The Twisted Citadel

  "Yes, very well. But not now, please, Maxel."

  "Not now," he said softly, letting his hand slide from her arm. "Ishbel..."

  She stared at him, clearly wanting to get away.

  "Ishbel, if you need me, you can find me in the command tent." He nodded at the tent they'd both just left. "I'm no longer sharing a tent with Ravenna and Venetia."

  Then he left her staring after him as he ducked inside the tent.

  Ravenna stood in the shadow of a tent as Ishbel passed. She had watched the command tent for a half hour or more, knowing Maximilian and his commanders and Ishbel were inside, and not surprised at, yet resenting, the fact she had not been asked to attend.

  She felt physically and emotionally exhausted. She could not understand why Maximilian kept Ishbel close after she had lost the child he'd wanted so much, and then treated him so vilely by flaunting Isaiah as her lover. She could not even comprehend why Maximilian could still consider Ishbel an ally after Ravenna had shown him the vision, the truth, for the Land of Dreams did not lie.

  But Maximilian wanted Ishbel as much more than an ally, didn't he? No matter what he had said to Ishbel last night in the snow, Maximilian still wanted her. Ravenna had watched as Ishbel emerged from the tent, clearly upset about something (had one of the others justly questioned her apparent good faith?), and then Maximilian had followed her, not a breath later, catching at Ishbel's arm and pulling her close for a quiet conversation.

  Ravenna had been sure Maximilian would lean down to kiss Ishbel, but he did not, and that likely due, Ravenna thought, to Ishbel's determination to tease him and make him beg for her after he'd humiliated her before Ravenna.

  Ishbel would have her way with him eventually. She would cajole Maximilian into her bed and his ring onto her finger.

  Ravenna was now certain of that. There was nothing left that she could do or say to make Maximilian see sense, and realize that Ishbel would bring catastrophe to his life, and to Elcho Falling and the entire land.

  She felt ill at the thought, and wished that Maximilian had been a stronger man.

  Ravenna watched as Ishbel walked away toward her tent, then she moved away quietly into the night.

  Ishbel stood twenty or so paces from her tent, not yet willing to enter it. She needed the night air, needed it to clear her mind and heart and restore some peace to her soul.

  She wished Maximilian had not followed her out once she'd walked away from him.

  "Are you all right?" Axis said softly, stepping up behind her.

  "Not particularly," she replied, not looking at him.

  He stood with her silently for a little while, his eyes wandering over the stars in the sky.

  "Did you mean what you said to Maxel," he said finally, "that what lay between you is over?"

  "Yes," Ishbel said. "There is a freedom, you know, in not loving him as once I did, and in not yearning for him. It is more peaceful."

  As once I did...Axis wondered what she meant by that.

  "Will you be my lover?" he said.

  She looked at him, momentarily startled. "You waste no time, Axis SunSoar."

  "I mean to be first in line."

  Ishbel laughed softly. "My answer is no, Axis. I have had enough of lovers for the moment. The gods alone know my last was ill-timed enough." She hesitated. "Did you mean it?"

  He gave a small smile, his eyes reflecting the starshine. "No."

  "Azhure is a lucky woman," Ishbel said.

  Axis shrugged slightly. "Not so lucky, if you think that she rests still in the Otherworld while her husband lives untouchable in this."

  "Do you miss her?"

  "Not as much as first I did. When Isaiah pulled me from the Otherworld, from death back into life, my yearning for her was a throbbing pain. Here." He tapped his chest. "I used to write her letters every night.

  I think Isaiah had a servant steal them from my bedchamber so that I would think they had been spirited by magic into the Otherworld."

  Ishbel smiled.

  "Then Isaiah sent me north, to fetch you from Ba'al'uz," Axis continued, "and my yearning for Azhure dulled. I no longer write her letters. I think of her most days...but I do not yearn for her." He sighed.

  "She has lost me, I think, to the adventures of life."

  "Do you think you will ever love again? As you did Azhure?"

  "Not as I loved Azhure, no. Not that, not ever again. But love, in a different manner, shape, and form?"

