The Born Queen

1 Empress of the Red Hall

Anne stood on the bow of the royal ferry and stared up at the walls and towers of Eslen, wondering at how alien they seemed. She had lived all but one of her seventeen winters on that hill, within that fortress. The island’s forests and greens had been her playground. Shouldn’t she feel like she was coming home?

But she didn’t. Not in the least.

When they reached the slip and the boat was secure, her horse, Faster, was brought around. She mounted it for the procession through the city but paused at the great Fastness gate, frowning at the massive stone of its construction.

“Majesty?” Cauth asked. “Is something the matter?”

Her pulse was thumping strangely in her neck, and she couldn’t seem to draw a deep breath.

“Wait,” she said. “Just wait a moment.”

She turned and looked back the way they had come, across the slow flood of the Dew River and the green fields of Newland beyond, to the malends on the distant dike turning against the blue sky. She knew that all she wanted to do was cross that water again and ride, keep riding until she was so far away that no one had ever heard of Eslen or Crotheny or Anne Dare.

Instead she turned, set her shoulders, and rode through the portal.

Crowds had collected along the Rixplaf Way, and each square was full of merriment, as if it were a holiday. They chanted her name and threw flowers before her horse, and she tried to seem pleased and smile for them, when it was the best she could do not to bolt Faster through the throngs at a dead run. When she had returned from exile the previous spring, almost no one had recognized who she was. At the time she had been surprised and a little chagrined that so few people knew what their princess looked like. Now that anonymity was another precious thing forever lost to her.

By the time they reached the castle itself, Anne wanted nothing more than to hide in her rooms for a time, but she knew there wouldn’t be any peace there; that was where Austra would be, and she didn’t quite feel like facing her oldest friend. Better to confront her counselors and find out just what was being blamed on her absence this day.

“I’ll give an audience in the Hall of Doves,” she told Cauth. “I’d like to see Duke Fail de Liery, Duke Artwair, John Waite, Lord Bishop, and Marhgreft Sighbrand. Have them there in half a bell, would you?” “It’s done, Majesty,” the Sefry replied.

John Waite, of course, was already waiting in the Hall of Doves when Anne arrived there. Plump, balding, pleasant of expression, John had been her father’s valet. He’d been imprisoned and apparently forgotten by Robert, which was a better fate than most of the late king’s staff had received.

“Majesty,” he said, bowing as she entered the room.

“Hello, John,” she replied.

“I understand you wanted to speak with me, Majesty.”

She nodded. “Yes, John. I was going to wait until everyone was here, but we may have something of a delay while they’re all found.” She took a seat in what once had been her father’s armchair, a straight-backed affair with arms carved to resemble feathered pinions. Made of white ash, it fit well in the white marble and abundant light of the Hall of Doves.

“My father trusted you more than anyone, John, and I know the two of you were close.”

“That’s very kind of you to say, Your Majesty. I miss your father a great deal.”

“I do, too,” she said. “I wish he were in this chair right now, not me. But it is me, as that’s how it is.” “It’s what your father wanted.”

Anne almost laughed. “I’m sure he imagined Fastia here, not me. No one imagined it would be me here, I’m sure. Was I horrible to you, John?”

He smiled indulgently. “Just a bit of a prankster,” he said. “But I always knew you had a good heart.” “I was horrible,” Anne contradicted. “And I may be horrible yet; I’m still learning. But I hope you will consider being gardoald and keybearer of the house Dare.”

The old man’s eyes widened. “Majesty—I—I haven’t the blood for that position.”

“You will when I create you lord,” she replied.

John reddened. “Your Highness, I’ve no idea what to say.”

“Say yes. You won’t thrust a knife in my back, John. I need men like that.”

He bowed deeply. “I would be most honored,” he replied.

“Good. We’ll discuss particulars later, but the first thing I’d like you to do is see to finding me some ladies-in-waiting and a female head of staff. Someone absolutely trustworthy, you understand? Someone whom I don’t have to worry about and who will not bother me much.”

John bowed again, but when he straightened, he had a puzzled expression. “Your young maid, Austra. I should consider her for head of staff.”

“No, I have other plans for her.”

His eyebrows shot up in surprise, but he nodded. “As you wish.”

“Thank you, John. Please arrange for some wine to be brought and then rejoin me here. As my gardoald, these discussions will concern you.”

“Yes, Majesty.”

She heard footsteps approaching and looked up in time to see Artwair come in.

“Well, Cousin,” she said. “Here I am, just as you wished.”

“I am pleased,” he said. “We need our empress here, Anne.”

“I’m here,” she replied. “When the others arrive, we’ll discuss those matters you deem most urgent.” “Who else is coming?”

“John will be back. I’m making him gardoald.”

“That’s not a bad choice,” Artwair said. “You’ll have to title him.”

“I know. Can you think of a good one?”

Artwair frowned. “Haul Atref, I should think. One of Robert’s puppets slaughtered the former Lord Haul and all his kin. The castle is garrisoned but masterless.”

“Then I shall create him Lord Haul,” Anne said.

“Well, here’s my grandniece, back from her adventures,” a lowtimbred voice said.

“Grannuncle Fail,” Anne said, allowing him to gather her in a hug. “I trust all went well at Copenwis.” “As well as it could. I still don’t like it, but I imagine they’re in Hansa by now.”

“Mother will be fine,” Anne said. She heard more footsteps and saw that the others had arrived. “My lords,” she said. “Let’s begin, shall we? Tell me what I need to know. Duke of Haundwarpen, you first.”

Artwair drew himself up and clasped his wooden hand with his living one. “Hansa continues to occupy Copenwis, and they are massing ships there and in Saltmark. My guess is that they will disembark ground forces for a march on Eslen and send their navy against Liery. There are also reports of an army gathering at Schildu, on the Dew River. Their intention there is probably to cut off our river trade, then use the river to move down into Newland.”

“A familiar strategy,” Anne said. “That’s like what we did.”

“Precisely, Majesty.”

“Do they have the men to come at us from all of these directions and deal with the Lierish fleet as well?” Sir Fail cleared his throat. “If I may?”

“Spell on,” she said.

“They haven’t the ships to take Liery, not alone. But there is rumor that a fleet is assembling at z’Espino. Moreover, it is nearly certain that Rakh Fadh is allied with Hansa, although there’s no way of knowing how many ships they have or will send.”

“What about our allies? Or do we have any?”

“Riders tell us that an embassy from Virgenya will arrive soon, probably sometime tomorrow.”

“An embassy? I’m their empress. I don’t want an embassy; I want the ships and troops we asked for three months ago.”

“You may take that up with the Virgenyans,” Artwair said. “Of all of the parts of the empire, they are the most independent, and they like to make a show of it.”

“There will be a show,” Anne muttered more or less under her breath. Then she turned to the other two men.

“Lord Bishop, Marhgreft Sighbrand, I trust you are well.”

“Very well, Your Highness,” Bishop replied.

“Lord Bishop, we made you master of the treasury, did we not?”

“You did, Majesty.”

“What is the state of it?”

Lord Bishop’s lips tightened. “Robert did a bit of looting before he fled the city, it seems.” “Can we pay and supply our troops?”

“For the time being. But if we have another levy—even a modest one—it will make our belts very tight.” “Even with the confiscated Church properties?”

“Even with that, yes,” he replied.

“I see. Well, we need to find some more silver, don’t we?”

“Yes, Majesty.”

She turned to Sighbrand. “Marhgreft?”

“Majesty.”

“The duke tells us that troops are gathering at Schildu. That is very near your greffy of Dhaerath, isn’t it?” “It is. Very near.”

“I called you here to ask you to be my prime minister. I’ve been advised you would make a good one.” Sighbrand’s lips twitched. “I’m honored, Majesty.”

“Yet I wonder if your heart would really be in the job when your lands are in danger, so I will give you a choice instead. You may serve here as my adviser and defender of the keep, or you can take command of the armies of the east and defend us from there.”

The old warrior’s eyes brightened a bit. “I am a man more suited to action, Your Majesty, than arranging court appearances and the like.”

“So I thought. Very well. You will answer to Artwair, who is supreme general of my forces, and you will answer to me. Beyond that, you have leave to organize the armies of the east as you see fit to guard our borders. I will have your title and powers drafted before this afternoon.”

“Thank you, Majesty. I will not fail you.”

“I don’t expect you to,” she replied. “I don’t expect any of you to.” She settled her hands on the tops of her thighs.

“Now,” she said. “All of you. Can this war be stopped?”

“You did appoint an embassy,” Artwair pointed out.

“Yes, based on the recommendation of the Comven and on an idea of my own. But you are not the Comven; you are men I respect. I’m not a general. I don’t know much about war. So tell me what to think.”

“There will be war,” Artwair said. “They have come too far to turn back, and Marcomir is old. He has the backing of the Church. This is his chance, and he knows it.”

“The rest of you agree?”

The others nodded their heads yes.

“Very well, then. It seems foolish to give them any more time to make things as they want them. We will take the war to them, gentlemen. Where shall we begin?”

Artwair frowned. “You mean now? But Your Majesty—”

“I won’t wait until we’re completely hemmed in,” Anne said. “You say there are ships at Copenwis? Copenwis is our city, our port. Let those ships become ours or burn.”

“Now, that’s her de Liery blood talking,” Duke Fail said. “I’ve been saying that for months.”

“I’m settled on it,” Anne said. “Make preparations. I would like to march within the nineday.” “Surely you aren’t planning to go,” Artwair said. “You promised you were done with adventures.” “This isn’t an adventure. This is the war you’ve been asking me to fight. And Copenwis isn’t so very far from Eslen. I can return at will.”

Artwair looked unconvinced.

“You need me, Duke. I promise you. You need my gifts.”

He bowed stiffly. “As you say, Majesty.”

She rose. “Tomorrow, gentlemen.”

Then she did go back to her rooms.

Just as she expected, Austra was there to fling herself into her arms and kiss her cheeks.

Austra was a year younger than Anne, a pretty young woman with hair the color of sun on grain. She had forgotten how good, how natural it felt to be with her; she felt her intentions falter a bit.

“It’s been so strange here without you,” Austra said. “In our old rooms, all alone.”

“How is your leg?”

“Mended, almost. And things went well at the monastery?”

“Well enough,” Anne replied.

“And is everyone, ah, well?”

“Cazio is fine,” Anne replied. “You’ll see him soon, although not as soon as you wish, I’m sure.” “What do you mean?”

“He didn’t come back with me. I sent him to Dunmrogh.”

Austra face seemed to sag. “What?” she said faintly. “Dunmrogh?”

“I still don’t fully trust the heirs to that place. They might yet give the Church the dark fane there, and I can’t risk that. I need someone I can rely upon watching the place.”

“But he’s your bodyguard.”

“I have other bodyguards now, Austra. And you cannot tell me you wouldn’t be happier with Cazio safer.”

“Happier, yes, but in Dunmrogh? For how long?”

“He doesn’t know it yet, but I’m giving him Dunmrogh. I’m making him greft there and sending him the men he might need to hold that title should what remains of Roderick’s family object.”

“He won’t be back, then?”

Anne took Austra’s hand. “Don’t worry,” she said. “You’re going there, too. You have my blessing to marry if you wish.”

“What?” Austra’s eyes were like plates, and her throat was working oddly.

“You once told me that although I felt we were like sisters, we never would be, not really, because you’re a servant and I’m—well, now I’m queen, aren’t I? And if something were to happen to me, what would become of you? As a girl I always assumed you would be fine, but I know better than that now. Well, under the law, there’s no way for me to give a woman a title. But I can give Cazio one, and he can make you an honest woman, and your children will be nobles of Crotheny.”

“But that means you’re sending me away. I won’t be your maid anymore.”

“That’s true,” Anne said.

“I don’t want that,” Austra said. “I mean, it would be wonderful to marry and be a greffess and that sort of thing, but you can’t send me away!”

“You’ll thank me one day,” Anne said.

“Give Cazio a castle in Newland or make him ward of some part of the city. Then we can all stay together!”

“Now you’re wanting the dress and the cloth it was made from,” Anne said. “No. You will go to Dunmrogh. I’ve said it.”

Austra’s eyes were full of tears. “What have I done? Why would you do this? Anne, we’ve always been together.”

“As children. We aren’t children anymore. Austra, this is for the best. You’ll see. Be ready to leave by tomorrow.”

She left Austra crying, went into her chamber, and shut the door.

The next morning she took her breakfast in the solar, accompanied by her new ladies-in-waiting. She’d put Austra on the road that morning, with Sir Walis of Pale and fifty men-at-arms. She hadn’t gone down to see her off, fearing her resolve would weaken, and she reckoned they were a league away by now. She noticed that all the girls were looking at her and none were eating. “Ah,” she said. She picked up a piece of bread and spread some butter and marmalade on it. “There. The queen is eating.”

Lize de Neivless, one of the few Anne knew by name, giggled. A Lierish girl of fifteen, she had dark, curly hair and a stubby little nose.

“Thank you, Majesty. I was so hungry.”

“In future,” Anne said, “don’t wait for me to start. I won’t have you beheaded, I promise. Not for that, at least.”

That drew a few more giggles.

Lize tucked into the rolls and cheese, and so did the others.

“Your Majesty,” began a slender young woman with wheat-colored hair and oddly dark eyes, “I wonder if you could tell us about Vitellio. Was it wonderful and strange? Are all the men as handsome as Sir Cazio?”

“Well, not all of them,” Anne said. “Miss…?”

“Cotsmur, Majesty. Audry Cotsmur.”

“Well, Miss Costmur, there is no lack of comely fellows there. As to the rest, yes, I suppose I thought it was strange and exotic at first.”

“And is it true you worked as a scrub maid?” another asked.

“Hush, Agnes,” Lize hissed, clapping her hand over the mouth of a girl who looked about thirteen. “That’s not to be brought up; you know that.” She looked at Anne. “I’m so sorry, Majesty. Miss Ellis often talks without thinking.”

“Miss de Neivless, it’s no matter,” Anne said. “Miss Ellis is quite right. When I was hiding in z’Espino, I did scrub pots and pans and floors. I did what needed to be done to return here.”

“It must have been awful,” Cotsmur said.

Anne thought back. “It was,” she said. “And I was a pretty terrible maid, at least at first.”

But part of her suddenly longed for those days in z’Espino. She knew that was absurd. She had been in fear of her life, working like a dog at menial tasks, often missing meals. But still, compared to the times that came later, compared to now, those days seemed simple. And she had had her friends, and they had been working together to survive, which had rewards she’d never imagined while growing up in privilege. She would almost want to have those days back.

But it didn’t matter what she wanted, did it?

The girls began chattering among themselves, silly prattle about who was handsome and who was sneaking off to see whom. It made her sad, not least because she had been sillier than most of them not so very long ago.

It was a relief when John came to tell her that the Virgenyan delegation had arrived. Taking Lize and Audry with her, she went to change her dress and receive them.

She chose a black and gold Safnite gown, a light breastplate, and greaves. She had Lize trim her hair back up to her ears and chose a simple circlet for her crown. Then she went to the Red Hall.

As far as Anne knew, the Red Hall never had been used to receive ambassadors. Her father hadn’t used it for anything; it was in the oldest part of the castle and not very large. The king had preferred the more imposing chambers to overawe those who came before him.

But that lack of use had made it the perfect place for children to play. Her sister Fastia had held pretend-court there, throwing lavish banquets of cakes and wine or whatever they could pilfer or beg from the kitchens. In those days, more often than not, Anne had pretended to be a knight, since being a princess was—well, what she was. Austra had been her man-at-arms, and they had defended their queen from countless invasions and depredations.

Anne felt comfortable there. It also suited the image of the warrior-queen she had adopted to meet in less formal places, more face to face.

Today the hall seemed a bit large, however, because the number in the Virgenyan delegation was exactly three. The leader she recognized as a frequent visitor to her father’s court, the baron of Ifwitch, Ambrose Hynde. The black hair she remembered was grayer now, and his squarish face more lined. She reckoned he was about fifty. He had a vaguely apologetic look in his eyes that worried her. Behind him stood two other men. One was her cousin Edward Dare, the prince of Tremor, a man of some sixty years. His silver hair had been cropped till he was nearly bald, and he had a severe, hawklike look about his face. The third man, by contrast, was unknown to her and younger, probably no more than thirty. She noticed his eyes first, because something seemed odd about them. After a moment she understood that it was that one was green and the other brown. His face was friendly and intelligent, boyish, really. He had auburn hair and a small mustache and goatee that were redder.

He smiled, and she realized her gaze must have lingered on him while she sorted out his eyes. She frowned and looked away. They were announced by her herald, each in turn kissing her outstretched hand. The phay-eyed man turned out to be the Thames Dorrel, the earl of Cape Chavel.

“Such a large delegation,” she said when the immediate formalities were done. “It’s good to know our cousin Charles takes our troubles seriously.”

“She goes right for it, doesn’t she?” Cape Chavel said.

“I haven’t spoken to you,” Anne snapped. “I’m speaking to the baron.”

“Majesty,” the baron said, “I understand how this looks, but it wasn’t meant as an insult.”

“Well, I can’t imagine what an intended insult must be like, then. But that’s not really the point, Baron. The point is that Virgenya and her monarch are subject to the will of their empress. I requested knights and men in arms, not a delegation, and so I can only imagine you’ve been sent to tell me that Virgenya is in open revolution.”

“That we are not, Majesty,” the baron replied.

“Then you’ve brought the men with you?”

“They will come, madame,” he said.

“I rather need them now, not after the ravens are picking our bones.”

“It is a long march from Virgenya,” Baron Ifwitch said. “And there was difficulty in the levy. Monsters have been swarming out of the Mountains of the Hare, terrorizing the countryside. And since your actions against the Church—”

“What of the Church’s actions toward me? Or the good people of Virgenya?”

“Loyalty to z’Irbina has lately become a fashion in Virgenya, Majesty, especially among the nobility. No one actually refused to send men, but they have found ways to…delay.”

“You’re saying that the trouble isn’t that my dear cousin is insubordinate but that he cannot command his own nobles?”

“There is some truth in that, yes.”

“I see.”

“I’m not sure you do, Majesty. The political situation in Virgenya is very complicated at the moment.” “Too complicated for me to sort out, you mean?”

“Nothing of the kind, Majesty. I will be happy to explain it to you.”

Anne sat back in her chair. “You will, but not now. Do you have any other bad news for me?”

“No, madame.”

“Very well. Have a rest. I would be pleased if you would meet me at my table tonight.”

“We would be honored, Majesty.”

“Good.”

The two older men turned to go, but the younger stood his ground.

“What?” she asked.

“Is that leave to speak, Majesty?”

Despite herself, she smiled a bit. “I suppose it is. Go ahead.”

“You asked if we had more bad news. I do not. But I hope you will think I have brought a little good news.”

“Delightful if true,” Anne said. “Please say on.”

Ifwitch took a step toward the earl. “Tam, you shouldn’t—”

“Really, Ifwitch, I would like to hear this rumored good news.”

He bowed and didn’t say anything else.

“It’s true, some nobles don’t know where their duties lie. I am not one of them. Majesty, I’ve brought my bodyguard with me, five hundred and fifty of the best horsemen you will ever see. They—and I—are yours.”

“King Charles has released you to me?” She asked.

None of them spoke, although Ifwitch reddened.

“I see,” she replied. “He hasn’t.”

“Charles needs the nobles he trusts in Virgenya,” the earl said. “It’s really that simple. He knows I would never ride against him. But as I am loyal to him, so I am to the empress he serves, so I have come directly to petition you.”

“I didn’t think I would hear much pleasing today,” Anne said. “I was wrong. I accept your loyalty.” She shot her gaze back at the other two men. “It is a thing in short supply these days.”

2 Along the Deep River

Witchlights led the way as Stephen, Zemlé, Adhrekh, and twenty Aitivar descended into the roots of the mountain. The ethereal globes of iridescence flitted about, casting the otherwise bleak gray walls in shades of gold, silver, ruby, emerald, and sapphire. Stephen had never seen witchlights before entering the Witchhorn, but Aspar had spoken of them as a fixture of Sefry rewns.

Oddly enough, the Aitivar didn’t seem to know anything about them other than what anyone could observe. Were they alive? Creations of shinecraft or some natural product of the tenebres?

No one knew, and no book Stephen could find answered the question. But they were useful, and they were pretty, which was more than could be said about most things.

They were particularly useful just now, as the path they walked was barely a kingsyard wide, bounded on the right hand by the stone of the great central subterrain of the caverns and on the left by the crevasse through which the underground river Nemeneth sought its way through stone and earth to feed deeper streams and eventually, perhaps, the Welph, which flowed in turn to the Warlock and thence to the Lier Sea at Eslen. He could hear the rushing of the Nemeneth, but it was too far below him for the witchlights to reveal.

“Are you sure you’re ready?” Zemlé asked him.

“I’m sure I’m not,” he replied. “I wasn’t ready to walk the first faneway I walked. Then I nearly died—maybe did die—just setting foot on another sedos. But Virgenya Dare wasn’t ready, either. She just did it. And I’m not going to wait until the Vhelny or whatever it is that’s stalking me has its chance.” “Then the journal talks about the faneway?”

“Yes. I was reading an early part, when she was a girl, and the Skasloi took her into the mountains. This mountain. She felt the faneway below her. Years later she came back and walked it.”

“So she tells where it is.”

“Yes. I know where I’m going, if that’s what you’re asking.”

“Is it much farther?”

He smiled. “That’s what we used to ask my father on long trips. Have you aged backward to five?” “No. I don’t care how far it is. I’m just curious.”

“I reckon it at about half a league. It’s in another part of the mountain. Adhrekh, have you ever been this way before?”

“The cavern ends ahead, pathikh.”

“You really believe that, or is this just something else you neglected to tell me? Another test to see if I’m really Kauron’s heir?”

“It’s not a test, pathikh. We’ve never known where the faneway is.”

Stephen stopped. “It’s going to stay that way, then. Give me a pack of food and water and return to your rewn.”

“Pathikh—”

“Do it. If I even suspect you’re following me, I won’t go anywhere near the faneway. Do you understand?”

“Pathikh, this place you are going—it is old, very old, and it has been abandoned for a long time. There’s no knowing what might lurk there in the dark.”

“Stephen, he’s right,” Zemlé said. “Going alone would be foolish.”

“They’ve just admitted they need me to find the faneway. Maybe that’s all they ever needed from me. Maybe once I find it, I’m of no use to them.”

“Stephen, Sefry can’t walk faneways. Any faneways. Why would they want to know where this one is?” That drew him to a stop. “What? I’ve never heard that.”

