SARA DOUGLASS

The Serpent Bride

Darkglass Mountain

Book 1

Dedication

For Snow

Contents

Cover

Title Page

Dedication

Map

The Legend of Chaos

Part One

1. Margalit, The Outlands

2. Serpent’s Nest, The Outlands

3. Serpent’s Nest, The Outlands

4. Serpent’s Nest, The Outlands

5. The Royal Palace, Ruen, Escator

6. The Royal Palace, Ruen, Escator

7. The Royal Palace, Ruen, Escator

8. Serpent’s Nest, and the Royal Palace at Ruen

Part Two

1. Lake Juit, Tyranny of Isembaard

2. Baron Lixel’s Residence, Margalit

3. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

4. Baron Lixel’s Residence, Margalit

5. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

6. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

7. The Royal Palace, Ruen, Escator

8. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

9. The Road East, Escator

10. Hairekeep, Tyranny of Isembaard

11. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

12. West of Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

13. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

14. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

15. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

Part Three

1. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

2. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

3. Margalit, The Outlands

4. Darkglass Mountain, Tyranny of Isembaard

5. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

6. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

7. Margalit, Central Kingdoms

8. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

9. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

10. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

11. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

12. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

13. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

Part Four

1. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

2. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

3. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

4. Pelemere, Central Kingdoms

5. The Road from Pelemere to Kyros, Central Kingdoms

6. Kyros, Central Kingdoms

7. Kyros, Central Kingdoms

8. The Road from Kyros to Escator, Central Kingdoms

9. The Road from Kyros to Escator, Central Kingdoms

10. The Road from Kyros to Escator, Central Kingdoms

11. The Road from Kyros to Deepend, Central Kingdoms

12. Aqhat and Crowhurst

13. Tyranny of Isembaard

14. The Road from Kyros to Escator, Central Kingdoms

Part Five

1. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

2. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

3. Farreach Mountains, and the Northern Reaches of the Ashdod Dependency

4. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

5. The Farreach Mountains

6. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

7. Southern Reaches of the Farreach Mountains

8. Southern Reaches of the Farreach Mountains

9. The Town of Torinox, Northern Borders of the Farreach Dependency

10. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

11. The Town of Torinox, Northern Borders of the Farreach Dependency

12. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

13. The Royal Palace, Ruen, Escator

14. The Royal Palace, Ruen, Escator

15. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

Part Six

1. Northern Plains of Isembaard

2. Palace of the First, Yoyette, Coroleas

3. Northern Plains of Isembaard

4. Courtyard of the People, Yoyette, Coroleas

5. Widowmaker Sea, to The West of Escator

6. River Lhyl, Tyranny of Isembaard

7. Widowmaker Sea, to The West of Escator

8. The Marshlands Outside Narbon, Escator

9. Crowhurst, The Far North

10. Venetia’s Hut in the Marshlands, Escator

11. The Road Between Narbon And Deepend

12. Narbon, Escator

Part Seven

1. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

2. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

3. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

4. Deepend, and the Road from Deepend to the Farreach Mountains

5. At the Foot of the Farreach Mountains

6. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

7. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

8. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

9. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

10. Northern Isembaard

11. The Farreach Mountains, Southern Kyros

12. The Farreach Mountains, Southern Kyros

13. The Farreach Mountains, Southern Kyros

14. The Farreach Mountains, Southern Kyros

15. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

16. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

17. Darkglass Mountain, Isembaard

18. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

19. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

20. Palace of Aqhat, Isembaard

Part Eight

1. The Farreach Mountains

2. Palace of Aqhat, Tyranny of Isembaard

3. The Eastern Plains, Gershadi

4. Dependency of En-Dor, Tyranny of Isembaard

5. Sakkuth, Isembaard

6. Sakkuth, Isembaard

7. Sakkuth, Isembaard

8. Sakkuth, Isembaard

9. Sakkuth, Isembaard

10. Sakkuth, Isembaard

11. Sakkuth, Isembaard

12. The Borderlands of Hosea

Part Nine

1. Sakkuth, Isembaard

2. Salamaan Pass, Northern Kingdoms

3. Salamaan Pass, Northern Kingdoms

4. Saiamaan Pass, Northern Kingdoms

5. Pelemere, Northern Kingdoms

6. The Sky Peak Passes

7. The Sky Peak Passes

8. Entrance to the Sky Peak Passes, The Outlands

9. Entrance to the Sky Peak Pass, The Outlands

10. Entrance to the Sky Peak Passes, The Outlands

Keep Reading

Glossary

About the Author

Also by the Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

Map

THE LEGEND OF CHAOS (KANUBAI)

In the beginning and for an infinity of time there was nothing but the darkness of Chaos, who called himself Kanubai. After a time Kanubai grew weary of his lonely existence and so he invited Light and Water to be his companions. Kanubai and Light and Water co-existed harmoniously, but one day Light and Water merged, just for an instant of time, but in that instant they conceived a child — Life.

Kanubai was jealous of Life, for it was the child of the union of Light and Water and he had been excluded from that union. He set out to murder Life, to consume it with darkness, but Light and Water came to the defence of their child. Aided by a great mage, Light and Water defeated Kanubai in a terrible battle, and interred his remains in a deep abyss. They stoppered this abyss with a sparkling, life-giving river, which combined the best both of Light and of Water, and they hoped that Kanubai was trapped for all time.

Trapped, but not extinguished. Every day Life was reminded of Kanubai’s continuing malignant presence by the descent of the night, when for the space of some hours the dark memory of Kanubai blanketed the land.

Despite this daily sadness, Life prospered, and many creatures came into existence.

For aeons Kanubai lay trapped, able to do little more than darken each light-filled day with the reminder of his presence.

But then, one day, something remarkable happened.

Infinity visited.

PART ONE

1
MARGALIT, THE OUTLANDS

The eight-year-old girl crouched by the stone column in the atrium of her parents’ house. Clad only in a stained linen shift, she hugged her thin arms tightly about herself, her eyes wide and darting under her bedraggled and grimy fair hair.

The house was cold and still, and the girl’s breath frosted as she hyperventilated.

The foul liquid of rotting cadavers streaked her face and arms. For many days now the girl had crept about the house, seeking out the bodies of her parents (almost unrecognisable, four weeks after their death), rubbing the stinking, viscous liquid that had leaked from their flesh over her body, sucking it from her fingers.

All she wanted was to die, too.

It had been a bad month. Four weeks ago everyone in the house — save the little girl — had died within a day of the first person falling sick. Thirty-four people — not just the girl’s parents and siblings, but her three aunts, their husbands, their children, her grandmother, and the household’s servants as well — all dead from the plague.

Just her, left alive.

Outside gathered a frightened and angry crowd, neighbours as well as sundry other concerned citizens and council members of Margalit. They had blocked off all entrances to the house as soon as they realised plague had struck the household.

In the initial days after everyone had died, the girl, Ishbel, screamed at the crowd outside for help, begging them to save her. She pressed her face against the glass of the windows and beat her small fists against frames, but the hostile expressions on the faces of the crowd outside did not alter.

They would not move to aid her.

Instead, Ishbel heard cries demanding that the house be set alight, and all the corpses and their infection burned.

She screamed at them again, begging them to allow her freedom.

She wasn’t ill.

She didn’t have the plague.

Her skin was unmarked, her brow unfevered.

“Please, please, let me out. Everyone is dead. I want to get out. Please … please …”

The crowd outside had no mercy. They would not let her escape.

Ishbel begged until she lost her voice and scraped away several of her fingernails on the wood of the front door.

The crowd would not listen. No other house in Margalit had the plague. Just the Brunelle house. Its doors and windows would not be opened again. The house would never ring with life and laughter as once it had.

When the girl was dead, they would burn the house, and all the corpses within it. Until then they would wait.

Eventually Ishbel crept away from the windows and the cold, bolted doors. She could not bear the flat hostility in the eyes outside.

All she wanted was comfort, and so she crept close to the corpse of her mother and cuddled up next to it.

Her mother was very cold and smelled very bad, but even so Ishbel garnered some comfort from the contact with her body.

Until the moment it began to whisper to her.

Ishbel. Ishbel. Listen to us.

Ishbel recoiled, terrified.

Her mother’s corpse twitched, and it whispered again.

Ishbel, Ishbel, listen to us. You must prepare —

Ishbel screamed, over and over, her hands pressed against her ears, her eyes screwed shut, her body rolled into a tight ball in a corner of the room.

Then the corpses of two of her aunts, which lay a few feet from her mother’s, also twitched and whispered.

Ishbel, Ishbel, listen to us, our darling. Prepare, prepare, for soon the Lord of Elcho Falling shall walk again.

A vision accompanied the horrifying whispers.

A man, clothed in black, standing in the snow, his back to her.

Darkness writhed about his shoulders.

He sensed her presence, and turned his head a little, glancing at her from over his shoulder.

Bleakness and despair, and desolation so extreme it was murderous, overwhelmed Ishbel’s entire world.

The despair that engulfed her annihilated everything Ishbel had felt until now.

The loss of her family, and her entrapment with their corpses, was as nothing to what this man dragged at his heels.

Prepare, Ishbel, prepare for the coming of the Lord of Elcho Falling.

After her mother, and her two aunts, every other corpse in the house twitched in the same mad, cold, macabre dance of death, and whispered until the words echoed about the house.

Prepare, Ishbel, our darling, for the Lord of Elcho Falling shall walk again.

The twitching corpses and the constant whispering drove Ishbel to the brink of insanity. She didn’t want to live. She had gone mad, here in this cold house of death, watching everyone she had ever loved putrefy before her eyes.

Listening to their never-ending whispers.

Prepare, our darling … for the Lord of Elcho Falling.

She tried to starve herself, but one day she had weakened, sobbing, stuffing her mouth with mouldy pastries from the kitchen.

Then she found a knife, and drew it across her wrists, but was too weak to carve deeply, and too cowardly to bear the pain, so the blood just seeped from the thin cuts and Ishbel had not died.

Finally, frantic, crazy, Ishbel had stuffed her ears full of wadding and crept close enough to rub the foul effluent from the cadavers of her parents over her body and face. Then she licked the foulness from her fingers, just to be sure. It made her retch and sob and then scream in horror, but she did it, because surely, surely,this way the plague would manage to take a grip in her body and kill her as mercifully fast as it had killed everyone else in her life.

But all that had happened was that the scars on her wrists became infected, and wept a purulent discharge, and throbbed unbearably.

Ishbel survived.

Whenever she slept, she dreamed of the Lord of Elcho Falling, turning his head ever so slightly so that he could look at her over his shoulder, and engulfing her in sorrow and pain.

She grew thin, her joints aching with the cold and with malnutrition, but she survived.

Outside the crowds waited.

Every so often Ishbel called out to them, letting them know she still existed within, because, no matter how greatly Ishbel wanted to die, she did not want to do so within an inferno.

On this day, huddled in the atrium of the house, Ishbel began to dream about death. She looked at the great staircase that wound its way to the upper floors of the house, and she wondered why she’d never before thought that all she needed to do was to climb to the top, then throw herself down.

Very slowly, because she was now extremely weak, Ishbel crawled on her hands and knees towards the staircase. She was frail, and she would need to take it slowly to get to the top, but get there she would.

Ishbel felt overwhelmed with a great determination. Her death was but an hour away, at the most.

But it took her much longer than an hour to climb the stairs. Ishbel was seriously weak, and she could only crawl up the staircase a few steps at a time before she needed to rest, collapsing and gasping, on the dusty wooden treads.

By late afternoon she was almost there. Every muscle trembled, aching so greatly that Ishbel wept with the pain.

But she was almost there …

Then, as she was within three steps of the top, she heard the front door open.

A faint sound, for the door was far below her, but she heard it open.

Ishbel did not know what to do. She lay on the stairs, trembling, weeping, listening to slow steps ascend the staircase, and wondered if the crowd had sent someone in to murder her.

She was taking far too long to die.

Ishbel closed her eyes, and buried her face in her arms.

“Ishbel?”

A man’s voice, very kind. Ishbel thought she must be dreaming.

“Ishbel.”

Slowly, and crying out softly with the ache of it, Ishbel turned over, opening her eyes.

A man wrapped in a crimson cloak over a similarly-coloured robe stood a few steps down, smiling at her. He was a young man, good-looking, with brown hair that flopped over his forehead, and a long, fine nose.

“Ishbel?” The man held out a hand. “My name is Aziel. Would you like to come live with me?”

She stared at him, unable to comprehend his presence.

Aziel’s smile became gentler, if that were possible. “I have been travelling for weeks to reach you, Ishbel. The Great Serpent himself sent me. He appeared to me in a dream and said that I must hurry to bring you home. He loves you, sweetheart, and so shall I.”

“Are you the Lord of Elcho Falling?” Ishbel whispered, even though she knew he could not be, for he did not drag loss and sorrow at his heels, and there was no darkness clinging to his shoulders.

Aziel frowned briefly, then he shook his head. “My name is Aziel, Ishbel. And I am lord of nothing, only a poor servant of the Great Serpent. Will you come with me?”

“To where?” Ishbel could barely grasp the thought of escape, now.

“To my home,” Aziel said, “and it will be yours. Serpent’s Nest.”

“I do not know of it.”

“Then you shall. Please come with me, Ishbel. Don’t die. You are too precious to die.”

“I don’t need to die?”

Aziel laughed. “Ishbel, you have no idea how greatly we all want you to live, and to live with us. Will you come? Will you?”

Ishbel swallowed, barely able to get the words out. “Are there whispers in your house?”

“Whispers?”

“Do the dead speak in your house?”

Aziel frowned again. “The dying do, from time to time, when they confess to us the Great Serpent’s wishes, but once dead they are mute.”

“Good.”

“Ishbel, come with me, please. Forget about what has happened here. Forget — everything.”

“Yes,” said Ishbel, and stretched out a trembling hand. I will forget, she thought. I will forget everything.

She did not once wonder why this man should have been able so easily to wander through the vindictive crowd outside, or why that crowd should have stood back and allowed him to open the front door without a single murmur.

Two weeks later Aziel brought Ishbel home to Serpent’s Nest. She had spoken little for the entire journey, and nothing at all for the final five days.

Aziel was worried for her.

The archpriestess of the Coil, who worshipped the Great Serpent, led Aziel, carrying the little girl, to a room where awaited food and a bed. They washed Ishbel, made her eat something, then put her to bed, retreating to a far corner of the room to sit watch as she slept.

The archpriestess was an older woman, well into her sixties, called Ional. She looked speculatively at Aziel, who had not allowed his eyes to stray from the sleeping form of the child. Aziel was Ional’s partner at Serpent’s Nest, archpriest to her archpriestess, but he was far younger and as yet inexperienced, for he’d replaced the former archpriest only within the past year, after that man had strangely disappeared.

Ional knew she would partner Aziel only for a few more years, until he was well settled into his position as archpriest, and then she would make way for someone younger. Stronger. More Aziel’s match.

Now Ional looked back to the girl.

Ishbel.

“You said,” Ional said very softly, so as to not wake the girl, “that the Great Serpent told you she would not stay for a lifetime.”

“He told me,” said Aziel, “that she would stay many years, but that eventually he would require her to leave. That there would be a duty for her within the wider world, but that she would return and that her true home was here at Serpent’s Nest.”

“She is so little,” said Ional, “but so very powerful. I could feel it the moment you carried her into Serpent’s Nest. How much more shall she need to grow, do you think, before she can assume my duties?”

“When she is strong enough to hold a knife,” said Aziel, “she shall be ready.”

Deep in the abyss the creature stirred, looking upwards with flat, hate-filled eyes.

