The Twisted Citadel

  "Partly," Maximilian said, "but also because it is your heritage as well."

  "I cannot replace the Lord of Elcho Falling should he fall," Ishbel said.

  He gave her a very small smile at that. "I do not intend to fall, Ishbel."

  She sighed. "What do you think Armat is planning?"

  "Axis thinks, and I agree, that he intends to lay siege to Elcho Falling. He wants it for himself. Gods alone know what Ravenna has promised him."

  "Armat and his army are close, yes? Then why doesn't he attack now? We only have a relatively few thousand."

  "Armat and Ravenna want to wait until we open Elcho Falling."

  "They don't have the skills to do it themselves?"

  Maximilian shook his head.

  "Have you had any further news from the south, Maxel?"

  "No."

  He was very isolated, Ishbel thought. So much to bear, so much unknown, the whole burden to carry alone. She felt a great ache within herself, and knew that, whatever rationalizations she used to deny it, there was only one way to resolve that ache.

  "Madarin's belt buckle," she said, "and Serge's sword think we should marry."

  He looked at her, and she at him.

  "I'll make a decision at Elcho Falling," she said, and something about him relaxed. He smiled, nodded, then pushed his horse forward, leaving Ishbel to ride on alone again.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Hairekeep, Isembaard

  Eleanon paused a few steps inside the fortress. From outside, Hairekeep was a massive structure that soared high into the sky...but once inside the door it looked far smaller.

  As if it was the interior of a different building entirely.

  The space was very small (given the vast expanse of the exterior), almost intimate. There was a floor some fifteen paces square, and walls of golden glass, intricately carved, that rose in a pyramid shape to a point high above them.

  "It is beautiful," Eleanon said. Then, remembering what he'd seen when he, Inardle, and Bingaleal had used the dark spire, "It is the heart of DarkGlass Mountain."

  "Yes," said Bingaleal, "it is a representation of the Infinity Chamber which powers DarkGlass Mountain and connects it to Infinity. And here, as in the Infinity Chamber," he nodded to the shadows at the back of the chamber, "is the One."

  Eleanon tensed, but rapidly relaxed as he felt no threat from the figure which emerged from the darkness.

  It was the size and representation of a man, save that his flesh appeared to be made of green glass. In the depths of his chest revolved a golden pyramid.

  "You are the One," said Eleanon, and gave an elegant bow of his head.

  "I am," said the One. "I am the One and I am Infinity. We spoke some weeks ago, when first I emerged into flesh." The One smiled, his teeth curiously transparent behind his glass lips. "Have you come to take final communion in the One? Have you come to learn what the ancient Magi forgot to teach the Lealfast?"

  "Perhaps," Eleanon said, and the One laughed, a pleasant, rolling sound.

  "And so also Bingaleal hesitated," the One said. "Until I showed him this."

  He made a movement with his hand, and the back wall of the Infinity Chamber vanished. Eleanon found himself staring over a landscape of incredible beauty and power--a vast plain of emerald water, from which rose a magical citadel of such loveliness and power that he felt his knees weaken with need.

  "Elcho Falling," said the One. "Your home, once I have done with it."

  Eleanon stared, his knees growing even weaker. He could see birdmen and women flying about the citadel, and sense their joy and power.

  They were Lealfast, not Icarii.

  And they were whole. Not half of this and half of that, but whole and glorying in that wholeness.

  They are at One with themselves, the One spoke inside Eleanon's mind.

  Yes, Eleanon whispered.

  This was not a future in which either the Skraelings or the Icarii had any place.

  Moreover, Eleanon could sense truth in the vision. It was not a trick, not a sorcery constructed to fool him, but it was truth, and it was his future and the future of the Lealfast.

  "You can do this," said Eleanon. "You would give this to us?"

  "Yes, and yes," said the One. "I have no use for Elcho Falling save to remove any threat it harbors toward me."

  "What threat?" Eleanon said.

  "It and its lord seek to subdivide me," said the One, and now Eleanon could hear hate and anger in the One's voice.

  "You want us to deliver to you Elcho Falling and Maximilian Persimius," said Eleanon.

