Tol was stunned. What of the Household Guard? The Horse Guards? The imperial courtiers?
“Some have resisted,” said Gonzakan. “They are being dealt with. Since you’ve disposed of the Wolves, no one now stands between you and the emperor.”
Valaran is mine!
The thought made Tol shiver, in spite of the night’s heat.
Kiya leaned close. “Let’s go, before the dream ends and they change their minds!” she whispered.
Tol dropped the reins. Jumping down from the wagon, he told Kiya to wait there. Like a sleepwalker, he passed between the lines of mounted men, crossing the broad square under the eyes of two thousand warriors.
Iron scraped. A warrior in the front ranks drew his saber and raised it high.
“Tolandruth!” he shouted.
Two thousand sabers thrust up toward the starry sky. “Tolandruth! Tolandruth!”
The Inner City gate was open and unguarded, but the imperial plaza wasn’t empty. Dark stains covered the mosaic. Farther on were several bodies, shapeless mounds illuminated by the glow of the Tower of High Sorcery.
He found more broken weapons and blood on the palace steps. There’d been a brisk fight here, but the Householders had been swept aside.
Once Tol had seen Emperor Pakin III stand on these steps, bathed in the adoration of his loyal subjects, Tol included. Now there was only the sound of the night breeze and Tol’s own harsh breathing. Only one of the iron sconces by the palace doors held a lit torch, and the double doors themselves were ajar. A brass lamp, stamped flat by a heavy boot, lay in the doorway.
The imperial palace felt like a cemetery-potent with the feeling that people had once been here, but now were gone. Tol finally encountered living occupants, small knots of courtiers or servants hiding in alcoves and whispering. More than once he heard his name spoken with the sort of frightened reverence usually reserved for forces of nature. Fire. Flood. Plague. Tolandruth.
The audience hall was barred to him. Its floor-to-ceiling double doors did not yield when he leaned against them. Tol smote the panels with the pommel of his sword and shouted. Ruddy light bloomed in the thin gap between doors and floor. A heavy bolt clanked. The left door swung inward.
Tol lifted Number Six, prepared to face a reserve contingent of Wolves or even Ackal V himself. The face that greeted him was pale, hollow-eyed, and indescribably lovely.
“By all the gods,” Valaran breathed, lifting her oil lamp higher. “It is you!”
Tol’s breath caught and held. She was thinner than he remembered, her chin sharper, and her cheekbones more prominent, but her eyes were still the clear, bottomless green of fine emeralds and her hair a warm, deep chestnut. She was clothed in white, with a delicate tracery of crimson thread decorating her gown’s close-fitting bodice.
“Valaran.” How sweet it was to speak her name aloud! “Valaran,” he said again. “I have come for you.”
She moved back a step so he could enter. She swung the ponderous door shut and threw the bolt. Without warning, Tol suddenly found her in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder. She held him tightly, her body shaking.
“I have worked so long for this moment,” she said, lips close by his ear. “So long and so hard, and I thought many times I’d failed. Yet here you are!”
The catch in her voice touched him deeply. Her scent filled his head, making him dizzy with desire. He lifted his hand and carefully rested it on her shimmering hair.
“I swore I would return.”
A small laugh, faintly edged with hysteria. “I know.”
They kissed, tentatively at first, then with increasing fervor. He had nearly forgotten his rage and his mission, until Valaran drew back and said, “Come, my love.”
She took his hand and led him down the carpeted path that ran the length of the long, high-ceilinged audience hall. Only a few candles in the room’s numerous candelabra were lit. Most of the enormous iron racks were overthrown, candle wax spattered over the floor. Elegant chairs were overturned, tables smashed.
Valaran led him to the rotund body of a man, clad in fine burgundy velvet, lying facedown on the marble floor. A wide bloodstain spread out from the man’s head.
“One of his most loyal chamberlains-Lord Fedro,” she said. “He killed him himself.”
Tol wondered what had happened here, but was given no time to ask. Valaran drew him onward.
The far end of the hall was brighter than the rest of the cavernous room. The throne of Ergoth was flanked by flaming braziers. The seat was vacant.
“Dal! Dal!” Valaran called with quiet urgency.
A small boy emerged from behind the throne and ran to her, clutching her gowned legs.
She smiled^ laying a hand on the child’s thick mop of black hair. “This is my son, Crown Prince Dalar of Ergoth.”
The child had his father’s high forehead and sharp features. His eyes were Val’s, emerald green and enormous in his pale face.
Tol nodded awkwardly at the boy, then looked beyond him. Protruding from behind the throne was a foot clad in a crimson slipper. It twitched. Tol strode around the imperial seat to find the emperor lying on the floor. His robe of gold and imperial scarlet was twisted around his legs and torso, as if he’d been thrashing about on the floor. His eyes were half closed, his fingers twitched convulsively, and he was mumbling into the carpet.
Taken aback, Tol said, “What happened to him?”
“Drugged.” Valaran shrugged at his shocked expression, adding, “I put a sleeping draught in his wine. With the Wolves gone, and him so preoccupied, he didn’t notice until it was too late.”
Tol rolled the semiconscious man onto his side. Ackal V reeked of sweat and sour wine. A bloody dagger lay on the rug beneath him-the same blade, Valaran said, that he’d used to slay his unfortunate chamberlain.
He felt Valaran’s hand on his shoulder. “Everything is ready,” she murmured. “The Great Horde has forsaken him. The Household Guards are beaten and scattered. His Wolves are gone. I knew they couldn’t kill you! No one remains to defend him.”
Tol stood. Valaran put her arms around his waist from behind. She pressed the trembling length of her body against his.
“This is the reason I lived, for this moment! I tried to kill myself, but he stopped me. Then there was Dalar-another reason to live until you came back to me. I dreamt of this, Tol, awake and asleep, for nearly seven years! Only one deed remains. Just one act, and I am yours forever.”
He felt the feather-touch of her lips against his neck. “Kill him, Tol.”
Tol looked down at his enemy. There was no one in the world he hated more than this man. Haughty, cruel, vicious Prince Nazramin, who had murdered his own brother to steal his throne. No one deserved death more than the man who had worked such evil against Tol, from the moment they’d first met up to this night.
Yet Tol did not move.
To hear the woman he adored say, “Kill him, Tol,” as easily he had said, “I love you,” was more than Tol could bear. The touch of her lips had sent a wave of desire through him, but those words brought a nauseating rush of revulsion. His sword arm seemed turned to stone.
“Tol, my love, what are you waiting for? Kill him!” Valaran said, more loudly.
Prince Dalar was watching them, peering around the golden throne of Ergoth. What did the boy make of this? Tol wondered. What did he think of his mother, kissing this strange, savage-looking man and demanding that he kill Dalar’s father? The child’s wide-eyed gaze only deepened Tol’s revulsion. He shook off Valaran’s embrace, stalking away. She followed.