The Hollow Queen (28 page)

“How—how can you do that, if you are—in thrall to a demon?” the little girl stammered.

The look of shock became one of quiet outrage.

“
In thrall to a demon?
What be you talking about, Lady Melisande Navarne? I could never be in thrall to such a thing.”

“I—I thought anyone could be made a thrall—unless they were stronger than the demon—”

Analise's face wore equal expressions of amusement and annoyance.

“Now see here, Miss Melly—no demon can take a soul that already belongs to another, if the bond be old and strong enough. And while there be no doubt that my soul be shared with my husband, I had sworn my soul and my life to your grandmother long before I met him. I can never repay what she did for me in Serendair all those years ago; my life and soul are hers.

“There was nothing within me for the demon to latch on to, nothing to take; it had been given away in the old world, on the day she put me atop a horse in front of the leader of the Lirin of the fields outside of the city where she had met me. She had bargained with Michael for my life; I do not know what she paid, but I know it was dear. She saved me; I would never harm her or her child at the command of a voice from wherever this be coming from. Instead I just let the coals burn out. Fornicate him.”

Melisande released a sigh of relief so loud that Meridion twitched in Analise's arms and turned on his side away from her.

Both women, young and old, chuckled quietly.

“Back to bed,” Analise commanded as Melisande came to her side and bent to kiss Meridion's head. “You be on duty in the morning, and he be bound to be hungry after the depth of his slumber tonight. Make certain you leave time to rekindle the fire. And make it a big one—I want to be able to feel it in my room with the door closed.”

The little girl nodded and hurried back to her bedchamber.

 

29

THE PENINSULA OF SITHGRAID, VLANE, MANOSSE

Ashe was running so hard that it almost seemed his pounding heart might cease to beat.

To the end of the peninsula of Sithgraid, the place where his ancestor had stood to hold vigil for the Island and the son he had unwillingly left behind there.

Ashe, having left his own son behind in the mountains, finally understood what MacQuieth had felt.

The fragmenting of his sanity settled within him; the wyrm in his blood was in control now, but focused.

Ashe closed his eyes.

He imagined the distant shore of the land he stewarded half a world away, imagined the harbors smoldering from the northern tip of Traeg, the windswept fishing village where he had once met MacQuieth, and where he had stepped into the ocean to come to this continent so many months before.

He imagined Avonderre Harbor, the jewel of the Cymrian Alliance, where guardian towers topped with light had once welcomed thousands of ships from around the world into the safe haven of its docks and the men who crewed them into the warmth of its hospitality, now riddled and broken by assault from the air, its harbor now a graveyard of those ships and the men who crewed them.

His mind, overridden by the ire of the wyrm now in control of him, imagined the gentle harbor of Port Tallono in the southern kingdom of the Lirin, a place his own grandmother had once helped build, when her wisdom was used for good rather than for destruction, decimated in blood and fire as Avonderre had been.

He pushed the picture of his wife out of his mind, knowing that she would be fighting with everything that was in her to spare her realm from invaders from Sorbold who doubtless were engaging her on two flanks, from the sea and from the south, assaulting the forest that had not seen invasion since the Cymrian War four hundred years before.

And all the way to the east past the coastline of Sorbold, he imagined the coast of Windswere in the Nonaligned States, where helpless orphans, children, and babies and the female acolytes who had cared for them lovingly had been butchered or catapulted, alive, into the sea, all by the order of the man who now called himself emperor.

He did not even feel his last vestige of restraint as it cracked within him.

Ashe raised the ancient sword of elemental water over his head.

The surf around his legs spun in churning waves.

The blade of Kirsdarke spun with them, sending blasts of spray skyward.

In the distance he could hear someone shouting his name, but it echoed, inert, deflected by his concentration. His dragon sense did not register anything except the mammoth power swelling within him, the element of water drawn into the air by the sword that was born of it.

Beneath his feet, planted in the sand, he sensed a cracking within the Earth, a trembling that changed the currents around him, sending them into a spinning vortex.

The dragon within his blood sensed an overwhelming increase in the power of the waves around him.

With everything he had, Ashe returned to the picture in his mind of the coast of the lands on the other side of the Wide Central Sea, half a world away.

Pockmarked by wanton destruction.

Occupied by the forces of the enemy.

Blockaded from the rest of the world.

And, with every thought, every sense, every intent he was able to summon, he channeled all his strength through the elemental sword of water.

Directing the wave homeward.

*   *   *

“Lord Gwydion! Lord Gwydion!”

Atop the swiftest horse he had been able to seize from the seaside livery at the harbor, Vincent de Malier was thundering in approach, holding on to the reins for dear life. The elderly Cymrian's face was set in a grim mask of concentration, his eyes blazing, as he rode down the peninsula of Sithgraid, shouting Ashe's name into the wind.

In the distance he could see the Lord Cymrian standing in the surf, and he tried not to choke at the sight. He had been one of the people who had witnessed the vigil of MacQuieth a millennium and a half before, had seen the captain of his vessel and the commander of the Second Fleet toss the sword the Lord Cymrian now held above his head into the waves and wade out into the surf, his eyes locked on the southwest, where the Island of Serendair had been, half a world away.