It whispered, sending the whisper up and outwards with all its might, seething through the crack that Infinity had opened.

It had been sending out its call for countless millennia, and for all those countless millennia, no one had answered.

This day, the creature in the abyss received not one but two replies, and it bared its teeth, and knew its success was finally at hand.

Twenty years passed.

2
SERPENT’S NEST, THE OUTLANDS

The man hung naked and vulnerable, his arms outstretched and chained by the wrists to the wall, his feet barely touching the ground, and likewise chained by the ankle to the wall. He was bathed in sweat caused only partly by the warm, humid conditions of the Reading Room and the highly uncomfortable position in which he had been chained.

He was hyperventilating in terror. His eyes, wide and dark, darted about the room, trying to find some evidence of mercy in the crimson-cloaked and hooded figures standing facing him in a semicircle, just out of blood-splash distance.

He might have begged for mercy, were it not for the gag in his mouth.

A door opened, and two people entered.

The man pissed himself, his urine pooling about his feet, and struggled desperately, uselessly, to free himself from his bonds.

The two arrivals walked slowly into the area contained by the semicircle of witnesses. A man and a woman, they too were cloaked in crimson, although for the moment their hoods lay draped about their shoulders. The man was in middle age, his face thin and lined, his dark hair receding, his dark eyes curiously compassionate, but only as they regarded his companion. When he glanced at the man chained to the wall those eyes became blank and uncaring.

His name was Aziel, and he was the archpriest of the Coil, now gathered in the Reading Room.

The woman was in her late twenties, very lovely with clear hazel eyes and dark blonde hair. She listened to Aziel as he spoke softly to her, then nodded. She turned slightly, acknowledging the semicircle with a small bow — as one they returned the bow — then turned back to face the chained man.

She was the archpriestess of the Coil, Aziel’s equal in leadership of the order, and his superior in Readings.

Ishbel Brunelle, the little girl he had rescued twenty years earlier from her home of horror.

Aziel handed Ishbel a long silken scarf of the same colour as her cloak, and, as Aziel stood back, she slowly and deliberately wound the scarf about her head and face, leaving only her eyes visible. Then, equally slowly and deliberately, her eyes never leaving the chained man, Ishbel lifted the hood of her cloak over her head, pulling it forward so that her scarf-bound face was all but hidden. She arranged her cloak carefully, making certain her robe was protected.

Then, with precision, Ishbel made the sign of the Coil over her belly.

The man bound to the wall was now frantic, his body writhing, his eyes bulging, mews of horror escaping from behind his gag.

Ishbel took no notice.

From a pocket in her cloak she withdrew a small semicircular blade. It fitted neatly into the palm of her hand, the actual slicing edge protruding from between her two middle fingers.

She stepped forward, concentrating on the man.

He was now flailing about as much as he could given the restriction of his restraints, but his movements appeared to cause Ishbel no concern. She moved to within two paces of the man, took a very deep breath, her eyes closing as she murmured a prayer.

“Great Serpent be with me, Great Serpent be part of me, Great Serpent grace me.”

Then Ishbel opened her eyes, stepped forward, lifted her slicing hand and, in a movement honed by twenty years of the study of anatomy and practice both upon the living and the dead, cleanly disembowelled the man with a serpentine incision from sternum to groin.

Blood spurted outwards in a spray, covering Ishbel’s masked and hooded features.

As the man’s intestines bulged outwards Ishbel lifted her slicing hand again and in several quick, deft movements freed the intestines from their abdominal supports, then stepped back nimbly as they tumbled out of the man’s body to lie in a steaming heap at his feet.

The pile of intestines was still attached to the man’s living body by two long, glistening ropes of bowel, stretching downwards. The man himself, still alive, still conscious, stared at them in a combination of disbelief and shock.

The agony had yet to strike.

The man trembled so greatly that the movement carried down the connecting ropes of bowel to the pile at his feet, making them quiver as if they enjoyed independent life.

Ishbel ignored everything save the pile of intestines. Again she stepped forward, this time leaning down to sever the large intestine as it joined the small bowel.

Behind her the semicircle of the Coil began to chant, softly and sibilantly. “Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us. Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us.”

“Great Serpent, grace us, grace us, grace us,” Aziel said, his voice a little stronger than those of the semicircle.

Ishbel had pocketed the slicing blade now, and stood before the intestines, her hands folded in front of her, eyes cast down.

Please, Great Serpent, she said in her mind, grace me with your presence and tell me what is so wrong, and what we may do to aid you.

The man’s intestine began to uncoil. A long length of the large bowel, now independent, rose slowly into the air.

The man had bitten and masticated his way through his gag by now, and he began to shriek, thin harsh sounds that rattled about the chamber.

No one took any notice of him.

All eyes were on the rope of intestine now twisting into the air before the archpriestess.

It shimmered, and then transformed into the head and body of a black serpent, its scales gleaming with the fluids of the man’s body and sending shimmering shafts of rainbow colours about the chamber. Its head grew hideously large, weaving its way forward until it was a bare finger’s distance from Ishbel’s masked face.

Then it began to speak.

When it was over — the serpent disintegrated into steaming bowel once more, the agonised man dispatched with a deep slash to the throat — Ishbel turned and stared at Aziel, dragging the scarf away from her face so he could see her horror.

“We need to speak,” she said, then walked from the chamber.

3
SERPENT’S NEST, THE OUTLANDS

Aziel followed Ishbel to the day chamber they shared, pouring her a large of glass of wine as she undid her cloak and tossed it to one side.

“Pour yourself one, too,” she said. “You shall be glad enough of it when I tell you what the Great Serpent said.”

“Ishbel, sit down and take a mouthful of that wine. Good. Now, what —”

“Disaster threatens. The Skraelings prepare to seethe south. Millions of them.”

“But …”

“Millions of them, Aziel.”

Aziel poured himself some wine, then sank into a chair, leaving the wine untouched. The Skraelings — insubstantial ice wraiths who lived in the frozen northern wastes — had ever been a bother to the countries of Viland, Gershadi and Berfardi. Small bands of ten or fifteen occasionally attacked outlying villages, taking livestock and, sometimes, a child.

But millions?And seething as far south as Serpent’s Nest?

“I know only what the Great Serpent showed me, Aziel,” Ishbel said. “I don’t understand it any more than you.” She took a deep breath. “I saw Serpent’s Nest overrun, the members of the Coil dragged out to be crucified on crosses. You …” her voice broke a little. “You, dead.”

“Ishbel —”

“There’s worse.”

Worse?

“A forgotten evil rises from the south,” Ishbel said. “Something so anciently malevolent that even the bedrock has learned to fear it. It will crawl north to meet the Skraelings. They whisper to each other … the Skraelings are under its thrall, which is why they are so unnaturally organised. Between them they shall doom our world, Aziel.”

“Ishbel,” Aziel said, “there have been no reports of any unusual activity among the Skraelings. In fact, from what I’ve heard, they’ve been quieter than usual these past eighteen months. Are you sure you interpreted the Great Serpent’s message correctly?”

Ishbel replied not with words but with such a dark look that Aziel’s heart sank.

“I apologise,” he said hastily. “I was shocked. I’m sorry.” Aziel finally took a large swallow of his wine. “You are the most powerful visionary to have ever blessed the Coil, and what I just said was unforgivable.” Then he gave a soft, humourless laugh. “I suppose that I am merely trying to find a means by which to disbelieve the Great Serpent’s message. Did he show you the reason behind this disaster? Why it is happening? How? The Skraelings have never managed more than the occasional, if murderous, nuisance raid. A death or two at most. Millions? How can they organise themselves to that degree?”

“The evil in the south organises them, Aziel,” Ishbel said. “I thought I’d said that already.”

Aziel did not reply. He understood Ishbel’s irritability. By the Serpent, had he been the one to receive this message he was sure he would have snarled far harder than Ishbel.

Ishbel rose, pacing restlessly about the chamber. “There is more, Aziel,” she said finally.

He, too, rose, more at the tone of her voice than her words. The irritation had now been replaced with something too close to despair. “Ishbel?”

She turned to face him, her lovely face drawn and pale. “The Great Serpent showed me the disaster which threatens, but he also showed me the means by which it can be averted.”

“Oh, thank the gods! What must we do?”

“It is what I must do. I must leave the Coil, leave Serpent’s Nest —”

Aziel stilled. Had not the Great Serpent told him twenty years ago, when he sent Aziel to rescue Ishbel from that house of carnage, that this would eventually come to pass?

“— and marry some man. A king.” Ishbel paused, as if searching for the name, and Aziel had the sudden and most unwanted thought that he hoped Ishbel would remember the right name.

“A king called Maximilian,” Ishbel said. “From some kingdom to the west … I cannot quite recall …”

“Escator,” Aziel said softly. “Maximilian Persimius of Escator.”

“Yes. Yes, Maximilian Persimius of Escator. Aziel … the Great Serpent wants me to marry this man! What can he be thinking? How can a marriage … to a man … avert this approaching disaster? I am not meant to be a wife, and I have no idea, none, of how to be a woman!”

Aziel stared at her lovely face, and saw the splatter of blood across one eyebrow that had penetrated her scarf’s protection.

No, he could not imagine her a “wife”, either. But, oh, the woman …

“We cannot hope to understand the Great Serpent’s reasons,” said Aziel, “nor the knowledge behind them.”

He stepped over to Ishbel and took her face gently between his hands. “My dear, we always knew you would leave us. You knew you would need to leave us. It is why we marked you as we did.” For a moment his hands slid into her hair, the tips of his fingers running lightly across her scalp. “Now,” he continued, his hands sliding back to cradle her face, “the time is here.”

“I do not know how to be a woman,” Ishbel repeated, refusing to meet Aziel’s eyes.

That statement, Aziel thought with infinite sadness, summarised Ishbel’s life perfectly. In the twenty years since he had rescued her from that charnel house in Margalit, Ishbel had devoted her entire being to serving the Great Serpent. She had no idea of her beauty, nor of her allure. All the members of the Coil were bound by vows of chastity, but only loosely. Liaisons and relationships did develop, and were allowed to continue so long as they remained discreet.

Aziel would have given full ten years of his life if it meant Ishbel looked at him with eyes of love or desire.

But she had no idea of his true feelings for her, and Aziel often wondered if Ishbel could even grasp the concept of love.

He stepped away from her. “Marriage to Maximilian of Escator, eh? It is a small thing, surely, if it will save us from the disaster the Great Serpent showed you.”

Ishbel looked at him as if he had committed an act of the basest betrayal. “Marriage? To some undoubtedly fat and ancient man who —”

“You do not know of Maximilian?” Aziel said. Surely everyone knew Maximilian’s story — the news of his rescue eight years ago had rocked the Outlands, as well as all the Central Kingdoms and as far away as Coroleas. Had Ishbel listened to none of the gossip that infiltrated the walls of Serpent’s Nest via tradesmen and suppliers?

Ishbel gave a small shrug. “Why should I know?”

Aziel sighed. Because everyone else in the damned world knows. “Sit down,” he said, “and I shall tell you of Maximilian Persimius.”

He waited until Ishbel had sat herself, her back rigid, her face expressionless, before he spoke.

“I shall be brief, as I am certain you shall have ample opportunity to hear this story from Maximilian himself.”

Ishbel’s face tightened, but Aziel ignored it.

“Eight years ago there was uproar when the presumed long-dead heir to the Escatorian throne, Maximilian, suddenly reappeared. He told an astounding tale: stolen at the age of fourteen, thrown into the gloam mines — known as the Veins — to labour in darkness and pain for a full seventeen years until he was rescued by a youthful apprentice physician and a marsh witch. Yes, I know, stranger than myth, but sometimes it happens. It transpired that Maximilian’s ‘death’ had been staged by his older cousin Cavor, who wanted the throne. Once free of the Veins Maximilian challenged Cavor for the throne, won, and … well, there you have it. Maximilian has since led a fairly blameless life running Escator and, as luck would have it, looking for a wife. I have never seen him, nor met him, but I have heard good of him. He is respected both as a man and as a king.”

“He was imprisoned in the gloam mines for seventeen years?”

“Yes.”

“Then I hope he has since managed to scrub the dirt of the grave from under his fingernails.”

“That was ungenerous, Ishbel.”

“Don’t lecture me,” she snapped. “Maximilian may be of the noblest character, and patently has endurance beyond most other men, but I have no wish to be his wife. I do not wish to leave Serpent’s Nest.”

“Ishbel … the Great Serpent has said that —”

“Perhaps the Great Serpent is mistaken,” Ishbel said, and with that she rose, snatched up her cloak, and left the chamber.

4
SERPENT’S NEST, THE OUTLANDS

Wrapping the cloak tightly about herself, Ishbel walked quickly through the corridors until she came to the stairwell leading up to a small balcony high in Serpent’s Nest. She was grateful she met no one, partly because she could not at the moment contemplate questions or small talk, but mostly because she felt deeply ashamed of her behaviour and manner with Aziel.

Her shock and horror at the vision the Great Serpent had showed her — and then at the solution he had suggested — could not excuse her behaviour towards Aziel. Ishbel owed the Great Serpent, the Coil and even Serpent’s Nest itself a great deal, but she owed Aziel so much more. He had been the one to rescue her. His had been the hand extended to lift her from the horror that assailed her. His had been the gentle smile, the soft encouragement, the friendship, over all of these years, which had helped her to put that frightful time behind her.

He hadn’t deserved that face she had just shown him.

Ishbel sighed and began to climb the stairs. The eastern balcony was her favourite spot in Serpent’s Nest, and she often came here to think, or simply to stand and allow the salt breeze from the Infinity Sea to wash over her face and through her hair.

The climb was a long one, and, as it progressed, the stone stairs became ever rougher and a little steeper. The increasing difficulty of the way did not bother Ishbel; rather, it comforted her, because it meant she approached the older part of Serpent’s Nest.

The more mysterious part.

Serpent’s Nest was a mystery in itself. Ishbel had begun to explore the structure in the first months after she had arrived as a child, completely fascinated by her new home. Serpents Nest was not a town, nor even a building, but a series of interconnecting chambers and corridors hewn out of what Ional, the old archpriestess Ishbel had replaced, told her was the largest mountain in the world.

Inhabited once by giants among men, Ional had said, and a legendary warrior-king who wielded magic beyond comprehension, but now left with only us to keep its empty spaces company.

Ishbel could well believe that giants had once lived here. Well, many people, at the very least. The Coil only occupied a hundredth of the chambers that had been thus far explored, and there were yet more corridors and tunnels that led deep into the mountain through which no one had yet dared venture. No one knew who or what had once lived here. Ional had told Ishbel that the Coil had lived here for twenty-three generations, but that the mountain stronghold had been long empty when the Coil had first arrived.

The stairs suddenly broadened, and Ishbel felt the first breath of sea air wash over her face. She smiled, relaxing, and stepped onto the eastern balcony. Ishbel had found this place in her tenth year, and had come here regularly ever since. No one else ever used the balcony, and Ishbel was not sure that anyone else even knew how to reach it.

Perhaps, among the myriad stairwells and corridors and possibilities that Serpent’s Nest offered, no one else had ever found this particular stairwell.

Ishbel leaned back against the stone face of the mountain, the semicircular balustrade of the balcony wall two paces before her, and looked out over the Infinity Sea.

By the Great Serpent, was there ever a more beautiful view?

The mountain that Ishbel knew as Serpent’s Nest rose directly above the vast Infinity Sea, its eastern face, where Ishbel now relaxed on her balcony, plunging almost a thousand paces into the grey-blue waters of the sea. Ishbel loved the great vastness of the ocean stretching out before her, with its wildness, its unpredictability, its strangeness and its unknowable secrets. Behind her rose the comforting solidity of the mountain, almost warm against her back.