  Axis paused. "I hope so, Ishbel. I could not bear to live this new life completely without love."

  When Axis left Ishbel he thought to stroll past the tents of the generals, to see if all was peaceful. But as he turned to go, he saw that StarDrifter and Salome's tent was still lit, and he decided to speak with them.

  The generals could wait until morning.

  StarDrifter and Salome were sitting up on their bed, quite naked, Salome leaning against StarDrifter's chest, one of his hands resting on her distended belly. Salome was now some seven months pregnant, glowing with satisfaction at the place in life she had unexpectedly found herself, and somewhat amused as she saw Axis' slight discomfort at finding his father and her in such intimacy.

  But he pulled up a stool, sat down, and nodded at Salome's belly. "What do you think, StarDrifter?" he asked his father. "What kind of son are you breeding this time?"

  "A peaceful one," said StarDrifter, watching his son a little carefully. He was not sure how Axis would react to this child--for so long Axis had been the favored, and then the only, son.

  Now he would have a brother.

  Axis gave a slight smile at StarDrifter's words. "Neither Gorgrael nor I had ever been `peaceful' sons,"

  he said, referring to his half-brother and onetime Lord of the Skraelings whom Axis had eventually killed in battle. "And Salome, if you forgive me for saying this, is a considerably less `peaceful' woman than either my mother or Gorgrael's."

  "Then feel your brother," said StarDrifter. "Place your hand on Salome's belly and feel him."

  Axis hesitated. It was not simply the familiarity, and the amusement in both Salome's and StarDrifter's eyes at his uncertainty, but the fact that he would be able to intimately sense the baby. All Icarii could sense and communicate with unborn children, and it was not an ability they had lost with the Star Dance.

  Axis was not sure if he wanted to meet his new brother just yet.

  "Axis?" Salome said.

  He leaned forward, sliding his hand over the mound of Salome's belly as his father withdrew his.

  Her skin was very warm, very soft, and very tight over her womb.

  Axis could literally feel the curve of his brother's body and two very slight bumps, either of hands or of feet.

  And he could feel more. The rapid thrum of his brother's heart...and his brother's interest, the movement of his tiny body as he shifted within the womb so that more of his body was exposed to the gentle pressure of Axis' hand.

  "What do you sense?" StarDrifter said.

  "Curiosity," said Axis. "You had not told him about me. He did not know he had an elder brother."

  "There has been so little time..." StarDrifter said, waving a hand languidly, and Axis shot him a sharp look, then looked back to his hand, which he shifted gently this way and that.

  "He is gentle and peaceful," Axis said. "You are right." His mouth quirked. "That is unexpected in a SunSoar. He wants to learn, he is so curious."

  Then Axis blinked, leaning back from Salome's body and removing his hand from where it rested.

  "He will be a great singer," he said. "A beautiful voice. StarDrifter, what have you named him?"

  Salome and StarDrifter glanced at each other.

  "StarDancer," said StarDrifter.

  "And how shall he do that," Axis said softly, holding his father's eyes, "when none of us have access to the Star Dance?"

  "The Lealfast arrive soon," StarDrifter said. "They shall tell us how to touch the Star Dance again. They can touch it, and they will te
ll us."

  Axis doubted very much that the Lealfast would just "tell" anyone, but StarDrifter had now broached the subject Axis wanted to speak to him about.

  "How do you feel about them, StarDrifter?" he asked. "They number so many, a quarter of a million, and shall be so strange to us. From my brief glimpse of the one who staged the assassination attempt on Isaiah, they are an alien people. They are--"

  "They are Icarii," StarDrifter said.

  Axis shook his head slowly. "I don't know, StarDrifter. They have the outward shape of an Icarii, but they are still so strange. They have Skraeling blood in them--and abilities that are beyond us, and beyond even what we commanded when we had the Star Dance and were at the full height of our powers."

  He paused. "And they give their loyalty to Maximilian, to the Lord of Elcho Falling. Not to you as Talon."

  "There will come a time," StarDrifter said, "when both the Lealfast and the Icarii shall be one nation again. They came from us, Axis. They shall return to us."