“It’s true,” Adhrekh said.

Stephen frowned and leafed quickly through his saint-blessed memory. No Sefry had ever joined the Church and walked a faneway; that much was true. But there was something…

“As soon have a Sefry walk a faneway as give shiveroot for the gout,” he cited.

“What?” Zemlé asked.

“From the Herbal of Phelam Haert. It’s the only thing I can think of that supports your claim. Anyway, maybe they have someone in mind to walk it other than me.”

“Who? Not Fend, obviously. Hespero? Then why did they fight him?”

You can trust the Aitivar.

Stephen blinked. Everyone was looking at him strangely.

“What did you say?” Zemlé asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You were just babbling in some other tongue.”

Stephen sighed and massaged his forehead. “Nothing,” he said. “Never mind. All right, Adhrekh. You can come.”

Adhrekh acknowledged that by bowing, and they continued the descent. As the Sefry had predicted, the roof of the cave came sloping down to meet them even as the angle of the trail sharpened and finally became stairs. The churning of the river grew louder, and eventually the stairs ended on a bed of gravel and sand at its banks.

Stephen had been trying not to think about this part, but now he was there, and he felt his breath shorten. It wasn’t how he had imagined it; it was much worse.

Upstream, where the Aitivar dwelt, the Nemeneth was a relatively placid stream. Here, she came crashing down from a series of shoals and waterfalls to form a great vortex. The cave roof was only two kingsyards above that, and across the river was only stone.

“No,” Zemlé said. “Oh, saints, no.”

“I’m afraid so,” Stephen said. He was trying to sound brave and nonchalant, but his voice quavered. He hoped they couldn’t hear that over the steady thrumming of the river-size drain.

“This can’t be right,” she said, and turned to Adhrekh. “Haven’t any of you ever tried this?”

Adhrekh actually coughed out a little laugh, something Stephen had never heard the man do before. “Why?” he said. “Why would anyone do that? I could live seven hundred years if I’m careful.”

Stephen sat on the shingle and tried to take deep, slow breaths. The witchlights seemed slower now, calmer.

“Stephen?”

“I have to,” he said. He took a few more breaths, levered himself up, and walked toward the rushing whirlpool. He knew he couldn’t pause, and so he leapt in, aiming his feet toward the center of it. It took him with incredible violence. The power of the water was absolute, and nothing his limbs could do had any effect. All he could do was try to hold on to his air, not scream and let it all out, and he suddenly knew with absolute certainty that he somehow had been tricked. He was a dead man, and knowing that, he lost the power of thought entirely.

When it came back, he remembered being ground against sand and stone and then expulsion and the grip of the flood easing. Now he lay on gravel in utter darkness, coughing out the water that had forced its way into his lungs.

A golden glow rose up in front of him, and then a deep red one. A few heartbeats later the witchlights were all around him again.

He lay on a strand not very different from the one he had just left, but here there was no high-vaulted chamber, only a tunnel two kingsyards higher than the river flowing through it. Water crashed through the roof in a great column on his right, and on his left the passage went on much farther than his luminescent companions could reveal.

He heard violent coughing and saw the silhouette of a head and shoulders rise from the pool: Adhrekh. “Zemlé!” he gasped. Had she tried to follow him, too?

More Aitivar appeared, but he didn’t see her.

“Zemlé!” he repeated, this time at the top of his lungs.

“I have her,” someone said. In the stir he couldn’t tell where the voice was coming from exactly. “Who is that?”

Then he made out one of the Aitivar cradling a limp figure. He waded up onto the beach.

“Saints curse me,” Stephen snarled. “Is she—”

The fellow shrugged and lay her down. Her head was smeared with black, which Stephen realized was blood rendered dark by the colored lights. For a moment he felt paralyzed, but then she coughed, and water bubbled out of her mouth.

“Bandages,” he told Adhrekh. “Get me bandages and whatever unction you might have.”

Adhrekh nodded.

“Zemlé,” Stephen said, stroking her cheek. “Can you hear me?”

He took the sleeve of his shirt and pressed it to her wound, trying to see how deep it was. Her eyes opened, and she shrieked.

“Sorry,” Stephen said. “Can you hear me?”

“I can hear you,” she said. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes.”

“Good. Because I hate you.” She felt toward her brow. “Am I bleeding to death?”

“I think it’s a shallow cut,” he replied. “There’s a lot of blood, but I don’t think your skull broke.” Adhrekh returned with linen cloths and some sort of paste with a sul-fury smell and set about bandaging Zemlé’s head. He seemed to know what he was doing, so Stephen didn’t interfere. His pulse finally began slowing down, and he felt unexpected exhilaration flood through him.

Who was he to brave such things? Not the Stephen Darige who had left Ralegh for the monastery d’Ef, what, not even two years ago?

Even Aspar might be proud of him.

“Did we lose anyone?” Stephen asked Adhrekh.

“No, pathikh,” the Sefry replied. “All accounted for.”

“It’s colder down here,” Stephen noticed. “You brought the change of clothes I asked for?”

“Yes. And now I understand why you asked for them. But if you had told me more concerning what we were to do, I might have made more effort to keep them dry. I can better serve you, pathikh, if you talk to me more.”

“The extra clothes are wet? What about the coats?”

“Drier than what we’re wearing, pathikh.”

“It’ll have to do. When Zemlé can walk, we’ll move on. Moving will warm us.”

“Stephen,” Zemlé said. “A small question. Tiny, really.”

“Yes?”

“There is another way back, yes?”

Stephen glanced at the waterfall. “Right. I guess we can’t swim back up that.”

“Stephen—”

“Virgenya Dare made it out.”

“But you don’t know how?”

“She neglected to write about that, I’m afraid. But there must be a way out.”

“And we only need find it before we run out of food or freeze to death.”

“Don’t be a pessimist,” Stephen said, his elation starting to fade. “We’ll be fine.”

“How much farther to the start of the faneway?”

“I’m not sure. Virgenya wasn’t sure; it’s hard to measure time and distance underground. She reckoned it at several bells but admitted it could have been days.”

“What if we get lost?”

“Not much chance of that right now,” he said. “We’ve only one direction to go. Anyway, I can feel the faneway. It’s close.” He gripped her shoulder. “How are you feeling?”

“A little dizzy, but I can walk.”

Adhrekh had dug out the coats from their packs, sturdy elkhide paiden with fur lining. They were hardly wet at all, and once clothed in one, Stephen felt a great deal better even though he was still wet. Once everything was gathered again, they started out.

The passage bent and turned like the bed of any river and its roof went higher and lower, but it stayed simple in terms of choices. More streams joined it, but they came from above, from fissures too small to accommodate a person. The floor dropped roughly down in places, forcing them to use rope to descend, but was never as dramatic or dangerous as what they already had been through. Not, that is, until they reached the place Virgenya Dare called simply “the valley.” Stephen knew they were approaching it because the close echoes of the tunnel began opening up, becoming vastly more hollow, along with the sound of rushing water.

They came to the lip where the river churned and fell far from sight, and a vast black space yawned before them.

“And now?” Zemlé asked.

“There should be stairs here,” Stephen said, searching along the ledge. The river must have flooded at times and eaten at the sides of the mouth, creating a shallow, low-roofed cave that went off to the left of the opening. After a moment he found what the Born Queen must have been talking about, and he groaned in dismay.

“What’s wrong?” Zemlé asked, trying to see around him.

“Two thousand years,” Stephen sighed.

There were indeed stairs cut into the stone of the wall, but the first four yards of them were gone, doubtless eroded by the floods he had just been considering. After that, the steps that remained looked glassy and worn. To reach them meant leaping three yards and falling two and then avoiding slipping upon landing. Or breaking a leg. And once there, he had no assurance there wasn’t a similar gap farther on.

Behind him, he heard Adhrekh in a hushed conversation.

“Any ideas?” Stephen asked.

He heard the quick thump of footsteps and air brushed at his locks. Then he saw one of the Aitivar hurl himself into space toward the eroded stairs.

“Saints!” Stephen gasped. He didn’t have time to say anything else before the fellow hit the stair, flailed for balance, teetered—and fell. Then he could only stare.

“Who—who was that?” he finally managed.

“Unvhel,” Adhrekh said.

“Why—” But then another one was running past him.

“Wait—”

But of course it was too late. The jumper hit the step, and his foot slipped, so that he fell like a tomfool at a traveling show, landing on his prat and sliding. Stephen held his breath, sure the Aitivar would go over, but he somehow caught himself and managed to slip down the water-worn steps to stable footing. Stephen turned to Adhrekh. “What is wrong with you people?” he asked, trying to contain his anger. “You were just on about how long you could live if you didn’t do anything stupid.”

“You shamed us at the waterfall, pathikh. If I had known your plan, one of us would have gone in first. We were determined not to let you risk yourself so foolishly again.”

“What good would it have done to go into the water before me? I wouldn’t have known if you made it or not.”

“Begging your pardon, pathikh, but you might have been able to hear us below. You’ve walked the faneway of Saint Decmanus.”

Stephen reluctantly acknowledged that with a tilt of his head. “So you sent them to jump before I could try it?”

“Yes.”

“But I wouldn’t have jumped.”

Adhrekh shrugged. “Very well. But someone had to, unless you know some other way down.”

“I don’t.”

A sharp ringing commenced, and Stephen realized that the Aitivar on the steps was working at the stone with a hammer and chisel, probably trying to create some purchase to tie a rope to. Another Sefry began the same work on their side. After perhaps half a bell, a rope was fixed across the gulf, and Adhrekh went across, hanging upside down, hooking his legs over the cord and using his hands to pull himself along.

Before Stephen went, they tied a second rope around his waist. An Aitivar held it at either end so that if he fell, they had a chance of stopping him. That safeguard made Stephen feel a bit condescended to but infinitely safer, and he insisted that Zemlé be brought across in the same fashion.

Finally, with the exception of a man Stephen hadn’t known the name of, they were all on the stairs. The footing improved after ten or so kingsyards, the steps becoming more defined and the way wider. The witchlights occasionally showed the other side of the crevasse but not the bottom, or the roof, for that matter.

“It’s colder still,” Zemlé noticed.

“Yes,” Stephen agreed. “There is much debate about the nature of the world beneath. Some mountains spew fire and molten rock, so one would imagine there is great heat below. And yet caves tend to be cold.”

“Rather that than molten rock,” she replied.

“Yes. What was that?”

“I didn’t hear anything.”

“Up above, at the waterfall: a sort of scraping sound, like something big coming through.”

“Something big?”

“Archers,” Adhrekh said quietly.

Stephen tried to focus in the direction of the sound, but beyond their luminous companions there was only darkness.

“Is there any way to dampen the witchlights?” Stephen asked. “They make us easy to see.”

And then he smelled it, a hot, animal, resiny smell, just like the trace of scent in the aerie. “He’s here,” Stephen said, trying to keep his voice from showing his building panic.

A warm breeze blew across them, and Stephen heard the sharp hum of a bowstring.

3 The Geos

The beast saw Aspar coming and whipped its snake-necked head around, lifting its great batlike wings in challenge.

Aspar rushed to meet it, trying in the few instants he had to see where he should strike.

As on a bat, its wings were its forelimbs. It was crouched down on its hind legs, so he couldn’t see much of them. The head was vaguely canine, like some mixture of wolf and snake, and sat atop a kingsyard of sinuous neck.

That long throat seemed the safest bet. The feyknife ought to cut right through it.

But then it beat its wings and jumped, and as its long, sinewy rear legs unfolded, he realized that despite a few details, the thing was grown more like a fighting cock than a bat, as it was suddenly above him, kicking down with wicked claws and dirklong heel spurs. It was fast.

Aspar had too much momentum to stop, so he pivoted to his right, but not quickly enough. The spur of one foot struck his chest.

To Aspar’s surprise and relief, the thing wasn’t as heavy as it looked. Although the claw probably would have laid open his chest if he hadn’t been warded, it didn’t have the force to cut through the boiled leather cuirass he wore beneath his shirt.

It did stick there, though, and the thing shrieked and yanked, trying to get loose. Then it did the more logical thing and kicked its other set of talons at Aspar’s face. Aspar brought the feyknife up and through the wedged claw and almost couldn’t feel the blade cutting. Then he bounded up and slashed at the neck. Its reflexes were better. It hurled up and back, shrilling—

—and going straight into Winna, who went sprawling on her back.

Aspar started after the beast, but suddenly heard the thrumming of hooves and glanced to see what it was. The monster looked, too, but not in time to dodge the spear that struck it in the ribs and lifted it off the ground, propelling it along with the weight of a bay charger and an armored knight behind it. The knight slammed it into the trunk of an ash, and the spear shivered. The terrible beast crumpled and then started haltingly to get up.

The knight dismounted, drawing his sword.

“Wait,” Aspar said. “It might be poison.”

He was trying not to think that if it was like the greffyn, Winna was already venomed.

The knight hesitated, then nodded.

Aspar walked over to the creature. Its skin was barely cut, but it was clear that much was broken inside. It watched him come with curiously blank eyes, but when he was close enough, it hopped at him again. It was slower than before.

Aspar sidestepped, caught the leg above the claws with his left hand, and severed the whole limb with the feyknife. Dark, almost purple blood jetted from the stump as the head darted down to bite him. Aspar kept the knife coming up, however, and it went through the serpentine neck as if slicing soft cheese. He turned away from the bloody work and found Winna hobbling toward him.

“Stay back,” he shouted more loudly than he meant to.

She stopped, her eyes widening.

“The blood,” he explained. “Every one of these things is different. Its touch may not be so bad, but its blood might.”

He noticed she was rubbing her elbow.

“Were you hurt when you fell?”

“It’s you,” she said feebly. “I should have known. All I had to do was find a monster…”

“Yah, it’s me,” he said more softly, unable to keep his gaze from jumping down to her belly.

“You’re—”

“Yah,” she said. “Yah.” She smiled a wavery little smile. “I knew you couldn’t be dead. I told them.” He saw that tears were streaming down her face. She reached out her arms, but he took a step back, and she nodded.

“Saints, then,” she said, straightening and wiping her cheeks. “Get cleaned up so I can greet you proper. And you can tell me where you’ve been all this—”

Her gaze went out over his shoulder and became suddenly less tender. “Oh,” she said. “Hello.”

“Hello,” he heard Leshya say behind him.

Ah, sceat, he thought.

The knight had his helmet off, and he looked familiar.

“There’s a spring just over here,” he said. “You can leave your clothes and take my cloak. We can be to Ermensdoon in under a bell.”

“I know you,” Aspar said.

“Auy. I hait Emfrith Ensilson. You saved my life.”

Aspar nodded. “You look better than when I saw you last.”

“I should think,” the greftson said. “How are you feeling?”

Aspar shrugged. “I’m not so easy to poison as some.”

“From what I’ve heard, I’d hardly guess you were human at all,” Emfrith said, trying on a little grin that didn’t fit and was soon put away. Aspar didn’t miss the shy glance at Winna, either.

“Human’s not all your mother told you it was,” Leshya said.

“He’s human enough,” Winna said.

“Where’s Ehawk?” Aspar asked.

“In the mountains, looking for you.”

Aspar had been aware that more horses and men were approaching, and now they were there: twenty-two of them, most in the livery that Aspar remembered from Haemeth. A couple were dressed more roughly, and he reckoned they were trackers or hunters.

“We’ve a few extra horses,” Emfrith said. “I’d be happy if you and the lady would use them.”

“I’ll stay on foot till I’m clean,” Aspar said. “Where’s this spring you were talking about?”

“Just there,” the fellow replied, gesturing.

Aspar nodded and headed in that direction.

The spring came cold and clear from the ground and fed a pretty pool edged in moss and ferns. He wearily stripped off his leather chest plate and the gambeson beneath, which was so threadbare that it was worn through in places.

Next to go were the elkskin boots and breeches, and he slipped into water that was almost painfully cold at first but after a few moments felt perfect. He closed his eyes and soaked for a moment, letting the toxic blood flow away from his skin in lazy banners.

Truth to tell, he didn’t think that as sedhmhari went the—what, wyver? drake?—was all that poisonous, at least not compared to the woorm or greffyn, whose mere glances were enough to bring death to the weak. But he needed a moment to think, and with Winna in her condition…

In her condition. He suddenly remembered the huge sow back in the Sarnwood, the thing within her tearing to be free from its mother’s belly, and felt his breath quicken.

“The next human being you meet, you’ll take under your protection. And you will take that person to the valley where you found the Briar King sleeping.”

That was Winna. Of course it was, Grim damn it all.

Well, he wouldn’t do it. To the hanging tree with the Sarnwood witch.

But why would she want him to take her there? Why would she want that?

He heard a twig snap and shifted his gaze. It was Emfrith, coming toward him.

Aspar cast a glance at his armor, a kingyard away, but there wasn’t any time to get that on. The knife was within arm’s reach.

“It’s me,” Emfrith said unnecessarily.

“Yah,” Aspar agreed.

“I’ve brought my cloak. It’s probably best we burn the clothes, don’t you think?”

“Probably,” Aspar replied.

Emfrith nodded but didn’t go toward the abandoned garments.

“Didn’t really think I’d see you again,” the greftson admitted. “She kept insisting we search, and I did, because, well, I suppose I owe you.”

“Was that the reason?”

“Not really. But I did search for you nevertheless, followed the waurm’s trail into the Bairghs and lost it there. That still wasn’t enough for her. Two days ago she had a dream, she said. Said she saw you coming down through these woods. I reckoned one more look wouldn’t hurt.”

“But it did.”

He shrugged. “I could wish we hadn’t found you.”

Aspar nodded, trying to take in the whole scene. Were there archers out there? But this boy had taken on the woorm with only a lance and a horse. That was almost the only thing Aspar knew about him, but it suggested he didn’t lack courage or conviction. Honor sometimes went with that.

“I never reckoned I could feel this way about someone with common blood,” Emfrith went on. “But it’s not so unusual in my family. We’re not high royalty, after all.” His voice lowered. “I can give her a better life than you can, holter. And the child, too.”

“I know,” Aspar said. “How does Winna feel about all this?”

“What do you think? She’s been waiting for you.”

“And here we are.”

“Here we are,” the greftson concurred. Then he started forward, toward Aspar’s clothes.

“Maunt you we should destroy the cuirass, too? I can give you another.”

Aspar glanced at the worn piece of armor. He’d had it for a long time. He’d already lost Ogre. Stupid. It was just a thing, a thing nearly used up. And if Emfrith wasn’t going to try to kill him now, he probably was telling the truth about replacing it.

“I’m being chased,” Aspar said.

“Chased? By whom?”

“A pack of monsters,” he said.

“How far behind you?” Emfrith asked. He didn’t seem surprised.

“Well, the flying ones are here already, aren’t they? The rest could be a day behind or a nineday. I’m not sure about their route or how well they track.”

“We can fight them at Ermensdoon.”

“No, we can’t,” Aspar said. “Trust me.”

“What, then?”

“I—” Aspar began, but then his throat tickled. What he meant to say was that he and Leshya would continue on, draw Fend and his beasts off someplace.

That was what he meant to say.

“We can keep ahead of them. I know a safe place; it’s just a matter of getting her there.”

Emfrith frowned. “I understand your feelings for her, but if the monsters are chasing you, wouldn’t she be safer if she didn’t travel with you?”

Yes!

But Aspar shook his head. “They’re after her, too. The wyver was attacking her, yah?”

Emfrith nodded. “Yes,” he conceded. “But why?”

Aspar took a deep breath. Could he tell Emfrith about the geos? Then the boy could kill him or imprison him long enough to get Winna away from him.

It was worth a try.

“You remember where I got the berries that cured you from the woorm’s poison?”

“The Sarnwood witch, they say.”

“Yah.” There was a price for that. “She told me that Fend was going to kill Winna if I don’t stop him.” He wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.

“Look,” he said desperately. “You said Winna dreamed I would be here?”

Emfrith nodded. “Does she often have premonitions?”

“No!” Aspar replied. “No, she—” But that was all he could manage. He was like a strangpoppet in a children’s farce.

“We’ll go to Ermensdoon for supplies and the rest of my men,” Emfrith said. “And I’ll send out a few scouts to see if they can get a better idea of how far behind you they are. You killed the wyver; maybe they’ve lost you entirely.”

“Maybe,” Aspar said dubiously.

The ride to Ermensdoon wasn’t a comfortable one. Winna rode near him, and Emfrith wasn’t far away. Leshya hung back, but that didn’t do much good. No one wanted to talk in front of everyone, so they mostly went in silence.

Ermensdoon was an old-fashioned hill castle with a square central tower and a stout wall. It sat on a little stub of a mound surrounded by a moat so old and unused that it had reverted mostly to a marsh of cattails and river grass and was currently home to a number of ducks and coots.

“There’s a newer fortress a league south,” Emfrith told him. “A full garrison marched up from Eslen last nineday. I reckon the queen thinks Hansa may try a march to the Warlock and then take boats down. My father gave me Ermensdoon when I was little. Before that, it hadn’t been lived in for a generation.” Aspar didn’t really have anything to say to that, so he didn’t speak. Soon enough they were inside, anyhow, and he was in a small chamber in the tower. He was supplied with several cotton shirts, a pair of sturdy riding breeches, and calfskin boots. The thickset fiery-headed fellow who had brought them looked him over.

“What sort of broon you favor?”

“Boiled leather,” Aspar said.

“I can come up with a steel one, I think.”

“I’m not a knight. Steel doesn’t suit me: too heavy. Leather will do.”

“I can make one in a couple of days.”

“We’re in more of a hurry than that, I think,” Aspar said.

“I’ll start it, but I’ll see what else I might have on hand,” the redhead replied.

“Thanks,” Aspar said.

Then the fellow was gone, leaving him to his worries.

But not for long. The knock came that he had been both hoping for and dreading; when he opened the door, Winna stood there.

“Are you unpoisoned now?” she asked.

“I reckon.”

“You’ll kiss me, then, or I’ll know why.”

It seemed like a very long time since he had kissed her, but the taste came right back to him, and he remembered the first time his lips had met hers. He’d just encountered a monster then, too: his first. And the surprise of her kiss had easily matched the shock of seeing a kinderspell beast come to life. The kiss went on a little longer than its sincerity. Too many questions were behind those lips. They pulled apart, and Winna smiled.

“So,” Aspar said, glancing down at her belly.

Her eyebrows went up. “I hope that’s not a question,” she said. “Aspar White, I truly hope you’re not asking a question.”

“No,” he said quickly. “But, ah, when?”

“When do you think? In your tree house, back when we first saw the woorm.”