Ishbel took a deep breath, forcing herself to think about what had happened today. The horror of the Great Serpent’s vision … she shuddered as she replayed in her mind the sight of the ice wraiths with their huge silvery orbs for eyes and their oversized teeth, swarming over the mountain.

And the solution …

Ishbel shuddered again. Leave Serpent’s Nest? Marriage? Marriage? Ishbel could almost not comprehend it. She struggled to remember household life in her parents’ home. Her mother had been bound to the house, supervising the servants, the mending of linens, deciding what food should be served to her father for his dinner, being pleasant and hospitable to visitors. Her parents had been wealthy and important people, but Ishbel could remember that faint touch of servitude in her mother’s manner to her husband — how the entire household revolved about his wants and needs — and even to those visitors that her husband needed to impress. She remembered how tired her mother had constantly appeared, worn down by the responsibilities of the house and her large family.

True, marriage to a king would be different, but not so greatly. Ishbel would still be his inferior, and would still need to subject herself to him, as would any wife.

Here she was Aziel’s equal, respected by all other members of the Coil, and feared by those who came to the Coil seeking their visionary aid.

Even worse, Ishbel would need to subject herself physically to the man. Ishbel had led an utterly chaste life since her arrival at Serpent’s Nest. She did not even think of any of the male members (or any of the female members, for that matter) in sexual terms. She could not imagine a man thinking he had the right to touch her, and to use her body in the most intimate sense. She could not imagine having to subject herself to such intrusion.

And to lose all the support she had at Serpent’s Nest in the doing. To lose everything she held dear, and which kept her safe, for such a life.

“The Great Serpent must be mistaken,” she said. “This can’t be the solution.”

Ishbel straightened, squaring her shoulders, determined in her decision. “I will tell Aziel that I was mistaken, that I misinterpreted the Great Serpent’s words, that —”

Ishbel, do as I have asked.

Ishbel froze in the act of moving towards the opening that led to the stairwell.

Very slowly, so slowly she thought she could hear the bones in her neck creak, Ishbel looked up towards the distant peak of the mountain.

An apparition of the Great Serpent writhed there: the setting sun glinted off his black scales and shimmered along the fangs of his slightly open mouth. His head wove back and forth, as if tasting the wind, then he slowly wound his way down the mountain towards Ishbel.

Do as I ask, Ishbel.

Ishbel could not move, let alone speak.

The Great Serpent wound closer, sliding between rocks and through cracks with ease until his head hung some ten paces above Ishbel.

Do as I ask.

Ishbel was recovered from her initial shock. The Great Serpent had occasionally appeared to her, but it had been when she was a young child and still wept for her mother. Then he had come to comfort her. Now, it seemed, he was here to ensure Ishbel did as he wished. Given that Ishbel had just spent some long minutes silently fuming at the idea she should have to subject herself to the wishes of a husband, the idea that the Great Serpent was here to force her to his will irritated her into a small rebellion.

“I cannot see how marriage to Maximilian would help, Great One. We need armies, warriors, magicians —”

I need you to marry Maximilian Persimius. Ishbel, do as I bid.

Ishbel’s mouth compressed. “One of the other priestesses, perhaps. I —”

The Great Serpent’s mouth flared wide in anger, and his tongue forked close to her hair. Ishbel —

Then, stunningly, another voice, a male voice, and one much gentler than that of the Great Serpent.

Ishbel, you need not fear.

Ishbel spun about, looking to the stone balustrading. An oversized frog balanced there, its body so insubstantial she could see right through it to the sea beyond.

A frog, but one such as she had never seen previously. He was very large, as big as a man’s head, and quite impossibly beautiful. This beauty was mostly due to his eyes, great black pools of kindness and comfort.

He shifted a little on the balustrade —

Almost as if he balanced on the rim of a goblet …

— unconcerned about the precipitous drop behind him.

Ishbel, he said, listen to my comrade, no matter how distasteful you think his directive, He is arrogant, sometimes, and uncaring of the fragility of those to whom he speaks.

“I am not fragile,” Ishbel said, almost automatically. This apparition was a god also: she could feel the power emanating from him, and she sensed that perhaps he was even more potent than the Great Serpent. It was a different power, though. Far more subtle, more gentle.

Compassionate.

For some reason Ishbel’s eyes filled with tears. It was almost as if the frog god could see into her innermost being, where she still wept for her mother, and where she still shook with terror from the whisperings of her mother’s corpse.

“Who are you?” she asked, her voice soft and deferential now, where she had been irritated with the Great Serpent.

Above her head the Great Serpent gave a theatrical sigh. A companion through a long journey, Ishbel. My aquatic friend here keeps watch on the ancient evil to the south whereas I, it seems, must spend my time seeing that my archpriestess does her duty as she is bound. There was a moment of silence. I can’t think what he does here.

Ishbel felt amusement radiating from the frog.

I feared that if you got too dramatic, my serpent friend, the frog said, Ishbel might be forced to throw herself from this balcony in sheer terror at your persuasive abilities.

Ishbel bit her lip to stop her smile. For a moment the frog god’s eyes met hers, and she felt such a connection with him that her eyes widened in surprise.

You are not alone, the frog said, into her mind alone. We may not meet for a long time, but you are not alone.

“Must I marry this man?” Ishbel said.

Yes, said the frog. It shall not be a terror for you, for he is a gentle man. Do not be afraid.

Your union with this man is vital, said the Great Serpent. Allow nothing to impede it. You will do whatever you must in order to become Maximilian Persimius’ wife. Whatever you must!

He paused, then added in a gentler tone, You will return to Serpent’s Nest, Ishhel. It shall he your home once again.

Then, as suddenly as both the frog god and the Great Serpent had appeared, they were gone, and Ishbel was left standing alone on the balcony high above the Infinity Sea.

She waited a moment, gathering her thoughts, still more than a little unsettled by the appearance of not one but two gods. Then she went down the stairwell to Aziel, to whom she said she had changed her mind, and that she would, after all, marry this man, Maximilian Persimius.

She did not tell Aziel of her meeting with the Great Serpent, nor of her encounter with the compassionate and hitherto unknown frog god.

In the morning Aziel met with Ishbel again. He would not have been surprised to learn she had changed her mind yet again, but to his relief, and his pride, she remained resolute.

“I will marry this Maximilian,” she said. “I will do what is needed. After all, has not the Great Serpent said that I will return to Serpents Nest eventually? This shall be a trial for me, yes, but marriage cannot be too high a price to pay for saving Serpent’s Nest and the Outlands from the ravages of both Skraelings and ancient evils.”

That was a pretty speech, Aziel thought, and well prepared, and he wondered if it was less for him than for Ishbel herself.

Perhaps Ishbel believed that ij she repeated it enough times, over and over, the words would take on the power of prophecy.

“When the Great Serpent sent me to fetch you from Margalit,” Aziel said, “he told me that you would eventually need to leave — perhaps even then he foresaw this disaster. And it is true enough he said you would eventually return.” He smiled. “I hope you will not stay too long away, Ishbel.”

“I also hope I shall not stay away long,” she said, and Aziel laughed a little at the depth of emotion behind those words.

“Besides,” Ishbel continued, “perhaps Maximilian of Escator will not accept me.” She paused. “There would be few men willing to wed an archpriestess of the Coil, surely.”

“Ah,” said Aziel, “but I do not think we shall be offering him the archpriestess, eh? You are a rich noblewoman in your own right, and I think it is as the Lady Ishbel Brunelle that you should meet your new husband. We shall call you … let me see … ah yes, we shall call you a ward of the Coil. That should do nicely.”

5
THE ROYAL PALACE, RUEN, ESCATOR

Maximilian Persimius, King of Escator, Warden of Ruen, Lord of the Ports and Suzerain of the Plains, preferred to keep as many of his royal duties as informal as possible. He met with the full Council of Nobles thrice a year, and the smaller Privy Council of Preferred Nobles once a month. Maximilian respected, listened to, and acted upon the advice he received from both those learned councils, but the council he leaned on most was that which he referred to as his Council of Friends — a small group of men that, indeed, made up Maximilians closest circle of friends, but were also the men he trusted above any else, for all of them had been involved to some extent in his rescue from the gloam mines eight years earlier.

These men knew Maximilian’s past, knew where he came from, had seen him at his worst, and they still loved him despite his occasional darker moments.

Today the king was in a light-hearted mood, and none expected any of his dark introspections on this fine morning. Maximilian sat in his chair, one long leg casually draped over one of its arms, his fine face with its striking aquiline nose and deep blue eyes creased in a mischievous grin, his dark hair — always worn a little too long — flopping over his brow. He was laughing at Egalion, captain of the king’s Emerald Guard, who had hurried late into the chamber. Egalion was now making flustered excuses as he dragged a chair up to the semicircle seated about the fire that had been lit in the hearth.

“You must be getting old, my friend,” Maximilian said, “to so oversleep.”

“Out late, perhaps, with a lady friend?” said Vorstus, Abbot of the Order of Persimius. In his late middle age, Vorstus was a thin, dark man with sharp brown eyes and the distinctive tattoo of a faded quill on his right index finger. The Order of Persimius was a group of brothers devoted to the protection and furtherance of the Persimius family. Maximilian owed Vorstus a massive debt for aiding the effort to free him from the Veins, and sometimes, when Vorstus looked at Maximilian with his dark unreadable eyes, that debt sat heavily on Maximilian’s shoulders. When first Maximilian had emerged from the Veins he had trusted Vorstus completely. Now he was not so sure of him, for he felt Vorstus watched him a little too carefully.

Maximilian ignored Vorstus’ comment, “Perhaps you need the services of Garth, Egalion. A potion, perhaps, from the famous Baxter recipes, to soothe you into an early sleep at night so that we may not be deprived of your company at morning council?”

That was as close to a reprimand as Maximilian was ever likely to deliver to any of these three men.

“I apologise, Maximilian,” Egalion said. He was a tall, strong, fair-haired man who had served the Persimius throne for over thirty years, but now he reddened like a youth. “I have no acceptable excuse save that I did, indeed, oversleep, and no excuse for that — no woman or wine —” he shot a sharp-eyed glance at Vorstus, “— save a need to compensate for a late night spent at the bedside of one of the Emerald Guard.”

“And that late bedside vigil spent in my company,” said Garth Baxtor, court physician and the fourth member of the group sitting about the fire. “One of the men developed a fever late yesterday afternoon, Maximilian, and Egalion and myself spent many hours in his company until we were satisfied he was not in any danger to his life.”

“Then I am the one to apologise,” said Maximilian, all humour fading from his face.

“You were not to know,” said Egalion. “The man, Thomas, asked that you not be disturbed.”

“Nonetheless,” said Maximilian, “I should have known.”

“Thomas is well this morning,” said Garth, “and after a day’s bed rest should be able to recommence light duties tomorrow. I think his fever nothing more than a passing autumnal illness.”

“But one that kept you and Egalion for hours at his bedside,” said Maximilian. He studied Garth a moment, wondering at his luck that eight years ago the then seventeen year old should have believed in Maximilian so much that Garth had managed to persuade a diverse and powerful group of people to support his endeavour to free the king from the Veins.

Garth Baxtor was now a fully-fledged physician, second only to his father in the use of the Touch, a semi-magical ability to understand the precise nature of an illness and to help soothe away its horrors. He lived permanently at Maximilian’s court, but, apart from treating Maximilian himself as well as other members of the court, Emerald Guard and royal militia, he also spent two days a week treating the poor of Ruen for free. Garth, still only in his mid-twenties, was Maximilian’s closest friend.

Garth grinned at Maximilian, his open, attractive face appearing even more boyish than it normally did. “It is too early in the day to succumb to guilt, Maxel. You didn’t need to be there.”

Garth and Vorstus were among the very few who used the familiar “Maxel” in conversation with the king. Egalion, who had permission to do so, only rarely managed to take such a huge leap into familiarity.

“Well, at least let me be cross,” Maximilian said, “that you don’t have any shadows under your eyes, Garth. Ah, the resilience of youth.”

Garth laughed. “You are hardly old yourself, Maxel!”

“Almost forty,” Maximilian said, his eyes once more gleaming with humour. “About to tip over the edge.”

Now everyone laughed.

“Well, now,” said Maximilian, “since we’re all finally here, is there any business to discuss or can we give up governing as a bad idea this fine day and go visit the palace hawk house and admire my newest acquisition instead?”

Garth and Egalion brightened, but Vorstus glanced at a small satchel that lay beside his chair, and Maximilian did not miss it.

“My friend,” the king said in a soft voice, “why do I fear that that satchel at your side contains dire news?”

Vorstus gave an embarrassed half laugh. “Well, hardly ‘dire’ news, Maxel.” He paused, glancing at the satchel yet one more time. “A document pouch arrived late yesterday afternoon, from your ambassador to the Outlands.”

“Another request for a swift return to civilisation?” Maximilian said. The Outlands were not renowned for their creature comforts and Maximilian’s ambassador to the region, Baron Lixel, had sent plaintive requests to return home at regular intervals over the past year. Maximilian knew he should allow him home soon, but there were so few men better equipped with such a smooth diplomatic tongue for dealing with the notoriously touchy Outlanders that Maximilian felt he could barely spare him from the duty.

“Among other things,” Vorstus said. “And one of those other things …”

“Do we have to drag it out of you with blacksmith’s tongs?” Maximilian said.

Vorstus took a deep breath. “One of those other things is a somewhat unexpected offer of a bride.”

Garth and Egalion shot careful glances at Maximilian, gauging his reaction to this news.

Maximilian had been singularly unlucky in finding a bride. It was eight years since he’d been freed from the Veins, and he was still wife-less. Garth knew it niggled at him. It wasn’t so much that Maximilian wanted a woman by his side, as welcome as that might be, but that he was desperate for a family. Maximilian had once confided to Garth that when he’d been trapped down the Veins, he’d occasionally overheard guards talking about their children. It had made him long for a family and children of his own, although, imprisoned in the Veins as he was, Maximilian could barely imagine a world where that might be possible.

Now that it was possible, it was proving difficult beyond anyone’s wildest imagining.

“A bride?” said Maximilian. “How many negotiations have we opened and lost these past eight years? It must be all of … what … twelve or thirteen?”

“Fourteen,” Vorstus muttered.

“Fourteen,” Maximilian said. “All of them eligible, and all of them deciding for one reason or another, that I wasn’t quite ‘right’ for them.”

His voice was so bitter that for a moment Garth more than half-expected Maximilian to wave away the offer without even considering.

But then Maximilian sighed. “And here we have a new offer. From the Outlands of all places. They’re such a strange nomadic people, Vorstus. What manner of Outlander woman would want to spend her life as queen in my staid — and stationary — court? And why would I want her?”

Vorstus had by now retrieved a sheaf of papers from his satchel. “The lady in question’s name is Lady Ishbel Brunelle, and she is the surviving member of an ancient family who for many centuries resided in Margalit.”

“Margalit? The only place even faintly resembling a city in the Outlands?”

“Yes,” said Vorstus. “It’s the only place where families actually settle — as you say, everyone else lives a virtually nomadic life.” He rustled through the papers. “Lixel has investigated the Brunelle family … let me see … ah yes, here it is … eminent and highly educated —” Vorstus looked up at Maximilian “— well, as highly educated as an Outlander family can get, I imagine.” He looked back down to his papers. “Very distinguished. Somewhat cultured — I have no idea what Lixel means by that — and remarkably fecund.” He chuckled. “Lixel patently thought that a point in the woman’s favour.”

