Bereft of the shadow and the demon that led them, the Allasakari did many things. Some fled toward the doors to the west, and some to the galleries; some drew weapons other than the daggers that had, with the shadow, evaporated; some formed up into a loose, defensive line; some attempted to draw upon the power of the God they worshiped, pulling out their ebon amulets and holding them aloft in angry defiance.
But they all died.
For in the galleries, behind the Exalted, waited the shadowed forms of the Astari. Masked and clothed in a uniform that was a simple, dark ash, they leveled crossbows—or longbows—and fired into the Allasakari below. No one spoke to stop the slaughter.
• • •
Devon waited until the last bowstring quivered into silence before he looked up at the gallery. The Exalted—the three!—stood as they had when they’d stepped forward; they were serene in expression, but to his eye pale, and all of their attention was focused upon their captive.
To either side of each of the Exalted, the Astari were putting up their weapons. A few left the gallery, no doubt to rummage among the dead and the dying to ensure that their work was finished.
Devon did not speak, but waited. The knives of the compact were sharp and quick—more merciful than their victims deserved. They rose and fell thrice in the lights, glinting; there was little struggle.
At last, a lone figure detached himself and came to where the Kings’ Swords kept their vigil. He bowed, very low, to Verrus Sivari. “As you commanded,” he said softly. It was hard to place the voice, and hard to guess the age of its speaker; the Verrus did not bother to try.
“You knew of this in advance,” he said coldly, “and you passed no word to the Kings’ Swords.”
“The Kings’ Swords are not our responsibility,” the man replied, but smoothly and almost deferentially. “The Kings are. Between us, we have ensured their safety. Had there been time, we would have warned you.”
The Verrus said something rude, but not at all unprofessional; he had been, after all, a soldier. “You had the time to roust the Exalted,” he said coldly. “You had the time to inform us.”
“Although I owe you no explanation, Verrus, I will say this: The Exalted were ready and waiting for us; we did not go to them. Had that been necessary . . .” He shrugged; they both knew what the lost time would have meant.
There was a long pause before either man spoke again. When one did, it was the Verrus. “The Queens?”
“The Queens,” the Astari said, with infinitely more regret in his voice, “are also not our responsibility.”
Silence.
Verrus Sivari said nothing to the Astari. Instead he turned and began to give orders; there were few to give. His men left with haste in a grim and orderly silence that was punctuated only by the sound of armor moving. He led them.
Devon stayed behind. “The Queens?”
“There is fighting in their quarters,” was the quiet reply. “You did well.”
The ATerafin glanced at the bodies of the fallen, and then, at the solitary figure that remained standing in the room’s center, a twisted statue that paid homage to the power of the Three. The demon.
“The Exalted had the foresight to bring a seer with them,” the Astari said softly, noting where his companion’s glance strayed. “Together they will question the creature before they return him to his dominion.” The smile in the words could be heard but not seen; Devon was glad of it.
“You took a risk,” he told his leader.
“There are always risks,” was the soft reply.
Devon nodded absently as he looked the room over, and then smiled oddly. Kallandras was nowhere to be seen.
11th of Corvil, 410 A.A.
Royal Healerie
Princess Mirialyn sat in the healerie with a serene impatience that the healer, Dantallon, found far more frustrating than the usual argumentative demands that injured royalty—or worse, the injured Swords officers—usually displayed. It was clear that she wished to leave, and it was also clear that she took to heart his missive and remained abed, where disinfectants and feverweed could be readily administered by his overworked apprentices. She offered no resistance, but her eyes burned holes in the closed doors, and her people came and went, in and out, out and in, with the same annoying overpoliteness that their leader herself showed.
She had taken three wounds, and it was the last—an abdominal wound that had pierced the stomach wall—that had the best chance of causing her death; he had tended it with the skill he could spare, but it was not severe enough to demand his full attention—not now, with so many close to death. The other two, a thigh wound and a grazing of the skull, were messy but easily dealt with by Cadrey and Lorrison.
The infirmary was lined with beds, and the overflow room with cots and bedrolls; three of The Ten had donated the services of their healers in the cause of the Crowns. They were sorely needed.
“Well, Miri,” Dantallon said gruffly, “I don’t suppose this will teach you to wear proper armor.” The bandages beneath his hands were reddened, but the wound was clean and cool.
“No.” She stared at the wall, her eyes reflecting light that poured in through the unshuttered wide windows. “In two days, I may rise?”
“Two days, yes.”
“Thank you.” She turned as the door swung open, tensing slightly. The golden-haired, golden-tongued bard of the Queens’ court sauntered in, lute in arms, hat askew.
Dantallon studied the younger man’s gait, and then, as the songster drew close enough, the lines of his face, the color beneath his eyes. He remembered the last time he had tended Kallandras. As if aware of his appraisal, the bard bowed ironically, strumming the chords of a melody at once familiar and unknown.
“Healer Dantallon?” Cadrey was at his sleeve, his sleepless eyes darting in the direction of Verrus Sivari.