  Axis grew more uncomfortable by the moment. Almost everything about this visit had disturbed him, just slightly, and he felt a distance between himself and his father that he hadn't felt previously.

  He really didn't think the Lealfast would prove firm and fast and immediate friends to the Icarii, and he suspected that StarDrifter expected them to accept him as their Talon.

  "Perhaps," Axis answered, then he took his leave of Salome and StarDrifter.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Sky Peaks Pass

  Ishbel?"

  Ishbel twisted about on the stool, caught in the act of brushing out her hair before she dressed it for the day, irritated that Maximilian had found her at such an intimate moment.

  "May I sit?" Maximilian said, coming further into the tent and nodding at the chair to one side of Ishbel's mirror. "I'm sorry to disturb you before your breakfast."

  "Of course." Ishbel set her brush to one side, keeping her movements slow and ordered and her expression carefully neutral as she regarded Maximilian.

  "Ishbel, I do need to speak to you about what happened the other night in the snow."

  "There is no need to--"

  "I should not have treated you in the manner I did. You did not deserve it."

  "You have done nothing these past months but allow me to believe that was how I should be treated."

  "We have both said things hurtful, and done things that--"

  "Maximilian, leave this, please. I meant what I said earlier. Our past is now past. It is gone. I realized that after you'd left. There is no point in either of us trying to resurrect a relationship that has caused us nothing but pain."

  Maximilian regarded her steadily for a long moment, and Ishbel had to drop her eyes. That little speech had sounded ridiculous.

  "You always said that the Lord of Elcho Falling would bring you nothing but pain and grief, Ishbel. I

  cannot believe I fulfilled that prophecy so readily."

  "It is gone, Maximilian. You have Ravenna now, and her child, and--"

  "Did you not hear what I said about the command tent, Ishbel?"

  "You can't possibly want me to believe that not an hour after you turned your back on me, you then did the same to Ravenna." Ishbel paused. "Can you?"

  Maximilian shifted his eyes away from her as she had so recently averted hers.

  "You amaze me," Ishbel said. "I can't believe it. You were willing to grind me into the snow with your heel and--"

  "Ishbel--"

  "And for what? For what? To then do the same to Ravenna not an hour later? I cannot believe you have the nerve, Maximilian, to sit there and...and expect me to fall about with gratefulness and dewy-eyed radiance and hold out my arms to you!"

  "That is not why I came here!"

  "Of course not. Oh, I am well rid of you, Maximilian Persimius! Do you know what I felt as you walked away from me in the snow? Do you know? It was anger, not at you or Ravenna, but at myself for having allowed myself to be so foolish as to love you!"

  Ishbel closed her eyes briefly as she took a deep breath and damped down her anger. "Maximilian, I

  harbor no ill will toward you. I will do anything I can to aid you. But I will not love you. You need to understand that very clearly. I want control of my life back, and I want never again to find myself so hideously vulnerable as when I loved you. You were right all along. The marriage is over. The love is over."

  "You have abandoned love in short order, it seems."

  "As you abandoned love, and two women, in short order."

  He said nothing, looking down at his hands, the muscles in one cheek working.

  Finally, he looked at Ishbel. "May I ask something?"

  She sighed. "Why not?"

  "Have you ever had any other visions or dreams than those which you told me about--myself, in the snow, destroying your world?"

  She looked at him quizzically. "What kind of visions?"

  "You, on your knees, opening the door of Elcho Falling to a lord of darkness."

  Now Ishbel looked very steadily at him for a long moment before answering. "No. The only nightmares I

  ever had were about you, Maxel."

  He looked at her sharply at that, but Ishbel continued straight on. "Where did you get that little gem from?"

  He gave a slight shrug of his shoulders, again not meeting her eyes.

  "Ravenna?" she said, and Maximilian's mouth tugged upward in a small smile.

  "Yes," he said. "She tells me that you will bring nothing but sorrow, and destroy me, Elcho Falling, and the entire land in the process."

  Ishbel laughed hollowly. "Oh, that I had that much power, Maxel." She paused. "Do you believe her?"