“Yet this Lady Ishbel is the only remaining member of her family?” Egalion said. “That doesn’t seem very fecund to me.”

“A plague went through the Outlands twenty years ago,” said Vorstus. “I don’t even need to consult Lixel’s report to remember that. Half the Central Kingdoms were affected by it as well, and Escator was damned lucky to escape its ravages. Anyway, the plague took out everyone in the Brunelle family except Ishbel, then an eight-year-old girl. So,” again Vorstus looked at Maximilian, but now with some humour twisting his mouth, “the Lady Ishbel comes with a considerable dowry along with her other attributes, which Lixel claims are a fair face and form, a decent education, and a pleasing manner of character.”

“Why do I sense a ‘but’ coming?” said Maximilian.

Vorstus put down the papers, and sighed. “There is a problem.”

“Yes?” said Maximilian.

“The Lady Ishbel is currently a ward with the Coil at their base in Serpent’s Nest. It is the Coil who offers her to you, Maxel.”

There was utter silence, everyone staring at Vorstus.

Egalion finally broke the quiet. “I thought the Coil was a myth! You can’t tell me that the vile … gut gazers … actually exist!”

Vorstus looked down at his hands, now folding the papers over and over in his lap.

“Vorstus?” said Maximilian softly.

Vorstus sighed. “The Coil do exist. I have always believed them fact, and Lixel confirms it here.”

“But they’re nothing like the myth,” said Garth. “Right, Vorstus?”

The abbot remained silent.

Maximilian gave a soft humourless laugh. “Do you — or Lixel — actually suggest I take to wife a woman who lives among those who slice open the bellies of the living in order to foresee the future?”

“And who in the doing turn the entrails of the still-living into snakes?” said Egalion. “I can’t believe you — or Lixel — have actually thought to take this cursed offer so seriously as to bring it to the king’s attention.”

Maximilian waved a hand. “Vorstus must have a reason. Let’s hear it”.

“The lesser of the reasons is that the Lady Ishbel is not a priestess. She is not a member of the Order. The Coil took her in during the dark days when much of the Outlands was in turmoil. When Ishbel had no one, the Coil offered her a home.”

“And a warm place to sleep amid the steaming entrails of their victims,” muttered Egalion.

“The Coil’s priests and priestesses never leave their Order, Maximilian,” Vorstus continued. “The mere fact they offer her to you indicates that Ishbel has been their ward, but not their trainee.”

Maximilian gave a shrug. “Why should I consider her? Gods, Vorstus, she comes tainted with all the vile reputation of the Coil … how could I take such a woman as my queen? No one would accept her.”

“The Lady Ishbel comes with an added extra to her dowry, Maxel. The Brunelle family, as well as owning half of Margalit, also controlled vast estates in the principalities of Kyros and Pelemere in the Central Kingdoms, as well as the full manorial rights to Deepend. She would bring much-needed riches to Escator.”

Maximilian said nothing, regarding Vorstus with unblinking eyes as he slowly stroked his chin with a thumb as he thought. Vast estates in Kyros and Pelemere. And full manorial rights to Deepend, the town and its land, which in turn controlled the trading and shipping rights to Deepend Bay to the south of Escator.

Riches indeed, particularly to a king who, in the very act of escaping and then destroying the rich gloam mines, had virtually crippled Escator’s economy. Most of the past eight years had been spent, relatively unsuccessfully, trying to repair the country’s finances.

What a difference this dowry could make.

“How is it a lady from the Outlands manages to control the rights to Deepend?” Maximilian asked. He’d known there had been an absentee lordship on the place — Escator had the right to use the bay for its shipping but each year Maximilian paid heavily for the privilege to the steward of Deepend — but had always believed it belonged to one of the more reclusive Central Kingdom families.

“The Brunelle family has lineage that stretches back many centuries,” Vorstus said. “Lixel writes that they picked up the Deepend rights via a fortuitous marriage two hundred years ago.”

“And now the Coil, via Ishbel, offers those rights to me,” said Maximilian. “Why? Of what benefit can this be to them?”

“You’re the least objectionable man on the aristocratic marriage market,” said Vorstus blundy, and Maximilian laughed, now with genuine amusement.

“Ah!” he said. “Now I see. The Coil doesn’t want anyone from the Central Kingdoms getting them, eh?”

“Indeed,” said Vorstus. “There’s bad blood between the Outlands and the Central Kingdoms, as well you know —”

Maximilian grunted. The various kingdoms and principalities of the two regions had been posturing and threatening each other with war for years.

“— and perhaps the Coil, who Lixel says are closely allied with the Outlanders through blood and geography, think to establish an alliance with Escator so that they may have a friend on the rear flank of the Central Kingdoms.”

“So we get to the heart of the matter,” said Garth, silent until now as he studied Maximilian’s reactions. “Is the thought of the economic advantage of the woman enough for Maxel to forget her more ghastly acquaintances?”

“There is no need for anyone beyond this room to know of the Lady Ishbel’s ‘more ghastly’ acquaintances,” said Vorstus softly. “She is the well-dowered Lady Ishbel Brunelle, of Margalit. An Outlander, to be sure, but one wealthy enough, and well-mannered enough, for that slight geographical stain to be conveniently forgotten. Maximilian,” Vorstus leaned forward, “no one need ever know of her time with the Coil.”

“You really want me to consider this, don’t you,” said Maximilian.

“Aye,” said Vorstus, “I don’t think you can ignore it. Escator needs her wealth, and you need a wife to mother you a family. Damn it, all you need do is meet with her, talk, and if you don’t like her then walk away.”

“How would I know,” said Maximilian, “if she really is ‘just a ward’ of the Coil, and not some fully blooded member of their vile Order? I don’t want some witch slitting open my belly in the middle of the night to see what the weather will be like for her tea party the following week.”

Vorstus held out his right hand, showing Maximilian the mark of the quill on the back of its index finger. “If she was a priestess of the Coil then she would be marked with the sign of the Coil, the coiled serpent, somewhere on her body, just as I am marked with this as a member of the Order of Persimius. Just as you are marked with the Manteceros.”

Maximilian absently touched his right bicep, where, just after his birth, the mark of the Manteceros — the semi-mythical protector of the Escatorian throne — had been tattooed in blue ink made from the blood of the creature itself.

“She would have to be marked, Maxel,” Vorstus continued, “and if she isn’t, then she is truly what the Coil claims her to be — a simple ward when no one else was left to ward her.”

Egalion grinned. “Does that mean Maximilian gets to spend his wedding night going over her with a magnifying glass?”

Maximilian smiled politely, but his eyes were far distant.

The group broke up a half hour later. It was not a moment too soon for Maximilian, who needed to be by himself to think.

Egalion and Garth left, but Vorstus hung back a moment to hand Maximilian the sheaf of documents.

“Maxel,” Vorstus said softly, “when you go through these papers, do be sure to cast your eyes over the map of the Outlands that Lixel enclosed most helpfully. I’m sure it will prove … interesting.”

6
THE ROYAL PALACE, RUEN, ESCATOR

Late that night Maximilian moved restlessly about his bedchamber. The palace at Ruen was a massive structure of dark red stone, rising more than five windowless storeys from street level before splintering into fifty-three towers and spires. Maximilian could never quite decide whether it was the most beautiful structure he’d ever seen, or the ugliest, but he loved it. He’d been born within its walls, and raised here by loving parents for his first fourteen years before Cavor snatched him and condemned him to the Veins. Now, once more encased within its red stone walls, Maximilian appreciated the palace for the isolation it allowed him. Maximilian liked people, but he also loved solitude, and at night in his bedchamber, which rested at the summit of the highest of the palace towers, he could indulge that to the fullest.

There was something about living at the pinnacle of the tower, about being so high and having the castle stretch down beneath his booted feet, that sated some deep need within Maximilian.

But tonight that isolation irked him. He couldn’t stop thinking about the Coil’s offer of Ishbel Brunelle as a bride. His first instinct was to refuse her: he was repulsed by her association with an order as abominable as the Coil. Even if she had taken no part in any of their murderous ceremonies, nor even if she swore horror herself at their activities, Ishbel would always be tainted in his mind with their depravity.

But on the other hand she did come from a good family — Maximilian had spent an hour this afternoon poring over the information Lixel had sent … if not poring over the map that Vorstus was so eager for him to read. Vorstus could annoy Maximilian at times with his secretive eyes and his ambiguous words, and Maximilian was in a perverse enough mood that he did not want to immediately do what Vorstus wanted.

The documents kept Maximilian occupied enough. Gods, this Ishbel came with such wealth trailing at her skirts! Escator’s economy was virtually moribund. It had depended so greatly on the gloam mines, and when they had been destroyed during Maximilian’s release there was nothing to take their place. Maximilian had worked hard to increase trade, but he’d concentrated on trade alliances with Tencendor, and when that country had sunk beneath the waves five years ago then so also had Maximilian’s hopes of an economic resurgence in Escator within his lifetime. The Central Kingdoms to the east, his only other useful trading partners, were locked in exclusive trading alliances with the far northern nations of Berfardi and Gershadi. The Coroleans were too hopelessly unreliable and treacherous to consider as allies in anything, and as for the great southern lands beyond the FarReach Mountains … well, they were so isolated by reason of both the mountains and lack of ports, as well as being totally uncommunicative, that Maximilian had never even considered them as potential trading partners.

Besides, what did Escator have to trade with anyone? A tiny surplus of agricultural produce and a surfeit of geniality essentially encapsulated all Escator had to offer, and Maximilian honestly couldn’t think of anyone desperate for a bucketful of beans delivered with a smile.

Lady Ishbel Brunelle, ward of the Coil, offered Maximilian and Escator a lifeline. Perhaps some of the eastern princelings would smile disdainfully at a handful of vast estates and the Deepend manorial rights, but to Maximilian they represented salvation. The income would make all the difference to the country.

They would make all the difference to Maximilian’s guilt. Although he knew he had no need, he did feel guilty about the loss of the gloam mines. Yes, they were vile, but they had kept Escator rich, and it was now Maximilian’s task to replace those lost riches.

A ring on Ishbel’s finger would do it.

Ah! Maximilian paced restlessly about the chamber, his thoughts tumbling. Marriage to a woman tainted with the Coil to restore Escator’s riches, or continued personal isolation and poverty for so many of his subjects?

“Damn it,” he muttered. “Why couldn’t I have found someone else with that kind of dowry who was interested in me?”

He paced about for a few more minutes, stripping off his jacket and shirt and tossing them over the back of a chair, running his hand through his too long hair and thinking he really ought to get it cut, rolling the Persimius ring around his finger, over and over.

Finally, coming to a decision, Maximilian walked to one of the high windows and opened wide the glass panes. He stared out into the night for a moment, then returned to stand by his bed, his back to the window, the fingers of his left hand absently running over the ungainly outline of the Manteceros on his right bicep.

He waited long minutes, finally relaxing when he heard the faint sound of movement in the window.

“How arrogant you are,” she said softly, “that you were so certain I’d be crouching on a rooftop somewhere waiting in hope that you’d open a window for me.”

Maximilian smiled, slowly turning about. “And how glad I am, StarWeb, that you were sitting on that rooftop, waiting for me to open the window.”

She crouched in the window, her dark wings held out gracefully behind her for balance, watching him with unreadable dark eyes. She had a mop of black curls, a fine-boned face and a dancer’s body, currently clothed in a short silken robe as dark as her hair and wings.

Maximilian slowly walked over to her and held out a hand. “StarWeb, I took a chance, knowing you often soar over the palace late at night. Arrogant assumption didn’t open that window. Hope did.”

StarWeb hesitated, then took his hand as she jumped down to the floor. She started to walk into the chamber, but Maximilian’s grip on her hand tightened, and he pulled her close enough for a soft kiss.

“Smile for me,” he whispered, drawing away fractionally.

“Why? What good news could you possibly have to make me smile?”

Still keeping her hand locked in his, Maximilian drew back enough so he could study her face. StarWeb was an Icarii, one of the race of bird people who had once ruled over the land of Tencendor to the west. StarWeb had also been one of the elite among the Icarii, a powerful Enchanter who could manipulate the magic of the Star Dance. But then Tencendor had descended into chaos, the ruling SunSoar family had imploded into tragedy; the Star Gate, through which the Icarii Enchanters drew the power of the Star Dance, had been destroyed. Tencendor itself vanished into the waters of the Widowmaker Sea, taking all its peoples into doom.

But not quite all its peoples. Caelum SunSoar, who had ruled the land in its final years, had maintained strong diplomatic ties with both Coroleas and the continent over the Widowmaker Sea. During the final wars that had destroyed Tencendor, almost five thousand Icarii had been scattered about Coroleas and the eastern continent. More had joined them before the final cataclysm. Currently, StarWeb had told Maximilian, there was an expatriate community of almost six thousand Icarii scattered about the lands surrounding the Widowmaker Sea, as well as the Central Kingdoms. There were at least six hundred living in Escator alone.

The Icarii may have kept their lives, but the Enchanters among them had lost all their power, and Maximilian well knew from his relationship with StarWeb what that had cost them. It wasn’t so much the power they resented losing, but the constant touch of the Star Dance, without which, StarWeb had once confided to him, their lives were but pale reflections of what had once been.

Maximilian pulled StarWeb closer again, and kissed her a little more lingeringly. They had been lovers for some months now, their relationship based almost entirely on a sexual bond rather than an emotional one, which suited Maximilian well, although he often wondered about StarWeb. He knew she disliked the fact he kept their trysts secret.

StarWeb pulled away. “What do you want, Maxel?”

He sighed. “To talk, to share some companionship. To make love, if you want. I don’t want to be alone tonight.”

She shrugged, moving deeper into the chamber, running a hand lightly over a table, then the back of a chair, folding her wings close in against her body — a sure sign that she remained annoyed with him.

“Is it only kings who want companionship completely on their terms, Maxel?”

“You’re in a bad mood tonight.”

She swung about to look at him. “That’s because I hate it, Maxel, that I always come whenever you deign to open that window.”

“I’m sorry, StarWeb. I am not what you need.”

She studied that statement for any hint of sarcasm, and then decided the apology was genuine. “So what’s up, Maxel? You’re tense. Worried about something.”

“I’ve been offered a bride.”

StarWeb burst into laughter, her expression relaxing back into that of a delighted girl. “Well done, then! Are you going to take this one?”

“She’s been offered to me by the Coil.”

All StarWeb’s amusement vanished. “I’ve heard of them.”

“And not liked what you have heard, most apparently.”

“You are truly considering taking a priestess of the Coil to your bed? As a wife?”

“She’s not a priestess, merely a ward taken in after a plague wiped out her family and half the population of the Outlands. And she comes with wealth that Escator could well use.”

“Oh, well. That makes it all right then.”

“I don’t need that sarcasm, StarWeb. If I was merely Maximilian Persimius, I would have winced and torn up the offer into a thousand pieces. But I am King of Escator as well, and with that comes a responsibility to my people. Escator needs that wealth.”

“So shall you meet with her?”

He hesitated, then gave a nod. “Eventually, but —”

“But you want something from me first.”

“I trust you, StarWeb. I trust your perception. I need someone to act as an emissary between me and the Coil. I need someone to meet her, and tell me what they think. Will we suit each other? Is she good enough for me to forget her association with the Coil?” He gave a shame-faced grin. “And I need someone who can do all this relatively quickly. This is not a decision I wish to linger over.”

“Would you like me also to take her to bed, and see if she suits your needs?”

Maximilian smiled. “Would you?”

StarWeb laughed then, and the mood between them relaxed. The Icarii Enchanter walked over to Maximilian, running her hands slowly over his naked upper body, her fingers tracing the outlines of the scars left from his time in the Veins, kissing his neck slowly as she spoke. “How fortunate you are that I am not a jealous woman.”

