Mother of All

by Jenna Glass

  She’d stood outside so long that she had to stop by her rooms and change into dry clothes before she could return to Tynthanal’s office for an update. The moment she stepped inside, she knew the situation was grim. Tynthanal was pacing restlessly, one hand scrubbing at his hair, and the men who huddled around his desk wore expressions of anxiety and stress.

  Tynthanal stopped his pacing when Alys stepped in. The lines on his face were deeply drawn, his eyes looking bruised with weariness. She knew beyond a doubt that he wanted to be on the front lines, his lifetime in the military insisting it was wrong for him to stay in his study in safety. He shook his head as he met her gaze.

  “They’re heading for Wellshead Beach,” he told her. “We’ve lost…” His voice broke, and he had to clear his throat to continue. “We’ve lost so many ships already I’ve lost count. We’re taking some of them with us, but there are just so many of them.” He huffed out a deep breath. “They’re going to make landfall. It’s only a question of when.”

  She nodded, for of course no one had really believed Aaltah and its allies could prevail in the naval battle. “You’re sure they’re heading for Wellshead Beach?” she queried, her stomach quivering with such a mix of hope and despair she could not sort through her feelings. She was certain Delnamal was going to come to the Well, and that he was going to reach it.

  Her certainty was not rational—she knew that. There was nothing about Leethan’s prophetic dream that suggested any such thing. But knowing her instincts were irrational did not stop her from feeling them. If the fleet was not heading for the harbor, then the only way Delnamal could possibly get to the Well was if Aaltah was utterly defeated.

  “We’re sure,” Tynthanal said. “They’ve already sailed past the harbor entrance. The ships that were guarding the harbor are now at their rear and closing in from behind, but…” He let his voice trail off.

  “There aren’t enough of them,” one of Tynthanal’s advisers said. Alys didn’t even know the man’s name, but the scars on the old man’s face suggested he had seen combat himself in his younger days. “They’re sailing into slaughter, cut off from the rest of our fleet.”

  “Can’t you order them to fall back?” Alys asked.

  “I did,” Tynthanal said with a haunted look in his eyes. “Or at least, I tried to.”

  “The lead ship was under attack when we heard from them,” the adviser explained. “Their talker went dead in the middle of our communication. In all likelihood, it was too late for them to retreat even if they got the message and managed to spread it to the rest of the ships.”

  “So now the Khalpari fleet has free access to the harbor?” she asked.

  “I told you, they’re already past it,” Tynthanal said irritably.

  Alys didn’t take his tone personally, and she clamped down on her urge to second-guess him. If the ships guarding the harbor were lost, it was too late to correct the situation now.

  Tynthanal sighed heavily and rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. We do still have lookouts keeping an eye on them, making sure none of their ships veer off to come for the harbor. I’m not sure what we can do about it if they do, but we’ll at least have some warning.”

  She nodded her acceptance of his apology. “And do we know where Delnamal and Draios are?”

  Everyone was well aware that if the ship carrying those two men went down, the Khalpari fleet would be decapitated. As inexperienced as Draios might be as a military commander, there was no reason to think he wasn’t taking extra precautions to keep his own ship hidden and out of the fray.

  “No,” Tynthanal said regretfully. “I’m concerned about our informant. We have not heard from him since the fleet launched. It would be difficult for him to reach us from a crowded ship—there isn’t a whole lot of privacy to be had—but we still hoped he would help us locate the flagship. I fear his silence is ominous.”

  One of the talkers arrayed on the desk chirped, and Tynthanal hurried to activate it. Alys slipped away as one of the fleet’s captains began his report, not because she was uninterested, but because everything within her continued to insist that she needed to be at the Well to face Delnamal when he arrived.

  No matter where his ship was or whether he was planning to come via the harbor or only after Aaltah had fallen entirely, he would not arrive at the Well for a very long time yet. Even so, she gathered the band of honor guards who’d been assigned to join the last defense of the Well and descended to the chamber deep below the palace to wait.

  * * *

  —

  Draios stood leaning against the railing of his fleet’s flagship, his breath coming short with excitement as he watched the last of Aaltah’s fleet sail out of the harbor in pursuit of the main body of their navy.

  Grudgingly, he had to admit that Delnamal’s idea of sending Khalpari spies to the mainland to acquire the famous Trapper spells that had been developed in Women’s Well had been a sound one. Not only had it allowed the grand magus to research ways in which the spells could be thwarted, but it also allowed their own ship a level of stealth that was heretofore unheard of.

  Draios did not like using the stolen Trapper spells to hide his ship, for it made him feel unclean to use the unholy magic of Women’s Well. When Delnamal had first suggested the possibility, Draios had physically recoiled from the very thought of it, but a long night of prayer and fasting had finally convinced him that he must do whatever was necessary to ensure a swift and decisive victory. After all, Delnamal himself was hardly a wholesome weapon, and yet the Creator had sent him to Draios, acknowledging that sometimes there were necessary evils in the world.