This, Dantallon thought, as he turned away, is why a Verrus is never supposed to see action. And this was what he expected from the ACormaris. People in positions of responsibility did not look at near-death as a good excuse for dereliction of duty, and they usually thought of the interference of the healer-born with little more love than they did the injury that had brought them to the healer. Verrus Sivari, an able-bodied man with a razor-sharp mind, was unfortunately also a doer.
“Verrus Sivari,” he began, as he nodded poor Lorrison away from the Verrus’ side. “It’s good to see you awake.”
“Don’t start with me,” the Verrus replied shortly. “I’ve business to attend to, and I don’t have the time to laze about like a mewling child with a scraped knee.”
“The report that has come from the Kings’ Swords—and from the office of the Kings themselves—has indicated that you were instrumental in winning the battle in the Chamber of the Graces; my commendations.”
“Dantallon—”
“I have, however, taken the liberty of addressing the Kings personally about the nature of the injuries sustained by their officers in the battle.”
“Dantallon—”
“And the Kings have ordered you remanded into my custody until I deem you fit to return to duty. There will, unfortunately, be a debriefing; the Kings will come shortly, and you will be removed, for a time, into the ready room. You will then be returned to the infirmary, where you will follow the instructions of my apprentices. Is that clear?”
“Perfectly.” The word came from between teeth closed so tightly Dantallon wondered if the jaws would survive the pressure. They’d better; he’d enough work to do as it was without adding spoonfeeding a man with a broken jaw.
“Good.”
“Healer?”
“Yes?”
“The Queens?”
Dantallon smiled softly, and let the edge wear away from the exhaustion and the irritation of the day’s long labor. “The Queens are safe. Queen Marieyan ACormalyn was injured, but
recovers well.” Her recovery, unfortunately, cost the healerie their most powerful healer; she had been very close to death. “Queen Siodonay AReymalyn was among the Swords that your men joined in battle. She accounted well for herself, as befit her former House.”
The Verrus sank back into the bed and let the fight go, at peace. Dantallon knew it wouldn’t last, but he was willing to take advantage of it for as long as it did.
• • •
Kallandras regarded the Princess as she sat against the wall behind the narrow bed that was to be her home for the next two days. She was fair; the color had been leeched from her by the wounds she’d suffered. But her hair was still glorious, still bronze, although it had been sheared by a careless healer in order to add a few stitches. Her eyes were darker than usual.
“You look lovely as always,” he said, bowing.
“And you speak smoothly as always—but one hopes a little less accurately.” She smiled ruefully. “I hate it here. Give me word of the court.”
“The court?” Kallandras laughed and began to absently coax a peaceful collection of notes from Salla’s strings. “The court is in a state of what could politely be called chaos. The Ten are in session, and the session is, from the sounds that can be heard outside of the Great Doors, quite grim. Accusations are flying of a less than delicate nature.”
“How . . . interesting.” She watched his fingers play against the strings as if the movements, and not the resulting sounds, were the art. “What other news, Kallandras? Does Sioban send word?”
“She is quite occupied,” he said. “The tales of the Allasakari are more legend than history to all but the trinity, and even among the Churches, it seems that knowledge of the known rituals are limited to a few. The Exalted, for example, learn them as part and parcel of the antiquities.”
“You speak that word lightly.”
“Antiquities?”
She frowned. “Exalted.”
“Ah, Mirialyn. Your looks and bearing are wasted upon you; you should have been born old.” The smile, light and playful, fell from his face; his eyes darkened.
“What word?” she said, leaning forward.
His reply, when it came, was in tone and timbre a private thing; the bustle of the healerie did not touch or weaken its whisper. “I chanced upon a member of the Order, summoned to the Kings’ Council.” He paused. “We are . . . friends, of a sort.”
“And?”
“ACormaris,” he said, all playful flirtation gone, “Sioban and the Bardic Order now rifle through every bit of folklore and child’s wisery looking for answers to an old and dangerous riddle.”
“Riddles,” she said softly. “You speak them. Be blunt.”
“Vexusa,” he replied, and the sound of the word was ugly.
She sank back. “I . . . had heard rumors. What of it?”
“It is upon that place that Averalaan is built.”
She said nothing, her face set in an impassive mask. “History,” she said at last, the word neutral, “hides much when the cataclysm is great.”
He shrugged. “In this world, a simple bard does not judge the likelihood of the information he receives; if the counsel of the wise says it is so, he believes it.”
“A simple bard.” Her eyes flickered impatiently. “Then we must be about our business.”
“Not we, ACormaris. I. Your business is healing.”
“Kallandras—the rest.”
He sat upon the side of the bed, leaning close to her as if the bardic voice did not guarantee him the privacy he desired. She made no protest. “They captured the leader of the assault upon the Hall of Wise Counsel.”
“The kin.”
“Yes.”
“And?”
“He is gone, but before he was banished, he told them this: That the ways to the Shining City have been unmade.”