He took her face between gentle hands. “I am well aware how fortunate I am in you, StarWeb, and also well aware that I use you unmercifully. Whatever you want from me, you have it.”

Your love? she wondered, and then discarded the thought. There had never been any expectation of love on either of their parts.

“Just you,” she whispered. “For an hour or two tonight, so I can forget all I have lost.”

While Maximilian lay with StarWeb, Vorstus sat at a table in his locked chamber in a distant part of the palace. On the table before him sat a small glass pyramid, about the height of a man’s hand. It pulsated gently with soft rosy light, and its depths showed a man of ascetic appearance in late middle age who revealed, as he reached up a hand to rub thoughtfully at his nose, a serpent tattoo writhing up his forearm.

“Has Maximilian looked at the map yet?” said the man whose image showed within the pyramid.

“No, my Lord Lister,” said Vorstus. “If he had I am sure I would have heard the screech from here.”

Lister smiled. “Will he be ready, do you think?”

“He had seventeen years battling the darkness in the Veins, my lord,” said Vorstus. “He won’t like it, but when he is needed, then, yes, I believe he will step forward. How goes the Lady Ishbel?”

“Resigning herself to marriage. She, also, will step forward when needed.”

“If only she knew who had caused that plague to strike her family home in Margalit, my lord. Then perhaps she might not be so ready to ‘step forward’.”

“Don’t threaten me,” Lister said. “Besides, what will Maximilian say, eh, when he learns who it was whispered to Cavor the plan to imprison him in the gloam mines for such a mighty length of time?”

“We have all done what was needed.”

“Ah, we all have done what was needed,” said Lister, “and we will do more, as the need dictates. Let me know what Maximilian says, why don’t you, when he finally looks at that map.”

The rose pyramid dulled, then died.

Lister stood in the central chamber of his castle of Crowhurst and stared as his own pyramid dulled into lifelessness on the table. He sighed, and turned away, walking to the open window to look out.

Beyond stretched a vast wasteland of frost and low, snow-covered rolling hills. The northern wastes were a desolate place, but they suited Lister’s purpose for the time being, and for the time being he needed to be here. He shuddered, more from the cold than from any direction of his thoughts, and he reached out and closed the windows, revealing tattoos of black serpents crawling up both his forearms.

Kanubai’s ancient foe, Light, had taken the form of Lister some forty-five years ago when it had become apparent to both Light and Water that Kanubai’s prison had begun to fail. Light and Water needed mortal shape now, for the battle to come would be of the physical rather than the ethereal. While they had taken the flesh of men, Light also, from time to time, and as it amused him, took on the ethereal form of the serpent, while Water occasionally took the form of the frog.

Sometimes also, when it suited their purpose to manipulate those about them, they named themselves gods, and commanded ordinary men and women.

Ishbel had no idea what it was she truly served.

The move into the physical realm of men was dangerous. As flesh and blood men they might still command powers greater than those of most mortals, but were as vulnerable to the spear and the sword as any other.

There came a noise from the door, a footfall, and Lister turned about.

Three creatures of above man-height stood there. They were skeletal, and vaguely man-shaped, but more wraith than flesh. The most substantial part of them was their over-sized skull-like heads, dominated by heavy, great-toothed jaws and huge silver orbs set deep into their eye sockets.

One of them nodded at the table, which was covered at one end with the detritus of Lister’s earlier meal.

“We’ve come for the leavings, Lord Lister,” the Skraeling said, his voice more hissed whisper than spoken word.

“Take them,” said Lister. “Did the kitchen hand out the scraps to your comrades earlier?”

“Yes,” said another of the Skraelings. “Thank you. Lard and blood. Tasty.”

“Tasty, tasty,” whispered the other two.

Lister nodded at the table, and the three Skraelings crept forward, gathering plates into their awkward hands, licking each one clean as they picked them up. Then, silver orbs glancing at Lister, they crept back through the door, closing it behind them.

“Damned creatures,” Lister muttered. He loathed them, but for the moment it was better to be their friend than their enemy.

Like his ally, Water, who stood watch over the ancient evil far to the south, Lister stood watch over the tens of thousands of Skraelings who gathered in the frozen hills about Crowhurst. He knew that Kanubai whispered to them from deep within his abyss, and that Kanubai was the Skraelings’ only true lord. But Lister had wormed his serpentine way into the Skraelings’ affections by feeding them scraps and leavings in order that he might live beside them, and watch their every move.

They were loathsome companions, but for the moment Lister must make do.

And at least they were not his only companions. Another footfall sounded at the door, and Lister looked up, smiling in genuine warmth as the winged woman entered.

7
THE ROYAL PALACE, RUEN, ESCATOR

Maximilian lay in bed alone, wide awake, staring at the ceiling. Star Web had left an hour or more ago.

Since he’d returned from the gloam mines, Maximilian had taken a variety of lovers. He had spent his youth and early manhood trapped in the mines, and once free he did not hesitate to enjoy the comfort and excitement of a woman in his bed.

But they never stayed the night.

One of Maximilian’s first lovers had been an accommodating lady of court. She was a sweet woman, and had taken it upon herself to teach Maximilian the skills that by rights he should have learned many years earlier. She had slept through the night at his side one time only (and that many months into their relationship), and in the morning had turned to him and said:

I think that the darkness is your true lover, Maximilian. I think you brought it with you out of the Veins. Perhaps you should wive the darkness, and not any flesh and blood woman.

That had stung Maximilian badly, and he’d never invited her back into his bedroom.

Now he lay on the bed, twisting the Persimius ring on his left hand over and over, thinking not so much about Ishbel, but about his parents. His father and mother had loved each other dearly, and their marriage had been strong.

But they had had separate bedrooms, and Maximilian suspected that his mother only spent a handful of entire nights with his father, and those, perhaps, only at the very beginning of their marriage.

Generally, she had preferred to sleep elsewhere than at her beloved husband’s side.

Maximilian’s lover had been wrong. It was not the Veins that had imbued Maximilian with his darkness, but something far older, and deeply embedded within the Persimius blood.

Maximilian sighed, finally admitting he could not sleep. He sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. He looked at his desk for a long time, then rose and walked over, lighting a lamp and scattering the documents regarding Ishbel Brunelle across the desktop with his fingers.

He paused as the folded map slid into view.

“By the gods, Vorstus,” Maximilian muttered, “my life would be so much simpler without you.”

Then he picked up the map and unfolded it.

At first glance the map was innocuous, showing the Central Kingdoms and the Outlands. Maximilian traced a finger over the Outlands, looking for Serpent’s Nest. He knew it was a mountain, and had supposed it was one of the summits within the Sky Peaks which ran down the western border of the Outlands.

He frowned as his initial scan of the map failed to reveal Ishbel’s home.

Then, increasingly irritated, he looked further afield, and finally spotted Serpent’s Nest on the very eastern seaboard of the Outlands.

Maximilian dropped the map and stepped back from the desk, staring at the desktop as if it contained the most vile of monsters.

Serpent’s Nest was what he knew as the Mountain at the Edge of the World.

It took Maximilian some minutes to bring his breathing back under control and to still his racing thoughts.

A coincidence, nothing more, surely. The Mountain at the Edge of the World must have been abandoned for thousands of years, it was not so strange that some others may have taken occasion to inhabit it.

But to be inhabited by an order devoted to a serpent god?

Maxel? said the Persimius ring. Maxel? What is the matter?

“Nothing,” Maximilian said automatically, still staring at the desk.

Is it about Ishbel? said the ring.

“No,” Maximilian responded, but wondered what it meant that this bride was coming to him from within the Mountain at the Edge of the World, now associated with a serpent.

No, no, surely not …

Maximilian turned on his heel and walked to one side of his bedchamber, which was clear of furniture. He stood, looking at the floor, then he leaned down.

As his hand approached the floorboards a trapdoor materialised. Maximilian hesitated, then grabbed the iron pull ring and hauled the door open.

The Persimius Chamber lay directly under Maximilian’s bedchamber. He rarely came here: several times when he was a boy and his father had been inducting him into the mysteries of the Persimius family; once, six months after he’d been restored to the throne and he’d felt he needed to check to ensure that all was still safe after seventeen years (Vorstus had told him Cavor had not been informed about the chamber); and once about a year ago, when some marriage negotiations had looked as though they might actually mature into fruition, and Maximilian had come to look at the mate to the ring he wore on his left hand that any wife of his would wear.

No one else ever came here. Only the king, his heir, and the Abbot of the Order of Persimius knew of its existence.

The Persimius Chamber was oval in shape, and relatively small. It contained two chest-high marble columns, each at opposing ends of the oval. Each column held a cushion, and each cushion cradled an object.

Maximilian walked first to the column at the western end of the oval chamber. It held an emerald and ruby ring, worn by the wives of the Persimius king.

My lover, said Maximilian’s ring, and Maximilian sighed, part in irritation and part in resignation, and, taking off his ring, laid it beside the emerald and ruby ring so they could chat for a while.

The Whispering Rings they were called, but only someone of Persimius blood could ever hear them, which Maximilian supposed was a good thing, as he knew his own cursed ring tended to mutter the most uncomplimentary things at the worst of moments.

What it murmured about StarWeb tonight, right at the peak of their lovemaking, had very nearly distracted Maximilian completely.

He looked at the rings, tuning out their whispering as he thought.

Ishbel came to him from the Mountain at the Edge of the World now called Serpent’s Nest. What did that mean? Coincidence? Or something deeper? Darker?

Maximilian knew the ancient legend of Kanubai, and he knew also, from his father’s teachings, that Light often assumed the shape of the serpent, just as Water sometimes assumed the shape of the frog. He hadn’t immediately connected the name of Serpent’s Nest with Light, simply because then he had not realised that Serpent’s Nest was the ancient Mountain at the Edge of the World.

The ancient home of the Lord of Elcho Falling, who had once allied himself with Light and Water in the battle to imprison Kanubai.

Finally, unable to ignore it any longer, Maximilian turned and looked at the other column.

Its velvet cushion held an object so ancient, and so cursed, that Maximilian felt slightly ill even looking at it.

It was the crown, simply made of three thick entwined golden bands, of a kingdom and a responsibility so ancient that its name had been forgotten by all living people, and which had never been recorded in any history book.

Living darkness writhed among the golden bands.

Very slowly, every step hesitant, Maximilian walked over to it. He had never touched it, and hoped he never had to. His father had never touched it, nor his father before him.

If ever Maximilian had to lift that crown to his head, then it meant that the end of the world had risen, and was walking the land.

To Maximilian’s profound relief, the crown looked just as it had every other time Maximilian had studied it. The darkness (that same darkness which writhed through the Persimius blood) lived, yes, but it did not seem aware, or awake. It merely waited, as it had been waiting for thousands of years.

Maximilian allowed himself a sigh of relief, his shoulders finally relaxing.

Perhaps Ishbel’s connection with the Mountain at the Edge of the World and its current association with a serpent, was coincidence merely. He should not worry.

But he should, perhaps, be highly careful.

Maximilian turned his back on the crown, and collected his ring preparatory to leaving the chamber.

But just before he climbed back into his bedchamber, Maximilian turned and looked once more at the dark crown. He frowned, something stirring in his mind.

Cavor had never been inducted into the mystery of this chamber.

Why not? Everyone had believed Maximilian dead, so why hadn’t Cavor been inducted into this mystery?

Maximilian stood there a long time, the rings silent, before he turned abruptly on his heel and left the chamber.

And the crown of Elcho Falling.

8
SERPENT’S NEST, AND THE ROYAL PALACE AT RUEN

Ishbel sat in her bare chamber, staring unseeing at her hands clasped in her lap.

Tomorrow she was to leave for Margalit. The early negotiations with Maximilian had been successful. He was willing to consider the offer of the “ward” of the Coil — Ishbel’s mouth curled slightly in a smile — as a wife. She’d entertained doubts that Maximilian would even come this far, but he had, and so now she must leave.

Maximilian was sending a deputation to Margalit to meet with Ishbel and to hash out more detailed negotiations. The negotiations could still break down — Ishbel could almost smell the wariness in Maximilian’s initial interest — but they could just as easily progress further, and Ishbel needed to ready herself to commit to marriage.

Ishbel had indeed largely resigned herself to marriage with Maximilian. She still had no idea why the Great Serpent thought such a union would help avert the threatening disaster, but she would do as he (and as this curious frog god) wished. Ishbel had spent the last few weeks discovering all she could about her potential husband, but that was little enough. There had been more details about his harrowing seventeen years spent as a prisoner in the gloam mines, some interesting tales about how he’d been released and how he had defeated Cavor in battle, but very little information about the man himself. Ishbel discovered that Maximilian was respected across the Central Kingdoms, that he had a good relationship with the kings of Pelemere and Kyros, and that his small kingdom of Escator was, indeed, crippled by debt. Ishbel had decided that Maximilian was likely harmless enough, and that his worst fault (apart from some as yet undiscovered socially embarrassing habit) was likely to be a mild dreariness engendered by his long imprisonment.

He certainly had done nothing to set the world afire since his restoration to the throne of Escator.

Ishbel had also steeled herself to accept the sexual intimacy of the marriage. She would endure, if that was what the Great Serpent needed of her.

Additionally, she would endure the necessity of deferring to her husband. She, the archpriestess of the Coil, who had hitherto bowed only before gods.

What Ishbel feared most was the actual leaving of Serpent’s Nest. It had been her only home, her entire world, for most of her life. The mountain was her safety and her comfort, and it shielded her from the horror of the world beyond.

For an instant a memory resurfaced of her mother’s whispering corpse, and Ishbel jerked a little, fighting to keep it at bay.

She was not looking forward at all to her journey to Margalit. Ishbel would be travelling only with a company of guardsmen from Margalit itself. No one from the Coil would be accompanying her. Ishbel understood the necessity for this. She needed to distance herself from them and become the Lady Ishbel Brunelle rather than the archpriestess of the Coil, and Ishbel could not do that if any of the Coil or their servants travelled with her.

There came a knock at her door, and Aziel entered. He came over to Ishbel and sat down beside her on the bed. Wordlessly he picked up her hand, kissed it, then kissed the side of her forehead.

“You will come back,” he said softly, and Ishbel blinked away her tears, and nodded.

She would return.

Since the night he’d looked at the map, Maximilian had either avoided Vorstus, or had avoided speaking to him alone. Maximilian simply did not want to give Vorstus the satisfaction of a reaction.

It irritated Maximilian that Vorstus had not simply come to him and said, “Maxel, an offer of a bride comes out of the Mountain at the Edge of the World. A woman associated with a serpent god, no less. What do you think about that, then?”

Instead, Vorstus had decided to play games.

It took Vorstus eight days before he knocked one evening at the door to Maximilian’s bedchamber as Maximilian was preparing for evening court.

Maximilian waved away the servants, then indicated Vorstus should take a chair. “What can I do for you, Vorstus? You are normally cloistered in your library at this time of night.”

“What did you think of Serpent’s Nest, Maxel?”

Maximilian tugged at the cuffs of his linen shirt, making sure they sat comfortably under his heavy velvet over jacket. “I’d wondered why you did not come to me directly, Vorstus, instead of cloaking this offer in mystery. You know more than you are saying. What?”

“All I know is what I have told you. No one was more shocked than I when I saw that Serpent’s Nest is what was anciently called the Mountain at the Edge of the World.”

Maximilian shot him a deeply cynical look. As Abbot of the Order of Persimius, Vorstus was privy to almost all of its secrets.

“All I know is what I have told you,” Vorstus repeated quietly.