  "She showed me the vision. I saw it."

  "Well then, believe it if you must. Malat is talking of riding to the Central Kingdoms. I can go with him. I

  believe he is wifeless now the Skraelings ate his--"

  "Ishbel!" Maximilian took a deep breath. "Don't."

  "But you have seen this vision."

  "Don't taunt me, Ishbel. Visions can be misinterpreted."

  "I hope you didn't say that to Ravenna. It might have made her very cross."

  Another smile tugged at Maximilian's mouth. "Do you mean me treachery, Ishbel?"

  "No. But I am assuming that what Ravenna deduced from the vision was that I am weak-willed and prone to disasters of monumental proportions."

  "Your vision of me destroying your world...did it eventuate as you had thought?"

  "Very close, but not quite, perhaps. I am still here, breathing, and my world is not shattered. Only my fear and doubt were destroyed." She paused. "I allowed you to create such misery in my life, Maxel, because I loved you, and I won't--"

  "Allow that to happen again?" he said. "Yes, so you have said."

  Their eyes met, and both almost smiled.

  "You have not come here to ask me to leave, Maxel?"

  "No. I want you to stay."

  "And Ravenna's vision..."

  He shrugged, thinking of what Ishbel had said: Only my fear and doubt were destroyed. "Maybe it is truth, maybe not."

  Ishbel hesitated, then spoke. "Thank you for telling me about it, Maxel."

  He nodded. "Will you stay with my column?"

  "You are going to Elcho Falling?"

  "Yes."

  "Then I will stay with you. Elcho Falling is my home, too, Maximilian."

  "I know that."

  "Good."

  He rose, walking to the tent door. "Ishbel, be careful of Ravenna."

  She cannot possibly do me the harm that you have done, Ishbel thought, but was too tired to put those words to voice. She gave a nod.

  "We need to talk again," Maximilian said. "About Elcho Falling."

  She gave another nod.

  He looked at her, then turned and left the tent.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Sky Peaks Pass

  Maximilian spent the morning with Axis and Ezekiel, inspecting some of the Isemb
aardian units and talking with the soldiers. He had a brief lunch, then, feeling restless, he waved away Serge and Doyle, took his cloak, and walked out into the countryside.

  There was a hill about three or four hundred paces from the northern border of the camp, and he made for it at a brisk rate, enjoying the exercise.

  The hill was perhaps fifty paces high and he climbed it easily. By the time he reached the summit he was sweating gently, thoroughly warmed by the exercise. He circled about the summit, taking deep breaths of the chilly air, enjoying its invigoration.

  His breath steamed, and he clapped and rubbed his hands together as he took in the view. It was still late winter, but spring could not be far away, and on the summit, where the rocks were warmed by the sun, the snow had melted away.

  The great Isembaardian army, swelled now by Georgdi's and Malat's ragged column and a few Icarii, stretched away to the south and east almost as far as Maximilian could see.

  What was he going to do with such a mass? And how was he going to keep it together?

  He did not fool himself that the shout of loyalty in that instant after Isaiah had so stunningly handed command to Maximilian, meant much at all. The men had done as they were told, but their hearts had not been behind their voices. Maximilian was not surprised at what Axis had told him, that the men murmured about their families and worried.

  He, too, would worry and murmur.

  He turned slightly, catching sight of Ishbel's blue tent with the pennant fluttering in the breeze.

  A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

  She amazed Maximilian, almost as much as she disconcerted him. He had been so sure that he had devastated her world with his coldness and denial two nights ago in the snow. But instead Ishbel had straightened her back, tossed her head, and emerged from it the stronger.

  So much stronger.

  Maximilian was not entirely sure why he'd gone to talk to her earlier in the day. Yes, he had needed to sound her out about Ravenna's vision, because it worried him. But Maximilian thought also he had gone to make sure she hadn't been pretending when she'd said, so calmly and assuredly, that what had once been between them was now past.

  His smile faded as he remembered how he'd rushed after her, and made himself look like a foolish youth by telling her that he'd now moved into the command tent.