Her face was whiter than the sheets upon which she lay. “The Shining City,” she said.
“You know your legend. It would appear that Vexusa was not built upon this spot without reason. There is a darkness that waits.”
“And there were roads . . . to this place?”
“Which were unmade.”
“Unmade?”
“A technical term. Erased from existence as if they had never been. It is, according to the Council of the Magi, quite possible—if theoretically so—when enough raw power is available.”
“Meaning,” she added, “that no member of the Order could do it.”
“Meaning that no member of the Order would confess to such an ability, no.”
Her brow arched as she studied his face. “The Shining City—if such it is—has been sealed off beneath us?”
His smile was sympathetic—and false; she knew him well enough to know that the news disturbed him greatly. Or rather, she knew him well enough to know that he had never seemed so ill at ease as he did by her bedside in the healerie. “Yes,” he said, gazing past her to a point beyond the wall’s plain surface, “it’s like being on a boat with a very thin bottom while the dragons of the deep circle at their leisure.” He shook himself. “The mage—the member of the Order—has been out with the most powerful of his brethren, digging—if you can call such destruction mere digging—through the ground upon which the city stands. They go so far, and no farther—a barrier is there that cannot be breached by the full extent of the power they can summon. In combination.” He paused. “The Exalted have been summoned, but they must hoard their power; the questioning of the demon was not lightly undertaken.”
She paled, and then paled further, clutching her side. “It’s worse than that, isn’t it?”
He nodded gravely; even injured, one did not condescend to Mirialyn ACormaris. “The undercity is protected by the very power of the God himself. Not his followers, not the kin, but the God. The Lord of the Hells—whose name we will not speak—has set one foot firmly upon the mortal land—and if we cannot find a way to breach the barrier that divides his Shining City from our own, he will walk the world again.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
12th Corvil, 410 A.A.
Council of The Ten
THE COUNCIL OF THE Ten was never peaceful; called once a quarter at most—and often only once a year—it consisted of posturing, politicking, the veiled threats that are often exchanged as pleasantries among people of power. Trade affairs were sometimes ironed out—when a foreign power such as the Dominion of Annagar was involved, The Ten usually underwent the effort necessary to achieve a semblance of unity—but the minutiae of the affairs of the Kings’ Councillors were usually conducted in secrecy among the Houses involved.
The Council of The Ten, of course, was called in privacy, but not in secrecy; it gathered in the Halls of The Ten upon the Holy Isle, and anything said in a wing of the royal buildings was said for the royal ears, or worse: the Astari. But it had been privately agreed—among The Ten—that such a gesture, in a state of such emergency, was of the utmost necessity.
The Terafin sat quietly in the chair reserved for her use. It was not at the head of the table, but in the Council it was considered to be the seat of power; it was held, after all, by Terafin. The Morriset, replete in the elegant pomposity of his office—it could be said that Morriset and Terafin were not friendly—stood speaking in a corner with The Berrilya; they were not bantering.
The Korisamis sat in silence, observing her as she observed him, and then moving on to watch the rest of the room.
This was the second meeting of the Council of The Ten. The first meeting had had a most unsatisfactory conclusion for The Terafin—for the Council—and in the end, a recess had been called. Now, nine of The Ten stood or sat, waiting upon the final member: The Darias.
He had much to answer to Terafin for; the graves of the dead were still fresh, and the scent of broken earth reminded her, as she kept the Three Day vigil, of all that Da
rias had cost her House.
He claimed his innocence; she was not, in the end, a poor enough judge of character to fully disbelieve him. But if innocent, he was ignorant, and in his ignorance, he had failed in his responsibility both to his House and to the Crowns. To fail either duty in a minor way was the privilege of the powerful—but to fail either in a noticeable way was almost always the end of that power.
The Terafin had had only an enemy’s respect for Darias; he was clever, if deadly, and had always played his game well, even if, in living memory, he had played it against Terafin. The rules that governed The Ten, unwritten and unspoken, had been the razor’s edge over which he had balanced with such precise care. Until now.
What she wanted—if it could be gained without cost to the kingdom in such a perilous time—was blood for blood spilled.
Time passed; The Darias had still not arrived. The nine sat. It pleased The Terafin little to wait upon her enemy, but pleased her greatly that the other eight were subject to this insult as well; any leverage at all that she could gain in her case against Darias—especially when it was an outright gift—she would take.
But when the doors opened and the tenth man entered the room, it was not The Darias she had known for all of her tenure. This man was stooped and fair, and obviously of a more sedentary bent than the tall and dark Darias. He was younger, perhaps by fifteen years, and his face was round and bearded, where The Darias’ had been lean and long.
But he wore the family crest, and although the coat fit him poorly, it was obviously his right to bear it; no one, especially not so nervous a man, would dare to enter this hall in that crest otherwise.
He came to the seat of Darias, and stopped behind it, closing his eyes a moment as if to gather himself. And then, shaking his head and squaring his shoulders, he stood to his full height—which was not, after all, so insignificant.
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