“How coincidental that the Mountain at the Edge of the World is now dedicated to a serpent god.”

“Perhaps just a coincidence.”

Maximilian stopped fiddling with his attire and looked at Vorstus directly. “Is Elcho Falling stirring, Vorstus?”

“I don’t know, Maxel.”

“I am sick of hearing your ‘I don’t knows’!”

“I —”

“Listen to me, Vorstus. I know that you were instrumental in aiding my escape from the Veins, and for that you know I am grateful. But I am not going to spend my life mired in debt to you, nor am I going to put up with you stepping coyly about something that has the power to destroy this entire world. Gods! Have I not had enough darkness in my life? Or do the gods demand something else from me besides losing seventeen years, seventeen years, Vorstus, to those damned, damned gloam mines? Have I not suffered enough”

“If Elcho Falling is waking, Maximilian Persimius, then you must do what needs to be done.”

The patronising idiot, Maximilian thought. “Ah, get out of here, Vorstus.”

Maximilian waited until Vorstus had his hand on the door handle before speaking again.

“One more thing, Vorstus. You know of the Persimius Chamber?”

Vorstus gave a wary nod.

“You know what it contains?”

Another wary nod.

“But you never took Cavor there. You never inducted him into the deeper mysteries of the Persimius throne.”

Vorstus now gave a very reluctant single shake of his head, and Maximilian could see that his hand had grown white-knuckled about the door handle.

“I was standing in the Persimius Chamber the other night, Vorstus, and a strange unsettling thought occurred to me. Here you are, Abbot of the Order of Persimius, and the only one apart from the king and his heir who knows what truly underpins the Persimius throne. But for seventeen years, when everyone save Cavor thought me dead, you never once took the opportunity of inducting Cavor into the mysteries? Should you not have done that? I can perhaps understand you waiting a year or so, hoping for a miracle, but seventeen?”

“I always had faith that you —”

“You knew, for those entire seventeen years, Vorstus, that I was alive. That is the only reason you did not induct Cavor into the mysteries. You knew I was coming back.”

“I —”

“Get out, Vorstus. Get out!”

When the door had closed behind him, Maximilian walked to a mirror and stood before it, seeing not a reflection of himself, but of the bleakness that had consumed him within the Veins.

“You knew where I was,” Maximilian whispered, “and you left me there for seventeen years.”

Much later that night, still unsettled and unable to turn his mind away from Elcho Falling, Maximilian sat in his darkened bedchamber, rested his head against the high back of the chair, and closed his eyes.

As he had visited the Persimius Chamber on a previous night, so now Maximilian visited another of the mysteries his father had taught him.

The Twisted Tower.

The crown of Elcho Falling carried with it many responsibilities, many duties, and a great depth of dark, writhing mystery. Each King of Escator, and his heir, had to learn it all in case they one day had to assume once more the crown of Elcho Falling.

There was an enormous amount of information, of ritual, of windings and wakings, and of magic so powerful that it took great skill, and an even better memory, to wield it. There was so much to recall, and to hand down through the generations, that long ago one of the Persimius kings, perhaps the last of the sitting Lords of Elcho Falling, had created a memory palace in which to store all the knowledge of Elcho Falling.

They called it the Twisted Tower.

Maximilian now entered the Twisted Tower, recalling as he did so the day his father had first taught him how to open the door.

“Visualise before you,” his father had said, “a great twisted tower, coiling into the sky. It stands ninety levels high, and contains but one door at ground level, and one window just below the roofline. On each level there is one single chamber. Can you picture it, Maxel?”

Maximilian, even though he was but nine, could do so easily. The strange tower — its masonry laid so that its courses lifted in corkscrews — rose before him as if he had known it intimately from birth and, under his father’s direction, Maximilian laid his hand to the handle of the door and opened it.

A chamber lay directly inside, crowded with furniture that was overlaid with so many objects Maximilian could only stand and stare.

“See here,” his father had said. “This blue and white plate as it sits on the table. It is the first object you see, and it contains a memory. Pick it up, Maxel, and tell me what you see.”

Maximilian picked up the plate. As he did so, a stanza of verse filled his mind, and his lips moved soundlessly as he rolled the words about his mouth.

“That is part of the great invocation meant to raise the gates of Elcho Falling,” said his father. “The second stanza lies right next to it, the red glass ball. Pick that up, now, and learn …”

Maximilian had not entered the Twisted Tower since his last lesson with his father, just before his fourteenth birthday when he’d been abducted. That lesson had, fortuitously, been the day his father had taken him into the final chamber at the very top of the Twisted Tower. Despite it being well over twenty years since he’d last entered, Maximilian had no trouble in recreating in his mind the Twisted Tower, and travelled it now, examining every object in each successive chamber and recalling their memories throughout the height of the tower.

As he rose, the chambers became increasingly empty.

It began at the thirty-sixth level chamber. This chamber was, as all the chambers below it, crammed with furniture, which in turn was crammed with objects, each containing a memory. But occasional empty places lay scattered about, marked by shapes in the dust, showing that objects had once rested there.

Maximilian turned to his father. “Why are there empty spaces, father?”

His father shifted uncomfortably. “The memories held within these objects have been passed down for many thousands of years, Maxel. Sometimes mistakes have been made in the passing, objects have been mislaid, memories forgotten. So much has been lost, son. I am sorry.”

“But what if we needed it, father? What if we needed to resurrect Elcho Falling?”

His father had not answered that question, which had in itself been answer enough for Maximilian.

Now Maximilian entered the final chamber at the very top of the tower.

It was utterly barren of any furniture or objects.

Everything it had once contained had been forgotten.

Maximilian stood there, turning about, thinking about how the chambers had become progressively emptier as he’d climbed through the tower.

He was glad that he had remembered everything his father had taught him, and that he could retrieve the memories intact as he took each object into his hands.

But, contrariwise, Maximilian was filled with despair at the thought that if, if, he was to be the King of Escator who once again had to shoulder the ancient responsibilities of Elcho Falling, he would need to do so with well over half of the memories, the rituals and the enchantments of Elcho Falling forgotten and lost for all time.

PART TWO

1
LAKE JUIT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

Lake Juit, as old as the land itself, lay still and quiet in the dawn. The sun had barely risen, and broad, rosy horizontal shafts of soft light illuminated the gently rippling expanse of the lake, and set the deep reed beds surrounding the lake into deep mauve-pocked shadow.

A man poled a punt out of the reed beds.

He was very tall, broad-shouldered and handsomely muscled, with a head of magnificent black tightly-braided hair that hung in a great sweep to a point mid-way down his back. He wore a white linen hipwrap, its simplicity a foil to the magnificent collar of pure gold and bejewelled links that draped over his shoulders and partway down his chest and back.

He was Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, and the lake was surrounded by ten thousand of his spearmen, while on the ramshackle wooden pier from where he’d set out waited his court maniac, the elusively insane (but remarkably useful) Ba’al’uz.

Ba’al’uz narrowed his eyes thoughtfully as he watched his tyrant. One did not expect one’s normally completely predictable tyrant to suddenly decamp from his palace at Aqhat, move ten thousand men and his maniac down to this humid and pest-ridden lake, saying nothing about his motives, and then get everyone up well before dawn to watch their tyrant set off by himself in a punt.

Ba’al’uz had no idea what Isaiah was about, and he did not like that at all.

Isaiah poled the punt slowly and steadily forward. He did not head out into the centre of the shallow lake, but kept close to the reed beds. Occasionally he smiled very slightly, as here and there a frog peeked out from behind the reeds.

As Isaiah got deeper into the lake, he watched the dawn light carefully, waiting for the precise moment.

He poled rhythmically, using the regular movements of his arms and body to concentrate on the matter at hand. What he was about to do was so dangerous that if he allowed himself to think about it he knew he would turn the punt back to the wharf and the watching Ba’al’uz.

But Isaiah could not afford to do that. He needed to concentrate —

At one with the water.

— and he needed to focus —

On the Song of the Frogs.

— and he needed to draw on all the power he contained within his body —

And allow it to ripple, to wash, and to run with the tide.

— and he needed today to be successful, because without that which he’d come for, Isaiah knew the task of the Lord of Elcho Falling would be nigh to impossible, and the land itself would fail.

Besides, he knew this would annoy Ba’al’uz, and annoying Ba’al’uz always brightened Isaiah’s day.

Above all, Isaiah was here because he needed something from the lake very, very badly, and he did not think the world would survive if he did not get that for which he’d come.

The sun was a little higher now, and nerves fluttered in Isaiah’s belly, threatening to break his concentration. His hands tightened fractionally on the pole, and he forced himself to focus.

The air, clear a few minutes ago, was now damp with mist seeping out from the reed banks.

Frogs began to sing, a low, sweet melody, and one or two of them hopped onto the prow of the punt.

Isaiah closed his eyes briefly, overcome with the sweetness of their song.

Then, hands tightened once more, eyes opening, he drew down on the deep well of power within himself.

Isaiah spoke the words that were needed, and the moment the last one dropped from his mouth the air about the entire lake exploded in sound and movement as millions of pink- and scarlet-hued juit birds rose screaming into the dawn light.

On the wharf, Ba’al’uz crouched down, arms over his head, and shrieked together with the birds.

About the lake, ten thousand men thrust their spears into the air, and screamed as one with Ba’al’uz.

On the lake, Isaiah poled into the reed banks, into magic and mystery, and into the strange borderland between worlds. Then, while the air still rang with the harsh cries of bird and man, as the frogs screamed, and as the sun suddenly topped the horizon and flooded the lake and reed beds with light, Isaiah dropped the pole, reached down into the water, and lifted a struggling, naked man into the punt.

2
BARON LIXEL’S RESIDENCE, MARGALIT

The journey to Margalit took almost three weeks, longer than expected. The winter was closing in, and drifts of snow had forced Ishbel and her escort to spend long days idle in wayside inns, waiting for the weather to improve enough that they might continue their journey.

Ishbel had spent most of the idle days praying that the weather would close in so greatly she’d be forced to return to Serpent’s Nest. Of course it hadn’t happened. The snow had always cleared in time for her to move forward, and, by the time they reached Margalit, she had managed to convince herself that no matter the trials ahead, she would manage.

Ishbel hoped only that this Maximilian was tolerable, and that he would be kind to her, and that the Great Serpent had not lied when he’d said that she would return to Serpent’s Nest, and that it would be her home, always.

She would be strong, because she had to be.

And, damn it, she was the archpriestess of the Coil, no matter how much she might hide that from Maximilian. She had courage and she had ability and she had pride, and she would endure.

Despite her carefully constructed shell of determination, it was a black moment for Ishbel when she first saw the smudge of Margalit in the distance. For an instant all the terrifying fear of her childhood threatened to swamp her, but Ishbel managed to bite down her nausea and panic, and maintain a calm exterior as they rode closer and closer to the city.

Then she took a deep breath, called on all her training and courage, and the moment passed. Margalit held no horrors for her now. All that was past.

Ishbel was to stay with Baron Lixel, Maximilian’s ambassador to the Outlands, in his house in Margalit. The house sat in one of Margalit’s more desirable quarters. It was a large, spacious house, single-storey like most of the Outlanders’ buildings, with thick walls, high ceilings, and decorative woodwork around doors and windows. Lixel had rented the property from the Margalit Town Guild when he’d first arrived in the city, and Ishbel had no reason to suppose that Lixel knew that the house was, in fact, one of the properties in her not inconsiderable inheritance.

Baron Lixel was there to greet Ishbel on her arrival, and he was not what Ishbel had imagined. Her fears had led her to expect a stern, forbidding man, uncommunicative and dismissive, but Lixel proved exactly the opposite. He was a pleasant man in middle age, very courtly, courteous, attentive without being fussy and with a charming habit of understatement in conversation, and Ishbel hoped it foretold well for Maximilian.

Ishbel spent a pleasant evening with him. Lixel seemed to intuit her anxiety and, surprisingly, managed to put Ishbel at her ease with his charming conversation and easy manner.

On the morrow Maximilian’s party was to arrive, and the negotiations for the contract of marriage to commence.

Lixel knocked on the door of Ishbel’s chamber at mid-morning, and bowed as she opened it. “Maximilian’s delegation has arrived,” Lixel said, offering Ishbel his arm. Then, as she took it, he added, “They won’t eat you.”

Ishbel gave a tense smile. “I feel very alone today, my lord. This is all most strange for me.”

They walked down the corridor towards the large reception rooms of the house. “You do not wish to wed?” Lixel said.

“I am missing my home, my lord, as noxious as that home must be to you.”

Ishbel was pushing Lixel a little too far with this statement, but she knew that his response would tell her a great deal about the man, as also, possibly, his master.

“A home is a home,” Lixel said, leading Ishbel out the door and down the long corridor towards the main reception room of the house, “whatever its strangenesses. I do not think Maximilian will begrudge it in the slightest if you yearn for a home you have lost.”

Not lost, Ishbel thought. I will return to Serpent’s Nest one day.

“I would not have thought him so generous towards the Coil,” Ishbel said, pushing just a little more.

“I was not speaking of the Coil,” Lixel said quietly, and led her into the reception room.

Ishbel might have responded to that, she still had time before they met the gaggle of people standing at the far end of the large chamber, but just then she caught sight of the leading member of Maximilian’s delegation, and she stopped dead, unable to repress a gasp.

It was a birdwoman. An Icarii. Ishbel had heard about them, and had heard about the land from which they had come, but had never seen one.

The birdwoman turned, looking directly at Ishbel with a discomforting frankness. She was clad all in black — form-fitting leather trousers and a top which allowed her wings freedom. She moved again, taking a half step forward, and Ishbel had her first glimpse of the stunning grace and elegance of the creatures.

The entire group had turned at her entrance now, and Ishbel tore her eyes away from the birdwoman long enough to see that several other Icarii were within the delegation.

Maximilian controlled Icarii?

Ishbel took a deep breath, hoping it wasn’t obvious, set a smile to her face, and walked forward.

She was the archpriestess of the Coil, and she would manage.

“You were very surprised to see me,” StarWeb said. “You paled considerably.”

They were alone, standing on the glassed verandah that opened off the reception room. Everyone else was still inside, talking, drinking, negotiating, but as soon as practicable after the introductions and initial chat, StarWeb had requested Ishbel join her for a private word.

“I have never seen one of your kind,” Ishbel said. “I was shocked.” Her mouth quirked. “The Icarii are almost myth here in the Outlands.”

StarWeb thought about being offended at the “your kind”, but decided that for the moment she would accomplish more without assuming affront. Full-on confrontation would prove far more effective.

“Then in your marriage,” she said, “you shall have to get used to us. There are many of ‘my kind’ at Maximilian’s court.”

“You know him well?”

“I am his lover.” There, Ishbel, StarWeb thought, make of that what you will.

To StarWeb’s surprise, Ishbel showed no emotion whatsoever. “That does not mean that you know him well.”

“But I expect that,” StarWeb countered, “should you become his wife, you shall come to know him well.”

“I expect,” Ishbel said, “that any man who has endured what Maximilian has experienced in life will be a man who lets only those he truly loves know him well. If he allows me that privilege, then I shall be honoured.”

“That was very good, my lady,” said StarWeb. “You managed to be self-effacing and insult me all in one. You shall do very well at a royal court, but I do not know that it should be Maximilian’s.”

“Will all Escator welcome me as generously as you, StarWeb?”

“Let me be frank with you, Ishbel — I may call you Ishbel, yes?”

“I would prefer that you did not.”