Cold crept along his spine. Winna had conceived the same day she’d been poisoned by the woorm. Of course she had.

“That’s not the look I was hoping for,” she said.

“I’m just—I’m trying to take this all in,” Aspar said.

“Yah, well, me too. Where have you been, Aspar? And what, by any damn saint, is she doing with you?” “That’s a long story.”

“Does it start with you leaving me here?”

Aspar wasn’t sure what that was supposed to mean, but he nodded. “Yah.”

“Well, tell me.”

“Sit down, then.”

She took a seat on the bed.

“I went off after the woorm, followed it for a long time up through the Bairghs. Deep up in there I caught up with it, but I wasn’t the only one. Hespero had been tracking it, too, somehow.”

“The praifec?”

“Yah. He tried to kill me, so I reckon he knows we don’t work for him anymore.”

“Tried to kill you?”

“Yah. He was in the wrong place to do it, up on a cliff and me below, so I gave him the slip. But Fend was there, too.”

“Right. Riding the woorm.”

“And there were Sefry in the mountain: Leshya’s people. I think they were fighting the praifec. But I was a bit occupied. The Briar King showed up, so only you and Stephen were missing.”

“You didn’t find Stephen?”

“No. I killed the woorm with the praifec’s arrow. Then I had a bit of a fight with one of those Mamres monks. He hurt me pretty bad: broke my leg. If it hadn’t been for Ogre, I’d be dead, and that’s certain.” “Ogre…”

“Died saving me.”

“I’m sorry, Aspar.”

He shrugged. “I meant to pasture him soon, but the chance just never came up. But he died fighting. Anyway, then Fend, ah, killed the Briar King.”

“What?”

“With the same arrow. Turns out it can be used any number of times, not just three. He was about to use it on me when Leshya showed up and got me out.”

“Convenient.”

“Yah. But I got sick after that, really sick. When I came to my senses, Leshya had found us a hiding place, but I wasn’t able to travel for months. Fend found us. He’s on my trail again, and he’s not alone. We can’t stay here, Winna.”

“You were alone with her for four months?” Winna asked.

“Yah.”

“That must have been awfully cozy.”

He felt a flare of anger. “That’s kindertalk, Winna. There’s nothing there. If anyone’s been courting all this time, it seems it was you.”

“Emfrith? He’s sweet. He’s not you. He’s not the father of my child.” She stood up. “And as for kindertalk, yes, I’m young enough to be your daughter, but that doesn’t make me a fool for being jealous. It just means I love you. I was actually beginning to lose hope, to think you were really dead, and then you show up with her? Just don’t get all angry and don’t dodge my question. You tell me nothing happened between you, and I’ll not raise this again, ever.”

“Nothing happened.”

She let out a deep breath. “Fine,” she said.

“We’re done with that?”

“Yah.”

“Good.”

“That’s all? Don’t you have more to say than that?”

Aspar closed his eyes for a moment. “You know how I feel about you, Winna. But maybe it would be best for you—”

“Stop,” she said. “Just stop there, Aspar. There’s no best for me. There’s only you. You know I never asked anything more than you could give, but you have given me something.” She patted her belly. “I never imagined a normal life from you, holter. You never promised it, and I still don’t expect it. But whatever happens, this child is ours.”

He stared at her belly, remembering the greffyn being born. “Winna.”

“What?”

Grim take the Sarnwood witch.

“Let’s get you somewhere safe, then. Somewhere you can have this baby without fear.”

“You’ll go with me?”

“Yah.”

She smiled and rushed to hug him, pressing the hardness of her belly into him.

“I’ve missed you, Aspar White. You’ve no idea how much I’ve missed you.” She took his hands.

“Where shall we go?”

He kissed her hands and answered. He meant to say that they would go to Virgenya or Nazhgave, anyplace that seemed outside the sickness wasting the world.

“To the Mountains of the Hare,” he heard himself say instead. “I can protect us there.”

And he kissed her again.

4 Two Maids

Faster was thunder beneath Anne as she galloped across the Sleeve. Anne felt a fierce grin pull at her mouth, and she shouted her joy up to whatever saints were listening.

It had been so long since she had ridden for the sheer fun of it. Once she had spent most of her time like this, eluding the pursuers her mother would send to bring her back for lessons or court. Just she and Faster and sometimes Austra.

Austra should be with Cazio by now. She hoped they were happy.

That thought brought her spirits down a bit. She wasn’t a carefree girl anymore, was she? The horsemen following her right now weren’t chasing her; they were her bodyguard, at her command.

She saw more horsemen up ahead, where the Sleeve began to turn, and slowed down a bit. They wore red, gold, and black over their light armor, and their shields bore a serpent and a wave. She recognized neither the colors nor their emblem. They were practicing some sort of riding formation, wielding compact bows. Targets had been set up, and they were already well feathered.

As she continued to watch, she noticed that one of the riders was quite slight, was indeed a woman. She fastened her gaze on that one, watching as she stood in her stirrups and casually loosed an arrow. It struck, quivering, in the heart of one of the targets. She wheeled her mount, already drawing another shaft from her quiver.

“Whose colors are those?” Anne asked Captain Eltier, the short, balding Craftsman who commanded her horse guard.

“The earl of Cape Chavel, Highness,” he replied.

“And Cape Chavel has women warriors?”

“Not that I know of, madame.”

A few moments later the horsemen broke off their activity, and two came toward them: the earl and the woman.

They stopped about ten kingsyards away, dismounted, and knelt. Anne saw that the woman was young, probably no more than fifteen.

“Rise,” Anne said. “How are you today, Cape Chavel?”

“Very well,” he said. “Just riding with my light horse.”

“And this is one of your archers?”

His smile broadened. “This is my sister, Emily. Not officially a member of the company, but I can’t stop her from practicing with us.”

Emily did a curtsy. “Pleased to meet you, Your Majesty.”

“You do very well with that bow,” Anne told the girl.

“Thank you, Majesty,” she said.

An impulse struck her. “Would you two care to ride with me for a bit?” she asked.

“It would be an honor, Highness,” the earl said.

They mounted back up and continued along the edge of the Sleeve where it dropped off steeply to the marshy rinns far below.

“That must be Eslen-of-Shadows,” Emily said, pointing to the somber stone structures poking up here and there through the canopy.

“It is,” Anne said, feeling the faintest chill. That was another place where she once had spent a lot of time, but unlike the Sleeve, she had no interest in revisiting it.

“It’s big,” Emily said. “Much grander than the one in Ralegh.”

“Well, more people have died here, I suppose,” Anne said.

“Oh,” the girl said. She sounded uncomfortable, as if suddenly remembering how many of Anne’s family had lately gone there.

“Come this way,” Anne said. “There are more cheerful things to see on Ynis.”

She nudged Faster back to a run, and the others fell easily in with her. The earl and his sister were as used to riding as walking; she could see that right away.

She led them toward the twin hills of Tom Woth and Tom Cast, glancing wistfully at the Snake, the sharp descent she once had used to escape pursuit into the rinns. None of that today. She led them instead up the grassy slope of Tom Cast, switching back and around until they reached its great bald summit, from which vantage the whole island of Ynis was laid out for them.

“It’s so beautiful,” Emily gasped. “So much to see in every direction.”

Anne had been there a hundred times before, but not since returning. She was surprised to discover that it all looked suddenly new to her, too.

East, the city of Eslen rose up in three magnificent tiers topped by the many-towered castle itself. North was the Dew River and the vast lake that was the King’s Poel, flooded by her uncle Robert and now colorful with hundreds of ships flying the colors of Liery, Crotheny, and Hornladh. The mist-covered rinns stretched south to where the mighty Warlock River shimmered like fish scales in the midmorning sun and also to the west…

“Thornrath,” the earl sighed.

“I never could have imagined,” Emily murmured.

“The mightiest wall ever built by Mannish hands,” Captain Eltier said.

That it was. The island of Ynis was formed in the confluence of the Dew and Warlock rivers where they opened into Foambreaker Bay. Thornrath cut the bay in half, a wall of ivory stone more than three leagues long. It had seven great towers and seven arches each big enough for two men-of-war to sail through safely. It was seven hundred years old; since its building Eslen had never been taken by sea. “It’s all very grand,” Emily said. “Thank you for showing me this.” Her eyes sparkled.

Anne nodded. “Well, you came a long way to see it.”

She turned to her brother. “Why did you bring her here, Cape Chavel? I’m sure she was safer in Virgenya.”

“No, I don’t think she was,” the earl said. “There she might be taken hostage and used to persuade me to return. Here I can keep an eye on her.”

“Anyway,” Emily said, “I’d rather be here than safe. It’s all very exciting.”

“What will you do when your brother goes to war?”

“I was hoping for a favor there, Majesty,” the earl said.

“What is that, Cape Chavel?”

“If some lady could be found who needs a maid…” He trailed off, looking a bit embarrassed.

“What’s this?” Emily said. “Why can’t I ride with you?” She turned to Anne. “I’m really not much good at sewing.”

“I might be able to manage to please you both,” Anne said. “I am presently in need of a maid, and your brother, for a time at least, will ride with me. I want to see personally how his men perform.” “Majesty,” the earl said, “that is very generous.”

“It is also very dangerous, Cape Chavel. Any maid of mine is in constant peril.”

“I can handle a knife and sword as well as a bow,” Emily said.

The earl pursed his lips and shot his sister a look probably meant to silence her.

“It’s true,” he conceded after a moment. “She can handle herself. There’s peril everywhere, Your Majesty. You may attract danger, but from what I’ve heard, you’re also good at repelling it. And to have my sister near me—it really is more than I could have hoped for.”

“Well, I promise nothing, but we shall try it out for a few days and see how we get along.”

Emily clapped her hands together but did not giggle. That in itself was promising.

A few bells later, in the Warhearth, the fresh air of the sunlit Sleeve seemed very far away. It wasn’t just the lack of windows but the heaviness of the room itself and the massive paintings of her family’s martial past. One picture in particular seemed to have singled her out. It depicted from behind the first few ranks of an army on some sort of rise, so near the bottom of the frame of the painting that only the tops of helms were visible, and in the next rank full heads, then down to shoulders. At the crest of the hill stood a woman in armor, also showing her back, but with her head turned back to her men. Her hair was flame, twisting about her in coruscating strands, and her eyes were incandescent, inhuman. Her lips were parted and her neck was taut, as if she were shouting.

Before the warriors loomed a massive, mist-shrouded citadel of dark red stone, and in the mists gigantic shadows seemed to move.

Genya Dare, at that last terrible battle, had fought right here, where Eslen now stood.

Genya Dare, who had let one Skaslos live to be the secret captive of the kings of Crotheny—until Anne let him go.

Follow me, she was saying. Follow me, daughter-queen.

“Majesty, if you would like to do this another time—”

Artwair.

“No,” she said, shaking herself back to the moment. “I’m fine. I was just wondering how the artist knew what Genya Dare looked like.”

“He didn’t,” Artwair said. “The model was Elyoner Dare.”

“Aunt Elyoner?”

“No, your father’s grandmother. A Merimoth, originally, but her mother was a Dare from the Minster-on-Sea branch of the family.”

“That’s her?”

“Well, she didn’t look exactly like that when I knew her. She was a good deal older. Why do you ask?” Because I almost lost my virginity in her crypt.

“No reason,” she said.

He shrugged, then pointed at the map he had spread out on the table. “Sir Fail will blockade Copenwis to prevent more reinforcements by sea. They will expect an attack by land because it’s the best and quickest way to take the city. The city isn’t really built for siege, and the highlands around it make it too easy to bombard with engines. That means they’ll try to meet us somewhere on the Maog Vaost plain before we get there.”

“And so?”

“And so I propose taking a somewhat indirect route to the city: moving east a bit and then doubling back to attack.” His finger described a half arc.

“We can send a smaller mounted force the obvious way and have them camp to provoke the waiting force to settle. They’ll have orders to retreat back to Poelscild. By that time we should have the position we want.”

Anne nodded. “If you think this is the way to do it.”

“We could take a larger force, but that would leave Eslen weakened, and we would still be delayed. If we go heavy on cavalry and light infantry, I think Copenwis might fall quickly.”

“We’ll try that, then. And if we’re taking mostly horse, I’ve a mind to take Cape Chavel with us.” Artwair frowned a bit. “His reputation is good,” he said. “His mounted archers are said to be without equal. But he got those from his father, and the man himself hasn’t been tested in battle. Besides that, I worry about his loyalties.”

“You think his allegiance to me is feigned?”

“I don’t know what to think, Majesty. That’s just the problem. I don’t know him.”

“Aren’t we better putting him to the test now rather than later?”

“I suppose. But with you riding along…”

“Not that again, I hope.”

He looked very much as if he did want to revisit that subject, but instead he shook his head.

“We’ll try him,” she said.

“As you wish, Majesty. Now, if we can talk about the defenses along the coast…”

Another two bells of that, and Anne headed up to her rooms, ready for a rest. She hardly had begun to undress when she heard a soft rap at the door. Throwing on a dressing gown, she went to see who it was.

The knock was from the Sefry guard, of course.

“Forgive me, Majesty,” he said, “but someone requests an audience.”

“In my rooms?”

“Majesty, it’s Mother Uun.”

“Ah.” She hadn’t seen the ancient Sefry for a long while. It wasn’t her habit to drop by for no reason. “Send her up, then,” she said. “And find some of that tea she drinks.”

“Majesty.”

A few moments later, two Sefry women were shown in.

Mother Uun was old even for a Sefry, and Sefry lived for hundreds of years. Even in the dusk light coming through the window, the spider work of veins in her face showed through translucent skin. She had her hair in a braid so long that it was wrapped around her waist three times, like a sash. The other woman looked very young, but with the Sefry it was hard to know what that meant exactly. Her face was oval, her eyes some dark color, her mouth a bit crooked, as if she were always on the verge of a deprecating smile.

“Majesty,” Mother Uun said, bowing. “May I present Nerenai of the House Sern.”

The young woman bowed again. “A pleasure, Majesty.”

Her voice was pleasantly husky, with a lilting accent Anne did not recognize.

“The pleasure is mine,” Anne said. “To what do I owe this visit?”

“Intrusion, I’m sure you mean,” Mother Uun said. “I’m sorry for the late hour. I won’t keep you long.” “Sit,” Anne said. “Please.”

The two took their places on a bench, and Anne settled in her armchair.

Mother Uun’s gaze seemed to pick through her. “Your power is growing,” she said. “I can see it all around you. I can feel you when I close my eyes.”

Anne suddenly realized how glad she was the Sefry had come, happy to have someone she could talk to who might not think her merely mad.

“I—things are happening to me. I do things I don’t understand sometimes, as if I’m in a dream. I think things…” She sighed. “Can you tell me what’s happening to me?”

“Not everything, I’m sure, but Nerenai and I have come to offer what knowledge we have.”

The tea arrived at that moment, and Anne waited impatiently while the two had a sip.

“There is a woman I see,” Anne said. “She burns, and she has power. She helps me, but I don’t know if I can trust her.”

“A woman? Not one of the Faiths?”

“She killed the Faiths,” Anne said.

Mother Uun’s eyes widened. “That’s interesting,” she said. “I don’t know what that might mean. Nerenai?”

“The Faiths are advisers,” Nerenai said.

“Not very good ones,” Anne replied.

The younger Sefry shrugged. “They are limited, it is true. Or were, I suppose. But they see things in the flow of the great powers that others cannot. And they have followers in the temporal world.”

“Yes,” Anne said. “I’ve met some of them. They kidnapped me.”

Nerenai frowned, and steepled her fingers together.

“The burning woman must be your arilac,” Mother Uun said. “It could appear as anything.”

“Arilac?”

“In the oldest stories about the thrones, there is a mention of the arilac, a sort of guide who appears to lead those who have the power to claim it toward the throne. She is your ally in that, at least.” “But the question you must ask yourself,” Nerenai said, “is what advice the Faiths might have given you that the arilac did not want you to hear.”

“I spoke to their ghosts,” Anne said. “They didn’t tell me anything about why they died.”

“They may not have known. It might have been something your arilac feared they would learn later.” “Then she isn’t to be trusted?”

“I would question everything she—or, rather, it—tells you. It wants you to find and control the sedos throne, and in the most direct manner possible. There may be other, more difficult ways that it withholds the knowledge of. If it asks you to do something you think is wrong, press it for an alternative.” “So if she asks me to cut off my hand—”

“I would question that,” Nerenai said. “Follow the arilac, but not blindly. Stay skeptical.”

Mother Uun shook her head. “I anticipated the arilac, suspected it had already found you the first time we met, but I did not know enough to help you with it. That’s why I sent for Nerenai. Her clan holds those secrets. She can help guide you.” She smiled. “A guide to help with the guide.”

“I am at your service, Majesty,” Nerenai said.

Anne studied the two women for a moment. Part of her desperately wanted to believe that Nerenai was sincere, but another part of her feared the woman was a spy. That was the trouble with being queen: She couldn’t really trust anyone. Suddenly, where she had once had friends, she was surrounded by strangers.

But I did that on purpose, didn’t I? she thought. Her reasons for it were still good.

“Before I say anything, I’d like to ask you something else,” she said.

“I’m at your pleasure, Majesty.”

“You know I freed the Kept. Was that a bad thing?”

“Yes.”

“How bad?”

“Very bad,” Mother Uun said. “Although I can’t be more specific than that.”

“He promised to mend the law of death and then die himself.”

“And he will do both of those things. It’s what he does between then and now that is likely to be the problem.”

“It’s been months.”

The ancient Sefry croaked out a laugh, and Nerenai smiled that little smile that had been waiting behind her lips.

“He’s been waiting for two thousand years, Your Majesty. A few months are a breath to him.”

Anne sighed. “I know you warned me. But I didn’t see that I had a choice.”

“You didn’t,” Mother Uun said. “I knew you would do it.”

“You knew I would do it?”

“Well, I was pretty certain.”

“Why didn’t you warn me about that?”

Mother Uun placed her cup on the small table before her.

“I said it was very bad to have freed him. But things would be worse had you died. You must claim the sedos throne, Anne, not another. Only then can we be redeemed.”

“Redeemed?”

“It’s an old thing, a Sefry thing. I should not speak of it.”

“Is that why you’re serving me?”

“While the Kept was prisoner, we were bound to watch him. Now we are free to serve you, and so we do. The moment he was free, our warriors came to find you.”

“And saved my life. And helped me win back the castle. And now you want to give me a maid. But I don’t understand why, Mother Uun.”

“Because you can put things right,” the old woman replied. “And I won’t tell you more than that or it will go to your head and ruin you. Now, do you want Nerenai or not? You are free to refuse; it changes nothing else.”

Anne felt a sudden claustrophobic panic, the same sort that she had felt at the gates of the city. I don’t want any of this! I don’t want to sit on any sedos throne or save the world. I just want Cazio and Austra back, to be back out on the road…

“Majesty?” Mother Uun asked, concern in her voice.

Anne realized she had tears running down her face. She shook back her hair and pulled back her shoulders.

“Nerenai of the House Sern, I would be pleased if you would join my ladies. But you must understand that there is war, and I will be in it, and you will be in danger.”

“We are all in danger,” Nerenai replied. “I am most honored to accept your invitation.

Anne felt something like a little curl of flame flicker up her spine.

This is a mistake, the woman said.

Maybe. But it’s my mistake. I make my own decisions.

The only answer to that was a derisive chuckle. Then the heat was gone.

5 A Storm in Hansa

Neil unbuckled his breastplate and, wincing, eased it down to the floor. He gazed at his murky reflection on its untarnished surface and sighed.

A tap came at the door of his tiny room.

“You’re welcome in,” he said.

The door pushed open, and Alis stood there, looking pretty in a yellow gown.

“Congratulations,” she said.

He nodded. “Thank you.”

“You don’t seem very happy,” she noticed. “Let me guess: You’re disappointed he ran like a dog.” “He withdrew,” Neil replied.

“You were chasing him,” Alis chortled.

Neil shrugged, which hurt. “I’m sad for him.”

“But didn’t you mean that to happen? Wasn’t it all bluff on your part?”

“I wasn’t bluffing,” Neil said. “He wouldn’t have believed me if I was bluffing. There’s nothing more frightening to a man who wants to live than an opponent who doesn’t.”

“Ah. So you don’t want to live?”

“My sword arm is bad, and my other is worse. The skill in my head has no way to my hands, and I won’t win a fight again by being the better swordsman. Not caring is the only weapon I have left. I won’t kill myself, mind you. But my next foe may not flinch, and that will be that.”

“You aren’t fully healed yet.”

He smiled grimly. “No. But I don’t think it will be much better when I am.”

“Well, cheer up. Today you’ve won, and in the best way. Humiliating Sir Alareik is better than killing him. The story is already growing; they say it was your face that broke his will, that your eyes were burning like the sun, that one was as large as a dinner plate and none could gaze straight at you, as if you were Saint Loy made flesh. They say no mere mortal could have stood against you.”

“If they couldn’t look at me, how did they see that my eye was as big as a dinner plate?”

“Now you’re looking for hair on an egg,” she said. “Rather than that, you ought to go father a few children; I think you’ll find plenty of offers tonight. And since you didn’t get any exercise in the fight…” Neil sighed and began working at doffing the rest of the armor.

“I didn’t mean me, of course,” Alis said.

“Is there anything else, Lady Berrye?”

She folded her arms and leaned on the door frame. “Sir Neil, you haven’t yet seen your twenty-second winter. It’s too early to act the broken old man.”

“Thank you for your concern, Lady Berrye,” Neil said. “I promise you, I’m fine.”

“I’m going,” she said. “I tried. And I did come to tell you something: We’ll delay here another day and leave at cock’s crow tomorrow.”

“Thank you. I’ll be ready.”

The road got a little better as they moved deeper into Hansa, creeping over low hills, along broad fields of wheat guarded by scattered farmers’ steadings. Men in the fields watched them go by without much expression, but they passed a pair of little flaxen-haired girls who giggled and waved and then ran off to hide behind an abandoned granary. Muriele could still see them peeking from there until they were out of sight.

“This could almost be the Midenlands,” Muriele mused to Alis.

“Farmers are pretty much farmers,” Alis said, “whether they speak Hansan or Almannish.”

“I wonder if they even care if there is a war or who wins it.”

Alis stared at her. “Are you joking?”

“No. You just said farmers are farmers. Their lives will be much the same whoever taxes them.” “Oh, yes, true, but in the meantime—during the war—their fields will be plundered and their daughters raped, and it could be either side doing it. Their sons will be pressed into service if they are needed, and they will die bridging moats with their bodies, since they have no skill at arms. They may not care who wages or wins a war, but they will certainly not want one coming through here.”

