In places like this.
Grace Beckett–Queen of Malachor, Lady of the Winter Wood, and Mistress of the Seven Dominions–stood at the foot of the mound she had ridden to that morning. It was one of the highest in the vale, rising up no more than a furlong from the Rune Gate, whose gigantic iron doors hung open, steadily rusting away.
As her honey‑colored mare Shandis grazed nearby, Grace knelt and parted the grass with her hands, revealing a skull bleached white by sun and rain and snow. The skull was elongated, the eye sockets large and jewel‑shaped. There was no mouth. She let the grass fall back and stood, holding her right arm against her chest. The wraithlings had perished. So had the feydrim, and their master the Pale King. All the same, the pain in her right arm lingered on, just like the bones beneath the grass. Just like the memories.
Grace started up the side of the mound. It was Lirdath, and even this far north in the world the morning was already growing fine and hot. Soon she was mopping the sweat from her brow with a hand and wishing she had chosen something lighter than a riding gown of green wool.
After several minutes of steady work, she reached the top of the mound. She panted for breath and pushed her blond hair from her face; it was getting too long again. Others might have thought it beautiful, a gilded frame to her regal visage, but to Grace it was simply a nuisance. She would take a knife to it as soon as she got back to the keep.
Hands on hips, she gazed around. She could see the whole vale from up there. Sharp mountains soared against blue sky, and in the distance Gravenfist Keep rose like a mountain of gray stone itself. Summer had come, and the vale was a verdant emerald. Still, here and there white patches gleamed like snow.
She half closed her eyes, and through the veil of her lashes she could see it again, pouring out of the mouth of the Rune Gate like a foul exhalation of hatred: the army of the Pale King. Its ranks of feydrimand wraithlings and trolls, heartless wizards and witches, was without number, and they had come for one purpose–to cast the world into shadow forever.
Only they had failed, thanks to the bravery and sacrifice of countless men and women. And of one man more than any other. Grace knelt, letting her fingers brush across the arynesseththat bloomed atop the grass‑covered mound. She plucked one of the small white‑blue flowers. Its scent was faint and clean, like snow.
“I miss you, Durge,” she murmured. “I could use your help. There’s still so much more to do.”
She stayed that way for a time, content to listen to the wind and the far‑off cries of a hawk. At last she stood, and as she looked back toward the keep she saw a horseman coming. His need must have been great for him to make no effort to conceal himself.
By the time the horseman reached the foot of the mound, she had descended to meet him.
“I thought I might find you out here, Your Majesty,” Aldeth said as he climbed down from a horse as gray as his mistcloak.
Grace raised an eyebrow. “All I told Sir Tarus was that I was going for a ride in the vale. How did you know to find me here?”
“I serve you with all my heart, Your Majesty,” the Spider said with a rotten‑toothed grin. “But that doesn’t mean I have to tell you the secrets of my craft.”
She folded her arms and waited patiently.
Aldeth threw his hands in the air. “Well, fine, if you’re going to torture me like that. He can’t blame me for not being able to resist your spells.”
“I’m not casting a spell, Aldeth,” she said, but the spy seemed not to hear, and he rattled on for several minutes about how it wasn’t hisidea to go to Master Larad, how he had been dead set against it, knowing how offended she would be, but how Sir Tarus had insisted that they ask the Runelord to speak the rune of vision, and how he–Aldeth–would never have dreamed of compromising his queen’s privacy in such a manner.
“No, you’d simply sneak after me.”
“Exactly!” the Spider said, snapping his fingers. “That way, you’d never even know I was–”
He bit his tongue, and he looked as if he was going to be sick. Grace couldn’t help a smile. He really was getting better; a year ago he would have dug himself a far deeper hole before having the sense to shut up.
“Oh, Aldeth,” she said, patting his cheek. Then she climbed into Shandis’s saddle and whirled the mare around. As she did, she cast one last glance at the Rune Gate.
Last summer, at Sir Tarus’s urging, Grace had finally ordered an exploratory mission into Imbrifale. Tarus himself had led the small company of knights through the gate, with the Spiders Aldeth and Samatha serving as scouts. Master Larad and the young witch Lursa had gone as well, for there was no telling what fell magics might remain in the Pale King’s Dominion.
For an entire month, Grace had paced the outer wall of Gravenfist Keep, gazing out across the vale, waiting for them to return. She had hoped to be able to speak across the Weirding to Lursa. However, the moment the troop passed through the Rune Gate, all contact with them ceased, as if their threads had been cut by a knife. The Ironfang Mountains, woven with enchantments to imprison the Pale King, proved a barrier that could not be pierced by thought or magic.
At last, on the first day of Revendath, they returned to Gravenfist Keep. The company had not lost a single member on the journey; however, all of them suffered in spirit. None seemed able to speak of what they had found except for Master Larad, and even he spoke in halting words, so that it took many days before Grace finally learned all they had discovered.
Imbrifale was dead. Nothing lived in that Dominion–not men or monsters or animals, or even trees or plants. Every living thing that had dwelled there had been infused with and twisted by the Pale King’s magic over the centuries. Nothing had not been bound to him, and when he and his master Mohg had perished, so did all else.
What had happened in the thousand years the Rune Gate was shut would never truly be known, for no written records had been found, but some things could be gleaned from what the company saw. They came upon terrible cities, built like the hives of some insect species. There the feydrimand other inhuman slaves of the Pale King were bred and born, fed through holes in tiny chambers, where they either perished or grew strong enough to break their way out.
Other cities were more like the castles and keeps of the Dominions, though sharper, harsher, made only for function, with no consideration for beauty or comfort. There the human subjects of the Pale King had dwelled, and beneath one such keep they had found a labyrinth of chambers that contained stone tables large and small, and racks filled with knives and curved hooks. In one such chamber they discovered a cabinet containing iron lumps, some the size of a man’s fist, some tiny, no larger than a robin’s egg. In the next chamber was a pit filled with bones, many of grown men and women, but others the birdlike bones of infants–the remains of those who had not withstood the transformation.
Elsewhere the company came upon mines: immense wounds gouged in the land, oozing fetid liquids and emitting noxious fumes. Near each mine stood a foundry, many of them still filled with half‑finished machines of war. At last they had reached Fal Imbri, the Pale King’s palace, and they had looked upon his throne: a chair of iron forged for a giant, carved with runes of dread, its edges sharp as razors.
The throne was empty. The company had turned around to begin the long journey home.