The Twisted Citadel

  A massive crown of three entwined rings enclosed the peak of the very highest tower.

  The citadel hung over the entire army, revolving very slowly so that all could see every aspect

  It was stunning, awe-inspiring.

  Axis stared. The sense that there was something he should be understanding about what he was seeing--apart from the skill of the Lealfast in forming this representation--was now so all-consuming that he could barely breathe.

  There was something...something...

  "Oh gods..." Axis muttered, staggering a little on his feet with the depth of his emotion.

  Oh gods...he understood suddenly just how it was that the Lealfast could touch the Star Dance.

  Almost frantically he looked about, this way and that, Ishbel watching him carefully as if she thought he had been caught in a sudden fit of insanity.

  Axis didn't care. He turned, his eyes almost starting from his head, as if searching out a ghost within the air.

  And then, with incredible sweetness, the Star Dance filtered through his body, and Axis was whole once more.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Sky Peaks Pass

  Maximilian knew. He stared at Axis, and gave him the ghost of a smile, then raised his hand in the air to attract the attention of the massed soldiers.

  "Behold," he said, and he waved his hand.

  Then, before the startled eyes of the watching tens of thousands, the representation of Elcho Falling blurred, then fell apart. Most of the snowflakes tumbled to the ground, coating the heads and shoulders of the army below, but many thousands of them remained hovering in the air.

  There was a long moment when they just hung there, quivering slightly in the faint wind, and then the snowflakes transformed into the indescribably beautiful frosted outlines of winged men and women.

  Axis had never seen anything like it; the sight eclipsed, for the moment, his joy at being able to once again touch the Star Dance. The sky filled with the creatures, light glinting and shimmering off their wings and the outline of their bodies. They rose into the air, higher and higher, a great cloud of glimmering lights, a tangle of wings and outflung arms and the curve here and there of a back, or a shoulder, or a cheek.

  Axis dragged his eyes away to look at his father. StarDrifter was staring upward, transfixed, his mouth open.

  It was a similar reaction all about. Men stood, utterly still, staring upward, mouths hanging open.

  "These are the Lealfast," said Maximilian, his even voice carrying across the entire assembly. "You do not need to fear them. They have pledged themselves to me, the first to do so with their entire hearts and loyalties."

  Maximilian opened both arms, his face now looking up at the Lealfast hanging in the sky far above him.

  "My friends!" he called. "Will you inhabit the winds for a time, while I speak to this great crowd?"

  As one, every Lealfast in the sky bowed--with exquisite gracefulness--then wheeled away to the north.

  In five heartbeats they were gone, and Axis felt a breath go through the mass, as if of disappointment.

  "The Lealfast," Maximilian said again, "are the first peoples to pledge themselves to me. Others may follow." He paused. "I do not command you by any right, nor by any heritage. I am the Lord of Elcho Falling only, not of the world. But the doors of Elcho Falling are open to any who wish to join with me, or have like cause with me. Isaiah has handed command of you into my hands, but I cannot command the same loyalty that you owed Isaiah, nor should I try to do so.

  "That loyalty is something you must give me freely."

  Again Maximilian paused. "Some among you have chosen a different path to mine. Kezial, Lamiah, and Armat, three of Isaiah's generals, as well as some of their confidantes, have fled, preferring lonelier campfires to those here."

  Stars, thought Axis, be careful with this, Maxel. He wondered if he should use the Star Dance somehow, to aid Maximilian, then realized that Maximilian would hate that.

  Axis almost smiled. He was looking for an excuse now, any excuse, to use the Star Dance.

  Despite his concern, Axis was glad that Maximilian had mentioned the generals' desertion openly. The fact of that desertion would be widely known within the Isembaardian army.

  "Many of you are worried about what has happened to your homes and families in Isembaard,"

  Maximilian continued. "I know that, and I sympathize with it.

  "I can do a little about it. Tomorrow I am sending your once-Tyrant, Isaiah, back to Isembaard.