  "Yes," said the One. "I have cursed Maximilian Persimius, but you can be a more powerful friend to me than that curse can ever be. You will be my door into the citadel."

  "I will be your key," Eleanon said softly.

  "My key. Yes," said the One.

  "Maximilian thinks we are loyal to him," said Eleanon.

  The One smiled.

  Eleanon locked eyes with Bingaleal, then took a deep breath, addressing the One. "I will put this to the Lealfast Nation," he said, "but they will agree. They know that Maximilian is weak and cannot deliver to us that which we desire more than anything."

  "Wholeness," said the One. "Completeness. Your own dignity and destiny. Oneness."

  "Yes," Eleanon said, and the One had to bite back his smile. The Lealfast would be as malleable as Ravenna, and as had once been the Magi. "You may take this vision to your Nation with my blessing,"

  said the One, "and as my promise to you."

  Eleanon felt a peacefulness infuse his soul--and a certainty that he'd previously been denied.

  It was hope, he realized. Destiny, even.

  Once again he made his elegant bow to the One. "Thank you," he said.

  CHAPTER NINE

  On the Road to Serpent's Nest

  Axis!" Maximilian leaned over the distance between their horses and clapped Axis on the shoulder.

  "You look exhausted!"

  "A reflection of you, then," said Axis. He'd ridden for three days to catch up with Maximilian, who had obviously pushed his convoy harder than Axis had imagined.

  Stars knew how long it would take Inardle to catch up.

  But he was here, finally, and gladder than he had thought to see Maximilian again. "Thank you for sending the Strike Force," Axis said. "Without them..."

  "You should thank your father for loaning them to me," Maximilian said.

  "But you were the one to think of sending them, and for that you do have my thanks."

  "And thus, I hope, your undying gratitude and intention to run yourself into the ground accomplishing whatever it is I might ask of you."

  "Naturally!"

  Both men turned their horses so they rode side by side at the rear of the convoy.

  "But seriously," Axis said, "you look worn out."

  "I have been spending each night in the Twisted Tower," said Maximilian, "learning from Josia who was once hidden within the Weeper. You heard how...?"

  "How Ishbel freed him, and suffered attack from Ravenna? How Ravenna murdered her mother? Not all the details, but I have the gist of it."

  "Then the details can wait for the moment when we have more leisure, Axis," Maximilian said. "Tell me what you heard and saw in Armat's camp."

  For the next hour Axis talked in a low tone, telling Maximilian what had happened from the moment the injured Lealfast started falling out of the sky around him to the time BroadWing's Strike Force had saved them. Maximilian listened in silence, not interrupting with any questions, keeping his eyes on the road ahead.

  "Have you seen the Lealfast?" Axis asked.

  "No. They must be truly licking their wounds somewhere."

  "I think they will rejoin you at Elcho Falling," said Axis. "It will take time both for their wounds and egos to heal. I told Eleanon I didn't want him rejoining you until he was prepared to learn under BroadWing.

  Stars knows when that might be."

  "Axis...why did Ravenna
free you?"

  "So that I might persuade you against Ishbel, Maxel. She said that she loves you, and that she is not trying to destroy you. She said that all she wants is for you and this land to survive. But she says that if you take Ishbel back to your bed then you will fail, and this land will become a wasteland. She showed me--"

  "A vision?" Maximilian said sharply, looking at Axis once more.

  "She showed me a wasteland, Maxel. It was a version of the same vision she must have shown you, but she said it was different. Maxel, instead of some nameless threat, the vision now very clearly shows that Ishbel aids the walking pyramid. According to the vision, it is DarkGlass Mountain to whom she will betray Elcho Falling. There, I have said what Ravenna wished."

  Maximilian did not answer, and they rode a while without speaking.

  "Maxel," Axis said eventually, "Ravenna seemed almost reasonable. And she did save me."

  "Yet she murdered her mother."

  "Yes," Axis said. "She murdered her mother." He paused. "Maxel, I do not believe this will have some happy, magical ending. Either Ishbel or Ravenna will prove your destruction, and this land's destruction."