“An army of Crotheny would not behave so,” Muriele said.

“It would, I promise you. It has.”

Muriele was shocked by the conviction in her voice.

“Tell me,” she said.

Alis turned away. “Never mind,” she said. “This is a boorish subject. I shouldn’t have brought it up.” “You didn’t. I did. And as I am the queen and you are my servant, indulge me.”

Alis fumbled at her reins and studied her horse’s mane.

“It’s an old memory,” she said. “I was only five. We were poor, you understand. My father couldn’t even afford to keep our mansion in repair; some rooms you couldn’t even go in, the floors were so rotted. The river had shifted course before I was born, and half of our fields had gone to marsh. We only had five families living on the land. I can’t remember any of their names except Sally, because she was my nursemaid. I think she must have been about twelve. I remember she had red hair and her hands were rough. She sang funny songs to me, but I can’t really remember them.

“One day a lot of strange men showed up. Some stayed in the house, and some camped in the fields. I remember my father arguing with them, but I just thought it was all very exciting. Then one day when we were at Sally’s house, she told me we were going to play a hiding game in the barn. She was acting funny, and it scared me a little. She got me up in the loft and told me not to make any noise. Then some men came in and made her take her clothes off.”

“No.”

“Oh, yes. I didn’t know what was happening, what they were doing, but I could tell it hurt her, and I didn’t say anything. After they left, she cried for the rest of the day. I told my father about it. He kissed me and asked if they had touched me, and when I said no, he cried. Then he said there was nothing to be done about it. He said that we were at war.”

“The Causy rebellion.”

“Yes.”

“But Causy’s men were brutes.”

“The men at our house weren’t Causy’s men; they were knights and men-at-arms sent from Eslen. I found that out later, of course, and about all the other things those men did when they were living on our land. Not long after that I was taken off to the coven.”

“William hadn’t been king long when that happened,” Muriele said.

“Doesn’t matter who the king is. Armies have to eat. The men in them are off to fight and probably die, and it makes them—different.”

“You can’t be excusing them.”

“No. I hope the men who did that to Sally died in agony. I’m making no excuse; I’m just stating it as a fact.”

“All men aren’t like that.”

“Of course not. But one in a hundred is plenty, and there’s more than that,” Alis replied.

That afternoon, they saw ahead of them towering cloud castles flickering with incandescence. There was no sound, and Muriele felt breathless at the beauty of it. From time to time crooked blue-white lines leaped between the clouds or to the earth, but most of the fire seemed to be in the hearts of the thunderheads. Alis seemed as rapt as she.

So much beauty in the world when one had time to notice it. Why was that almost always on a journey of some sort?

Unperturbed by the fire in the north, the sun went his way toward the wood in the west, but before he reached it, a different sort of spectacle appeared before them. It looked at first like a cloud of dust, but soon enough Muriele could make out the banners and the red glint of evening sun on armor.

She remembered the little girls from that morning and felt spiders on her back.

“How many would you guess, Sir Neil?” she asked the knight as the army drew nearer. They had a good vantage from the top of a hill overlooking a long, shallow valley. Aradal had unfurled his banner, and she could make out an advance party on horse riding to meet them.

Neil pointed to marching men, who walked four abreast in a column that seemed to stretch for a league. “You see the banners?” he asked.

She did. They were hard to miss, as each of them was several kingsyards square. The nearest depicted a large horned fish. The other two were too far away to quite make out their figuring.

“For each of those banners there are a thousand men, or near. That’s an entire harji.”

“Harji?”

“The Hansan army isn’t organized like ours,” Neil explained. “In Crotheny, lords raise their knights, and knights bring retainers, footmen, levy peasants if need be. Men are organized by their natural leaders.” “But not so in Hansa?”

“The horse is arranged that way, but not the marching army. That’s divided into units: A hundred men are a wairdu. Ten wairdu make a hansa. Three or four hansa make up a harji, much like a Church legif.” “Sounds organized,” Alis remarked.

“It is,” Neil replied.

“But if a hansa is a thousand men, why is the country named so?”

“I never wondered about that,” Neil answered. “Perhaps Lord Aradal can tell you.”

Muriele hailed him, and the Hansan lord trotted his horse over.

“Your Majesty?”

“We were wondering why your country is named after a thousand men.”

He looked briefly puzzled, then smiled. “I see. It’s got to do with our history. The hansa is more than a thousand men; it is a sacred thing, a brotherhood, a saint-blessed guild. There was a time before the wairdu or the harji, but we always had the hansa. It’s the foundation of our kingdom, and it’s said that when we first conquered this land, we did it with a single hansa.”

“It will take more than that to conquer Crotheny,” Muriele informed him.

“Aye. But we have more than that, as you see.”

The outriders were nearly on them now. The leader was a knight in the livery of the Reiksbaurg, a writhing waurm and a sword. His helm was plumed with horsehair. He had about twenty men with him. When he drew up, he lifted off his helmet, revealing a young man with high cheekbones, pale golden hair, and eyes as green as moss.

Aradal was already off his horse and going down on his knee.

“Your Highness,” he said.

“Rise, please, Aradal, and introduce me,” the newcomer said.

Aradal straightened. “Queen Mother Muriele Dare of Crotheny, I am pleased to present to you His Royal Majesty Prince Berimund Fram Reiksbaurg.”

“My suitor,” Muriele said.

“A most unsuccessful suitor,” the young man replied. “It is most unflattering to be rebuffed not once but several times, and now that I look upon you in person, I am doubly, no, triply dismayed. Your beauty may be legendary, but even legend does you no justice.”

Muriele tried to look flattered and abashed, but the boy was half her age and the speech sounded practiced rather than sincere.

“With that golden tongue you should have pressed your suit in person rather than through envoys,” she replied. “Although to be honest, even Saint Adhen could not have persuaded me out of my mourning.” Berimund smiled briefly. “I hope to marry a woman as steadfast as you, lady. I should like to be mourned.”

The prince reddened a little, and a shy look crept across his face. He suddenly looked very young. “Let’s hope no one mourns you for a long time,” Muriele said.

He nodded.

“Blood and duty command me to tell you something else, Berimund. This host you lead—I hope it is not bound for my country.”

“It is bound for our border,” Berimund said, “but I am not leading it. I have been sent here, lady, to escort you to Kaithbaurg.”

“That’s sweet, but I already have an able escort,” Muriele told him.

“The king, my father, was quite adamant about it. Aradal is needed elsewhere.”

“Your Majesty—” Aradal began, but the prince interrupted him, his voice suddenly harsher.

“Aradal, if I wish you to speak, I will ask you to. My man Ilvhar will give you instructions. I will escort the queen from here.”

He turned back to her. “Your men will be guided back to the border unharmed, I promise you.”

“My men? They will stay with me.”

He shook his head. “You may keep your maid and a single bodyguard, but the rest of your escort must return home.”

“This is outrageous,” Muriele said. “I was assured that the old covenant would be maintained.” “Aradal had no right to make such assurances,” the prince said. “Your country has been declared a heretic nation by the holy Church. The old covenants no longer apply.”

“Do you really believe that?”

For an instant the uncomfortable boy showed again in his eyes, but then his lips pressed into a thin line. “I won’t argue about this, lady.” He nodded at Neil. “And I don’t expect an argument from your man, either.”

“You’re taking me prisoner and you don’t expect an argument?”

“You wanted to talk to my father, didn’t you?”

“Yes. To try to talk him out of this war.”

“Well, the war is begun, and your daughter began it.”

“What are you talking about?”

“She slaughtered five hundred holy warriors of the Church, sent by the Fratrex Prismo to keep the peace. The Church is our staunch ally. If it is attacked, so are we. Furthermore, we have news that she is preparing to assault our peacemakers in Copenwis. So we find ourselves in a state of war. You, Your Majesty, represent an invading force, and I would be fully justified in removing all of your men-in-arms from the fray. Instead, I’m doing the honorable thing and allowing them to return to Crotheny.” “And if I wish to return with them?”

Berimund opened his mouth, closed it, and seemed to think for a moment.

“My father told me to intercept your embassy and bring you to him on his terms. If there is no longer an embassy—if you no longer wish to meet with him—then I will take you to the border. He did not expressly tell me to take you prisoner.”

“But you imagine that was his intent? That if I do go, I will be hostage?”

Berimund sighed and looked away. “One might imagine that, yes.”

Muriele took a long breath, remembering the endless days in the Wolfcoat Tower, where Robert had kept her.

“You have some honor, Prince Berimund,” she allowed. “If I go with you, I would ask for your protection.”

He paused at that, seemed to study something in his head, then nodded. “You have it, lady, if that’s really what you want.”

“It is.”

“Very well. Your knight may keep his harness, for now, if I have his word he will not attack unprovoked.”

He eyed Neil, who looked to her. She nodded.

“I so swear by the saints my people swear by,” the knight said.

“Thank you,” Berimund said. He turned to Aradal. “Take the rest of these men back to the border. They are not to be harmed or disarmed.”

He nodded at Muriele. “When you are ready, lady, we will ride on to Kaithbaurg.”

Muriele felt her hair stir. The wind from the storm had reached them.

6 A Heart Found Changed

Cazio did not have pleasant memories of Castle Dunmrogh. A stone’s throw from it he had watched helplessly as men and women were nailed to posts and disemboweled, and those doing it had meant to hang him. If it hadn’t been for Anne and her strange powers, he probably would have died there. He very nearly had, anyway.

Even without that recollection to color things, he still wouldn’t have been happy. What was Anne up to? Was she being honest with him—did she really need him here—or was this punishment for opposing her? He remembered Anne stepping into the clearing that night, regal and powerful.

Terrifying, actually. And since then he had many times felt that power and terror. It was hard to think of her as the nymph he had met swimming in a pool back in Vitellio.

Maybe she wasn’t. Maybe that Anne was gone.

And maybe he didn’t care to serve the new Anne anymore.

He sighed, gazing up the hill at the gray walls and three-towered keep.

“What do I know about running a castle, anyway?” he murmured in his native tongue.

“We’re here to help you with that, sir,” Captain Esley replied in the same language.

Cazio turned to the fellow, the leader of the men Anne had put under his charge. He was short, with a steel-streaked black beard and hairy caterpillar eyebrows shadowing dark eyes.

“A nineday on the road and you don’t bother to tell me you speak my language?”

“I don’t speak it so well,” Esley said. “But I fought for the Meddisso of Curhavia when I was a young man and remember some.”

“Listen, if you heard me say anything uncomplimentary about the queen—”

“I wouldn’t have been listening to anything like that.”

“Good. Good man. Viro deno.”

Esley smiled, then jerked his chin toward the castle. “Looks in pretty good shape. Unless the Church sends half a legif to fight us, we ought to be able to hold, depending on the local forces.”

“So we’ll go introduce ourselves, I suppose,” Cazio said.

“I’m sure they remember you, sir.”

They didn’t, or at least the outer gate guards didn’t, so they sent for a member of the household to examine the royal letter before letting him across the moat with a hundred fifty men. Cazio didn’t blame them.

After the wait stretched into almost a bell, Cazio rested himself in the shade of a pear tree and closed his eyes.

He woke with Esley tapping his shoulder. “Someone’s finally come, sir.”

“Ah,” Cazio replied, raising himself up against the trunk of the tree. “Who have we here?”

It was an older man in an embroidered saffron doublet and red hose. He had a tuft of gray beard on his chin and a well-weathered face. He wore a floppy little hat the same color as his hose.

“I am Cladhen MaypCladhen de Planth Alnhir, steward of the house of Dunmrogh,” he said. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

“Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio the very damn tired of waiting,” he replied.

“I am sorry for that,” the man said. “I was not presentable when you arrived, and I thought I should muster the men. Considering all the trouble we had here last year, I don’t like to take chances. May I see the letter, please?”

Cazio handed it over, and the steward examined it for a moment.

“This all looks good,” he said. “I’m happy Her Majesty saw fit to reinforce us. There are all sorts of rumors about armies marching, although it’s been mercifully quiet here.” He handed the letter back. “Well, if you’ll just follow me, we’ll find you some quarters and you can start getting to know the place. I’m happy to pass on the responsibility.”

“Why?”

The steward paused, seemingly confused by the question.

“I…I’m just not cut out for it, I suppose. I’m really more of a scholar. Not much of a politician or a soldier. But Her Majesty purged most everyone else because they were involved in that business in the forest.”

He gestured. “Walk with me?”

“What about my men?”

“Yes, of course. We’re only half-garrisoned; plenty of room inside.”

They followed him into the outer yard, a pleasant green lawn that obviously hadn’t seen any fighting in a long time. The flagstone path led to a rather long drawbridge whose lifting cables were affixed to the top of the inner wall some thirty feet up. The bridge did not also function as a door, as in some castles he had seen; the door was to the right of the bridge and was in fact a heavy-looking portcullis banded with iron. Cazio looked down into the green water of the moat as they thumped hollowly across the span, wondering if there were any dragons or nymphs swimming in its depths.

As he stepped on stone again, he heard a peculiar sound, the hum of something going taut. Then, suddenly, Anne’s soldiers were shouting.

He spun quickly, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. He saw that the bridge was lifting, stranding most of the men on the other side of the moat. Those still on the bridge were tumbling toward him or pitching off into the moat. Red-feathered shafts were hurling into them, and cries of surprise became screams of pain.

Cazio drew Acredo but felt something suddenly close about his neck and cut off his wind. He lifted a hand, but it was seized, as was his sword arm. As black spots began dancing in front of his eyes, he felt his weapon stripped from his grasp.

He tried to turn but found himself in the firm grip of three grim-looking men, all Mamres monks. One had some sort of rope snare tightened around Cazio’s neck. He couldn’t even shout as they dragged him, struggling, toward the portcullis. He saw Captain Esley hollering, running toward him with drawn broadsword, and then the poor fellow was headless.

About then the sun went out.

He came back to his senses, and the only thing he saw at first was a long rectangle of grayish brightness and a thousand tiny lazily drifting motes. It didn’t make sense at first, but then he gathered that the rectangle was light on a stone floor, thrown there by a shaft spearing through a window some four pareci above. He blinked, looking away from the light, but it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. He tried to remember. He’d been ambushed…

“Oh, I think he’s with us,” someone said. The language was Vitellian, but crefo was pronounced more like “crewo,” the telltale of the aristocratic accent from z’Irbina.

“Wonderful,” another voice said. This was also in well-cultured Vitellian, but with a faint foreign lilt to it. “Let’s have a talk with him.”

As his eyes adjusted, the faces came into focus, but they were faces he didn’t recognize any more than he did the voices. Their clothes, in contrast, he recognized very well. One was clad in the black gown and red mantle of a patir. The other was all in black, with a single red star at the collar. Only one man in the world was allowed to wear that habit.

“Fratrex Prismo,” Cazio murmured.

“Oh, a devout,” the fratrex said.

“I’m only devout to the saints that love me,” Cazio said. “But I’m from Vitellio. Your portrait is everywhere. But it isn’t your portrait, is it? You aren’t Niro Lucio.”

“You’re two nirii behind,” the man said. “I am Niro Marco.”

“You’re a long way from z’Irbina, your grace,” he observed. “I’m flattered you came so far to see me.” “Cover your teeth!” the patir shouted. “You’re speaking to the Voice of the Saints.”

“Oh, let him talk,” the Fratrex Prismo said. “He seems an interesting fellow—a Vitellian dessrator sent to invest a castle with Crothenic troops? I can really think of only one person he is likely to be.” “Oh, it’s him,” another voice said from his right. Cazio turned toward the third man. “You I know,” he said. “Sir Roger, yes?”

“Yes,” the fellow agreed. “I wonder what you’re doing here.”

“I was just traveling with the soldiers,” Cazio lied. “Hoping for a free meal and a bed here tonight.” The highest man of the Church wagged a finger at him as if he were a little boy eating berries in the wrong garden. “Now, that’s clumsy. Have you forgotten you were carrying a letter from Anne?”

Right.

“No,” he said. “Just taking the chance that you can’t read.”

The patir started forward, but the fratrex held up a hand, and he stopped in his tracks.

“I really don’t understand your hostility,” he said.

“Your men attacked me,” Cazio said.

“Naturally. You were invading a castle we have occupied in the name of the saints. If you hadn’t had an army with you, we might have spoken first, but since you came on unfriendly terms—”

“I offered no terms, unfriendly or otherwise.”

“Where servants of the saints are concerned, Crotheny’s standard terms seem to be slaughter,” the fratrex said.

“We have fought corrupt churchmen, if that is what you mean,” Cazio said. “Very near here, in fact.” “That? That was a handful, and that was before Anne Dare made claim to Crotheny. I’m talking about since she usurped her uncle’s throne: the military expeditions. I’m talking, for instance, about the butchering of five hundred men at Tarnshead.”

“They meant to do the same to us,” Cazio said. “Ask Sir Roger there. They believed the odds were in their favor, and they were wrong.”

“Their throats were cut as they slept,” Sir Roger exploded.

“No, they weren’t,” Cazio said.

Sir Roger’s brow wrinkled, then cleared.

“Oh. You weren’t there, were you? You never saw what happened to them.”

Cazio opened his mouth to retort, but he hadn’t been there. Anne’s Sefry guard had led that attack. He felt a nasty something in his belly. The Sefry had lost only two men. Maybe the Sefry had killed them in their sleep. Anne wouldn’t have known about it, but the Sefry might have done it.

“He didn’t know,” the fratrex said. “I never thought a dessrator would be involved in such a despicable business, especially the son of the Mamercio.”

The name struck through Cazio’s breast like a sword stroke. “My father? How do you know who my father was?”

“The Church keeps records, you know. But beyond that, I met your father a long time ago. A man of honor.”

“You met him? Not with a sword in hand, I suppose?”

The fratrex smiled broadly. “I see. You want to avenge him?”

Cazio felt suddenly very light-headed. “It was you? You killed my father?”

The fratrex snorted. “No. I’m sure it would be convenient for you if I had. Give you good reason to murder me, eh?”

“My father was a fool,” Cazio said. “I never pledged to avenge him, only to live better and longer than he did.”

“Really? Then I don’t understand. You seem to follow the way of the sword, just as he did.”

“He fought for honor,” Cazio said. “He lost everything he owned and his life in a duel over a ridiculous notion. I fight for food and coin. I fight to survive, and I fight smart, for no other reason. I—” He stopped. It had been a long time since he had had this conversation with anyone, he realized. Why had he turned down the chance to walk the faneway of Mamres? Why had he been so disappointed when Acredo had been shot full of arrows?

Ah, no, he thought. How did it happen?

He tried to summon up the anger he’d once felt at his father, the outrage, the disdain.

It was gone. When had he changed? How had it happened without his knowing it?

The Fratrex Prismo was still regarding him, apparently waiting for him to go on. When he didn’t, the churchman leaned forward.

“So you’re just a mercenary, then? Honor means nothing to you?”

“I—Never mind that,” Cazio said. “Do you know who killed my father?”

“I’ve no idea,” the man said. “I knew him years before his death. He was on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Uni in Abrinio, and so was I. He saved our lives when bandits attacked.”

For the first time in years, Cazio remembered his father’s face and his voice, talking about going to Abrinio on pilgrimage. It was shocking how clear his memory suddenly was, how suddenly full of tears his head seemed to be.

“I don’t want to talk about this,” he said. His voice felt wet and gritty.

“What shall we talk about, then?” the fratrex asked. “What to do with you?”

“Why not?”

“It’s an interesting subject. And it depends so much, you know, on—well, you. I’m willing to imagine you’ve been guided up until now by a personal sense of loyalty to Anne rather than by honest opposition to the Church. But to maintain that viewpoint, I’m going to need some cooperation from you. I’m going to need your help with Anne.”

“Suppose,” Cazio said after a moment, “I offer you a similar bargain? Just an arrow’s flight from here I witnessed men of the Church committing the foulest possible atrocities. At first I was willing to believe that the clergy involved were renegades, but we discovered that the praifec of Crotheny was involved and that the events I witnessed weren’t unique. It seems impossible that the rest of the Church fathers knew nothing of this, yet I am willing to imagine that you were unaware of these abominations. But to maintain that viewpoint, I’m going to need some cooperation from you. I’m going to need your holy kiss on my bare arse.”

The patir was beet-red now, but the fratrex only smiled an odd little smile.

“I see.” He leaned forward. “I’m going to give you a bit of time to think about this, my friend.” He nodded, and the patir clapped his hands. A door he hadn’t noticed opened, and five large monks entered.

Cazio met the man’s gaze dead on. “I will tell you one thing: You shouldn’t go to Eslen. Anne will crush you.”

The Fratrex Prismo shook his head. “No, she won’t. I know something she doesn’t. If you help me, she might live. Otherwise I fear for her.”

“Fear for yourself,” Cazio snarled. “If you threaten Anne, I will have to kill you myself.”

“Really?” the fratrex said. “Well, you might as well do it now.” He nodded at the guards. “Gentlemen, loan us a pair of swords, won’t you.”

“Your grace,” one of the men said. He removed his heavy cut-and-thrust weapon and walked it over to the fratrex. Another man brought Cazio his own weapon, Acredo.

Cazio took the hilt. Certainly it was a trick of some sort, but at least he would go down fighting, not tortured to death in some dungeon.

He stood, not raising the sword until Niro Marco took the position of guard.

With an amazing quickness that belied his earlier assertion, the man lunged at him. Cazio caught the blade in perto, bound it down to uhtave, and struck the Fratrex Prismo of the holy Church in the chest. Except that the point stopped as if he had hit a wall. For an instant he thought the fellow was wearing a breastplate, but then he saw the truth: His point wasn’t touching the man; it was stuck in something a fingers-breadth from Niro Marco’s chest.

He tried to yank the weapon back for another blow, but all of a sudden his arms and legs went loose and he was on the floor.

“Now,” he heard the fratrex say, “these men will take you to a place of contemplation, but I’m going to warn you: I can’t allow you to reflect for long. I’m here only for a short time, and then I must go to Eslen, with or without any help you may be able to give me. I would like to save you, but if you don’t have anything to tell me by tomorrow, I’m going to have to encourage you any way I can. If that’s no use, well, perhaps we can still lustrate your soul before it leaves this world. It’s the least I can do for your father.”

7 The Walk Begins

When the witchlights went out, Stephen shouted and batted at the darkness. Adhrekh hollered orders, and Zemlé screamed. Then something rough struck him, and he heard a deep, ragged gasp of breath. His feet stood suddenly on nothing, and he heard a second shout, this one in that other voice. Do not trust…

Then silence and wind and the wait for the stop at the end.