  Accompanying him shall be twenty thousand or so of the Lealfast fighters."

  Axis hoped that Maximilian had already mentioned this to Eleanon.

  "Your loyalty," Maximilian said to the Isembaardians, "you need to give to me freely. I shall not seek to force it."

  He took a deep breath and gave a nod, and dismissed the gathering with that simple action.

  Maximilian turned to step down from the top of the hill, but as he did so three Lealfast materialized above his head, and descended before him. As they landed, they attained full flesh, although their forms still shimmered with a semitransparency and frost still rimed the ridges of their features.

  They bowed to Maximilian, spreading their wings out behind them in the same manner as the Icarii when paying someone their respects.

  "Lord of Elcho Falling," said one of them, a bold, handsome man, "my name is Eleanon, and I speak for all the Lealfast. We have waited thousands of years for you, Maximilian Persimius, and our lives are now yours to command as you will."

  Then Eleanon rose and, just before Maximilian addressed him, shot Axis a look of chilling triumph.

  Part Two

  CHAPTER ONE

  DarkGlass Mountain

  By the end of the third day, the One had completed his restoration work within the Infinity Chamber.

  Once more it glowed with light, and once more the power of Infinity powered the One's soul.

  He exulted, then left the pyramid.

  This was an adventure for the One, and a revelation.

  He strode along the internal corridors of the pyramid, his green glassy form reflecting shadows from the fused black glass which lined the corridors, and gloried in the physicality of movement.

  Then he emerged from the pyramid, and discovered the warmth of the sun, and color, sound, scent, and wind. For a moment all these different sensations threatened to overwhelm the One, but he took a deep breath ( feel the warm, scented air fill his lungs!) and he absorbed these varied sensations, and they became at one with him.

  He turned slightly, enough so he could see the pyramid rising high above him. This was a strange feeling, to look back on that which had contained him, which had literally been him, for so many thousands of years. He reached out a hand, touching a plate of green glass.

  His hand blended with it (into it) perfectly.

  Feel how smooth, how warm.

  "Master?"

  The One blinked, momentarily angered by the intrusion. He blinked again, and saw that it was a Skraeling.

  He didn't like the Skraelings. But they were necessary, and they would prove useful.

  Behind this single Skraeling the One could see many of the creatures, almost an infinity of them, stretching along the riverbank beyond the pyramid.

  "Master?" the Skraeling said again.

  "Yes?"

  "It is good to see you again. We thought you had forgotten us, crouched so deep within your glass mountain."

  The One thought this was presumptuous of the Skraeling, and did not deign to answer.

  "Have you been talking with the Lealfast?" the Skraeling said.

  "And if I have?" the One said.

  "You should not trust them," said the Skraeling. "We are their fathers, yet they affect to despise us."

  The One did not find that very surprising. He would expect nothing less than that his Magi should despise creatures such as these.

  "One day," said the Skraeling, "they may affect to despise you, too. They h
ave no great sense of loyalty.

  Unlike us. We are your true servants."

  "And you have my gratitude for that," the One said, loathing them, and hoping that they did not intend to whine at him for hours. He waited, expecting the Skraeling to drift away, but it still stood there, clasping its claws in anxiety and looking at him with those disconcerting watery silver orbs.

  By Infinity, they were disgusting!

  "Was there anything else?" said the One.

  "We are hungry."

  "Hungry." The One pondered this. What was hunger?

  "We need to eat, please. We've come a long way. You said you'd feed us."

  "Kanubai said he would feed you. I am the One. I am not Kanubai. I am perfection incarnate."

  "We still need to eat."

  "You may not eat me!" the One roared.

  "Of course not!" said the Skraeling, springing back to what it hoped was a safe distance. "We'd like to eat flesh, please."

  "That is such a weakness, your need for flesh."

  "Nonetheless..."

  "Well," said the One, trying to work out what the Skraeling wanted him to do about this apparently overwhelming hunger--by Infinity itself, the whole horde of them appeared to be slavering! "Can't you find some flesh around and about to sate your hunger?" He waved a glassy hand about vaguely. "Does not flesh populate this land? I have been aware of much flesh these past few thousand years. Much and very annoying flesh."