Where he stood, up to his thighs in the surf, staring southwest, refusing the company or sustenance of anyone but his daughter-in-law, Talthea, his grandson, Aidan, and his newborn granddaughter, Elsynore, who held vigil with him from the shore.

Awaiting the death of the Island of Serendair.

And that of the son who had stayed behind to guard it.

It was a sight that had broken the collective heart of the Second Fleet.

The Lord Cymrian's seeming repetition of the event now terrified Vincent even more.

He urged his mount forward mercilessly, the hoofbeats thundering a terrible tattoo along the sandbar that was the peninsula of Sithgraid.

Vincent ceased his shouting, knowing that it was lost in the wind that was beginning to pick up markedly. He bent his head down over the horse's neck and held on tightly, in a full gallop, down the peninsula.

Before him, he could see a marked withdrawal of the waves that had been pounding the coastline a few moments before. With each new wave breaking toward the shore, the water in the seabed seemed to pull back a good deal more, until even the demarcation of the lowest of tides had been exceeded. Fish flapped on the sand, suddenly exposed, amid swales dotted with shells and seaweed, driftwood and pebbles.

With each withdrawal, the water seemed to rise higher.

Finally Vincent arrived at the end of the penisula. He dragged his horse to a halt and shouted into the sea wind.

“Lord Gwydion!
Lord Gwydion!
Please!”

The Lord Cymrian didn't seem to hear him.

Rather, he watched water beyond the naked sea bottom rise and turn in its direction, then head out to sea.

Slowly he lowered the sword as he stood in the dry air of the seabed. As the taller wave withdrew, heading east, new water flooded back in, incrementally, quickly covering Ashe's feet, the next wave his calves, the next his knees, and finally his thighs until the waves were crashing as they customarily did.

Vincent shielded his eyes and looked farther out to sea. The elevated ridge of water was still there, moving beyond his sight.

Still heading east.

Vincent opened his mouth to speak, but could force no sound out. He swallowed and tried again.

“Lord Gwydion!”

Finally Ashe turned around. His red-gold hair, which had caught the sun a few moments before and reflected back like copper melting in a forge, had cooled in the coming of evening. His face was pale, and his eyes seemed focused once again.

“Lord Gwydion, come, please,” Vincent urged from atop his mount. “If we hurry, we can sail before dusk.”

The Lord Cymrian just stared at him.

“M'lord?”

“Sail? Dusk?”

Vincent sat up a little straighter in the saddle.

“Indeed, m'lord. Can you not hear the bells?”

The world around Ashe was moving more slowly than he was accustomed to, the sea winds buffeting his face. He shook his head and concentrated.

On the wind were the vibrations of bells: carillon and church bells, harbor bells and bells on fishing boats.

All clanging in a random tintinnabulation, filling the air with frantic music.

“What is happening?” The three words took more effort than he ever remembered expending in speech.

Vincent exhaled deeply.

“The fleet, m'lord. The fleet is preparing to deploy, under your command—all of it, every warship, even those that are not yet commissioned. Everything but the fishing boats; they would never stand the voyage to the continent.”

He waved his hand to the Lord Cymrian.

“Come, m'lord! The consulate voted unanimously, and the harbormaster has summoned all the captains to sail. We leave as soon as you return.”

“The—wave,” Ashe stammered. “We will be following a wave—”

Vincent's face took on a serious mien.

“Aye, that might be a complication,” he said. “We have dealt with such waves at sea before, and it was not a pleasant experience. But at least this time it is heading in the other direction. And we will once again have the Kirsdarkenvar to lead us. Come; let us be on our way.”

 

30

THE THRESHOLD OF DEATH, SOUTH OF BETHANY

The line of soldiers stretched into the west as far as Anborn could see.

The Lord Marshal was seated atop his warhorse, riding the line as he did each morning, inspecting the recruits and the arriving enlisted soldiers as well.

Only this day, instead of the makeup of the line consisting mostly of volunteers, adolescent children, and those who had survived previous conflicts when the remainders of their families hadn't, and so were serving for lack of anything better to do now that life had lost all meaning, the defense barricade was largely peopled by soldiers who had been recruited and trained by his nephew for the last several years, who had followed him from Canderre after his meeting with Solarrs, Knapp, and Rhapsody.

An experienced, well-trained fighting force, admittedly outnumbered by the vast Sorbold army, but one to be reckoned with.

Anborn looked out over them with an unmistakable fondness. While the men-at-arms who had served with him, some from the Cymrian War itself, rode the line in sections, taking battalion leaderships along it from the western sector to the eastern encampment, he was assessing his new troops, soldiers who had chosen in peacetime to take up arms and train to defend the Alliance when no apparent need to do so had presented itself yet.

Even though they were new in his command, he felt immensely akin to them.

He, like they, had taken up arms cheerfully and with the belief that to do so was a noble way to spend one's life.

Or to lose it.

As he looked out over their faces now, most of them youthful but occasionally some in middle age, still in fighter's trim, still excited in the anticipation of battle, he remembered how it felt to be one of them, in days far gone by. As peaceful and secure as days may have been when they first took up arms, there was no misunderstanding now that the war they were about to enter would be brutal, that they were facing an enemy that had long trained, had long planned this destruction, and that outnumbered them seven times over.