Something hit him again and knocked all the air out of him. The pain was blinding, but he still could feel, so he figured he wasn’t dead.

That wasn’t so bad, he thought. The floor mustn’t have been as far as I thought.

But as he hiccupped air into his lungs, Stephen understood that something had him gripped tightly around the torso, and they were still hurling through the darkness. Was it one of the Aitivar, diving in a vain attempt to save him?

But they weren’t moving so much down as forward. Whatever had him was flying.

What could fly that was large enough to carry a man? Only something from legend and likely something nasty: a wyver, a dragon…

He cried for help but had the feeling the sounds were dying just past his lips. He couldn’t struggle. Even if he could, and succeeded, it would mean a long fall.

The smell hit him again, and the creeping sensation of something infinitely malevolent surrounding him, and he suddenly felt stone smack against his feet. Whatever had gripped him had released him, and he fell on his bottom.

He scuttled back, crablike, in terror to escape from the thing. A hard stone wall stopped his retreat. The darkness remained elementally absolute.

“What do you want?” Stephen gasped. “I—what do you want of me?”

He was answered by a thunder of incomprehensible words that seemed to roll around him, a gibbering no human throat could make. Part of him was fascinated despite the horror. Was this the language of demons?

“I can’t—”

“Hush.”

It went in his head like a pin through an insect. His mouth froze open.

“Is this the one?” the thing went on. “Are you the one? Are you shadow or substance?”

The voice was burring right in his ear—in both ears, in fact, as if whoever it was somehow was whispering in them both. It didn’t sound like a human voice, but he couldn’t say exactly why.

Stephen still couldn’t move his mouth, so he couldn’t answer.

“The smell of you,” the voice continued. “Revolting. I don’t understand how you don’t take your own lives from that alone.”

It paused, and Stephen had the sense of something immense slithering around him. But when it spoke again, its voice was still right in his ears.

“You smell of other things, too. You stink of the sedoi. It all rots in you, mayfly. All comes to you to rot. Or will.”

Stephen was shivering uncontrollably. He still could move his limbs, and he did—to roll up into a ball. “Hold still,” the voice commanded.

Then he couldn’t move at all, although the trembling in his limbs continued.

Suddenly the needle through his mind began to wiggle, and he was standing in front of the fane of Saint Ciesel in the King’s Forest. The forest rose up around him like columns supporting the cloudy sky. The fane was a tidy little structure of gray stone with a low-vaulted roof.

He blinked. He was staring at a different fane, that of Saint Woth.

And then he didn’t have time to blink as he flashed from place to place and from time to time. He was nine, looking off the cliffs behind his house and smelling the sea. He was watching Zemlé pull off her shirt. He was relieving himself behind a bush off the Old King’s Road. He was watching Aspar kiss Winna. Part of him understood that these were memories, but it all felt absolutely real: The weight of himself on his feet shifted—sometimes he wasn’t on his feet—the scents, the temperature of the air, and it all went faster and faster until his thinking mind suddenly stepped away from it all, watched it flow like a river. Not trying to recognize anything but just watching it ripple and move.

And after a moment he noticed another stream, deep and dark, running alongside him, almost touching, then joining and broadening the river.

What’s this?

But then even his ability to form questions disintegrated.

It took him a long time to understand when it was over, that he was back in one place and time, still shivering in the dark and paralyzed. He realized that the thing was talking to him again, and probably had been for some time.

“…going through it? Nonsense. I feel the bones. The bones are there. And blood in them, yes? In them. Ah, you’re back. Listen, mayfly. He doesn’t know me, not for sure. I like it that way. I think you will, too. So helpful, isn’t he? Do you ever wonder why he wants you to walk the faneway? Do you ever wonder that?”

Yes, Stephen tried to answer.

“Come, tell—ah, wait. I see. It’s already working. You may speak in response to my questions.” He felt something like a knot untying in his throat, and he gagged and then vomited. He kept heaving long after there was nothing left in his stomach.

“Answer my question,” the darkness snarled.

“Yes,” Stephen replied through his gasping. “I’ve wondered.” He wanted desperately to ask who he was speaking to but found he couldn’t.

“Do you know who it is?”

I won’t tell you anything, he thought. “I won’t tell you that I think it’s the ghost of Kauron.” He suddenly realized that he’d said what he was thinking out loud, and he groaned. What sort of shinecraft was this?

“Kauron?” it said. “That’s a name. That doesn’t mean anything. Do you know who he is?”

“That’s all I know,” Stephen said, feeling the words rush out of him. “He helped me find the mountain and the faneway.”

“Of course he did. No one wants you to walk that path more than he.”

Stephen didn’t bother trying to ask why.

“Well, walk it you will,” the voice purred. “I have no objection.”

Stephen felt the beat of wings and a rush of air. He uncoiled like a spring and then went loose, the shaking finally easing out of him.

Stephen lay there for a while, sick at heart, wondering how he ever could have imagined himself brave. It was the same old story: Every time he was close to feeling in command of himself and his world, the saints showed him something to shatter him again.

He opened his eyes and found that the witchlights were back with him. He was still somewhere beneath the earth but no longer in the vast open canyon where he had been abducted; nor was the river anywhere within sight, although he could hear it somewhere, far away.

He couldn’t hear anything that might be his companions either, even with his sedos-touched ears. He called experimentally, not expecting a response and not receiving one.

He tried not to think about the very plausible explanation that they were all dead. They couldn’t be, because that would mean Zemlé was dead, and she wasn’t.

So where was he?

The cavern was very low-roofed, so much so that he couldn’t stand, but it went on farther than the witchlights revealed in every direction.

Anne Dare had described a place like this; she had called it the “stooping room.” Had his kidnapper actually brought him to the start of the faneway?

Kauron, where are you now?

But there was no answer.

He didn’t feel like moving. He didn’t feel like doing anything. But after a moment he did, coming up to his hands and knees. He picked the direction where he seemed to feel the faneway most strongly and started toward it.

He didn’t have to go far. A column of stone appeared ahead, about as big around as a large oak tree. Scratched into it was the old Virgenyan symbol for “one.”

He paused. He had never encountered a sedos underground before. Above ground they usually appeared as small hills, though sometime they were rock outcroppings or depressions. What saint had left his footprint here, and how was he supposed to approach it properly? The faneways of the Church had shrines with depictions of the appropriate saint to help prepare the mind and body to receive his power. Here there was no such clue unless the number was some sort of cipher. But it probably just meant that this was the first place he was supposed to visit.

How had she known the order? Her journal didn’t say.

Feeling weary, he crawled toward the sedos.

When he reached it, he stayed on his knees and reached toward the stone.

“I don’t know what saint you are,” he murmured. “Else I would come to you properly.”

Maybe it didn’t matter. The Revesturi—those renegade clergy who had helped Stephen find this place—claimed that there were no saints, that only the power was real.

He touched the stone.

Something pushed through his fingertips and ran down his arm. He gasped as it clamped around his heart and squeezed. He braced himself for the agony, but although everything in him warned him that pain was coming, it didn’t.

He rocked back on his haunches as the sensation faded. His skin tingled lightly. An incredible sense of well-being seemed to wash down from his head to his toes.

All his pains—small and large—were gone, and although he remembered that a few moments before he had been on the verge of absolute hopelessness, now he couldn’t even imagine feeling like that. He touched the stone again, but the experience didn’t repeat itself.

Neither did it fade. He felt a smile tickle his face.

Why had he put this off? If this was any indication, walking this faneway was going to be a lot better than walking the last one.

He started off for the next station, which he now could sense as clearly as a voice calling him.

The roof dropped lower and lower as he progressed so that eventually he was crawling on his belly, his nose almost on the stone. A distant part of him felt claustrophobic, but it never became overwhelming. He felt too good, too confident that things were going his way now. Besides, at least two people had done this before and survived.

Soon enough his certainty was justified as the floor began dropping away. The walls came in, and soon he was back in a tunnel, albeit one moving downhill in a series of broken steps.

How long since a river had flowed through here? How long had it taken to cut the rock? An unimaginable period of time, surely.

How old was the world?

It wasn’t a question he’d thought much about. To be sure, there were scholars who had, and he had read the basic texts in his essentials at the college. There was plenty of speculation, but it fell into essentially two major schemes of thought: The world was created pretty much as it was a few thousand years ago, or it was very, very old.

Then as now, Stephen’s love for languages and ancient texts had been his central preoccupation, and the oldest texts in the world were only about two thousand years old. That was when Mannish history had begun. But there had been a Skasloi history before that, one that no one knew much of anything about. How long had the Skasloi kept slaves? How long had the Skasloi civilization existed? What was here before them, if anything?

These suddenly seemed to be very important questions, because it seemed to Stephen that the world had to have been around for a long time for water to dig channels through stone, abandon them, dig new ones, and so on. The saints certainly could have made caverns when they made dry land, but why make them appear as if they had been formed by natural processes that ought to take many thousands of years? They could do so, of course, but why?

And if there were no saints, if the power was just something that was, how long had it been here? Where had it come from?

How many times since the beginning of the world had someone—or something—walked this faneway, and what had happened?

The thought literally arrested him. So far as he knew, only Virgenya Dare and Kauron had walked this path. Virgenya Dare used the power to conquer and eradicate the Skasloi. Kauron didn’t seem to have survived to use his power. If he had, he surely would have stopped the rise of the Damned Saints, the Warlock Wars, and the unholy reign of the Black Jester.

Virgenya Dare had saved the Mannish and Sefry races from slavery. Kauron had died and failed to prevent what was in many ways a rebirth of the Skasloi evil. Now it seemed chaos and night were coming again, and it was his task to walk the fanes, wield the power, and set things right.

Could it really be that simple? Was he really the one? Would he succeed—or fail as Kauron had? He shook his head. Why hadn’t the Skasloi walked the fanes? They must have known about them. How could they not?

“Because the saints love us,” Stephen said aloud. “They love what is right and good.”

But that sounded so silly that he suddenly knew for certain that he didn’t believe it anymore.

The next fane was a pool of very cold water. He approached it without hesitation and thrust his hands in, and in an instant he heard a voice. The language was a very ancient form of Thiuda, but before he could cipher it out, it was joined suddenly by ten more voices, then fifty, a thousand, a hundred thousand. He felt his jaw working and then didn’t feel much at all as his mind shouted to be heard, to stay different, to not be swept away in the ocean of weeping, pleading, screaming, cajoling. Now it was all one sound, a single voice saying everything and thus nothing, thinning, rising in pitch, gone.

He blinked and yanked his hands from the pool, but he knew it was too late because he could still hear that final tone, itching far in the back of his mind, waiting.

Waiting to swallow him.

And even as he tried to force the voices out, they were starting to emerge again, not from the pool this time but from his own head. And he knew that when they did come back, his mind would be swept away.

All fanes have a limit. All fanes have a demand. They take and they give. If I don’t finish this in time, the voices will make me one of them. My body will starve. I’ll never see Aspar or Winna or Zemlé again.

He pushed himself up, trying to keep his panic down as the susurrus slowly waxed.

I finish, then. I finish.

8 Zo Buso Brato

The guards took Cazio down several halls and through the kitchens, where red-faced women in tan aprons and white head scarves labored about a hearth big enough to walk into without ducking. He wondered briefly if they meant to cook him or at least threaten to, but they pushed him on through the kitchen just as the scent of boiled beef and green vinegar sauce began to waken him to how very hungry he was.

He glanced at a large knife on a cutting table, still red from butchering. If he could get his hands on that— The guard behind him jabbed him with his sword.

“No,” he said. “Don’t think about it. They want you alive, but they didn’t say anything about hamstringing you.”

Cazio half turned. “There are six of you, and you’re still scared of me. Come on. Let me have the knife and you can keep your swords. I’ll show the ladies what a man really is. If they ever knew, you fellows have made them forget, I’m sure.”

He raised his voice a bit more. “What about it, ladies? Would you care to see a little sport?” “I would at that,” one of the women replied. Her face was a little wrinkled, but in the right places. “Shut that, you,” another of the guards said.

“Why?” the woman asked. “What will you do?”

“You’d best not find out.”

“Threatening women,” Cazio said. “Very, very brave.”

“Listen, you Vito scum—”

“Don’t be stupid,” a third guard said. “He’s just trying to goad you. Just keep your head and mind your orders. This is a simple job. Do it.”

“Right,” the fellow just behind Cazio said, and gave him another push.

“Sorry, ladies, another time,” Cazio said.

“Promises, always promises,” one of the women shot back as he was forced out of the kitchen and into a cellar, where once more his mouth watered as they moved among amphorae of olive oil, kegs of grain and rock sugar, sausages and hams hanging from the rafters.

“All right,” Cazio said. “Lock me in here, then.”

“Not quite,” the big fellow behind him said. “Dunmrogh doesn’t have a proper dungeon, but this will do. Stop.”

They were standing in front of a large circular iron plate set in the floor. It had a handhold cut in it, which one of the guards used to lift it up, revealing a dark hole a little less then a pareci wide. Another of the guards then uncoiled a rope and tossed one end into the pit.

“Now be good and climb on down,” the fellow said.

“Just let me take a few sausages with me.”

“I don’t think so. And don’t imagine the women from the kitchen will help you. We’ll be chaining the lid down. I don’t reckon any of them are lock picks.”

Cazio already had noticed the six heavy iron eyes protruding from the stone around the trapdoor. Not seeing any alternative, Cazio took the rope and let himself down into the darkness.

He went slowly, trying to use the light while he had it to see what he was being held in. That didn’t take long. The shaft was narrow enough that he could touch opposite walls by stretching out his arms—if he could do that without falling. More interesting were the hundreds of stoneware niches set into the sides of the shaft.

“I hope you left me some wine,” he called up.

“Weren’t any when we got here,” the guard called down. “Worse the luck.”

The rope suddenly went slack, and Cazio was falling. He yelped, but before he could do much else, his boots struck stone. His feet stung and his knees buckled a bit, but otherwise he was fine.

The shaft opened into a dome-shaped chamber about ten paces wide, the entire surface of which was riddled with the bottle-sized niches. He turned, trying to scan every inch of it before they took his light, but he didn’t see any way out or any wine.

Why would someone have such a nice cellar and no wine?

The iron lid slammed down, clanging so loudly in the small space that it hurt his ears, and he was in utter darkness. After a moment he heard chains dragging and settling and then nothing.

He stood there for a moment, then sighed and dropped down to sit cross-legged, trying to sort out his options.

The shaft was too high for him to reach, but with some effort he probably could use the wine niches to climb up the dome and get purchase enough to scale it and reach the trapdoor. But what then? He could wait there, hoping to surprise whoever came next, but how long would he have to wait? And would they really be surprised? Only if they were idiots.

Still, he marked that down as a possibility and moved on.

But there wasn’t much to move on to. He felt his way around the chamber in the vague hope of finding some hidden exit and rapped on the floor searching for evidence of a hollow but found no sign of either. He hadn’t really thought he would.

He searched the niches again, one at a time, on the chance that something useful had been left in one: a bottle of wine, a knife, anything to use as a weapon. Again he found nothing, and an attempt to break one of the ceramic niches to get an edge only hurt first his hand and then his foot.

His stomach was starting to complain, and he hurt all over. With an acquiescent sigh he made himself as comfortable as he could on the floor. Maybe something would present itself tomorrow.

He awoke from a dream of another wine cellar visited under happier circumstances, unsure whether he had been asleep for an hour or a day. He was distantly aware that something had wakened him but couldn’t recall what it was.

He sat up and was wondering whether it was worth his while to stand when he heard a muffled thump. His first thought was that the trapdoor was being opened, but then the thump repeated itself, and he felt the floor vibrate. His nose itched, and he suddenly found himself sneezing. The air was full of dust. The sound seemed to be coming from the wall, so he went to it and placed his hands against it. This time, when the impact came, he felt it through the clay and made out a thin shattering sound.

The next was louder still, and the one after that was suddenly sharp and unmuffled, as if he had been underwater listening and suddenly had surfaced. He felt air move against his face and smelled sour wine. Whatever it was hit again, and he felt clay shards pepper him. He shifted to put himself beside the rapidly growing hole.

Suddenly light came pouring through, so bright that at first he thought it must be the sun, until a lantern poked through the hole and he realized it was just his light-starved eyes playing tricks on him. “Cazio?”

Oddly, for the first heartbeat he didn’t recognize the voice, although in the entire world it was the one most familiar to him.

“Z’Acatto?”

A grizzled face pushed through the opening behind the lantern.

“You’re an idiot,” the old man said.

“How—”

“Just get through here,” the swordmaster snapped. “With your luck, they’re on their way to get you now.”

“Right,” Cazio said. He got down on his hands and knees and pushed the rubble aside until he could crawl through.

What he entered was another underground chamber, and from what he could see of it in the light of z’Acatto’s lantern, it was really enormous. A sledgehammer leaning against the wall testified to the method the older man had used to rescue him, and to make matters even odder, on this side of the wall there was a door frame that had been withed and plastered over.

“So there was a secret exit,” he murmured as he stood.

“Sealed up a long time ago.”

Cazio studied his mentor for an instant, then threw his arms around him. He smelled of wine and many days of sweat, and for a moment Cazio thought he was going to cry. He felt z’Acatto stiffen, then soften and return the embrace, albeit tentatively.

“I should have known,” Cazio said.

“All right, enough of that,” z’Acatto said. “We don’t have time to go all weepy. Here, take this.” He handed Cazio Acredo.

“Where did you get that?”

“Some soldiers were fooling around with it and left it in the hall near the kitchen. It wasn’t Caspator, but I figured it was probably yours.”

“Thanks,” Cazio said. Then he smiled. “You stayed.”

Z’Acatto’s brows collapsed in a frown. “Not on your account,” he said, wagging his finger. “I told you I was going back to Vitellio, and that’s still my plan.”

“You must be healed by now. You could have left months ago. Or has the Church been here this whole time?”

Z’Acatto’s eyes lit up with familiar mischief. “No, they only arrived a nineday ago. I found another reason to stay. Do you know who built this place?”

“I don’t know. The Dunmroghs?”

“The Dunmroghs? They’re the last crows to land here. This castle was built two hundred years ago. Back then the land was carved up into petty kingdoms by the knights of Anterstatai. Does that give you a clue?”

“Should it?” Cazio said. “The only thing I remember about the knights of Anterstatai—oh, no. You’ve got to be joking.”

Z’Acatto’s smile broadened. “Douco Cherfi daz’Avrii.”

Cazio took another look at the room they stood in and realized that all of the wine smell did not come from his old teacher. He was in another cellar, much vaster than the first.

“Impossible.”

“Come along,” z’Acatto said. “We’ll want to be far away when they find you missing.”

“You weren’t looking for me at all,” Cazio accused.

“Not until yesterday, no. But I have to eat, and the kitchen women told me you were imprisoned in the empty cellar.”

“Thank the saints for your sotted obsessions.”

“Yes,” z’Acatto acknowledged as he led Cazio through the vast storeroom. “I was down here when the Fratrex Prismo and his men arrived, so they didn’t catch me. I don’t think they even know about me.” “They haven’t searched here?” he asked.

“They don’t know about this place, either,” z’Acatto said. “The douco sealed it off before he left.” “Why?”

“To keep his wine safe, I imagine. He left the small cellar as a decoy. I’m sure he expected to come back.”

“Then how did you find it?”

Z’Acatto turned on him fiercely, hand on his heart. “I knew it had to be here. The douco was the greatest collector of wine in the world. He would never have been without a real cellar.” He waved around at the thousands of bottles.

“Aging for a hundred years. Of course most of it is vinegar now, but some is still potable. Enough for me to survive on for several months, at any rate.”

Cazio nodded. He had been noticing the piles of opened bottles that littered the floor.

“How many of the douco’s reputed cellars have we broken into now?” Cazio asked. “I remember the one in Taurillo when I was sixteen and that one in the house of the Meddisso of Istimma.”

“And the one in Ferria,” z’Acatto said. “But those were all different. They had all been in use. This one is pristine, and the barbarians living here never thought to look for it. Did you know even the small cellar they had you in was empty? Even before the Church arrived. Nothing they drink here improves with age, so why bother?”

They had reached a small, arched passage, but Cazio stopped in his tracks, incredulous.

“Are you saying you found it? Zo Buso Brato?”

Z’Acatto chuckled. “Four bottles,” he said. “And one from the year of the May frost.”

“Saints. I can’t believe—how was it?”

He frowned. “Well, I haven’t tasted it yet.”

“What? Why not?”

“Not the right time,” the swordsman replied. “Come on.”

“But where is it?”

“Safe.” He ducked into the passage. “Keep quiet in here. This passes near places where we might be heard.”

Cazio still had plenty of questions, but he kept them in.

The passage soon entered a larger and very smelly one littered with trash and filth and prowled by rats. A faint susurrus echoed within it.

Z’Acatto shuttered the lantern, and for a moment they seemed to be in pitch darkness. But after a moment, Cazio began picking out a little light coming from a narrow grate above them.

Z’Acatto, apparently waiting for his own vision to adjust, started off again. As they passed under the grate, the general buzz sharpened into the sound of a pair of women talking, but they weren’t speaking the king’s tongue or Vitellian, so he couldn’t make any sense of it. One of them sounded like the bold kitchen woman.

They passed under a few other grates, and then they traveled in darkness until z’Acatto reopened the lantern.

“We’re not under the castle anymore,” he explained.

“This leads out?”

“The douco liked escape routes. That’s how we got into the one in Taurillo, remember? And that’s how I found this one.”

Not much later, they emerged through a trapdoor onto a wooded hillside. Below, a wide river flowed lazily by.

“Here we are.”

Z’Acatto held up a leather bag. Inside were four bottles carefully wrapped in many layers of linen. “We’ll drink these when we get back home,” he said.

“That sounds good,” Cazio sighed. He meant it. To be sitting in the sun of the Piato da Fiussa drinking rare wine with z’Acatto, no worries about men who couldn’t be killed with swords or what was really going on in Anne’s mind or murder dressed up in fine clothes. Some cheese, some pears, a girl who wasn’t a queen or handmaid to a queen—

Austra.

Anne was supposed to be sending her to Dunmrogh. How long before she got here? Was she here already?

“I thought you would come around,” z’Acatto said. “There’s another bag down there with some drinkable but unexceptional wine; food, too. If you’ll get that—”

“I can’t go back,” Cazio interrupted. “Not yet. There are a few things I have to do yet. And I’m going to need your help.”

Z’Acatto shook his head. “I told you, I’m going back.”

