone in the chieftain’s eyes as Erlin related the warning, his fist closing over the stone in a fierce grip before he raised his gaze to Vaelin, squinting in contemplation. He grunted a short clipped sentence and, with considerable deliberation, turned his back and walked towards the settlement, his small host following close, all concern at the arrival of such a large body of intruders now apparently vanished.

“You may stay one day and one night,” Erlin said. “A most generous concession, I must say.”

“Is that enough?” Vaelin asked him. “For our purposes?”

Erlin looked up at the mountain towering above the settlement, the flattened summit part obscured by a thin mist. “You’ll find time loses its meaning here, brother.”

He forbade anyone but Vaelin from accompanying him, though Dahrena and the other Gifted protested loudly. “We have come so far,” Cara said. “To be denied knowledge now…”

“I seek to preserve,” Erlin broke in, “not to deny. Trust me, you would not thank me for this knowledge.”

He led Vaelin to a track that curved around the Laretha settlement to the base of the mountain, halting amidst a cluster of ruins. Vaelin scanned the granite blocks and part-tumbled walls, finding a familiarity in the way they had been shaped, the elegance of their line and the wind-blasted motifs carved into the stone. “The Fallen City,” he said. “This place was built by the same hands.”

“Not quite,” Erlin replied. “Though they shared the same language.” He gestured to a stairwell rising from the ruins to join with the flank of the mountain, Vaelin’s eyes picking out more steps carved into the stone, ascending in a winding track all the way to the top. “And the same gods.”

“So,” Erlin said as they climbed, the steps damp from the perennial mist and the air growing chill around them, “you no longer hold to the Faith.”

“A man can’t hold to a lie.”

“The Faith was never a lie. Confused in some regards, overly wedded to dogma in others. But having seen what the rest of the world has to offer in regards to the divine, I find it suits me well enough.”

“When we first met you said you had no choice but to follow the Faith. When I came to understand who you were I thought you meant the legend was true, the Departed had cursed you for denying the Faith.”

“Cursed? I thought so for a long time, when I was driven from the village of my birth, still seemingly a man in his thirties whilst those I had grown up with became ever more stooped and wrinkled. My wife was chief among my persecutors, grown bitter with envy at my continued youth, hating me for the grey in her hair and the absence of lust in my gaze. I had never been particularly observant of the Faith, mouthing the catechisms without real thought as to their meaning, occasionally muttering caustic words at the brothers and their tedious moralising. ‘Denier!’ my hating wife called me, desperate to find reason in this mystery. ‘The Departed have cursed you.’ I suppose that’s where it all began, a bitter old woman’s insult birthing a legend.”

“So you never heard their voice? You were not denied the Beyond?”

Erlin paused, breath misting as his face became sombre. “Oh I heard them, but not until many years later. Despite appearances, brother, I am not in fact immune to death. I do not age and I do not sicken. But without food I starve, and if cut, I bleed the same as any man. I can die, and once, long ago, I did. Or at least came so close it makes scant difference.

“I travelled far after the villagers drove me away, the length and breadth of the four fiefs, for there was no Realm in those days. I suppose I was searching for something, an answer to the enigma of my unending life, but had little notion of how to find it. Mystics and charlatans were not hard to find, all promising wisdom in return for gold, and all proving themselves mad or dishonest in time. One day I paused in a Nilsaelin tavern and heard a minstrel sing of the strange ways of the Seordah, how they preserved their forest home with Dark enchantments. It seemed a good place to seek answers, I was just one man after all, and certainly no warrior. What threat would they see in me? I think I walked for half a day beneath the trees before a Seordah put an arrow in my belly.

“He came to watch me bleed, a tall fellow with a hawk face that betrayed little reaction as I begged for aid. In time his face faded and the chill blackness of death came for me. It was then I heard them, the voices, whispering, shouting, pleading… There were so many. ‘This is the Beyond?’ I thought. ‘Just a void echoing with the voices of the dead?’ No endless serenity and wisdom. No eternity of calm. I must say, it was quite the disappointment.

“I realised the voices had faded, taking a collective breath as if suddenly muted in fearful expectation. Then one spoke, it was not like the others. They were thin, like the last echoes of a whispered song. This was the full, strong voice of a complete soul, but old, so very old.”

“The Ally,” Vaelin said, recalling the ancient chill in the voice he had heard as Dahrena dragged him from the Beyond.

“A name I didn’t hear until much later. But yes, it was he. And he had an offer to make. ‘I will return you,’ he said, ‘if you will be my vessel.’ I was awash in terror, not only of him but also of the prospect of eternity in this terrible void. The fear was such I might have agreed in an instant, but for something I heard in his voice: a boundless, desperate hunger, a need for what he sensed in me. It was overpowering, sickening, and I knew then there were worse fates than death.