“Very well then, my lady, let me be quite frank with you. None of us here,” StarWeb gestured to the Escatorian delegation inside the reception room, “nor any back in Ruen among Maximilian’s inner circle, entirely trust this offer. We don’t trust who it comes from — the Coil are universally loathed —”

“Not by me,” said Ishbel quietly. “The Coil took me in when no one else would. They nurtured me, and were kind to me, and subjected me to none of the practices in which I hear rumoured they indulge.”

“Apparently so, my lady, for I believe your belly is still intact under that silken gown of yours. But allow me to return to the point, if I may. There are many about Maximilian who wonder about this offer and its timing. We wonder why a lady as lovely as you, and with such a dowry as yours, has only now decided to put herself on the marriage market, and to such a minor player — no, no, don’t protest, Maximilian isn’t the haughty kind — when she could have tempted a much nobler man, an emperor perhaps, or maybe even the Tyrant of Isembaard, for I have heard rumour he is looking for a new wife.”

“My dowry,” said Ishbel, her tone low, “would attract no emperor or tyrant. Particularly with, as you have been so kind to point out, such a home as I have enjoyed these past twenty years. Yes, the Coil is universally loathed, but not by me. I owe them a loyalty, StarWeb, that perhaps you cannot understand. It is one of love and gratitude. It is one of family. If you want a reason why I have not married in the past eight or nine years, when one might reasonably have expected me to take a husband, then it is because no man has interested me enough.”

StarWeb looked at her carefully. “Yet Maximilian does.”

“I think a man who has spent seventeen years in a black pit thinking his life at an end will have more understanding, more tolerance, than most.” Ishbel paused, her eyes glittering. “Yet perhaps I am mistaken, if the kind of woman he takes as lover is any indication.”

“Maximilian is a quiet man, of manner and mind,” said StarWeb, “and you are a very unquiet woman, Ishbel. I do not know how I shall report you to him.”

“Report me as a woman who can speak for herself,” snapped Ishbel, “and who does not need an arrogant and threatened lover to speak on her behalf.”

And with that she pushed past StarWeb and rejoined the reception.

3
PALACE OF AQHAT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, walked along the wide corridor of his palace of Aqhat. He’d returned from Lake Juit a few days earlier, together with his maniac Ba’al’uz, his ten thousand men, and the man he had pulled from the lake.

It was this man that Isaiah now went to visit. He had not seen him since he’d deposited him, dripping wet, on the wharf of Lake Juit for his servants to attend.

He approached the entrance to an apartment, and the guards standing outside stood back, bowing as one and touching the tips of their spears to the floor.

Isaiah ignored them.

He strode through the door, through the spacious room that served as the day chamber of the apartment, then into the bedchamber. He stopped just inside the door, more than mildly displeased to see that Ba’al’uz hovered just behind the physician who bent over the man lying on the bed.

Both Ba’al’uz and the physician bowed when they saw Isaiah, and the physician stepped back from the bed.

“His condition?” Isaiah said.

“Much better, Excellency,” said the physician. “The nausea has subsided, and his muscles grow stronger. I expect that within a day or two he can begin to spend some time out of bed.”

“Good,” said Isaiah. “You may leave.”

As the physician collected his bag Isaiah switched his gaze to Ba’al’uz. “You also.”

“I was here merely to sate my curiosity as to the health of your guest,” said Ba’al’uz. “I apologise if this has displeased you.”

You were here to spy for your true lord and master, thought Isaiah. He did not speak, but merely regarded Ba’al’uz with his steady black gaze.

Ba’al’uz repressed a sigh, bowed slightly, then followed the physician from the room.

Once Isaiah had heard the outer door close behind them he relaxed slightly, and walked to the side of the bed.

The man who lay there was of an age with Isaiah, in his late thirties, but of completely different aspect. He was lean and strong, not so heavily muscled, and his shoulder-length hair, pulled back into a club at the back of his neck, was the colour of faded wheat. His close-shaven beard was of a similar colour, while his eyes were pale blue, and as penetrating as those of a bird of prey.

His entire aspect had an alien cast, but that was not surprising, thought Isaiah as he sat down in a chair close by the man’s bed, given his Icarii heritage.

“You do not like Ba’al’uz,” said the man. His voice was a little hoarse, but not weak.

“I neither like nor trust him,” said Isaiah. “He is that most dangerous of madmen, one whose insanity is so difficult to detect that most who meet him think him merely unpleasant.”

“Yet I sense that he is a force at your court,” said the man.

“You know who I am,” said Isaiah.

“I have been asking questions.”

Isaiah gave a small smile. “I would have expected nothing else from you. But as to your observation … Yes, Ba’al’uz is a force at my court. He is useful to me.”

“I suspect he is too dangerous for you to move against.”

Isaiah burst into laughter. “We shall be friends, you and I.” He hesitated slightly. “Axis SunSoar.”

Axis grunted. “I thought no one knew my name. I was revelling in the idea of such anonymity that I might invent my own past and name to suit.”

“I wanted to be sure that you would live before I told anyone your name and history.”

“Were you the one who pulled me from the afterlife?”

“Yes.”

“Then you are far more than just a ‘tyrant’, Isaiah.”

Isaiah gave a small shrug. That is of no matter at the moment. “Tell me how you feel. There have been times since I pulled you from the water when my physicians feared they might lose you back to death.”

Axis rested back against the pillows, not entirely sure how to respond. He’d been walking with his wife Azhure along a cliff-top coastline in the strange Otherworld of the afterlife when he’d felt a terrifying force grab at his entire being. He’d gasped, grabbed at Azhure, and then pain such as he’d never felt before enveloped him, and the world of the afterlife had faded. All he could remember was Azhure, reaching for him, and then the utter shock of finding himself caught by tangled reeds at the bottom of a lake, unable to breathe, unable even to fight the grip of the reeds because every muscle in his body was so weak they would not, could not, respond to his needs.

“Weak,” Axis said finally, “but improving. Eager to get out of this bed.”

“Good,” said Isaiah. “I am glad of it.”

“Why am I here, Isaiah? Why drag me back from death?” Axis gave a soft, bitter laugh. “I do not think I made a great success at my last life, so I cannot think why you need me here now.”

“Not a great success? You fought off an army of Skraelings, and resurrected an ancient land.” Isaiah hesitated. “Skills that might possibly be useful again.”

Axis shot Isaiah a sharp look, but did not speak. Skraelings?

“You became a wielder of great magic,” Isaiah continued, “and discovered yourself a god. You —”

“Completely underestimated the problems in trying to unite ancient enemies together in the one land, made a complete mess of raising my own children, and then watched everything I had fought so hard for disintegrate into chaos and eventually, death.” Axis paused. “How long has it been since …”

“Since Tencendor vanished from the face of the earth? About five years.”

“You know that I have no powers now. All the Icarii lost their powers of enchantment when the Star Gate was destroyed and we lost contact with the Star Dance. Isaiah, I am not a god any more, I am not an Icarii Enchanter any more, I am hardly even a man — I can barely feed myself my noonday soup. Why am I back? Why do this to me? I was at peace in death, curse you!”

“I apologise, Axis. I needed you.”

“For what? For what?”

“For the moment, just to be my friend.”

Axis fought back a black anger that threatened to overwhelm him. “You could not buy yourself a friend in the marketplace?”

“You have no idea how much I need a friend,” Isaiah said, very softly. “Someone I can trust. Perhaps you have mishandled much of your life, Axis SunSoar, but from what I know of you, you did know how to be a friend very, very well.”

Axis closed his eyes. He did not know what to say. He did not want to be here, not back in this life, not back in a world where there was no Star Dance, nor any family.

“Am I a prisoner?” he said eventually.

“No,” Isaiah said, “although you will notice guards about you. I seek only to protect you.”

“Of course you do,” Axis said.

“Get strong, Axis SunSoar,” Isaiah said softly. “Get strong, and then we shall see.”

Ba’al’uz may have been more than slightly insane, but he was no fool, he paid attention to world affairs, and he had a very good idea who the man was that Isaiah had hauled from Lake Juit.

So what did Isaiah want with a failed god?

From Axis’ apartment Ba’al’uz wandered slowly through the palace complex of Aqhat until he entered a courtyard in its western boundary. From here he walked through a gate and down to the River Lhyl, the lifeblood of Isembaard.

Ba’al’uz stood at the edge of the river for an hour or more, uncaring of the hot sun. He did not use this time to admire the river, as beautiful and tranquil as it was, but instead stared as if transfixed across to the far bank where, at a distance of perhaps half an hour’s ride, rose an extraordinary pyramid clad in shimmering blue-green glass and topped with a capstone of golden glass that sent shafts of light reflecting back at the sun.

DarkGlass Mountain.

Ancient. Unknowable.

Alive.

Twenty years ago it had suddenly whispered to Ba’al’uz. Sweet whispers, very gentle at first, offering Ba’al’uz power and friendship, the two things Ba’al’uz craved most.

Its name, it told him, was Kanubai.

Ba’al’uz knew a little of the history of DarkGlass Mountain. He knew it had been built some two thousand years earlier by a caste of priests who had hoped to use the pyramid to touch Infinity. He knew there had been a small catastrophe associated with the priests’ attempts to open the pyramid to Infinity, a catastrophe which resulted in the pyramid being dismantled and the caste of priests disbanded and scattered to the wind.

Dismantled.

Ba’al’uz looked at the pyramid, and smiled. What was once dismantled could always, with some effort, be resurrected.

But Ba’al’uz had never heard the name Kanubai associated with the pyramid. So Ba’al’uz had spent many of his free hours, over a period of almost a year, hunting down rare scrolls and manuscripts in the tyrant’s personal library (generally at night, when the tyrant was preoccupied with one of his wives, and not likely to come to the library looking for something to send him to sleep).

One day Ba’al’uz discovered a scroll which told of the legend of Chaos — Kanubai.

That had not been a good day, for as he’d read the legend through Ba’al’uz realised that the great being known as Kanubai was preparing for escape. The damned incompetent ancient priests must have unknowingly built their pyramid atop the very abyss where Kanubai was interred, and when they had opened the pyramid into Infinity … the stopper over the abyss had cracked.

Now Kanubai was seeking out helpers, for that great day when he would finally break free.

Like most of the insane, Ba’al’uz was a complete pragmatist. There was nothing he could do to stop Kanubai, and everything to gain if he aided him. Kanubai would be grateful when he finally stepped into the sunshine, and more than ready, perhaps, to repay those who had helped him.

Since then, Ba’al’uz had become the whisperer’s devoted servant, willing to do all he could to aid him. For the moment, that was little more than keep his eyes and ears open.

Great Lord, Ba’al’uz whispered.

He felt Kanubai’s interest, although the god did not speak.

An unusual event. Isaiah has brought back from the dead a man who I believe to be Axis SunSoar, former lord of the Icarii people in Tencendor. A man who was once of great power, but who is now powerless, and helpless. I do not know why Isaiah wants him, and I do not know how Isaiah managed to drag him out of death.

Isaiah is my enemy, Kanubai said. His voice sounded thick and a little muddled in Ba’al’uz’ mind, but it was much clearer than it had been twenty years ago, when Ba’al’uz had struggled to understand the god. The fact that Kanubai’s voice was now so much clearer meant that Kanubai was much, much closer than once he had been.

And mine, said Ba’al’uz. I dislike him intensely. Shall I kill him for you?

Kanubai did not respond, and Ba’al’uz could feel his interest seeping away.

I will watch for you, said Ba’al’uz. Inform you, as needed.

Do that, said Kanubai, and then his presence was gone, and Ba’al’uz blinked, and was once more aware of his surroundings.

4
BARON LIXEL’S RESIDENCE, MARGALIT

The negotiations between Maximilian, King of Escator, and Lady Ishbel Brunelle took many days, the process not helped by the marked hostility between Ishbel and StarWeb. Lixel was beginning to wish Maximilian had never included StarWeb in his delegation, for the birdwoman was proving more than awkward to deal with. Coupled with this was the fact Ishbel was conducting her own negotiations, unheard of when generally a woman’s parents or legal guardians did the negotiating on her behalf.

But then, this wasn’t precisely a normal family situation, was it?

By the third day of the negotiations, Lixel had become painfully aware that without StarWeb they might have concluded the entire deal within a brief three hours, and that mostly spent deciding over which wine they’d prefer to settle the matter. He wasn’t sure how much latitude Maximilian had given StarWeb, but was beginning to suspect the Icarii woman was overstepping the bounds.

The matter of the dowry, the lands, the manorial rights, the riches, and the marriage itself, all hung on one issue. According to StarWeb, Maximilian insisted that while a marriage ceremony could take place, the marriage would not be officially ratified, or made legal, until Ishbel produced a live child.

At that Ishbel had baulked. “A marriage is between a man and a woman,” she insisted. “It does not depend on children for legality.”

“Nonetheless,” StarWeb countered, “children are important to Maximilian, and the marriage will be as nothing to him without them.”

“It is an insult to me,” Ishbel said, “to suggest that I am nothing without the production of children. That I am nothing but a vessel in which to carry a child.”

The talks had centred on this argument for almost three days, and Lixel was despairing of finding any way round it. He tended to side with Ishbel. It was insulting to her to hinge the marriage’s legality on the production of live children; a marriage was far, far more than the children it created … it was an alliance between a man and a woman, between their families and their lands, and the children were incidental, if generally much desired and loved.

Lixel had also begun to half suspect that these demands made of Ishbel were in the manner of a test. Maximilian, through StarWeb, was pushing Ishbel as far as he dared, perhaps to see what manner of woman she was.

Or perhaps what manner of offer she truly represented.

“What Maximilian would like,” StarWeb said for the hundredth time, “is that you meet and, if all is agreeable, that a civil marriage ceremony take place … between the man Maximilian and the woman Ishbel, if you like.Once a child is born, then the marriage becomes a legality, between the King of Escator and the Lady Ishbel Brunelle.”

“The child would be a bastard,” Ishbel said, as she had been saying for three days.

“Not so,” said StarWeb. “There has already been a marriage ceremony … it just has not been ratified. The child would not be regarded as a bastard at all.”

Lixel closed his eyes, trying to summon the strength to step in and try to mediate some compromise. But before he could do so, Ishbel spoke again.

“Perhaps if Maximilian would agree not to wait until the child is born to ratify the marriage, but to do so when it is clear that I carry Maximilian’s child.”

Lixel opened his eyes, astounded at this concession on Ishbel’s part. There had been no hint of it until now, but to give way that much ground … even if the concession had been days in the arriving …

“Done!” said StarWeb. “Marriage shall be ratified when you are pregnant … and in Ruen.”

“Accepted,” said Ishbel. “Although the dowry won’t be Maximilian’s until the marriage is ratified, either. Until then, I remain in control of all properties and rights.”

Lixel looked at StarWeb, sure she would object. To his surprise, she inclined her head. “Then I am sure Maximilian will be most keen to get you pregnant,” she said. “You shall surely not lack any attention from your husband.”

“That’s going too far, StarWeb,” Lixel put in, noting that Ishbel had coloured faintly at that last. “You overreach yourself.”

StarWeb shrugged, not in the slightest bit apologetic, and Lixel thought he’d best regain some control of the situation.

“It is a long and arduous journey between Margalit and Ruen, my lady,” he said to Ishbel. “May I suggest that, should Maximilian be agreeable to the terms mooted about this table, that you meet halfway? Perhaps at Pelemere? That way, it is not so far distant for either of you to return home if, at the eventual meeting, you don’t suit each other.”

Ishbel hesitated, then inclined her head. “Agreed,” she said, and StarWeb smiled.

“Then I shall return immediately to Ruen,” she said, “and put it to Maximilian. I am sure he shall agree.”

She rose. “At Pelemere then, my lady,” and with that she stepped to the window and lifted out into the gloomy sky.