“I’m not asking you to get involved in this war of Anne’s,” he said. “But Austra is in trouble, and I need to warn Anne about the Fratrex Prismo. After that—”

“Hespero,” the swordmaster muttered.

“What?”

“The Fratrex Prismo is Marché Hespero.”

“The praifec of Crotheny? The one behind the murders in the woods?”

The older man nodded.

“All the more reason I have to tell her, then.”

Z’Acatto’s frown deepened. “Don’t be a fool.”

“Weren’t you the one who used to chide me for my lack of honor? For using dessrata as a thing to get money and women? For not being half the man my father was?”

Z’Acatto lifted one eyebrow. “Last time we talked about your father, you called him a fool.”

“And now you’re calling me one.”

Z’Acatto put his face in his palm. “Saints damn you, boy,” he said.

Cazio put his hand on his mentor’s shoulder. “Thanks,” he said.

“Oh, shut up. Let’s go steal some horses.”

9 The Queen Rides

Anne reined faster to a halt just before the edge of the tree line. Below her the land dropped away in gently rolling hills. Less than half a league away the land started to climb again, a bit more sharply. A little stream wound its way down the bottom of the dale, and near it was the track of North Ratheren Road.

“I see them,” Artwair murmured softly. “Majesty, I won’t doubt your visions again. We would have been caught between hammer and anvil.”

Anne followed the line of his finger, and now she saw them, too, a vast camp in the fold of the hills, easily noticed from here but probably invisible from the road.

“How could they know we were coming? And coming this way of all the ways we might have come?”

Artwair wondered. “Even if some traitor flew to them with wings, they would have still had to march here from Copenwis or Suthschild. Look how settled in they are.”

“They have a Hellrune,” Anne replied. “A strong one.”

Artwair cocked his eyebrow. “I’ve heard those stories,” he said. “It’s Hansan rubbish, meant to frighten us.”

“You’ve come to believe I can see across leagues and time. Why doubt another could?”

“Your visions have proved true time after time,” he replied. “Your Majesty was blessed by the saints.” “If one can be blessed, so can another,” Anne said. “I thought he was out there. I can’t see him, but sometimes I think I see his shadow.” She laughed. “So I did something I’ve always disliked: I found some books on the matter. It seems some in the Hansan royal line are born with the power, and they raise them from birth on a diet of strange, distilled essences and liquors to make them stronger.” Artwair still seemed skeptical. “If Hansa really has such seers, why would they ever lose a war? Or make a mistake?”

“Even a Hellrune isn’t perfect, I guess, and some are stronger than others. And sometimes they are assassinated before the war begins.”

“But if they can see the future—”

“Not their own, apparently,” she replied.

“Then we should kill this one.”

“I’m working on it,” Anne told him.

“So he saw us on this road—”

“And I saw the trap they set, because of what he saw,” Anne replied. “And now we must set a trap of our own.”

“We need to know their numbers,” he said. “And the composition of their forces.”

“I’ll send my Sefry tonight,” she said. “The moon will be nearly dark. They can discover what we need to know.”

Anne thought she saw a brief look of distaste cross Artwair’s face, but he nodded.

Anne woke before dawn, shivering although summer hadn’t really begun surrendering to autumn yet. She lay there, trying to remember where she was, but the colors and shapes around her didn’t make any sense. She closed her eyes and was creeping out of a hole, stretching her eight legs to tick into the sand, smelling the sweet scent of something with blood nearby. She crouched, waiting, feeling the sick power of the earth inside her, feeling the forest stretch out away from her to the great shallow sea and beyond. She opened her eyes again and sat up, trying not to vomit, pushing at the bedclothes with only four limbs, trying to regain herself.

Quiet yourself. Don’t panic.

She was there again, the arilac, a brand in the night, and fear crept away.

But she still didn’t know where she was, exactly.

“Mistress?

She knew that voice. Nerenai.

“Dreaming,” she murmured. “Stronger every night. Harder to remember…” She shivered again, wondering what she was talking about, because she’d lost it again.

“What is it?” Another voice asked. It was Emily, her other maid.

“Majesty has had another bad dream,” Nerenai said. “This is what I’m good at. Go back to sleep.” “I’ll wait to see she’s okay,” Emily replied.

Something warm touched Anne’s lips, and then she tasted something slightly bitter. She liked it and drank more.

“This will help,” the Sefry said. “Was it prophecy?”

“No,” Anne replied. “Those are—sharper. No, this—this is different. Like memories so real, I think they’re mine. Sometimes not even human memories. I think, just now, I was a spider.” She stopped again. “It sounds crazy, but it’s getting harder to remember who I am when I wake up.”

Nerenai was silent for a moment. She gave Anne another sip of the tea. “Nothing vanishes,” she said. “When we die, the river takes it all, but what is in us does not go away.”

“I’ve seen that river,” Anne said. “I’ve seen it take a man.”

“Yes. It swallows us, and in time it pulls us apart and we forget everything. But the things we knew are still there, in the waters—but not in us anymore, because the thing in us that holds it all together is gone.” She was moving her fingers as if sketching.

“There is another river,” she continued, “or perhaps another part of the same one, and there, those with the power to do so can drink and bring those memories and knowledge back into the world, held in new vessels.”

“It’s more than memories,” Anne said. “There is something more there.” She took a longer sip of the tea and realized she did feel better. “It will drive me mad. What use to have the memories of a spider?” “It sounds dreadful,” Emily said.

“Was it an ordinary spider?” Nerenai asked.

“That’s a weird question,” Emily opined.

Anne considered that. “No,” she said after a moment. “Nerenai is right. I think the spider was like me. I felt power in it, the way I feel when I use Cer’s gifts.”

“Maybe you are the spider, remembering Anne,” the Sefry said.

“Don’t joke,” Anne said, feeling sick again, knowing the Sefry wasn’t joking.

“Yes, Majesty,” she replied.

They sat there for a while in the dark, but Anne didn’t feel like going back to sleep. Not much later, word came that the night patrol had come back, so she rose and dressed and went to the war tent.

She found Artwair, the earl of Chavel, and Captain Leafton of her Craftsmen mulling over and marking on a map. They all bowed when she entered.

“Yes, yes,” Anne said. “What’s the report, Duke Artwair?”

“Heol and his boys make them at about ten thousand,” he said. “Half on either side of the road.” “That’s only about two thousand more than we have,” Anne noticed.

“Auy. But given surprise and their situation—they expect us between them, in the valley, remember—they could have murdered us with fewer men. A few volleys from the archers and a few charges with heavy cavalry to break our center before the men could be decently ready to fight. They could have done it with six thousand.”

“And so what do we do?”

“There are just over three thousand foot on this side of the valley and about five hundred horse. If we try to move our whole army up, they’ll detect us and have time to bring the other half over and face us with greater numbers.”

“So we send the horse now,” Anne said. “We have what, three thousand?”

“About that. We’ve the earl’s five hundred and fifty, a thousand heavy lancers with Lord Kenwulf, another thousand of mine, your fifty Craftsmen, two hundred light horse, and your hundred Sefry mounted light infantry. If we take them unawares, we can decimate those on this side. By the time the rest come over, our foot will have arrived and we can fight this battle on our terms.”

“It means leaving the foot marching unprotected by cavalry,” Leafton pointed out.

“Who do they need to be protected from?”

The Craftsman shrugged.

“Raiht,” Artwair said. “Better we should leave a small mounted force here. Perhaps that would suit you, Earl.”

“Whatever pleases Her Majesty pleases me,” the earl said, “but I would prefer to ride with the attack. I think that my archers might have been practically invented for this situation.”

“He has a point,” Leafton said. “We’ve archers in the light cavalry, but they and the Sefry generally dismount to fire. We could use archers experienced at actually shooting from horseback.”

Artwair nodded and sent a probing look at Anne.

“Yes, come along with us, Cape Chavel,” she said. “It ought to be fun.”

Preparations went quickly, and before midday they were riding. Anne was surrounded by her twelve Mamres-gifted Craftsmen and her Sefry guard in their broad-brimmed hats and scarves. Ahead of her was the vanguard, Kenwulf’s heavy horse, fifty knights, each with twenty handpicked riders. The light horse and Sefry rode on the right wing, and the earl’s men on her left.

Two bells later they were trotting down the hills. Anne had a brief view of the camp, and her scalp started to tingle. Had they been noticed yet? The ground must be starting to tremble from so many hooves.

They breasted a wide ridge, and there was nothing but a few hundred kingsyards between them and the enemy.

The Hansans were boiling like ants whose hill had just been kicked, trying to make formations, but as of yet she didn’t see a single pike hedge, although a rickety-looking shield wall was forming.

“Give the order to charge,” she told Leafton.

He nodded, lifted his cornet, and sounded it. The heavy horse in front of her formed a line five deep and two hundred wide, massed together so closely that an apple thrown among them wouldn’t find its way to the ground. They began the advance slowly but soon began to gather speed.

The air was already thick with the arrows of her men, and she felt a savage joy as they swept down from the ridge, her guard forming a wall around her.

Joy mingled with the now familiar sick rage of Cer as she reached out toward the Hansans, feeling the wet insides of them. As if with her hands, she softly squeezed.

And as the heavy horse shocked into them, she heard the vast sob of their despair. Some who had lifted their pikes dropped them.

The vanguard tore through the half-formed Hansan lines, and the light horse spread to encircle them. But to her chagrin, the knights around her were drawing to a halt.

“What’s this?” she said.

“We’re to keep you safe, Majesty,” Leafton said. “The duke’s orders. No need for you to be down in there where a stray arrow or lance might find you.”

“Artwair is my general,” she replied. “His orders weigh less than mine. Resume the charge, or by the saints, I’ll go down without you.”

“Majesty—”

“Your only possible response, Captain Leafton, is ‘Yes, Majesty.’”

“Yes, Majesty,” he sighed. Then, in a louder voice: “Resume charge.”

They struck what remained of the right flank, but there was little resistance to speak of. In moments the army of Hansa broke and ran, with her knights cutting them down from behind. Anne saw that some of their cavalry had managed to form up and were trying to help cover their fleeing comrades, without much success.

And so she found herself in the center of the camp, the dead and dying spread around her. She felt something swelling inside her, a terrible glee, and realized the woman was there, alive in the power that Anne was funneling through her.

You see? You see what real strength is? And this is only the beginning.

“Good,” Anne said, exhilarated.

“Something’s wrong,” Leafton said.

“How so?”

“This doesn’t look like five thousand men, not even half of that.”

Wait… The arilac sounded suddenly uncertain, something Anne never had sensed from her before. “What is it?”

The Hellrune! The Hellrune saw this, too! He’s a step ahead of you! Anne, flee!

Anne turned to Leafton, but he already had an arrow in his eye, and shafts were falling about them like rain from the north. She knew a sharp rush of pain as one cut along her arm, and then there were shields all around her.

“Someone sound the retreat,” she screamed. “We’ve been tricked. We’ve got to get back to the infantry.”

A moment later the cornet shrilled. Her own guard was already in motion, charging back up the way they had come, but there were horsemen there, charging right down at them. It looked like double their number.

10 Kaithbaurg

Sinister black walls beneath dark skies surrounded by leagues of desert rubble: That was what Neil expected of Kaithbaurg. That certainly was how it was in the stories his old neiny Eley had told him when he was a little bern. Kaithbaurg, the city of black towers where evil dwelt.

But the road took them through pleasant fields, woodlands, and bustling little market towns. In the nineday it took to reach the heart of Hansa, they camped only once, resting instead in comfortable inns or castles. His Hanzish sharpened until he almost didn’t have to concentrate at all to speak or understand it, even though the country dialects were much softer and less clipped than the coastal vernacular he had learned.

Still, until the road crested a ridge and he actually saw Kaithbaurg, the image of brutal black walls with merlons like shark’s teeth was still in his mind.

Well, there were walls and towers, but that was about as close as his old neiny had come to the truth. He realized they had drawn to a stop.

“You can see it best from here,” Berimund said. “It’s my favorite view.”

“I can see why,” the queen mother said. “One can really see most of it, it seems.”

It was true. Whereas Eslen was built on a rather dramatic hill, the loftiest point of Kaithbaurg wasn’t terribly higher than the lowest, which was the Donau River. The watercourse cut the city into two roughly semicircular parts: a smaller one on their side of the river and a much larger one on the northern side. Three great spans connected them.

Both parts of the city were surrounded by double walls of grayish-white stone. The outer wall was low and towerless. Just inside of it was a broad canal and then an embanked inner wall that looked about six or seven kingsyards high. The inner walls were guarded by a number of elegant, efficient-looking drum towers.

Towers bristled everywhere, in fact: delicate clock belfries with steepled roofs of black slate or green copper, massive cylindrical bastions wherever the walls met the river, sky-reaching gatehouse spires on the bridges.

More surprising was that although houses of all sorts were packed within the walls, Neil also could make out a good bit of green, as if there were fields in there.

The northern side of the city sloped gently up to another wall of darker-looking stone that encircled the hilltop, and the roof of some sort of keep or palace built of white stone could be partly seen. “That’s the castle?” Neil asked, pointing to the last feature.

Berimund smiled. “A warrior’s question, eh? That’s the palace, yes. Everything inside of those older walls is Hauhhaim; that was the first city, here before everything else. Come down toward the river, and that’s Nithirhaim. The part nearest us, with all the green, is Gildgards. The west side of town—you can’t see it well from here—that’s Niujaim. On our side of the river, that’s Suthstath.”

“You like your city,” Alis commented.

Berimund nodded. “It’s the most wonderful city in the world. I’m eager to show it to Her Majesty.” “Let’s hope your father allows that, then,” Muriele responded.

“You’ll see a bit on the way to the palace,” Berimund said.

Neil thought he was sidestepping the queen’s implied question, which wasn’t a good sign.

They entered through the Suthstath gate and found themselves in a busy market square with a fountain pool in the center and a statue, which by his winged shoes and staff Neil took to be Saint Turm. Across the square stood a massive temple with double clock towers.

The people all stopped what they were doing and bowed as Berimund passed. They continued on as the square narrowed back to a street, and moments later they were crossing one of the bridges, the center one, in fact. The river was active with boats of all sorts but mostly barges and medium craft with triangular sails. Neil wondered what defenses he didn’t see in the waters below: chains, probably, or catches that could be raised to hold an enemy to be bombarded from the bridge.

There was nothing like Thornrath or the fastness here, but Neil had to admit that the town was well made. He could only hope the Hansan army hadn’t been built by the same architects.

Muriele’s chest felt tight as they crossed the Donau. She was well and truly here now. Berimund had been willing to let her return home. Why hadn’t she? Once it had been made clear to her that Marcomir had lost any sense of tradition and honor, why had she continued? True, Berimund had promised her protection, but did that really mean anything?

Marcomir must know that keeping her hostage wouldn’t deter Anne. Robert had had her hostage, and Anne had attacked Eslen anyway. Everyone knew that story by now.

She was proud of Anne in a way that she had never imagined. Who could have ever foreseen her returning with such strength and character? Who could have imagined her as queen? But the changes in Anne that had made all that possible also made her very little like the daughter Muriele knew. Anne was distant, surrounded by her Sefry and the Vitellian swordsman, by warriors who loved her. She had become strange, inward, always listening to voices no one else could hear. There was even, at times, something a little frightening about her.

“What is it?” Alis asked.

Muriele looked up, realizing that instead of taking in the fresh sights of Kaithbaurg, she had been staring at her reins.

“I was just thinking what a relief it was, at first, to have the crown off my head,” she said. “You mean when Anne took it?”

“No, actually when Robert took it. True, I was a prisoner, but that relieved me of any chance of making bad choices. Nothing was my fault anymore.”

“I suppose that’s one way of looking at it.”

“I’m just wondering if I’ve done it again.”

“You think you came here to be imprisoned?

Muriele looked up, but Berimund was ahead, explaining his city to Neil, and the other riders were giving the two women plenty of space.

“Anne sent me here, Alis.”

Alis frowned. “The embassy was your idea.”

“So I thought. But when I went to her about it, she already seemed to know. She tried to hide it, but she knew. One of her visions, I suppose. And she was very particular that I bring you and Neil along.” “I would have been with you anyway.”

“But not Sir Neil. He should still be recovering.”

“Interesting,” Alis said. “I wonder what she expects us to do.”

“We shouldn’t talk about this,” Muriele said, remembering that there were monks who could hear a cricket chirp a hundred miles away. Maybe that was why they had been given the space to talk, so that they would. “It’s probably nothing.”

“Probably,” Alis said. “I think you’re worried over nothing. It will be much more dangerous to talk in the castle.”

“I know. How much do you know about the castle?”

“I know it’s called Kunijosrohsn.”

“I mean, was it constructed like Eslen? In the particulars of the walls, I mean?”

Alis shook her head slightly, showing that she understood the reference to Eslen’s secret passages. “I don’t know. Most of it is much younger than Eslen. I don’t think the same, ah, architects were involved. But I can’t be certain.”

“Well, let’s hope we know why we’re here when the time comes.”

“You came here to try to make peace,” Alis said. “Remember?”

“And I will try, earnestly. But I no longer have much hope.”

“The war is only just starting. Things will change when one side or the other begins to have an advantage. Then you will be Crotheny’s voice here.”

“That’s true. Of course, the last war with Hansa went on for ten years.”

“Well, let’s hope the food here is good, then.”

The Kunijosrohsn was something of a surprise, and even Muriele, who did not have the eye of a military man, could see that it hadn’t been built for serious defense. It was rather like a large manse, rectangular in shape, four stories high, and hollowed out by an immense inner courtyard. There were a few towers, but they looked more decorative than useful.

Men took their horses, and Berimund escorted them into the interior, down a series of halls, and up three flights of stairs so that Muriele was certain they were bound for one of the towers. Instead, they were shown into a large suite of rooms with large windows, elegantly appointed.

“Majesty, if this suits you, these will be your rooms.”

Muriele peered out the window. She had a beautiful view of the east side of the city, the winding Donau, and the plain beyond.

“It suits me very well,” she said. “Thank you, Prince.”

“I’ll send some servants for you to choose from. I hope after you’ve had some time to freshen up, you’ll join me at my table tonight.”

“I accept your invitation,” she said. “I wonder if your father will be there.”

“I’m going to talk to him now,” Berimund replied.

“I would like to speak to him at his earliest convenience.”

“Of course, Majesty. I will so inform him.”

But when they arrived in Berimund’s dining hall a few bells later, Marcomir wasn’t there.

Muriele stood politely as she was introduced to a dozen Hansan lords and their ladies standing at the long oaken table. None of them seemed to be above the rank of greft, and they all seemed about the same age as Berimund.

The hall itself was roomy and candle-lit, hung with tapestries of hunting scenes. Two white staghounds prowled hopefully around the table, and beyond all of that she could see the open door of the kitchen and several servants bustling about. Woodsmoke hung in the air, along with delicious odors, familiar and strange.

Mead was brought, which Muriele thought too sweet, followed by some pears and unfamiliar berries that were excellent.

Berimund rose and said something in Hanzish, and all the lords came to their feet. Berimund lifted his goblet and tilted it toward Muriele. Muriele remained seated. She hadn’t retained a lot from her childhood tutoring, but the various etiquettes of the civilized nations had remained with her. “To Queen Muriele of Crotheny, a matchless beauty. The saints keep you hale and happy. Whairnei!” “Whairnei!” they all repeated, and, after drinking, took their seats.

“You are all far too kind,” Muriele said, relieved that the toast was short. She wondered how many more she would have to endure.

Fifteen during the first course, as it turned out.

Meat came out next: roasted venison with what she thought was a cherry sauce, suckling pig with leek puree, fried hare in some sort of plum sauce, lamb-and-cheese pie, and a second pie of apples, quinces, and beef.

“Prince Berimund,” Muriele asked as she finished cleaning a venison rib and tossed it to one of the hounds, “I wonder if you gave your father my message.”

“I did, Majesty.”

“And?”

Berimund reddened slightly. “He apologizes that he didn’t find it convenient to come tonight.” “But tomorrow?”

“Not tomorrow.”

“Is the war keeping him so busy?”

“No, Majesty. He, ah—he’s going hunting.”

Muriele felt her blood—and the mead mixing in it—rise hot up her neck to her ears. “I see,” she said. “We will find some entertainment for you, I promise.”

“I’m sure. What news is there of the war?”

Berimund stopped with a knife full of food halfway to his mouth. “What?”

“The war. You said it’s started. What news have you?”

“I really don’t think I can make Your Majesty privy—”

“Who would I tell?” Muriele asked. “Is someone here going to carry a letter to my daughter for me? I shouldn’t think so. Come, Prince. Tell me of the Hanzish victories.”

“Ah, well.” He looked around at his retainers. “You’re right, I suppose. Well, there’s not much really. A fleet from Liery tried to blockade Copenwis, but we met them in open sea with better numbers.” “And?” Muriele asked, trying to stay stone-faced.

“They didn’t engage,” he replied. “It would have been stupid of them to. Of course, that was five days ago. There’s no telling what happened since.”

“That was lucky,” Alis said, “to find the Lierish fleet in the open sea.”

Berimund smiled and said something in Hanzish. Muriele followed enough of it to know that he was repeating Alis’ remark.

The reaction was a sort of group smirk.

“Lukka?” One of the nobles said. “Nei, sa haliurunna.”

“No, no, enough of that,” Berimund said. “Enough about the war.”

That was interesting. What was a haliurunna? Berimund seemed to have thought it had been a mistake to bring it up.

She would bring it up again when they were all a bit drunker, she thought.

Fish was next: a huge pike stuffed with trout sausage, salmon with grapes and leeks in pastry shaped like a halibut, cold roasted eel in a green sauce, bream in violet sauce.

And the toasts went on, and the mead flowed. Muriele sipped her drink.

By the time the fowl course arrived, the singing had started. A largish fellow who had been introduced as a landrauhtin began it. Berimund tried to wave him down, but the prince was pretty drunk by then, and with a sheepish, apologetic grin at Muriele, he joined in. She didn’t know the song, but Sir Neil stiffened. “What is it?” she asked. “Do you know this song?”

He nodded. “It’s a naval song about a great victory at sea. They’re celebrating.”

She shrugged. “That’s hardly a surprise.”

“But in front of you? And even without that, this isn’t proper behavior in the presence of a queen.” She covered his hand with her own. “Most of William’s dinners ended up like this, especially when he had his best men around. I think it’s no different in Liery.”

“I never dined with a queen in Liery,” Neil admitted. “Still, I don’t like it.”

“Keep calm.” Everyone in the room but Neil, Alis, and Muriele was singing loudly now, including the women.

