What, Ragnarson sometimes wondered, was Elana doing? She wasn't the sort to sit and wait.
On the last evening of March, Ragnarson gathered his commanders to discuss the summer campaign. Meticulously prepared maps were examined. Where to meet the enemy became the point of contention. Ragnarson listened, remembering an area he had seen the previous fall.
"Here, at Baxendala," he said suddenly, jabbing a map with a forefinger. "We'll meet them with every man we have. Talk to the Marena Dimura. Learn everything you can."
Before the inevitable arguments began, he strode from the room.
The die had been cast. All time was an arrow hurtling toward the decision at the caravan town of Baxendala.
He went walking the castle's outer wall, to bask in the peace of what would soon be a chill April Fool's morning.
Soon, in the white gown she had worn the morning they had first locked eyes, the Queen joined him. Moonlight like trickles of silver ran through her hair, gayly. But her eyes were sad. Ignoring the sentries, she held his hand.
"This is the last night," she whispered, after a long silence. She stopped, pushed her arm around his waist, stared at the moon over the Kapenrungs. "The last time. You'll leave tomorrow. Win or lose, you won't come back." Her voice quavered.
Ragnarson scanned the black teeth of the enemy mountains. Was it really still winter there? He wanted to tell her he would return, but could not. That would be a blemish on his memory.
She had sensed that he would always go back to Elana. Their relationship, though as intense and fiery as a volcanic eruption, was pure romance. Romance demanded a special breed of shared deception, of reality suspended by mutual consent...
So he said nothing, just pulled her against his side.
"Just one thing I ask," she said, softly, sadly. "In the dark tonight, in bed, say my name. Whisper it to me."
He frowned her way, puzzled.
"You don't realize, do you? In all the time you've been here you've used it only once. When you announced me to Sir Farace. Her Majesty. Her Majesty. Her Highness. The Queen. Sometimes, in the night, Darling. But never Fiana. I'm real... Make me real."
Yes, he thought. Even when she had been no more than a conception spawned by Tarlson's characterizations, he had felt an attraction that he had pushed off with formalities.
"Gods!" a nearby sentry muttered. "What's that?" Ragnarson's gaze returned to the mountains. Beneath the moon, over a notch marking the approximate location of Maisak, stood a pillar of reddish I coruscation. It coalesced into a scarlet tower.
The world grew silent, as if momentarily becalmed in the eye of a storm.
The pillar intensified till all the east was aflame. A flower formed at its top. The trunk bifurcated, took on a horrible anthropomorphism. The flower became a head. Where eyes should have been there were two vast Stygian pools. The head was far too large for the malformed body that bore it up. Its horns seemed to scrape the moon as it turned slowly, glaring malevolently into the west.
The thing's brilliance intensified till all the world seemed painted in harsh strokes of red and black. A great dark gulf of a mouth opened in silent, evil laughter. Then the thing faded as it had come, dying into a coruscation that reminded Bragi of the auroras of his childhood homeland.
"Come," he said to the Queen when he could speak again. "You may be right. It may be the last time either of us gives ourself freely."
Deep in the night he spoke her name. And she, shaking as much as he, whispered from beneath him, "Bragi, I love you."
iii) Elana and Nepanthe
On the Auszura Littoral, Elana and Nepanthe, up late after a day of increasing, undirected tension, released sharp cries when the Tear of Mimizan took on a sudden, fiery life that was reflected in crimson on the eastern horizon.
iv) King Shanight
From the Mericic Hills, at Skmon on the Anstokin-Volstokin border, Shanight of Anstokin, restless before the dawn of attack, watched the scarlet rise in the east, a head with its chin on the horizon. After meeting those midnight eyes he returned to his pavilion, called off the war.
v) Mocker
In Rohrhaste, near the site of Vodicka's defeat, Mocker suddenly erupted from an uneasy sleep, saw scarlet beneath the moon. For one of the few times in his life he was stricken dumb. In lieu he loaded his donkey and hurried toward Vorgreberg.
vi) Sir Andvbur Kimberlin of Karadja
Sir Andvbur and two hundred supporters, traveling by night to evade loyalist patrols, paused to watch the demon coalesce over the Gap. Before it faded, half turned back, preferring the Royal mercy. Kimberlin continued, not out of conviction, but for fear of appearing weak before his companions.
vii) The Disciple
In the acres-vast tent-Temple of the Disciple at Al Rhemish, a sleepy fat man moaned, staggered to the Portal of the North. This gross, jeweled El Murid bore no resemblance to the pale, bony, ascetic fanatic whose angry sword had scourged the temples and reddened the sands in earlier decades. Nor was his insanity as limited. The red sorcery stirred a mad rage. He collapsed, thrashing and foaming at the mouth.
viii) Visigodred
At Castle Mendalayas in north Itaskia a tall, lean insomniac paced a vast and incredibly cluttered library. Before a fireplace a pair of leopards also paced. From a ceiling beam a monkey watched and muttered. Between the pacer and leopards, on a luxurious divan, a dwarf and a young beauty cuddled.
The lean old man, sporting a long gray beard, suddenly faced south southeast, his nose thrusting like that of a dog on point. His face became a mask of stone. "Marco!" he snapped. "Wake up. Call the bird."
ix) Zindahjira
In the Mountains of M'Hand, above the shores of the Seydar Sea, lay a cave in which dwelt the being called Zindahjira the Silent. Zindahjira was anything but silent now. The mountains shook with his rage. He did not appreciate being involved in intrigues not his own. But by his own twisted logic he had a responsibility to right matters in the south. When his rage settled, he called for his messenger owls.
x) Varthlokkur
Fangdred was an ancient fortress poised precariously atop Mount El Kabar in the Dragon's Teeth. There, in a windowless room, tiny silver bells tinkled. A black arrow inlaid with silver runes turned southward. In moments a tall young man, frowning, hurried in. His haunted eyes momentarily fixed on arrow and bells.
He was Varthlokkur, the Silent One Who Walks With Grief, sometimes called the Empire Destroyer or the Death of Ilkazar. He was the man who had ended the reign of the Princes Thaumaturge of Shinsan. Those
Princes remained like trophies in an impenetrable chamber atop Fangdred's Wind Tower. Kings trembled at the mention of Varthlokkur's name.
He was old, this apparent young man. Centuries old, and burdened heavily with the knowledge of the Power, with his guilt over what he had wrought with the Empire. He spoke a Word. A quicksilver pool in a shallow, wide basin ground into the top of a table of granite shivered.
Iridescences fluttered across its face. A portrait appeared. Varthlokkur stared at a gargantuan, megacephalic demon whose ravenlike feet clutched the feet of mountains.
This manifestation couldn't be ignored. He began his preparations.
xi) Haroun bin Yousif
The long, cautious cavalry column was less than thirty miles from Al Rhemish when the northern sky went scarlet. Filtering four thousand Royalists through the Lesser Kingdoms and the Kapenrungs undetected had been a military feat which, meeting success, had astonished even its planner.
The demon head loomed. Haroun gave the order to turn back.
xii) The Star Rider
On the flank of a snow-deep peak high in the Kapenrungs, on a glacier that creaked and groaned day and night, one surprised and angry old man stood between gigantic pillars of legs and stared miles upward at scarlet horror. He spat, cursed, turned to his winged horse. From its back he unlashed the thing known as Windmjirnerhorn, or the Horn of the Star Rider. He caressed it, spoke to it, glanced, nodded. The demon began to fade.