“A sensible attempt to attain some small measure of advantage,” Isana said.
“Precisely.” She studied the pool’s surface. “Thus far, I estimate my own strength to be the greater by a considerable margin.”
“Unless he’s holding something back,” Isana said, primarily to plant doubt in the Queen’s mind.
The Queen smiled. “Always a possibility.”
Isana chewed on her lower lip for a moment, then asked, “May I see him?”
“If you wish.”
Isana rose carefully. Her dress was beginning to smell almost as untidy as it looked. No, she decided. She was beginning to smell almost as bad as the dress looked. Her hair must look a fright. How many days had it been since she had bathed or changed clothes? There was no way for her to tell.
As she approached the pool, she saw a ghostly image appear deep within it, one that grew brighter and clearer as she drew closer to the Queen. It showed a large field of fallen stones and ruined buildings. There were warrior-vord corpses all over it. The Queen waved a hand, and suddenly the vord sprang back to life and were surrounded by the blurred form of legionares. An instant later, the wall rose up again, colored oddly green, then a slender young man stood before the city gates of Riva.
“This is what he did no more than an hour ago,” the Queen murmured. “The image becomes too indistinct to be useful as his Legion closes to battle. These events transpired just prior.”
Isana watched in awe as her son, tall and proud, tested his will against the furycrafted fortress and reduced it to rubble. She watched as the enemy came forth to kill him and found only death instead. She watched as the Legions marched up to the city and hammered into the vord. She watched her son cast his defiance into the teeth of the enemy who had all but destroyed Alera—and emerge victorious. Her heart pounded hard with terrified pride, with worry, with hopeful anxiety.
Her child. Septimus’s child.
“If only you could see him, my lord,” Isana whispered, closing her eyes against sudden tears.
“Was it difficult?” the Queen asked a moment later.
Isana willed her tears away with a simple watercrafting and opened her eyes again. “Was what difficult?”
“Rearing the child without the aid of your mate.”
“At times,” Isana said. “I had help. My brother. The other folk at his steadholt.”
The Queen looked up from the foggy haze that had enveloped the pool’s image. “It is a collective effort, then.”
“It can be,” Isana said. “Was it difficult for you?”
The Queen tilted her head inquisitively.
“Bringing forth this horde without the aid of subordinate queens,” Isana clarified.
“Yes.”
“Would it not make it easier to use your warriors effectively if you had the help of more queens?”
“Yes.”
“And yet you have not created more.”
The Queen turned her young-seeming face back to the pool, troubled. “I have tried,” she said.
“But you cannot?”
“I can create them.” The Queen’s face became puzzled, wounded. It was a child’s expression. “They all try to kill me.”
“Why?” Isana asked.
For a moment, she thought the Queen wasn’t going to answer. When she spoke, her voice was very small. “Because I have been changed. Because I do not function in the manner which their instincts tell them I should.”
A slow wave of sadness and genuine pain washed out of the vord Queen. Isana had to fight to remind herself of the destruction and death brought by this creature to all of Carna.
“That’s why you left Canea and returned here,” Isana said suddenly. “Your junior queens turned upon you, so you escaped them.”
As she sat beside the pool, the Queen drew her knees up to her chest, wrapping her arms around them. “I did not escape them,” she replied. “I merely postponed the confrontation.”
“I don’t understand,” Isana said.
“The continent across the sea called Canea has been overrun,” the Queen said in a quiet monotone. “But it will take decades, perhaps centuries, for my children to consolidate and fully exploit their new territory—to make it impregnable. Once that is done, and they have a secure base of operations, they will come here to destroy me and everything of my creation. Already their forces have grown to an order of magnitude beyond mine.”
The Queen turned her eyes to Isana. “That is why I am here. That is why I must destroy you. I must create my own stronghold if I am to survive. That, too, is a task requiring many years.” She rested her chin upon her knees, closed her eyes, and whispered, “I wish to live. I wish for my children to live.”
Isana stared down at the monstrous child’s genuine sorrow and fear, and fought against the pity the sight and sense of her evoked. She was a monster, nothing less—even if she might also be something more.
The Queen rocked back and forth, a tiny and distressed motion. “I wish to live, Isana. I wish for my children to live.”
Isana sighed and turned to walk back to her place beside Araris. “Who doesn’t, child,” she murmured. “Who doesn’t.”
CHAPTER 35
From the beginning of the Vord War, the enemy had, time after time, attacked positions that were not ready to defend against a threat of the magnitude they represented. Despite the desperate attempts to warn Alera of what was coming, no one listened, and as a result, the vord had driven the Alerans from their fortresses and cities alike, one after the next. Time after time, the lightning-swift advance of the vord or the inhuman tactics they used had overwhelmed the insufficiently prepared defenders. Time after time, the light had dawned upon a world more and more thoroughly dominated by the invaders—but this dawn was different.
The Calderon Valley was ready to fight.
“There’s a dent in it somewhere,” growled Antillus Raucus, slapping one paw back at the ornate lorica covering his right shoulder. “It isn’t moving right.”
“You’re imagining things,” High Lord Phrygius answered. “There’s no bloody dent.”
“Well, something’s not right.”
“Yes,” said High Lord Placida in a patient tone. “You slept in it again. You aren’t young enough to keep doing that, Raucus. You’ve injured your shoulder joint, likely.”
“I’m young enough to toss your short ass right off this wall,” Raucus snapped back. “We’ll see whose joint gets injured.”
“Boys, boys,” Placidus Aria said. “Please don’t set a bad example for the other children.”
Ehren, standing well behind the High Lords, was too self-contained to smile. But he rocked back and forth on his heels in silent amusement before turning his head to cast a wink at Amara.
She rolled her eyes at him in response and stepped up to stand beside Lady Placida. They stared out at the wide-open plain rolling out of the mouth of the Calderon Valley, a sea of gently rising and falling green. The sun had risen bright, the day fair. Crows had been wheeling overhead for days, first in dozens, then hundreds, and now in thousands. They cast a steady stream of flickering shadows over the earth. The enemy had used them to drop takers into Aleran defensive positions before—now any such attempt would be thwarted by the earth furies on constant patrol among the Aleran forces, which had created a side benefit of all but exterminating the rats, slives, and other vermin that tended to haunt garbage piles around a Legion position.
Let the vord try to use the crows against them again. Calderon was ready.
“Countess,” Lady Placida said. “I believe I heard Lady Veradis tell you to sleep for at least twelve hours.”