She leaned close. “What’s a haliurunna, Sir Neil?”

“It’s a sort of shinecrafter, one who can see the future. They say Hansa breeds them.”

“Do you believe it?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “That’s how they met our ships at sea. They’ve done it before.”

That’s it, Muriele thought. That must be it.

“We need Berimund’s goodwill, Sir Neil. I’ll tell you why later.”

The song broke off, and somebody tried to start another one, but the prince shouted him down.

“We’re being rude to our guests,” he said.

Muriele came to her feet, mug in hand. “Forgive my pronunciation,” she said. She took a deep breath and sang:

“Wha gaf sa ansu gadrauhta fruma?”

They stared at her for an instant, then exploded out with, “Sein mahteig arm ya sein hauh-thutsitha!” Mead sloshed from tankards.

She knew only the first three questions in Hanzish, but after that they got going again, and it didn’t matter. Berimund made no effort to restrain them, and they drank until they either passed out or went stumbling away to wherever they were quartered.

Berimund himself, impressively, managed to stand up.

“I bid shou guh night, Majesty,” he said, his words slow. “You are good, ah, good—I hope you weren’t insulted.”

“Not at all. In fact, it made me a bit nostalgic.”

“Goth. Min shervants will show you home.”

“I wonder, Prince, if I could ask a favor.”

“Name it, Mashesty.”

“I wonder if you would take me hunting tomorrow.”

His eyes widened. “With my father?” Then he laughed. “Jah. That will be fun.”

Then he bowed and staggered out of the hall. A serving girl led them back to their rooms.

“Well, that was jolly,” Alis observed once they were alone. “How did you know a Hansan drinking song?”

“William used to sing it—sort of. It’s question and answer. The first question is ‘What did the saint give the first Hansan Warrior?’ I think the real answer was ‘The strength of his arm and courage,’ or something like that. William sang, ‘His sister to fondle and kiss.’ And so on.”

“Resourceful,” Alis said. “Shall I help Her Majesty with her gown?”

“Please.”

Alis stepped very close and began working at the fastenings in the back.

“I heard Sir Neil,” she said. “I think I see why we’re here.”

“Why didn’t Anne just tell us?” Muriele wondered.

“Maybe she didn’t know. Or maybe the sorcerer would have seen that.”

“Find out what you can while I’m away tomorrow.”

“Do you really think that sober, Berimund will remember his pledge, much less carry it out?”

“He won’t be sober until midday,” she answered. “And yes, I think he will.” She turned and gripped Alis’ hand. “Be very careful. One misstep here—”

“It might not even take that,” Alis said. “Marcomir is said to have vicious moods. So you be careful, too.”

11 The Woothshaer

Aspar woke with sunlight on his face. He stretched, rolled, and bumped up against something warm. Winna.

She was still asleep, her face glowing like a saint’s in the golden light. He remembered her as a little girl back in Colbaely, full of fire and mischief. He remembered the shock of understanding that he loved her when he thought he couldn’t love anyone.

His eyes traced down to her rounded belly. Gently, he stroked his fingers along it.

What’s in there? he wondered.

He hadn’t given much thought to being a father. Qerla hadn’t been able to bear his children; men and Sefry were too different for that. After she’d died, he’d never mont to marry again. And since this thing with Winna had begun, he’d been mostly thinking about keeping them alive.

But a child, a boy or girl, part him, part Winna…

He tightened his heart. There was no use thinking like that. Whatever Winna was carrying, it wasn’t going to be Mannish.

Should he tell her what he feared? Could he?

It seemed the geos was powerful and canny enough to protect its purpose. Could he jump off a cliff or slit his own throat? Provoke a fight with Emfrith and then lose it?

Probably not. But the thing about a geos, at least he had always heard, was that when its conditions were fulfilled, it was unmade. So when they reached the Briar King’s valley, he would be free of it, free to act as he wanted. The witch obviously thought that would be too late, but the witch couldn’t know everything.

He just had to keep his head and do what he could do. Test the geos until he found its weakness. He rose carefully, afraid to wake her.

The sun was higher than he liked. He itched to be gone, keeping Fend as far behind him as he could, but this might be the last good sleep she got for a long time.

He found Emfrith in the inner yard, talking with some of his men. He looked up as Aspar descended the stair.

“Morning, holter,” Emfrith said. His tone sounded a bit strained, and Aspar reckoned he knew why. “Morning,” Aspar replied.

“The Woothshaer chasing you wasn’t hard to find,” he said. “My man Arn spotted it upriver, near Slif Owys but moving this way. They’ll be here by tomorrow.”

“We’d better get moving, then,” Aspar said.

“I think we’ll fight them here,” Emfrith said.

“Werlic?” Aspar said. “Fine, then; you do that. The three of us will be on our way.”

“No, that I can’t let you do,” Emfrith said apologetically.

Aspar’s hand went to the feyknife, but he let it drop and balled his fists instead. “First your bloody father, now you,” he snapped. “What’s wrong with you people?”

“We’re just people who do what needs to be done,” Emfrith said. “My family guards this march, and I’m not going to let motley monsters and Sefry come strutting in unchallenged.”

“Yah, werlic. But what’s that to do with us?”

“If I let you go, they’ll just follow you. If you’re here, they’ll be forced to fight, and we’ll slaughter them at our walls.”

“Didn’t you learn anything from your little brawl with the woorm?” Aspar asked.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “Quite a bit. And more since, as we’ve had occasion to kill a greffyn. They’re tough, I’ll grant you, but they can die. And there aren’t so many of them in the band coming here.” “You’ve got only fifty men,” Aspar pointed out. “They may not be many, but they can do fifty men.” “I’ve sent for more from my father, and I’ve alerted Celly Guest—that’s the other fort I mentioned, about three leagues north. We’ll have more than fifty.”

“Maunt, maunt,” Aspar said, almost begging. “This is a bad mistake.”

Was that the geos talking?

No, this was stupid.

“I’d rather have your help than lock you up,” Emfrith said, “but we’ll do it any way we have to.” He sighed. “I’m putting Winna in the tower, under guard, until it’s over.”

“You’re taking her prisoner,” Aspar said, his voice flat.

Emfrith strode angrily toward him, and for a moment Aspar thought he might have succeeded in starting the fight he had wondered about earlier. His hand went back to the feyknife.

But Emfrith stopped a kingsyard from him. “I love her, holter. I’m doing what I think is best for her.” “And I’m not?”

“I don’t know. But she’s not in the best shape to travel, is she? To be chased over hill and stream by this horde? Women die from that sort of thing.”

“Yah. But you’re still taking her hostage.”

“If you want to look at it like that, I can’t stop you,” Emfrith said. “But this is how it’s going to be. Now, you can sulk about it, or you can help me win. You’ve fought more of these things than any of us. We have a day. What should we do?”

“Run.”

“Raiht. Besides that.”

Aspar shrugged inwardly, and his mounting anger leveled off. Maybe this was for the best, for them to all die here. Better than waiting to see what the witch had in store for Winna and her child.

“To begin with,” he said, “three of the Sefry warriors are something Leshya calls Vaix. They’re supposed to be stronger and faster than Mannish warriors. They have swords like my knife and Grimknows what else. Leshya can probably tell us more.” He rubbed his chin.

“Some of the beasts aren’t that smart,” he went on. “Leshya and I killed several of them with pit traps. You might want to dig some of those. And haul heavy things up here to drop on them. Do you have any siege engines?”

“I’ve got one catapult.”

“More would be better.”

“We’ll make do,” Emfrith said. “Why don’t we go find Leshya and some beer? I know greffyns, but the other things Arn describes are new to me.”

“How did you kill the greffyn?” Aspar asked.

“Eight of us charged it on horseback. Two of us managed to hit it in that sally. That didn’t kill it, but it slowed it down. We just kept lancing it.”

“You didn’t lose any men?”

“We lost two horses, and three of my men got pretty sick, but no one actually touched it. Winna warned us about that.”

“Some of these will be harder than that,” Aspar said. “I’ll help. You’ve got my word. But you won’t keep Winna locked up.”

Emfrith held his gaze for a moment then nodded curtly.

Sir Evan of Leanvel had a loose sort of face with several chins and cheeks threatening to join their number. At the moment his bushy eyebrows were pinched together in a frown.

“What’s that, then?” he asked, pointing at Fend and his monsters.

“Name it whatever you like,” Emfrith replied. “Manticore is what I’ve been calling it.”

“I fancy that,” Sir Evan replied. “Like the beast in the story of the Knight-Prince of Albion.” “There’s more of them,” Leshya said.

Aspar already had noticed that. The number of men and Sefry looked about the same, but Aspar now counted seven utins loping along, four greffyns, and two manticores. There were also a couple of wagons Aspar hadn’t seen before, likely because Fend hadn’t wanted to bring them over the pass.

“Theres something odd about a Woothshaer with a supply train,” Emfrith said.

“Yah,” Aspar allowed. “But Haergrim’s hunt is mostly dead men, alvs, and booygshins. They don’t need to eat. The monsters probably eat off the land, but that wouldn’t leave much for Fend and his men.” The enemy was still a good ten bowshots away, approaching the Warlock River across a wheat field. Aspar and his companions were watching from a low bluff a bowshot from the river. The land below the rise was clear and flat, a good place for a charge. Better yet, Fend had to cross an old stone bridge that was wide enough for only about three horses to go abreast.

Aspar still didn’t feel particularly hopeful.

“Celly Guest would like the honor of the first charge,” Sir Evan said.

“It’s my duty, sir,” Emfrith replied.

“Come along, lad; let us have a go first. We’ll save you a greff or two.”

“You’re the senior,” Emfrith said. “If you ask like that…”

The knight smiled and reached to slap Emfrith on the back. “Very good. Down we go, then.” He raised his voice. “Come along, men.”

Celly Guest had spared them not only Sir Evan but fifty heavily armored riders, thirty archers, and thirty pikemen. As Aspar watched, the knight formed his cavalry in a thick column, five abreast and ten deep. He supposed that made sense, as they would only be charging what was coming across the bridge. The archers fanned out on the bluff, with the pikemen lined up to protect them. Emfrith’s men were now the reserve.

Aspar sighed and strung his bow. Leshya did the same. He checked the binding on the spear he’d made from the feyknife one last time, wondering if it would be better to have it in his hand.

Probably not. Emfrith had given him a new throwing ax and dirk, which would be fine against men and Sefry but of less use against the sedhmhari. If he fought one of those, better to keep it at more than arm’s length.

Fend was forming his beasts up, too. Aspar wondered how exactly the Sefry communicated with them and how he had learned to do so.

He probably would never know. If he got Fend close enough to talk to, Aspar didn’t intend to waste any time asking questions.

Fend didn’t seem much interested in getting within bowshot, however. He wasn’t in sight. In fact, Aspar still didn’t know his old enemy was with the band at all.

Whoever led them, the monsters would be his vanguard.

One of the manticores came first, followed by the pack of greffyns and then the utins.

Have I lost my mind? he wondered. Am I dying of fever in the Mountains of the Hare? Is any of this real? Because it shouldn’t be.

The archers began firing as the beasts marched onto the bridge. Some of the shafts stuck, but the sedhmhari all had hide like armor, and none of them went down.

He heard the snap and hum of the catapult firing. Emfrith and his men had dragged it down there and found the range that morning.

A stone a little larger than Aspar’s head flew to the bridge and struck one of the greffyns just behind the head. It screeched and flopped over with its back plainly broken, and a tremendous cheer went up from the men.

The manticore charged.

Once again Aspar was startled by its speed. Sir Evan and his first and second ranks were trotting now, and as the thing neared the end of the bridge, they went to a gallop, ten lances with the weight of ten horses and ten men behind them.

Oddly, there wasn’t much sound as they came together, just a sort of dull thud. The manticore, for all its armor and weight, was driven back. It was hard to tell how hurt it was, though.

The riders wheeled away as the greffyns came leaping across, and the next two rows of horsemen gathered speed.

However Fend controlled them, it was clear that he couldn’t make them any smarter or he would have had the catlike beasts avoid the charge and try to flank. They didn’t, though, but met the charge head to head, leaping over the downed manticore.

Two of them were actually lifted into the air by the lancers, but the third got through, bowling over one of the horses and ripping into it with its beak and claws. Those riders wheeled away, too, but the beast abandoned its first kill and took down another horse.

The manticore wasn’t moving. Two of the four greffyns looked like they were dying, and a third was wounded.

Something was missing.

“Sceat,” Aspar said. “Where are the utins?”

But even as he asked it, he saw them swarming out of the river, coming at the cavalry column from the sides.

Utins, unlike greffyns, were pretty smart.

Cursing, Aspar picked the nearest and started shooting at it. His first arrow skipped off. The second stuck but didn’t look like it went in deep.

The column already was coming apart as the riders turned their horses to meet the fast-running utins. Aspar watched as the one he was firing at leaped nimbly over the lance aimed at it, danced down it, and struck off the head of the rider with its claws. Aspar sent another arrow at it as it came back to ground and disemboweled another rider’s horse.

“Holy saints,” he heard Emfrith gasp.

Now the second manticore was starting across the bridge. The archers were pouring arrows onto it because the remaining greffyn and the utins were too mixed up with the horsemen to target well. With a shout, Emfrith began trotting his horse forward, his men behind him.

The archers shifted their fire again as several of the utins began running toward the bluff. Aspar picked the one coming his way and began letting fly.

His first shot hit it in the eye. It spun and staggered but roared and began speeding toward them again. He saw one of Leshya’s white-fletched shafts appear in its thigh. Aspar put another arrow on the string, inhaled, and let it snap. It glanced off the thick scales of its skull.

Then it was up to the pikemen. It grabbed one of the pole arms below the head and flipped itself up and over the first rank, but one of the men in the second rank managed to set his spear, and the monster’s weight drove the point into its belly, showering gore all around. Screaming, it grasped at the shaft. It was five kingsyards from Aspar. He took careful aim and shot it in the other eye, and this time the arrow went all the way to the back of the skull. Its mouth froze open, and it stopped struggling. The pikemen rolled it back down the bluff.

Another one was coming, but fifteen arrows met it. Most either missed or skipped off, but one that found it struck it through the eye.

The archers were beginning to remember his advice concerning the creatures’ weak spots.

A glance showed him that the other wing of archers wasn’t doing so well. An utin had gotten through the line, and most of the men were in flight.

Things were coming back together on the field below.

Sir Evan and the other nine in his first charge had kept their cohesion and, as he watched, put their lances to the greffyn. Most of the rest had dismounted and were taking on the utins with sword and shield, encircling them with superior numbers. One was already down, being hacked by eight heavily armored men.

Emfrith’s group was slowing its charge because the second manticore had stopped advancing and stood just out of catapult range.

In moments, the two remaining utins tore away from their tormentors and ran back across the bridge. “I don’t believe it,” Aspar said.

It looked like Sir Evan had lost around fifteen horsemen and probably about that many archers. A few more probably would die of contact with the greffyns. But of his monsters, their enemy had lost all but two utins and a manticore. Suddenly, beating them didn’t seem that much trouble at all.

They seemed to know it, too. The wagons were turning.

Sir Evan was forming his men back up, and Emfrith was galloping back up the hill.

“Well,” he said as he drew up, “maybe not such a bad idea, after all.”

“Maybe not,” Aspar agreed. “I never would have believed it, but maybe not.”

“We’ll dog them for a while, find a good place to attack them, and—”

“Sceat,” Aspar said. “I think Sir Evan has other ideas.”

Emfrith turned just as the Celly Guest horsemen—what remained of them—went thundering over the bridge, along with about twenty of Emfrith’s men. The manticore wasn’t there anymore but had moved back up the hill.

“Get back here,” Emfrith howled. No one looked back. They probably couldn’t even hear him.

The men and Sefry across the river had turned but didn’t seem to be readying a countercharge. He couldn’t make out their faces from that far away, but something seemed odd about them.

“I don’t like this,” Leshya said.

Aspar just shook his head, trying to figure it out.

And then, as if struck by a thousand invisible arrows, Sir Evan and all the men with him, along with their horses, fell and did not move again.

Far across the river, Aspar saw something glinting in the back of one of the wagons.

“Turn around!” Leshya screamed. “Close your eyes!”

Aspar felt his own eyes starting to warm and followed her advice. After an instant, so did everyone else. “What is it?”

“Basil-nix,” she said. “If you meet its gaze, you die. I think it’s too far away right now, but…” “Get them out of here, Emfrith,” Aspar growled. “Get what’s left of your men out of here.”

“I don’t understand,” the young man wailed. He sounded as if he’d just been wakened from a deep sleep.

“Sound retreat,” Aspar told the man with the horn.

“Sir—”

Aspar took Emfrith’s shoulder.

“He’ll move up now. We can’t fight with our backs turned. We didn’t know about this.”

“Raiht,” the boy said, his face wet with tears. “Sound the retreat.”

A black shadow passed over them, and another, and there was a sound of many wings.

12 Kauron

Stephen paused, trembling, staring at his feet, staring at a thousand pairs of feet in shoes, buskins, boots, bare, missing toes, huge, tiny.

It was like what the Vhelny had done to him, except the other memories weren’t his.

But that distinction wouldn’t matter for long. He closed his eyes and stepped, feeling as he did a myriad of other steps, a thousand different swayings of his body.

His stomach couldn’t take that, and he doubled over, vomiting, observing with an odd detachment that in that act he somehow felt more solid, more himself.

But he wasn’t. That was the greatest lie in the world, the most fundamental illusion. That thing called Stephen was a culling, a mere snip of what really existed. The rest of him was trying to get back in. Would that end it? Would he be complete if he gave up the fantasy that this tiny Stephen thing was real? Maybe.

No.

The voice barged through the rest, pushed them back to whispers. It was gentle, strong, confident, and Stephen felt some of the strength from the first fane come back to him.

No, the voice repeated. That is death. The voices you hear, the visions you experience—those are the dead, those who let go of themselves, who allowed the river to take what was in them. You are stronger because you still have a self. Do you understand? You are still tied together. You are real, Stephen Darige. It’s totality that is the illusion. Only the finite can be real.

“Kauron?”

Yes. I’m more powerful here. You’ve passed the fourth fane. There is only one more. Listen to me. What you feel is your mind trying to accept everything in the river. You can’t do that without dying, without ceasing to become who you are. Can you understand me?

“I think so.”

Then let me help you fight it.

“Aren’t you dead, too? Why are you different?”

Because I walked this faneway, too. Because when my body died, I would not permit the river to have me.

“I—” But the voices were coming back, and he couldn’t think. “Help me find the last fane,” he gasped. Be strong, Stephen. Hold on to yourself. Hold on to me. It isn’t far.

It seemed far, however. He realized at some point that the light and wind weren’t illusions, that somewhere along the way he had left the innards of the mountain and was winding up its slopes. Kauron stayed with him, talking to him and not to the other voices, reminding him that he was the real one. It felt as if the ancient monk were walking right beside him, although when he looked, he could not see him. “The Vhelny,” Stephen managed to ask. “What does it want?”

“Vhelny?”

“The thing you warned me against, the thing in the mountain.”

“I don’t know. I wouldn’t think it would be someone else seeking the power of the faneway, not if he already knew where it was. One would think he would have slain you and walked it himself.”

“That’s what I thought,” Stephen said, pausing to make certain that the hand he was using to steady himself was his own.

“So it’s someone who wants you to have the power.”

“But the prophecy says he’s my enemy. I’m your heir, and he’s my enemy.”

“If I had an enemy like that, I don’t remember. It’s possible, I suppose. Ghosts, even ghosts like me, aren’t aware of the things they’ve forgotten. Anyway, I don’t think I would know much about prophecies concerning Kauron’s heir, would I? They were all made after my death.”

Stephen felt a deep shock of dizziness.

Stephen! The voice was back in his head, fainter, alarmed.

Listen to me, Stephen. Focus on my voice.

The vertigo eased back. “What happened to you, Kauron?” he asked. “How did you die?”

“I died on this very mountain,” the ghost replied.

“Did the faneway kill you?”

“No. It’s a long story. I actually returned here to die.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure. I just thought I ought to. It appears I was right.”

“But—”

“The fane is just ahead. The path is narrower than in my time.”

“I wish—it’s hard to think, to ask what I want to ask.”

“I know. I remember. Think about who you are. Tell me about who you are.”

“I—I love languages. You’re a thousand years old! There’s so much I could learn…” He shook his head, trying to focus. Was he still moving?

Yes, inching along. He saw something up ahead, something like a standing stone.

“I, ah—when I’m angry, or frustrated, I make up a little treatise, as if it’s going to go into a book.” “Of course you do,” Kauron said. “I used to do much the same, especially when I was a novice. I wrote mine down, though, and one of the other brothers—Brother Parsons—found it and showed the others.” “What happened?”

“They made fun of me, of course, and I had to clean the stables for a year.”

Stephen had a sudden vivid image of standing ankle-deep in horse muck.

“It’s hard to imagine the great Kauron cleaning stables,” he said.

“What’s so great about me? What did I do?”

“You brought Virgenya Dare’s journal here for safekeeping. You must have been important among the Revesturi.”

“Like you are, you mean?”

“What are you saying?”

“I was no one. Hardly anyone. I lived in the scriftorium, I found the journal; I found the location of the mountain. My fratrex sent me to bring it here because he reckoned that no one would suspect I was up to anything important, that no one would follow me.”

“There are prophecies about you.”

“No, it sounds like there are prophecies about you, Stephen. I’m just in them, doing what I’m supposed to do: helping you.”

The voices were fading now, and his sense of where he was returning. He was on a spit of stone sticking out from the mountain, a triangle four kingsyards at the base and seven long. It slanted up as it narrowed toward its apex, where stood a little spike. The Virgenyan symbol for “five” was barely visible scratched on it.

“It’s funny,” Stephen said. “You asked me to talk about myself, but it was talking about you that helped.” “I’m your guide.”

“I think we must be very much alike,” Stephen said.

“It sounds like it. At least in youth.”

“When I touch the stone, it’s over?”

“Yes. The knowledge and power are in you, but without the blessing of this fane you can’t control it.” “What happens to you?”

“It’s my sacrifice to make, Stephen.”

“What do you mean?”

“Don’t worry. All is as it should be. I’ve guided you this far. Trust me a step farther.”

Stephen nodded, walking carefully forward. Sighing, he placed his hand on the upthrust of stone. The last of the voices faded, replaced by a feeling of vastness. It was as if a great wave had passed over him, spun him in its waters, and set him back on his feet. Everything seemed new and different, as if he were seeing the world with completely novel eyes.