  To get to Aaltah’s Well in the manner Draios’s lord commander had recommended might well take weeks, even months. Aaltah’s walls were formidable, and although Draios’s army was likely to arrive in greater numbers than the defenders after the naval battle was won, it would be a long and costly fight to breach those walls and take the city. Sneaking in the back way while the bulk of the army was occupied elsewhere was clearly the best and quickest way to get to the Well, and once Delnamal had performed the sacrifice that would undo the Curse…Draios smiled to think of the despair that would fill the hearts of his enemies as the magic they’d come to count on sputtered and died.

  As he watched the harbor clear while his own ship stayed behind, unseen, he knew he had made the right decision. It would have been better still if Aaltah had no idea that he was planning to make for the Well—the traitor who’d been communicating with the enemy had served to shore up Delnamal’s store of Rhokai before the battle began—but Draios remained optimistic that any forces that had been left behind to guard the approach from the cliffs would be unprepared for the terror they would face when Delnamal and Draios cut through them.

  “It’s almost time,” Delnamal said from behind him, startling him. The murmur of the waves and the patter of the rain had masked the man’s footfalls, and even after all this time, Draios could not help but feel superstitious dread whenever Delnamal was at his back.

  Draios could not wait until this was all over and Delnamal was gone. He thanked the Creator every day for the gift of this weapon, even while praying for forgiveness for his own squeamishness. He was so tired of the way the hairs on the back of his neck prickled when Delnamal approached, of the way his stomach clenched whenever he heard the man’s whispery voice.

  “Are you ready?” Delnamal asked.

  “Of course I’m ready,” Draios snapped as he wiped a trickle of rainwater out of his eyes. “I’ve been ready for months!”

  “Then let’s do this.” Delnamal let his hood slide down, smiling that death’s-head smile as he looked upon his erstwhile kingdom. “I am more than ready to go home myself.”

  Draios nodded, making a hand signal, and the ship began moving toward the harbor. He frowned at the waves that lapped up against the sides of the ship, realizing that if anyone wa
s on the lookout—as surely they would be, even if the traitor hadn’t tipped Aaltah off to the possibility of an attack from this direction—the ship’s wake would be visible, even if the ship itself was not.

  “We don’t even need the stealth anymore,” Delnamal assured him, having guessed his concern. “Their ships will never catch us now.” His smile broadened as he looked over his shoulder. “Even presuming they have any ships left by the time anyone sees us coming.”

  The tail end of the Aaltah fleet was far enough away already that it was hard to see them in the rain-darkened light, but they looked to be surrounded, with one already capsized and one listing heavily. Delnamal was right once again.

  Draios nodded briskly, then retreated to his cabin to strap on all his armor and weapons and prepare for the glorious victory that would soon be his.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  Leethan’s heart was in her throat as she clutched her cloak tightly around her and slipped through the trees as silently as possible. The moon was full and bright, and though buds were beginning to form on the branches, the mostly bare canopy let in enough light that she did not miss the lantern she had known better than to carry.

  There was a light coating of snow on the ground, for the spring was slower to take hold here in the foothills just south of the Nandel border, and she was very much aware that she was leaving a trail anyone could follow. She was likely now past where the most distant of the Rhozinolm sentries patrolled, and her route had been carefully planned and prepared, but of course there was always the danger that she would run into someone who didn’t know in advance that she had permission from the Queen of Rhozinolm herself to sneak through these woods and cross the border into Nandel.

  Under her cloak, Leethan touched the bodice of the modest, high-necked traveling gown she wore. A gown that she herself had designed, and that Prince Zarsha had had made for her. The bodice felt exactly as the bodice of a gown should. A row of large, carved buttons trailed down the center over her sternum, and beneath those buttons, her fingers detected nothing but the expected boning of her stays.

  If she were not an old woman, there was no question that the thin dagger that ran behind the row of buttons would be found when she was searched. The success of her mission rested on the typical Nandelite’s assumption that as a woman—and an old one at that—she could not possibly be a true threat. Any search they performed would be perfunctory, and the chances of them finding the dagger were slim. And the chances of them detecting the Kai spell contained in that dagger were even smaller, for Queen Ellinsoltah herself had given her the precious concealment spell that had been invented by Princess Alysoon. The concealment spell wasn’t perfect—someone who examined her with an open Mindseye and knew what to look for could see past it—but no one would think to search Leethan that thoroughly.

  She was stumbling with fatigue by the time she was finally seen by a Nandelite patrol. She promptly fell to her knees and held up her hands in surrender, then closed her eyes and prayed she would not be shot on sight, for men on the brink of war tended to be extraordinarily reactionary. She thanked the Mother of All for the light of the full moon, so that when the men caught sight of her, they immediately saw that she was an old woman rather than a Rhozinolm spy skulking through the woods.

  Leethan quickly found herself facedown on the forest floor, the snow melting against her face as one of the men put a knee in her back and bound her hands behind her. When he was finished, he hauled her to her feet, wrenching her shoulders so that she had to stifle a cry of pain. Another of the men put the tip of his sword against her throat, and she held her breath, fearing he’d decided to kill her despite her obvious harmlessness.