  Maximilian sighed. "Ah, thus speaketh the prophet of doom."

  "Maxel, listen to me. One day you will have to put your sword through one of these women. Can you do it?"

  CHAPTER TEN

  Isembaard

  Isaiah pulled the horse to a halt in the middle of the afternoon, when they were five or six days' journey from Hairekeep.

  Hereward, who had been dozing against his back, jerked into wakefulness. "Isaiah?"

  "Wait there," Isaiah said, swinging a leg over the stallion's withers and sliding to the ground.

  Hereward slid off as well, one hand grabbing at the halter and rope that Isaiah had fashioned out of the harness he had made.

  Someone was sitting cross-legged in the sand some twenty paces away, their head bent over the sword they were honing.

  Isaiah was already walking toward the man, but Hereward did not follow.

  Whatever waited there looked too dangerous.

  Isaiah stopped several paces away.

  "Bingaleal," he said, although he knew that the creature sitting on the ground before him was not in any manner the Lealfast he had known.

  Bingaleal--or whatever he had become--looked up from his task. In features he looked as Isaiah remembered, but his eyes had been replaced with vivid emerald glass.

  "Isaiah," Bingaleal said, then bent his head back to honing the sword.

  "What do you want, Bingaleal?" Isaiah said.

  Bingaleal's right hand moved down the blade of the sword, slowly and rhythmically, running the whetting stone over the cutting edge of the steel. It made a slow, whispering sound that grated on Isaiah's nerves.

  "Bingaleal?" Isaiah said.

  Bingaleal looked up again, and Isaiah heard Hereward's very soft gasp as she saw the creature's eyes.

  "I have a message for you," said Bingaleal. "From the One."

  "I grow sick of his messages," Isaiah said. "They prove a heavy burden."

  Bingaleal grinned, and now Isaiah gasped in unison with Hereward.

  Within Bingaleal's mouth there was nothing but blackness, and within that blackness, hands pressing forth in agony and terror.

  "Take a good look at Hairekeep as you pass," Bingaleal said, "and know what awaits Elcho Falling should Maximilian think to ignore the One."

  Then he rose, making Isaiah take an involuntary step back, and strode off into the distance.

  When Isaiah returned to Hereward, she looked at him with worried eyes. "Who was that?" she said.

  "Dismay and disaster," he replied.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On the Road to Serpent's Nest

  Axis went back to his tent. He knew that his father wanted to see him, but he was too tired to brave either StarDrifter or Salome and their happy, happy pregnancy.

  He didn't want to be reminded of the family he'd lost.

  Yysell, his body servant, was in the tent, setting out a tub of water and a cold meal on a table to one side.

  Axis thanked him, then waved him away.

  He wanted to be alone.

  As soon as the man had gone Axis stripped off his filthy clothing and sank into the hot tub. He scrubbed his body and hair, combing it out with his fingers, then lay back in the soapy water, thinking.

  Not of what he and Maximilian had discussed, but of Inardle.

  And Azhure.

  He'd barely thought of anything else on the ride to rejoin Maximilian.

  Since his return from death Axis had been tempted by women, but had never taken the opportunity to surrender to that temptation. He'd been attracted to Ishbel, and to a lesser extent Ravenna and Venetia, and there had been many opportunities from willing courtiers at Isaiah's palace of Aqhat whom he had waved away with a smile. But all these attractions and temptations had been intellectual. Axis had realized that he had the opportunity, and he had turned those opportunities over in his mind, but he never once came close to thinking, Yes, I will take that woman.

  He had remained faithful to Azhure.

  Then he had met Inardle.

  The attraction had been there instantly and Axis had supposed that like all other temptations over the past two years he would mull it over in his mind, smile at the thought of succumbing, and then walk away. The attraction would fade.

  Instead, it had grown stronger, and was overlaid with other emotions: irritation, anger, fear.

  Irritation, anger, fear. Everything a man felt when he was falling in love, and fighting that love tooth and nail.

  Love? Inardle?

  A half Skraeling?

  She was so very different from Azhure. Inardle was so very different from Faraday. She wasn't someone he had ever thought he'd be attracted to--damn it, she was half Skraeling!

