And then they were gone. Quiet settled in, a living presence in its own right that occupied the space as if disgruntled by the previous intrusion. Rialus, who was to have no part in the fighting, stood near at hand, shifting, nervous, clearing his throat often as if about to speak. Corinn ignored him. Another seizure of doubt gripped her. It wrapped around her torso and squeezed the breath out of her and set her insides churning. The implausibility of what was happening and the fact that she, Corinn, was making it happen: it was almost too much to fathom. She felt the ceiling pressing down on her. She kept checking it with her eyes, suspecting, despite herself, that it was sliding downward. For the first time she noticed the bizarre carvings that lined the nearby space, forms half human and half animal. Was that what her people had once looked like? Were those her ancestors?
Rialus interrupted her thoughts. “May I ask, Princess, how you learned of these secret passageways?”
“Thaddeus Clegg,” she heard herself answer.
“Clegg?” Rialus asked, alarm in his voice. “Truly? That old traitor? He’s here, in the palace? He’s not to be trusted, you know. What is he-”
“He is dead, Rialus. Not a threat to you in any way.” He is gone, Corinn thought, but the gift he left me remains. One day, when she learned to use it, she would do many things. Good things. Benevolent things. She would not need to kill then. Would not need to make allies of-
“Well, may I ask how do you plan to proceed now? You’re not exactly working toward the same goal that your brother was. He is done for now, I’m sorry to say, but Mena and Dariel remain. What happens when-”
Corinn turned on the ambassador and stepped up close to him, enough so that he backed away a step, unnerved by the suddenness of her movement. Something about directing her agitation at him helped her get a grip on herself. “No, Rialus, you may not ask me anything. When we speak, it’s because I’ve asked you something. That’s all there is between us, understand? I need you, but I don’t have any delusions about the nature of your loyalty. It is the same as with the Numrek. Like them, you will be loyal for one reason-because only I will give you all the things you want. The Meins would flay you alive. My brother or sister would imprison you as the traitor you are. Only with me have you any chance of happiness. Do you doubt it?”
Rialus did not.
“Good. I will deal with my siblings when I have to. I love them, of course. They love me. Do not concern yourself with it.”
She stopped talking and motioned that Rialus should keep quiet as well. Faintly, she heard shouts of alarm and then the clash of weapons. They came to her muffled and warped by distance, almost ghostly. They were the type of sounds she might not have even noticed if she had not been listening for them. She had heard enough tales about how the Numrek fought so that she could envision the scenes now spreading through the palace. Right at that moment, she imagined, the Numrek were pouring through the halls. They were appearing at the very heart of the palace, completely without warning, igniting utter confusion. They were dashing from room to room, swinging those battle-axes, severing arms and splitting skulls, pinning breasts to the walls with their spears, driving the points of their swords into bellies, showing no mercy to anyone.
She pressed her palm against her abdomen, hit by a quick montage of the people she had sentenced to such deaths. Men like Haleeven, Hanish’s uncle, whom she had actually liked. Women like Rhrenna, who had been her friend and Halren, who had laughed at her at dinner that night at Calfa Ven. Guards and soldiers, maids and servants, officials, noblewomen and their children. The quick barrage of faces and names struck her like so many punches in the gut. What a nightmare she had unleashed! She stepped back and reached for the wall for support. She had to remember that they were her enemies. They always had been. Every one of them. If they seemed genteel and harmless, it was only because men had killed effectively enough in their name to assure it.
The ambassador stepped toward her, inquiring if she were well.
Corinn spoke coldly. “You said earlier that you did not think I’d be interested in all that Calrach said. In future, Rialus, when you are translating for me, translate exactly. It is not for you to edit what I-or they-hear.”
Rialus nodded, meekly accepting the reproach. A moment later, looking askance at him, she watched a smile of satisfaction draw across his face. She almost snapped at him, asking why he smiled. But then she understood why. She had just promised him a future. Such things, it seemed, were now hers to bestow. Or to take away.
This would take some getting used to.
CHAPTER
When he stepped out of his tent in the predawn that morning, Leeka Alain had already decided that this day was to be his last. He had fought so much in his life, in so many varying terrains, from these arid fields to the mountains of Senival and the marshes of Candovia, right up to the high tundra of the Mein and through the woodlands of Aushenia. He had squabbled with Maeander Mein’s troops; fought outright against Hanish’s; clashed with Senivalian mountain tribesmen; and battled Numreks, a race he had discovered before anyone else in the Known World. He had even tamed one of those foreigners’ rhinoceros mounts. He had stood shouting into snow squalls and through storms of catapulted fireballs. He had triumphed a few times but also been defeated more than once. He’d even sunk to the level of a belly-crawling mist addict. Yet he’d been resurrected and given another chance.
That made him one of the luckiest men alive. Thanks to Thaddeus Clegg’s hard discipline, he had been given a second opportunity at life. With it he found the young prince Dariel. He had a hand in teaching him his name and in turning him from a raider into a man worthy of the nobility to which he was heir. He had seen Mena, lithe and small of stature, become an artist of martial craft the likes of which he’d never witnessed before. What she did the day before with her sword was incredible. It made no sense, looking at her slim frame and intelligent face, that she could be such a tornado of rage. And he’d seen King Leodan’s eldest become a prophet of change, a noble man who spoke of a better world and was willing to fight-and die-in the struggle to bring it into existence. What, he wondered, could ever best watching his prince in all his perfectly formed glory cutting down the antok, a beast right out of the caves of hell? That would stand as the high point of his life, just as Aliver’s death the next day was undeniably the lowest moment he’d ever known. What a shifting, chaotic tide their fortunes followed.
Leeka did not regret the life he had led. He certainly would not alter a moment of the years he put in laboring for his king and country. It was possible, though, that his journey through life was not going to end as he would have written it himself. This truth, he decided, he would face with as much composure as he could muster. At least he would lose with dignity and die in a manner befitting the code by which he had lived. That, he believed, was what the coming day’s last stand against the Meins was to be about. He walked into it with his armor on, sword at his side, his face as creviced and venerable as he could muster as an example to those under him.
Such, at least, was his intention when he split the flap of his tent and stepped through the portal. But what he saw on the southern horizon was so bizarre and unexpected that he lost his composure immediately. His jaw hung loose. His mouth formed an amazed oval. His eyes became two copper coins that widened more and more with each passing moment.
What he saw was this: a sky roiling with clouds of red and orange, combusting with plumes of yellow and purple, with great mountains of movement stretching up into the heavens. All of this was a background upon which a company of giants approached. The sight of them was bizarre and surreal, their shapes incorporeal enough that on occasion the last stars of the dawn sky, seen between gaps in the seething clouds, twinkled right through them as well. Their shapes were in black silhouette, enormous figures of elongated vastness, their bodies rocking with their strides. Their arms waved in the air to either side as if they were moving across shifting ground, searching for balance. Their legs must have spanned miles with each step. Behind the first giants he saw the indications of others and felt the pressure of still more beyond that, coming up from around the curve of the world. He scanned his memories for anything to explain such a sight. He recalled only one thing.