“He felt my refusal, my repulsion, and I felt his will. The Beyond is a place that is not a place, a place of souls, but a place also of pain, if you know how to inflict it, and he did. I could feel him tearing at me, stripping away shreds of my being as his will lashed at me, not in hate but in precise, agonising flares. ‘Serve me,’ he said again, ‘Whilst you still have a soul capable of service.’ There was no hate in that voice, for I think he was beyond hate by then, formed by the ages into a being of purest purpose.

“I thrashed, I screamed, I wept… I begged. But still, I refused. It was then I felt another surge of will, but not his. This was something else, something not so old, but in its own way just as powerful, powerful enough to rend me from his grip. I could feel my soul re-forming then, though still much had been stripped away, memories of childhood and friendship lost forever. Even today I cannot recall my mother’s face, or the name of the wife who grew to hate me.

“My rescuer spoke to me, a woman’s voice, her will so different from his. Soothing where he hurt, banishing the terror he sought to instill. ‘You are not done,’ she told me. ‘I have seen your end, man of many lives, and this is not it. Seek out those like you, preserve all you can, for when you return, it is their strength that will sustain you, and bring the end you will come to crave.’ Then she said just three more words before casting me from the void and back into my body. The Seordah was still there, starting in surprise as my eyes flew open. From the blood seeping through my fingers I judged I had been gone for only a few seconds. The Seordah said something, sounding faintly annoyed, and drew a knife from his belt… then dropped it when I spoke the three words I had last heard in the Beyond, ‘Nersus Sil Nin.’”

“The blind woman sent you back,” Vaelin murmured. “She’s there, in the Beyond. She fights him.”

“She fought him then, but now…” Erlin shook his head. “Now it seems his power grows unchecked.”

Vaelin pushed the myriad questions aside, long accustomed to the realisation that any answers would be slow in coming. “The Seordah healed you,” he said.

“Yes. He brought others and they took me to their camp. My wound was grievous and it took many months before I could travel again. I learned their language, their legends, the truth of how our people had taken their land from them. I also learned there are no Dark enchantments protecting their forest, just great skill and fierce courage birthing enough fear to keep us at bay. In time, I said my farewells and went forth to fulfil the mission she gave me. I have not always been assiduous in my duties, given to distraction and sometimes wearied by the often-repeated mistakes and cruelties that beset humanity. But, I think I did what I could”—he glanced up at the misted steps above—“in the end.”

The mountain top lay under a vast silence as thick as the mist that covered it, only vague shapes visible in the swirling haze as they crested the final step. Erlin sagged a little from the effort of the climb, leaning hard on his walking stick and eyeing the shadowy forms ahead with naked trepidation. “I hate this place,” he breathed, voice soft as he straightened and started forward. “But then, so did those who built it, I imagine.”

They started forward into the mist, the shadows resolving into a cluster of buildings, all showing signs of having been crafted by the same hands that had built the ruins at the base of the mountain. They were mostly one-storey dwellings and smaller structures Vaelin took to be storehouses, forming a miniature echo of the Fallen City. But these were not ruined. The silence became ever more oppressive as they moved through the buildings, each empty doorway and window an uncaring witness to their passage. Despite the lack of damage Vaelin knew this to be an ancient place, the corners of the buildings smoothed and rounded by the elements. Also, in contrast to the Fallen City there were no statues here, the only decoration the faded motifs carved above doorways or windows, robbed of meaning by centuries of wind and rain. Whoever had built this place seemingly had scant time or inclination towards art.

It took only moments to clear the buildings, leaving them standing at the edge of a wide flat circle, in the centre of which stood a single flat-topped plinth. “Memory stone,” Vaelin said.

Erlin nodded and Vaelin heard the faint tremor in his voice as he replied, “The last to be carved, by the hand of a god no less.”

Vaelin’s mouth twitched in unwanted amusement and he turned to Erlin with a grin. “A god is a lie.”

They shared a laugh, only for a moment, the sound of their mirth soon lost amidst the mist and ancient stone. “Well.” Erlin took a firmer grip on his walking stick and started forward. “Shall we?”

Like the surrounding buildings the plinth’s edges had been softened by ages of exposure, though the flat top was smooth and unmarked, the indentation in the centre a perfect circle. “You’ve touched this before?” Vaelin asked Erlin.

“Four times now. I often seek out the ancient places, guided by the myths and legends I hear in my travels. One told of a forgotten city of towering majesty hidden in the mountains and guarded by savage tribes. I wasn’t overly surprised to find the reality didn’t match the legend, it rarely does.”

He extended his hand so it hovered over the stone, meeting Vaelin’s gaze. “Ready, brother?”

“I have touched these stones twice before,” Vaelin said, seeing the tremble in Erlin’s fingers. “They hold knowledge but no threat.”

Erlin gave another laugh, harsher this time. “All knowledge is a threat to someone.”

Vaelin extended his hand and Erlin took it, entwining the fingers. Closing his eyes, he took a breath and lowered their hands to the stone.