  Like Boaz, who had once worshipped him, but who had then presumed to plot to destroy him.

  "Yes," said the Skraeling, who had now crept back a little closer, "once flesh did walk this land. But the land on this side of the river," the Skraeling's face twisted with fear as it said the word "river," "has curiously little flesh about it. We think the man Isaiah--"

  Now the One's thoughts coalesced about the man who had spent hours sitting in the Infinity Chamber--Isaiah--and some of the hate that the One felt for Boaz managed to transfer itself to Isaiah.

  Isaiah was trouble, too, and Isaiah was still alive, which was worse.

  "--emptied the land this side of the river before we came," the Skraeling continued. "Nasty man. Now we're hungry, and we think that there is much flesh, much vulnerable flesh, waiting over the river."

  As if to underscore the point, the Skraeling turned its head and looked longingly over the River Lhyl where stood the palace of Aqhat.

  "It looks fairly empty to me," said the One.

  "It was full when first we arrived," said the Skraeling, "but it has been days now, days and days and days since we arrived, and in that time people have been escaping east and north and south and we haven't been able to chase them!"

  "Why not?"

  The Skraeling hung its head. "We're afraid of water."

  The One smiled. "What water?"

  The Skraeling frowned, then looked again at the river.

  It was gone, replaced by a glassy surface, rippled in patches where the water had struggled against its death.

  The Skraeling drew a deep breath, then moved so fast its form almost blurred.

  As it moved, so did its millions of comrades, and within a heartbeat the rigid river was lost beneath an undulating tide of gray wraiths.

  The destruction of Isembaard had begun.

  The One crossed the glassy Lhyl several hours later, once the initial fuss was over. The Skraelings had mobbed the palace of Aqhat, finding little save one old bedridden man whom the fleeing servants had forgotten, rats, a score of dogs, and a few cats.

  From Aqhat they swarmed eastward, fanning out over the countryside, the leaders running with their noses close to the ground, sniffing out the trails of the people who had fled as soon as they'd seen the Skraelings appear on the other side of the river.

  The One knew he'd have to call them back eventually, but he was coming to understand the need to feed, and so for the time being he would let them roam.

  It wouldn't do any harm.

  There were still a few score Skraelings snuffling around the reed beds of the Lhyl, perhaps hoping for a river lizard or two, and for a time the One stopped and watched them.

  They were truly horrid creatures, but they would serve his purpose well.

  There was a sudden commotion within the reeds, and the One strolled over to see what was happening.

  Had the Skraelings found a water lizard after all?

  No, as it transpired. They had found a cat with a litter of kittens.

  The mother cat had tried desperately to defend her litter, but in vain. She was now dead, torn between two of the Skraelings and ingested. The litter had consisted of seven kittens, but in the moments it had taken the One to walk over, the Skraelings had devoured six of them, leaving only one blood-spattered corpse which, just as the One stopped, one of the Skraelings reached for.

  "Stop," said the One. He was curious about this creature, and picked up the bloodied corpse himself.

  It lay in the palm of his hand, limp, damp with blood...and then it suddenly moved, and sank its teeth (or at least, it attempted to sink its teeth) into the meaty flesh at the base of the One's thumb.

  The One jumped in surprise, almost dropping the kitten. He steadied, raising his hand so that he might study the creature more carefully.

  Skraelings surrounded the One, wailing in frustration at the scent of blood and flesh so close.

  The kitten rose on its paws, hissing at the One.

  The One hissed back instinctively, but there was no malice in it. Instead he found himself confused by a strange sensation that began in his belly and rose into his chest.

  It was...emotion, he realized, but he could not identify it.

  "I might keep it," the One said of the kitten. "It requires further study."

  As one, the Skraelings hissed in frustration.

  "It was not dead at all," said the One, "merely covered with the blood of its siblings. Now all that remains from the litter is the one." His mouth curved and his eyes glinted as he realized the significance. "The one..."