As if he had been reborn.

This is the Alq, he realized. It’s not really a place, it’s a state of being.

He sank down to his knees, utterly exhausted. He gazed at the beautiful march of mountains before him and felt a sudden, savage joy at the magnificence of it all, at the thunder and lightning that was the world. His body was tired, but inside he felt alive as never before.

But he knew he’d just begun: There was still plenty he had to do. The faneway wasn’t the last step. He still had to find the throne, and he had to find it soon.

Stephen stood up, and although his knees were still a bit wobbly, he felt he could walk. He was sure he remembered the way back to the Aitivar city, but it meant going halfway around the mountain, and it wouldn’t do to starve to death. Not now, when it was all there before him, when he finally knew what to do.

Something was rushing toward him on the wind, something hot and acrid.

He turned to face the Vhelny.

He still couldn’t see it either with his eyes or with the sense that dug beneath the surface of the world. Or maybe it really was nothing more than shadow.

But no, he felt the slow and terrible potency burning in it.

Congratulations, the shadow told him, and opened vast, obfuscate wings. Stephen felt the tickle of command begin. I can use one like you.

Stephen didn’t hesitate, and that fact in itself was a beautiful thing, almost erotic in its intensity. He flung his will at the Vhelny, drawing from the infinite flood beneath the world.

What met him was raw force of a kind he had never sensed before, and he suddenly felt as if he were wrestling with something of constantly changing form, like the alv-queen’s lover in the old tale. But this was terribly real. He felt suddenly pushed back, surrounded, and it was more and more difficult to keep his focus on the demon, to match his power against it. This was not the power of the sedos; this was ancient night come to life, something that had existed long before the world itself or any of its petty powers.

No. I don’t know what it is, but it can be beaten. Take—

A surge of fresh energy filled Stephen’s limbs, and he suddenly understood.

Whatever this was sat the Xhes throne. There had been another, years before, who had sat that, a Sefry warlock, and he had been bound, and now he knew how to do it.

He stopped fighting the Vhelny’s energies, let them enter him, take hold of his heart and will. And when the demon had committed itself, was in him, he grabbed those energies like the leash of a dog and twisted them, made them his, laid stricture after stricture until the chaos in the monster was hemmed by order and his command.

No, the Vhelny whispered.

“Yes. And thank you for your congratulations, and to paraphrase, I’m sure you will be of use to me.” I will be free. I will grind everything in you.

“I don’t think so. Now, what say you fly me back into the mountain and we find my companions.” You will pay.

But something wrapped around him, and in a moment they were soaring though the air, and he laughed in sheer delight.

He couldn’t wait to see Zemlé. And Winna. And Aspar. And Queen Anne, especially Queen Anne. The best part was how surprised they would be. He loved it when people were surprised, when they finally got the joke.

Of course he did. That was why they called him the Black Jester.

13 Retreat

Anne couldn’t feel the reins anymore. The breeze seemed to spin her around, and then the ground reached for her.

She still could see, but nothing she saw made much sense. Horses’ legs were everywhere, and men were reaching for her, and then it was all just noise and color, and finally she was elsewhere, lying in a meadow by a mere. She lifted her hand and saw that there was no shadow. Her side hurt, and when she reached to feel it, there was a stick there. She pushed at it, and agony erupted along her ribs. Her hand felt wet and sticky, and when she looked at it, it was red.

“Shot,” she managed. There had been a lot of arrows; she remembered that. And then the horses coming together, a shock like a giant ocean wave that threw everyone around her down until she drew, drew down from the sickle moon hanging pale as a cloud in the sky, and struck through them. She remembered seeing their eyes explode in gouts of steam, and the screams…

I did that?

“You did it,” her arilac confirmed, rising up from the earth. “Even Genya Dare would have been impressed by that.”

“Did we win?”

“You broke their charge and killed half of them before you got shot. Beyond that, I don’t know.” “I am shot.”

“Yes.”

“Am I dying?”

“I don’t know, but you shouldn’t stay here in this condition. If he should come, you won’t be able to fight him.”

“I don’t—” Black spots were dancing before her eyes.

“I’ll help you,” the arilac said, and smoothed her forehead with one burning hand.

A hoof thudded in the earth next to her head, and someone shouted her name. She tried to sit up and gasped.

“She’s here!” a man shouted. “Saints know how. We were looking there—”

“She’s shot.” A face appeared above her.

“Hello, Cape Chavel,” she said.

“You can hear me?”

“Yes.”

“I have to get you up. Do you understand? I can’t leave you here; we’re in retreat. Unless you can—” He grimaced.

“I’m too weak,” she replied.

“You’ll ride with me. Your Craftsmen and the heavy horse have formed a rear guard. My horses are faster. We’ll get you back to camp and to a leic.”

Anne searched for a response, but she felt too tired.

It did hurt when he got her up in the saddle with him, and it hurt more every single time his horse took a stride. Although she tried not to, she cried, wanting nothing more than for the pain to end.

She woke flat on her back in a small, rumbling room that she eventually recognized as a wain. She remembered that Nerenai had given her something bitter to drink, and she had fallen asleep.

She felt at her side and found the arrow gone. So was her clothing. She was wrapped loosely in a blanket.

“There, mistress,” she heard Nerenai say. “Lie still.”

“What’s happening?”

Before Nerenai could reply, Emily broke in. “It’s very exciting. They say you made their eyes explode. Is it true?”

“I’d rather not talk about that,” Anne murmured. “Can you find Artwair for me?”

“No, Majesty,” the girl said. “He’s out forming up the lines. You killed a lot of them, but there’s plenty left. Like they knew we were coming.”

“They did know we were coming.”

“How?” the girl asked.

“I was outmagicked,” Anne replied. Pray saints Alis and Neil find this Hellrune and know what to do about him. He’s stronger than I.

A sudden thought occurred to her. “If we’re fighting, why is the wain moving?”

“We’re retreating,” Emily replied. “But orderly, so we don’t get slaughtered. Artwair’s a smart general.” I led him into a trap, Anne thought. That will be hard to mend. Yes, she was queen, but she needed her generals to believe in her, especially Artwair.

“How many have we lost?”

“I don’t know. They think around two thousand. They attacked our infantry where we were camped, too.”

Two thousand? The number seemed unreal. Had she ever even met two thousand people in her life? For three more days they fell back toward Poelscild. Losses on both sides were minimal. And then, a day’s march from the northernmost dike, the Hansan army stopped following them.

The next day Anne wasn’t sleeping in a wagon anymore but in a fine bed in Poelscild’s keep.

The count had almost three thousand of her soldiers sleeping in the ground.

“They haven’t gone far, Majesty,” Artwair told her the next day.

“You look tired, Cousin.”

He did. His face looked lined and ten years older than it had a month earlier.

“I’m well, Your Majesty.”

“So where have they gone, then?”

“About a league north, in Andemuer. They’re building a redoubt there. I expect they’ll reinforce it and then come here.”

Anne nodded. She’d made Nerenai and Emily sit her up. She couldn’t stand, but she didn’t want to face Artwair on her back. “And the fleet? Any word?”

“They anticipated us there, too,” Artwair said. “Met Liery in open sea. Five ships were lost, and about that on the Hansan side. Sir Fail brought them back to Ter-na-Fath.”

“So we’re in retreat everywhere,” Anne said.

“Everywhere we’ve ventured.”

“Everywhere I’ve sent us, you mean,” Anne said.

“There’s no blame to Your Majesty. It seemed like a good plan to me, too. But it wasn’t the surprise they thought it would be. And things could have been worse. This Hellrune of theirs isn’t perfect, either. He may have managed to trick you, but you fought out of his trap.”

“Barely. But I agree that things could have gone worse. I may know little about war, but I know that armies in retreat often fall apart and are destroyed. This could have been a rout. Your leadership prevented that, Duke Artwair.”

“I’m not the only one to credit. Lord Kenwulf kept our left flank, and young Cape Chavel our right. If we had ever been encircled, that would have been the end of it.”

“I will commend them, too,” she said. “What happens now?”

“I’ve sent for reinforcements, of course. Many of the landwaerden levies are already either here or reinforcing other forts along the edge of Newland.”

“Then we’re giving them Andemuer and the Maog Voast plain?” Anne asked.

“We’re not giving it; they have it. Northwatch fell two days ago, so reinforcements can come along the Vitellian Way without resistance. Copenwis is open to their ports. No, Newland is better fortified than the northern border and always has been. Andemuer has gone back and forth between Hansa and Crotheny for exactly that reason. But they’ll have a harder time breaking us here. And if they do, we’ll retreat to the next canal and flood these poelen behind us, so they’ll have to swim at us.”

“You mention the danger of them coming down the Dew. Have you any reports from the east?”

“No report of attack yet, no, but I expect it.”

“And the south?”

He nodded. “We’ve heard that at least three Church legifs are camped along the Teremené River. That news is a few days old, of course. They may have started fighting already.”

Anne remembered Teremené.

“The river is in a gorge there,” she said. “They’ll have to cross at Teremené town or go north into Hornladh…” She trailed off.

“Majesty?”

She closed her eyes. Nothing; just another stupid thing I’ve done. Cazio, be as smart as I think you are.

“The Hellrune can’t help those in the south. I’ll see what my visions can tell me about what the Church is up to. Is there anything else?”

“Not that I know of, Majesty.”

“Thank you, Duke. I’d better rest now.”

She met her arilac on a heather-covered down overlooking an azure sea. The air was warm and wet and a little dirty-feeling.

The arilac seemed more human each time they met, although she still shone unnaturally at times. “You were outmaneuvered,” the woman said. “With the law of death broken, the Hellrune is stronger than even I suspected.”

“You should have warned me,” Anne replied.

The arilac raised a fiery eyebrow. “That would have been an insult to your intelligence. If you could see the results of what he saw, how could you not imagine it wasn’t possible for him to do the same?” “But when does it end?” Anne asked. “If I had seen the trap, couldn’t he have seen me seeing it? And so on, into utter madness?”

“Yes and no. As you’ve learned, the future isn’t a fixed thing if you can see it. But it has a path and momentum. When the Hellrune saw that your army would march the way it did, and you saw that he had seen that, you might have done a number of things. You might have decided not to go that way, or not march at all, or bring thousands more with you—or what you did: try to turn the trap against itself. The Hellrune would have been shown all these paths, but dimly, and one would have seemed infinitesimally brighter. In turn, his possible reactions—abandon the plan, send more men, and so forth—would be even more contingent, first because your choice was one of dozens, then because his was. That’s why you didn’t see the reversal of the trap: It was a wispy thing, unnoticeable. For him to see the outcome of his reversal I would call impossible, which is why you managed to escape. So to answer your question, your duel with the Hellrune went as many strokes as it could, and he won. When you are in full mastery of the power, you might see one step farther. Might.”

“Then I must guess, you are saying, where Hansa is concerned.”

“No, no,” the arilac said. “He can’t know you’ve seen something unless you react to it.”

“Then what use to see it?”

“It can inform your strategy.”

Anne rolled her eyes. “Yes, poorly. Suppose I predict an army coming down the Dew River, and Artwair diverts troops to stop them, and instead the army never marches east but comes here instead?” “You will find you can rarely see more than a nineday or so when specifics are involved. Visions of the far future are usually vague as to when and how they will happen. The Hellrune’s is limited in the same way, and he is not here, Anne. His shadow is still in Hansa. It takes a rider to bring information from him, a rider that may or may not arrive and will always be late. You’re closer to where the war is being fought now. And now you know to be cautious.”

Anne nodded. “Very well. But first I must see what the Church is up to on our southern border and what danger I’ve put Cazio and Austra in.” She straightened her spine.

“I’m not afraid of you,” she told the arilac.

“I never said you were.”

“Oh, I was,” she admitted. “But no longer. From now on I expect you to tell me everything I need to know. Do you understand? I don’t want to be hit from behind again.”

“Very well, Anne.”

“Call me ‘Majesty.’”

“When you are my queen, I shall. But that time is not come. And I’m not afraid of you, either.”

She watched the titanic stones of the citadel crack and felt herself like fingers wedged there, tearing at it. The doors were like burning brands, but she pulled, and everything in her seemed next to snapping. In an instant she brimmed with the most profound happiness she had ever known as everything slowed to almost stopping, and the magicked metal rang as it tore, and the power of chaos collapsed before her. She felt the slow burning fire of ten thousand lives bent against her—creatures so much of the master’s that even now, when their liberation was at hand, they still fought to remain slaves.

But now they cringed as the citadel lay open and the powers that kept her at bay disintegrated. She had known the power before, but never like this. Gone were her reservations, gone her fears. She was pure and simple, an arrow already loosed from its string, a storm striking a port, unstoppable, not in need of stopping.

Every weakness purged.

She laughed, and they died, either quenched by her will or gutted by her warriors, her beautiful, lovely warriors. And everything they were and might have been flowed from them and came back, and she knew she finally sat the sedos throne…

“It was worse this time, wasn’t it?” Emily asked.

Anne held back from throttling the girl over the inanity of the question, but only barely. Instead she took deep breaths and more of the Sefry tea.

“Is there anything I can do, Majesty?”

Yes, jump out the window, Anne thought.

“Hush, Emily,” she said instead. “I’m not myself.”

But maybe she was exactly herself. They had wanted her to take on the responsibility? Fine, she had. Now that she was queen, she would be queen, the queen they all deserved.

Emily backed away and didn’t say anything.

A bell later Anne no longer felt as if a bed of ants had invaded her head.

“It’s getting so easy,” she told Nerenai. “I think of what I want to see, and I see it, or something to do with it. But then, the dreams. The clearer my visions come, the worse my Black Marys are. Is that the way it’s supposed to be?”

“I think it must just be the price,” the Sefry said. “You’ve separated the visions from the dreams, but they flow from the same source.”

“I have to be able to tell them apart.”

“True, for now. But when you are strong enough, you won’t have to keep them apart. It will all be one.” Anne remembered standing before the gates as they shattered, the liberation of it, the joy.

“I hope so,” she sighed. “Send Emily back in, will you? I want to apologize to her.”

“She’s just outside,” Nerenai said. “With her brother. He’s come to see you.”

“All right,” Anne said. “I’ll see him.”

The earl stepped through a moment later, Emily tugging at his hand. He was in a new-looking deep red doublet and black hose.

“Good of you to come, Cape Chavel,” she said.

“Majesty,” he said, bowing.

“Emily, my apologies for earlier. “

“It’s nothing, Majesty,” Emily said. “It’s your dreams, I know. I’m just here to serve you.”

Anne nodded. “Cape Chavel, I don’t think I’ve thanked you for saving my life.”

“I’m glad you haven’t,” he replied. “It would only embarrass me. Especially as it was your saint gifts that got most of us out of there alive.”

“Well, you’ll have to be embarrassed. Thank you.”

He actually blushed. He was a funny fellow, a bit like Sir Neil but a bit like Cazio as well.

Cazio. She had seen him free, with z’Acatto, but Dunmrogh fallen. And Hespero—but that part had been unclear. In fact, any vision concerning the praifec was unclear.

“How are you feeling?” the earl asked.

“Better. The leic will let me walk in a day or two. Nothing too badly hurt inside, I suppose.” “I’m relieved,” the young man said. “Very relieved, in fact. I’ve seen such wounds before, and they are usually, ah, worse.”

That gave her a bit of a pause. It had been rather bad, hadn’t it? The shaft had been half in her. She had seen bodies cut open before. How could it have missed all of that? She should have died, shouldn’t she? She remembered the knight who wouldn’t die, the one Cazio had been able to stop only by hacking the body into individual pieces. She remembered the other one in the wood near Dunmrogh.

And her uncle Robert, whose blood was no longer quick but who walked and did his evil anyway.

Oh, saints, she thought. What have I become?

14 The Singing Dead

Leoff stared at the blank parchment, terrified.

It was not the sort of thing that usually frightened him.

Since childhood he had been able to hear music in his head: not just music he had experienced but music he imagined. Not only melodies but harmony lines, counterpoint, chords. He could compose a sinfonia for fifty instruments and hear each individual voice. Writing it down was an afterthought, a convenience, a way to share his music with the less fortunate.

But now he feared the music lurking in his skull. Every time he tried to think about the forbidden modes he had rediscovered while he was Robert’s captive, he felt ill. How could he find an antidote when he couldn’t face the disease?

“I saw my mother last night,” a soft voice behind him said.

Startled, he turned to find Mery watching him from a few paces away.

“Did you?” he asked. Mery’s mother was dead, of course, but one saw the dead now and then.

“In the well,” she confirmed. “The old well in the back garden.”

“You shouldn’t be playing around there,” he said. “It’s dangerous.”

“I wasn’t playing,” the girl said softly.

Of course you weren’t, he thought sadly. You never play anymore.

Not that she ever had, much, but there once had been something of a little girl about her.

“Did your mother say anything?”

“She said she was sorry,” Mery said. “She said she’s been forgetting things.”

“She must have loved you very much to come see you,” he said.

“It’s easier for them now,” she said. “The music makes it easier.”

“The music we made together? For Prince Robert?”

She nodded. “But they’re singing it now, over there.”

“The dead?”

“They sing and sing and don’t even know they’re doing it.”

Leoff rubbed his mess of a hand against his forehead. “They’re singing it,” he muttered. “What is happening?”

“Why does it make you sad that the ghosts are singing?”

“It doesn’t,” he said gently. “Not in and of itself. But the song is bad, I think.” He held up his hands. “Do you remember when I could play hammarharp with these?”

“Yes,” she said. “The praifec had your hands broken.”

“Right,” Leoff said, shying from the memory of that pain. “And for a long time they didn’t heal, but now they have. Something in the world is broken: The thing that separates life from death. Our song made it worse, and I think their song—what you hear them singing—is keeping it worse. Preventing things from healing.”

“Your hands didn’t heal right,” she said. “You still can’t play hammarharp.”

“That’s true,” he conceded.

“What if the world heals, but not right?”

“I don’t know,” Leoff sighed.

She looked at the blank paper. “Is that what you’re trying to do? Make music that will heal things?” “Yes,” he said.

“Will it heal me?”

“I hope so.”

She walked over and leaned against him. “I’m sad, Leoff,” she confided. “I’m always sad.”

“I know,” he replied.

“I wish I could help you, but every time I try to play something, I hurt people.”

“I know.”

“I sing for the ghosts, though, and sometimes play for them very quietly, when no one is around. Like at the well.”

“Does that make you happy?”

“No. But it makes me feel a better kind of sad.”

Rain had washed Haundwarpen that morning and left it smelling new, as if its cobbles and bricks had been laid that morning. It was a neat little town anyway, but today it almost looked like something that had been painted, so fresh were the yellow and rust trims on the houses, the blue sky held in street puddles, the copper roof of the clock tower. Artwair’s estate was only a short walk from town, and Leoff enjoyed going there, especially with Areana, who despite having grown up five leagues away in Wistbirm, seemed to know everyone. He liked to watch her haggle for fruit, fish, and meat and knew by the curve and tautness of her neck when she was about to settle.

He enjoyed the details of the place, the door knockers in the shapes of fish and flowers and especially hands, the weather vanes on the rooftops, some shaped like banners, others like cranes or dragons, but especially hands.

And he loved the Rauthhat, the lively beer hall in the center of town. It was always alive with both locals and travelers, and there was usually a minstrel or two trying to get by to learn new melodies from. He needed the quiet of the estate, but he needed this, too—life. Especially after his talk with Mery that morning.

So the three of them found an empty table at the Rauthhat, and Jen, the barmaid with red hair and a wide grin, brought them the brown beer the place served, mussels cooked in wine and butter, and some thick, crusty bread to sop up the liquid with. Not surprisingly, Leoff felt a little more cheerful. Areana sparkled like a jewel as she said her hellos, and Mery at least ate some of the mussels and sipped at the wine. But that went only so far, and even in the Rauthhat things were a bit subdued. No one was talking about it, but everyone knew there was an army from Hansa just a few leagues away. Haundwarpen had a garrisoned keep and respectable walls, but determined armies had taken them before.

But for this night at least, Leoff joined everyone in the place in pretending nothing bad was afoot, and he let himself develop a bit of a glow. That all ended quite healthily in the arms of his young wife that night, when, as they lay damp and sleepy in the sheets, she kissed his ear and whispered, “I’m with child.” He cried with happiness and fear, and they fell asleep holding each other.

The next day found him staring at the blank sheet again, with—finally—the glimmer of an idea.

What if he could give the dead something else to sing?

A number of questions came around at that. Why were they singing the deadly music he had written? Would they sing anything using the forbidden modes?

Was Mery lying or deluded? That was an important one.

The old music had progressed in stages, coaxing and finally seducing the living toward death. Those who had died seemed to have expired by some act of sheer will, their hearts stopping because they—with all the strength and purpose in them—wanted their hearts to stop.

He remembered wanting it, too. He had almost surrendered everything.

Was it possible to write a backward progression? One that would make the dead yearn toward life? And if so, would that be the right thing to do? He pictured hordes of corpses rising, walking to the Rauthhat for beer, seeking the beds of their widows and widowers…

But at least he was thinking now.

He made beginnings, musical vignettes and fancies on the themes of life and death. He wrote melodies and countermelodies stripped of the modal accompaniments that would give them real power, able now to sense something of what they might do in his head.

It was with a start that he realized it was after midday and someone was calling—no, screaming—for him.

He flung open his door and hurried out of the house. Areana was running toward him across the clover, her long lace-trimmed blue skirt billowing. Her face was red from crying, and she was so hysterical, hiccups kept any sense from her words. But she was pointing, and he finally made it out: “Mery.” The girl was lying in the well, facedown. His first thought was that it wasn’t Mery at all but just a little doll someone had dropped down there.

When the servants fished her out, he couldn’t pretend that any longer. She wasn’t breathing, and water poured from her mouth and nose.

The next few bells were a blur. He held Areana and tried to say comforting things while the servants changed the girl, cleaned her up, and put her on her bed.

“She was so unhappy,” Areana said when things starting coming back into focus. “Do you think…” “I don’t know,” he said. “She told me yesterday that she heard the dead singing at the well, that she saw her mother. I told her not to go there anymore, but I should have—I should have stopped her.”

“It’s not your fault.”

“It’s all my fault,” he replied. “If I had never written that cursed music. If I had watched her more carefully…”

“You loved her,” Areana said. “You gave her more than anyone else in her life. You showed her a little of what she was capable of.”

He just shook his head, and she took him by the temples and kissed his forehead.

“Why are you crying?” Mery asked. She was standing in the doorway in the fresh dress they had put on her. Her hair was still wet.