  Perhaps that was the attraction. The feared, forbidden fruit, packaged in such loveliness.

  "Shit," Axis mumbled, rubbing a hand over his face, getting soap in his eyes, and trying his best to rid his mind of the image of the Skraeling mounting SummerStar.

  What was he going to do? Should he remain faithful to a woman who was, to all intents and purposes, dead?

  "What should I do, Azhure?" he murmured, but she didn't answer, and eventually Axis rose from the bath, sending water cascading over the floor of the tent, dried himself, and fell into bed.

  It took him hours to get to sleep, but when he did, his mind was made up, if not utterly easy.

  Azhure was dead, and Axis did not want to spend the rest of this new life yearning for what he had lost.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  On the Road to Serpent's Nest

  StarDrifter hugged his son as they met for breakfast in Maximilian's command tent. "I thought

  Imight see you last night."

  "I was exhausted, StarDrifter, and Maxel kept me talking until late in the night. Blame him. How's Salome?"

  "Still sleeping," StarDrifter said, starting to fill his plate with the food servants had set out on a side table.

  "There can't be long to go," Axis said, once more sitting down at the central table where he was already halfway through his own breakfast.

  "A few weeks, we think," StarDrifter said, sitting next to Axis.

  Axis looked at Maximilian at the head of the table. "And will it be an Elcho Falling birth, Maxel?"

  Maximilian waggled a hand. Who knows? "If we continue at this pace we should be at Elcho Falling within two weeks. Whether or not I unwrap Serpent's Nest to reveal Elcho Falling immediately rather depends on what I find when I get there."

  "Armat?" Axis said.

  "Armat has broken camp," BroadWing said. He had arrived in camp very early that morning, together with most of the Strike Force, leaving only a few scouts to track both Armat and the Emerald Guard bringing Inardle, Zeboath, and Garth to rejoin Maximilian.

  Axis nodded his thanks.

  Egalion, captain of the Emerald Guard, was also
present, together with Ishbel. Egalion had introduced himself to Axis when first the StarMan had entered, and the two men had spent several minutes in conversation, liking each other immediately, before anyone else had arrived in the tent. Ishbel had arrived only just before StarDrifter, had given Axis a hug of greeting and a kiss on his cheek, lectured him on getting into trouble, and had then sat down with a smile on her face and Maximilian's eyes watching her carefully.

  Ezekiel, the single remaining Isembaardian general, was not present. Although Maxel trusted him, Ezekiel tended not to be included in the meetings of Maximilian's closest advisors.

  "Armat is marching slowly northeast," BroadWing continued. "Not at a pace to catch us, nor on a line to intercept us."

  Axis forked some more eggs into his mouth and then, having swallowed, looked between his father and Maximilian. "I need to thank you," he said. "The Strike Force saved my life."

  "Maximilian asked me to send it," StarDrifter said. "Naturally, I had to consider the request carefully and at some length before I gave my consent."

  Everyone laughed.

  "I also need to thank and compliment BroadWing," Axis said. "An incompetent haggle of flighted bowmen--"

  Everyone present knew he was referring to the Lealfast.

  "--would only have exacerbated the danger to myself and my companions," Axis continued.

  "BroadWing, you commanded the Strike Force brilliantly, and if they responded in like manner, then it was because of the training you have given them over the past few weeks. You are an exceptional Strike Leader, my friend."

  "That title should truly belong to you," BroadWing said.

  Axis grinned. "Why is everyone trying to force ancient titles back onto my shoulders?" he said.

  "Because you have shoulders broad enough to bear them," Maximilian said. "Axis, my friends, this is as good a time as any to talk some strategy. We have a massive army moving up behind us, determined to lay siege to Elcho Falling. We have between us some twenty thousand men: Icarii, Escatorian, and the Isembaardians who chose to stay with us. Axis, I talked with StarDrifter, Egalion, and BroadWing earlier today, and they concur with my decision to give you complete command of all the disparate elements of what forces I have at my disposal. I am not the brilliant war leader, you are. Take command."