  The One studied the kitten more closely and noticed, as it flattened its ears and hissed at him again, that its teeth were tiny replicas of the ones the Skraeling had crowding their mouths.

  "It must eat flesh, too," said the One. He lifted his free hand, pointed it at one of the Skraelings, and the next instant the Skraeling dissolved into finely shredded strips of meat.

  The One bent down, retrieved a strip, and dangled it over the kitten.

  The kitten's ears quivered, then pricked forward, and it reached for the meat.

  The One smiled.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The Sky Peaks Pass

  Maximilian walked toward his command tent. Behind him came Axis, Ezekiel, Ishbel, and three of the Lealfast: Eleanon, another male Lealfast, and a lovely woman, whom Axis found himself glancing at far more frequently than the two males. They had come here straight from the gathering about the hill, Maximilian asking that StarDrifter, Georgdi, and Malat meet him in the morning.

  StarDrifter had not been pleased. He had wanted to speak with the Lealfast, but had eventually acquiesced to Maximilian's suggestion that that be left for the next day.

  The walk from the hill had not been accomplished without some tension between the Lealfast and Axis.

  The Lealfast walked to one side of Maximilian, Axis a few paces to the other side with Ishbel and Ezekiel, and Maximilian thought he would have been skewered a thousand times had the looks they'd shot each other been daggers.

  He repressed a sigh. More Icarii could be expected to fly in to join StarDrifter now that word was filtering out that once again there was a Talon of their people, and Maximilian had no idea how well the two winged peoples would get on.

  Badly, if this was any indication.

  He was glad he'd asked StarDrifter to stay away.

  Serge was waiting by the tent flap and opened it as Maximilian approached.

  "Isaiah is inside," Serge murmured. "And with bad news, I think."

  Maxi
milian nodded. "Isaiah?" he said as he stepped into the tent.

  "Maxel," Isaiah said, rising from his chair, "I am sorry I did not attend your gathering. There is more bad news from Isembaard."

  Maximilian wished now that Ezekiel wasn't with him, but the Isembaardian general was already inside the tent, together with the others, and would have heard what Isaiah had said.

  "Then just tell it to me, Isaiah," Maximilian said.

  "The River Lhyl is dead," Isaiah said. "Murdered by whatever that damned pyramid has become."

  Eleanon and Bingaleal exchanged the briefest of glances.

  "Oh no!" Ishbel said, sinking into a chair. "Not that magical river. Isaiah, I am so sorry."

  "If the River Lhyl is no more," Axis observed, "then the Skraelings have full access to Isembaard. The waters had held them back. Now..."

  "All the more reason, then, for you to go back, Isaiah," said Maximilian.

  "And how much," said Ezekiel, "do you think these frosted sprites and Isaiah can do, Maximilian?"

  Maximilian sent him a level look, but did not respond. Instead he turned to the three Lealfast. "Eleanon,"

  he said, offering his hand, and finding himself somewhat surprised to discover that the Lealfast man's hand was warm. "Will you introduce your fellows?"

  "My brood brother Bingaleal," said Eleanon, indicating the other Lealfast male. Maximilian thought that Bingaleal had a harder, more experienced air about him than Eleanon. His entire manner had a cold edge to it, and, like Eleanon, he was watchful and alert.

  Axis had recognized him instantly as the man who had tried to assassinate Isaiah in the great audience chamber of Aqhat, and he locked eyes significantly with Isaiah.

  Maximilian shook Bingaleal's hand, then looked at the woman. She was very lovely, but radiated a sense of distance that reminded Maximilian of Ishbel when first they had met. Of a height with Eleanon and Bingaleal, the woman was slim and elegant, every turn of her head or lift of her shoulder the movement of a dancer. Her long pale hair was braided so that it ran in two twists from the center of her forehead to either side of her head, curving together again behind her head to meet at the nape of her neck. The twists glittered with rime and framed her lovely face as would a crown.