  “What brings you into these woods at such an unseemly time of night, madam?” he asked in halting Continental, glaring at her. His blue eyes shone with an ill-concealed lust for blood, and Leethan knew that one wrong word would end her life.

  Having been born in Grunir, Leethan did not have the typical Nandel coloring, which was no doubt why the soldier had addressed her in Continental. She resisted a terrified urge to respond in the same language, to try to explain away her impossible presence in the woods at night in this no-man’s-land between two armies. But her option to run away from her destiny had passed the moment she had been spotted. She now had no choice but to go through with the terrible plan she had concocted, and that Zarsha and Ellinsoltah had grudgingly—oh so grudgingly!—agreed to.

  “My name is Mother Leethan,” she said, barely moving her mouth for fear of the sword pressed against her throat.

  The soldier’s eyes widened, and the other members of the patrol gasped. She noticed that although she had the full attention of the man who held her and the one who held the sword to her throat, the others were all facing outward, vigilant against a trap.

  The man with the sword at her throat turned his head to the side and spat. “Traitor!” he snarled. “Give me one good reason I shouldn’t run you through right now.”

  Leethan found she was trembling, her courage hiding somewhere deep inside her chest like a frightened cat cowering under a bed. She had constructed this plan with the sure and certain knowledge that it would lead to her death. That was the whole point of the thing. The Mother of All had planned this death for her since she was a young woman and had that very first dream, even if she herself hadn’t recognized it for what it was until much more recently.

  But somehow it was much harder to face the inevitability of her death with that sword pricking her throat. Stiffening her knees, searching for strength she could wield even when courage failed, she met the soldier’s eyes.

  “I’ll give you two,” she said, her voice betraying only the slightest of quavers. “One is that I am the property of Prince Waldmir, and he does not like others to damage his possessions. The other is that I come bearing information that he will find useful in the battle that is to come.”

  The soldier scoffed, the point of his sword not wavering from her throat. “You are already under warrant of death. And you wish me to believe that an old woman knows anything about battles and what might sway them?”

  “An old woman who has spent the last five months in Zinolm Well as a guest of the queen and the prince consort,” she reminded him. “I have been privy to some conversations that Prince Waldmir would very much like to know about.”

  There was no lessening of the suspicion in the soldier’s eyes, but it was now joined by a hint of speculation. “And why have you now turned traitor to these generous benefactors of yours? Or has betrayal simply become a habit you cannot break?” He moved the tip of his sword fractionally so that she could no longer feel the prick at her throat.

  Leethan would have sighed in relief, except the danger was far from over. This man was obviously eager for the killing to begin, and he could still decide to start with her. “My reasons are my own,” she said, hoping she wasn’t making a big mistake. She had an explanation ready, but instinct told her she’d be better served by letting Waldmir draw his own conclusions. “I will tell the prince, but no one else. You might consider that whether to hear me out or not should be his decision, not yours.”

  The soldier snarled at her, then lowered his sword, only to backhand her with his other hand. Pain and shock stole her breath, and for a moment her vision swam. He said something to her that she lost beneath the pounding of her pulse in her ears. Then he sheathed his sword and put his hands on her head, fingers digging hard into her hair, driving the pins that held her headdress into her scalp. She managed nothing but a soft mew of protest as tears clouded her vision.

  It wasn’t until his hands left her hair and began roaming over her bodice that she realized he was searching her for weapons. Which meant he must be intending to let her live and take her into the Nandelite camp.

  Leethan didn’t think he believed her to be anything resembling a threat, but he searched her with brutal thoroughness a
nyway, going so far as to shove his hand down the front of her bodice. But even so, he did not recognize the feel of the knife that was hiding in plain sight.

  Closing her eyes and gritting her teeth, she tried not to let her surge of triumph show.

  Waldmir would see her. She was sure of it. Even after her betrayal, he still loved her. It wouldn’t stop him from putting her to death for her crimes—unless he could find a rational reason to spare her. When he had heard she had walked into their camp and surrendered herself, he would feel certain she was bringing him information she believed would save her own life. And because he wanted that so badly to be true, he would be incautious.

  When the soldier finally gave up his search, Leethan was still fighting tears. For the first time, she admitted to herself that Waldmir’s residual love for her was not unrequited. She had so many reasons to hate him, and yet she had never quite been able to make herself do it.

  When the time came, would she truly go through with the plan? In some ways, it was easier to contemplate taking her own life than taking Waldmir’s. Everything about this plan was…dirty. Despicable, even. Waldmir would admit her to his presence because he loved and trusted her, and she would repay him with murder.

  No, not just murder. This was worse than murder. She would use her sacrificial Kai to trigger the spell contained in the dagger and kill…

  Well, she didn’t know how many would die. But the spell would kill anyone in the vicinity of Waldmir’s tent. That would almost certainly include any number of other high-ranking Nandelite commanders, many of whom would also be his relatives and heirs.

  With one brutal act of betrayal, she would decapitate and disable the entire Nandel army, leaving Rhozinolm’s army free to march to Aaltah’s aid. No one knew what the chances were a significant number of their forces could arrive before Aalwell fell, but if the battle should turn into a siege…