Ishbel hoped she had done the right thing. She’d held out as long as she could, loathing StarWeb for her persistence, and for putting her, Ishbel, archpriestess of the Coil, into such a vile and humiliating position. She hadn’t wanted to capitulate at all, but the Great Serpent had been so insistent the marriage take place … and if the only way that it was going to take place was to agree that it need not be ratified until she was pregnant, well then …

She had not been going to agree, but last night she’d dreamed that the Great Serpent had appeared before her, on his knees (if a serpent could manage such a feat), reminding her that the marriage must take place. It must. So much depended on it.

Shaken and worried, Ishbel had capitulated as far as her own pride would allow her.

Ishbel sighed, her hand creeping over her belly, hesitating, then making the sign of the Coil. She would be unable to get pregnant — if Maximilian thought he’d get an heir out of her then he would be sadly disappointed — because she’d given up all her reproductive abilities when she’d been inducted into the Coil.

Would it matter?

No, she decided. A civil marriage would still take place — the marriage would be legal — but the formal union between her and Maximilian, between their lands and wealth and titles, would never eventuate. A marriage with the man would surely be enough for the Great Serpent. It was all he had wanted. Surely.

Ishbel wondered if she even need bed with him. Perhaps she’d manage to find a way around that, as well.

A thousand leagues to the south-west, Ba’al’uz sat cross-legged in the open window of his chamber in the palace of Aqhat, staring at the great pyramid across the River Lhyl.

Tonight Kanubai communicated less in whispers than in shared emotion. There was seething resentment directed towards Isaiah, which Ba’al’uz could understand, given his own seething resentment of the tyrant, although he did not yet understand why Kanubai should also resent him so much — and with the faintest undertone of fear.

Ba’al’uz also felt a dark hatred at imprisonment from Kanubai, as well as a cold, terrifying desire for revenge.

The cold desire for revenge was something Ba’al’uz understood very well.

And there was something else, a formless worry, that Kanubai enunciated more in emotion than in words.

Every so often, though, a whispered phrase came through, although what Ba’al’uz was supposed to make of “The Lord of Elcho Falling” he had no idea.

The Lord of Elcho Falling stirs.

There was more hatred and worry underpinning that phrase, and so Ba’al’uz decided that he would hate and fear the Lord of Elcho Falling as well.

He would kill him, he thought, should he ever meet him.

5
PALACE OF AQHAT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

Isaiah, Tyrant of Isembaard, picked up the pyramid of glass, holding it in his hands as gingerly as if it contained the manner of his death. Then he raised his eyes and looked for a long moment into the shadowed depths of the chamber.

Axis sat there, hidden from the view of the pyramid. He had gained much in strength over the past days and was well enough to spend most of the day out of bed.

But he still didn’t trust Isaiah, and was still angry at him for dragging Axis out of death.

Isaiah could understand that and he hoped that after today he and Axis might be a little closer to friendship.

Axis returned Isaiah’s gaze, his face expressionless.

Isaiah studied the rose-tinged glass pyramid again.

“There are only a very few of these in existence,” Isaiah said quietly. “I have one.” He hefted it, as if Axis needed the visual reinforcement. “Ba’al’uz has one, and our ally has one. If there are more then I do not know of them.”

“Where did they come from!” said Axis. “I sense great power coming from the one you hold.”

“They were a gift from my ally, Lister. One for him, one for Ba’al’uz —”

“What did Ba’al’uz do to deserve such a gift?”

Isaiah shrugged, choosing not to answer that. “And one for me. They make communication easier than it might otherwise be.”

He paused, his attention now firmly on the glass pyramid in his hand. “I am going to speak to Lister now, my friend. It would be best for all concerned if you remained unobserved.”

There was no answering sound or movement from the shadows.

Isaiah settled the pyramid carefully into the palm of his left hand, took a deep breath, then placed his right hand about it.

A moment later the glass glowed through the gaps of his fingers. First pink, then red, then it flared suddenly a deep gold before muting back to a soft yellow.

Isaiah slid his right hand away from the pyramid. “Greetings, Lister,” he said.

While the glass pyramid still rested in Isaiah’s hand, its shape was now so indistinct as to be almost indistinguishable. An ascetic, lined face topped with thinning brown hair now looked back at Isaiah from deep within the glass.

Isaiah was careful not to even suggest a glance towards the shadows.

“I hope all goes well?” Isaiah said.

“The negotiations between Maximilian and Ishbel proceed,” Lister said. “Ishbel still does not like the idea of marriage, but intends to do as I, as we, wish, and Maximilian worries about the past rising to meet him. I hear he is stamping about his palace at Ruen in a right black temper. Maximilian and Ishbel are to meet in Pelemere, there to conduct a marriage if they find each other agreeable.”

“That is good. How go your ‘friends’?”

“My ‘friends’?”

Isaiah sighed, trying very hard not to look at Axis watching keenly from the far recesses of the room. “The Skraelings,” he said. “Are they massing?”

Axis made no sound, but from the corner of his eyes Isaiah saw him tense.

“Yes,” said Lister, “although still not in quantities enough to seethe south. Not this winter, but next, surely.”

“They pose no danger to you at Crowhurst?”

“I toss them scraps from my table, and speak kind words to them. They tolerate me. I do not think they will be a danger to me.”

“Be careful.”

In the pyramid Lister’s shoulders rose in a small shrug. “And what are you about, Isaiah?” Lister said. “How go your plans? Do you mass your army?”

“My forces accrue,” said Isaiah, “as do the stores I will need for the march north. In addition, I am sending Ba’al’uz beyond the FarReach Mountains within the fortnight. He will prepare the way for our invasion. I admit myself pleased at the thought of getting him out of the palace.”

“He could be more danger out of your sight than within it.”

Now it was Isaiah’s turn to shrug. “It is better, I think, to remove him from DarkGlass Mountain’s presence for the moment.”

Lister nodded. “We tread a dangerous dance here, Isaiah. Are you safe?”

Isaiah grunted. “From whom? My generals? I am never safe from them … but I will stay alive as long as it is needed, Lister. As must you.”

“I was not thinking of your generals.”

Isaiah did not respond.

Lister sighed. “Let me know when Ba’al’uz has departed.”

“I will.”

With that, the pyramid dulled, then resumed its usual rosy opaqueness.

“I cannot believe what I just heard!” Axis stalked out of the shadows, his gait not showing any signs of his former weakness. “You have allied with … with … with a Lord of the Skraelings?”

“Axis, I know that in your time you battled long and hard with the Skraelings, and with their then terrible lord, Gorgrael. But I have my —”

“I cannot believe this!” Axis slammed his hand down on the table, and Isaiah’s eyes slid towards the pyramid, grateful that Axis had not damaged it.

“What in the gods’ names do you want from me, Isaiah?”

“Your aid and your advice, Axis. Your friendship.”

“I lost tens of thousands of people to the Skraelings,” Axis hissed. “I have seen what they can do! What the fuck do you think I will do, ally myself with you and the Skraelings to invade —”

“You will calm down and you will listen to me!” Isaiah rose to his feet. He was taller than Axis by a handbreadth, and now he used that slight advantage to stare down at Axis, holding the man’s furious gaze with unwavering eyes. “Nothing is ever as it seems,” Isaiah said, more moderately now. “Nothing.”

He stepped away from Axis. “Wine?”

“Oh, for all the gods’ sakes …”

Isaiah ignored him, walking over to a table and pouring a large measure of wine into a goblet. He brought it back to Axis, holding out the goblet.

Axis did not want wine. He lifted a hand to brush the goblet away, then froze, staring at what Isaiah held.

It was a large amber glass goblet of the most exquisite beauty. Completely forgetting his anger, Axis reached out and took the goblet into his hands.

It was truly the most extraordinary goblet he had ever seen. A craftsman of astonishing talent — magical talent — had carved an outer wall, or cage, of frogs gambolling among reeds about the inner wall of amber glass. When he held it up to the light, careful not to spill the wine inside, the outer caged wall of frogs shone almost emerald, coming to life in the light; the frogs seemed alive, leaping away from the goblet’s inner amber wall as if they were about to take to life itself.

“Drink,” Isaiah said softly.

Axis lifted the goblet to his mouth, but just before the wine reached his lips, one of the frogs about the outer cage lifted a toe pad and gently touched Axis’ face.

Axis trembled so badly he almost dropped the goblet, and Isaiah had to reach out and take it from him.

“That is an object of great power,” Axis said hoarsely. He was rattled, not so much by the fact that the goblet was of a powerful magic, but of the manner of power it represented.

Compassion.

Axis looked at Isaiah, and saw in his black eyes, reflected for just a moment, that same compassion he’d felt from the goblet.

“I found it one day,” said Isaiah, somewhat diffidently. He took a draught of wine from the goblet. “Are you sure you want no wine?”

Axis shook his head. All his anger had vanished, and he was completely calm. He realised that this had been Isaiah’s intention when he’d handed him the goblet, but Isaiah had not actually used any power to pacify Axis.

Instead, Isaiah had used the goblet to show Axis his true nature.

Compassion.

“Trust me,” said Isaiah, and Axis nodded, still almost befuddled by what had just happened.

“Would you like me to tell you where I came from?” said Isaiah. “Where Isembaard came from?”

“Yes. Isembaard is such an unknown entity outside of its borders,” Axis said.

Isaiah walked over to a cabinet and withdrew a large rolled map, which he spread over the table.

Axis came over. The huge map showed the known world in detail, and Axis was stunned by the size of Isembaard. It was three times, at least, the size Tencendor had been.

Axis’ eyes drifted to the north-west of the map where Tencendor should have been.

There was nothing there save a broken line showing where once the coastline had been, and the chilling label: The Lost Land of Tencendor.

“As you can see,” Isaiah said, “my cartographers have produced a perfectly up-to-date map.”

Axis nodded, not trusting his voice.

Isaiah tapped a small city on the east coast of Isembaard. “The original Isembaard rose from this small eastern city of the same name — the Tyranny takes its name from the city that gave it birth. When Isembaard was still a small city and not the vast empire it is now, the tyrants of Isembaard depended almost entirely on warfare for their reputation, and for the means to feed their people.”

“How so?” said Axis. “Surely a state is the stronger the less it engages in war?”

“The city of Isembaard was small, surrounded by poor land,” said Isaiah. “How else was it to grow, and strengthen, if it did not accrue lands unto itself? Isembaard needed to expand in order to survive. It needed its leaders, its tyrants, to be successful and ambitious war leaders, in order that the needed land be accrued.”

“Ah,” said Axis. “So over time Isembaard ‘accrued’ all the nations I have seen on your maps? The ‘dependencies’? A city become an empire?”

“Yes,” said Isaiah. “Bit by bit. It has taken us centuries.”

Axis thought about the vast amount of territory within the Tyranny, and the different peoples contained therein. “It must be difficult,” he observed, “ruling such an immense area and peoples.”

“It is,” said Isaiah, and Axis thought he saw that fleeting shadow cross the tyrant’s face.

“Does the Tyrant of Isembaard still rely on the ancient methods of keeping people happy?” Axis asked. “Continual expansion? Warfare? Does your throne depend on victory in war, Isaiah?”

Isaiah turned his head to look at Axis fully. “You know the answer to that, Axis. Why else allow you to listen to my conversation with Lister?”

Axis looked back at the map. “You called Lister your ‘northern ally’,” he said, “and from my own experience I know Skraelings prefer ice and snow above all else.” He ran a hand slowly up the map, then tapped the area above Gershadi and Viland. “He’s up here. In the frozen northern wastes.”

Isaiah tilted his head in agreeance.

“And you want to invade ‘north’,” Axis said. He fell silent, concentrating on the map.

“By the stars, Isaiah,” Axis said eventually, “you have allied with Lister and the Skraelings with only one possible objective. The kingdoms above the FarReach Mountains: Pelemere, Kyros, Escator, perhaps even the Outlands. You intend to sandwich the Northern Kingdoms between you, yes? Two arms, two pincers, icy ghosts from the north, desert warriors from the south.”

“A sound strategy, surely,” Isaiah said.

“But such a risk,” said Axis. “Not merely relying on an alliance with Skraelings, for the stars’ sakes, but such a massive invasion into lands so far from your home.” Axis studied the map once more. “Frankly, I would have tried for something more achievable that didn’t necessitate a Skraeling alliance … the Eastern Independencies, for example.” He tapped the map down in its lower eastern corner. “I can’t think why you have not ‘accrued’ them already.”

Isaiah did not answer, and Axis looked at him curiously. “By the gods,” Axis said softly after a moment or two. “You have tried for the Eastern Independencies, haven’t you?”

“I campaigned against the Eastern Independencies in my second year on the throne,” Isaiah said. “The campaign proved to be … difficult.”

Stars! Axis thought, recalling Lister’s earlier remark about the generals. Isaiah was very uncertain of his throne. He had one military disaster behind him and he could not afford another — not with both a nation and some restless generals expecting a military victory resulting in the acquisition of yet more new territory.

“Why,” Axis asked, “were the Eastern Independencies so hard to —”

“That is not the issue now,” Isaiah said, his tone tight, and Axis knew this was not the time to push the point.

“So instead you ally with the Skraelings in the frozen northern wastes,” Axis said. “An interesting alliance.”

“It cannot fail,” Isaiah said. “The Central Kingdoms, the Outlands and their allies will not be able to resist us.”

Axis was trying hard to reconcile this Isaiah with the one who had handed him the Goblet of the Frogs. He realised, very suddenly, that there was no contradiction at all. Isaiah was a man genuinely unsuited to tyranny, which made him immensely vulnerable, which in its turn made him even more determined to win for himself a great military victory that resulted in the conquering of vast lands.

The only question in Axis’ mind was why Isaiah was so determined to cling to his throne. Axis thought that Isaiah was not one who needed the magnificence of throne and title and power of life and death over millions in order to bolster his self-esteem.

So why the need to ally with the Skraelings in order to achieve military victory? Why embark on a course which would result in the death of tens of thousands?

“I need a friend, here at court,” Isaiah said, his eyes watching Axis carefully as if he could understand the train of Axis’ thoughts. “I have none. No one I can trust.”

“If you want me to be your friend, then tell me why you want this invasion so badly. The real reason, Isaiah.”

Isaiah held his gaze for a long moment. “And so I will tell you,” he said, “when I am certain I can trust you.”

Axis laughed softly, shaking his head. “Why do I find it impossible to remain angry with you, Isaiah?”

“Will you be my friend, Axis?”

“I will not aid you to invade the Central Kingdoms. I will not, under any circumstances, condone any action that sees you ally with Skraelings.”

“Be my conscience then, if friendship is too difficult.”

Isaiah’s eyes twinkled, and Axis again shook his head in amusement. Isaiah was impossible to dislike.

“Your conscience, then,” Axis said.

“Good,” Isaiah said, taking Axis’ hand, and Axis sensed that Isaiah was truly relieved.

“Now,” said Isaiah, glancing at one of the windows, “it grows dark, and I fear I am late for an appointment with wife number fifty-nine. Can you find your way back to your apartment by yourself?”

Axis was struck firstly by the fact that at least Isaiah trusted him enough to allow him to wander the palace, and secondly to the casual mention of wife number fifty-nine.

“How many do you have?” Axis asked, aghast.

“Urn, eighty-four, I think.”

“So many?”

“I find myself displeased by a woman’s body when she is pregnant. So as my wives fall pregnant, I send them back to the women’s quarters and take to myself another wife. Also, many of the dependencies send me wives, hoping thus to garner my favour.”

“And you love none of them.” It was not a question.

“They are meaningless to me, Axis. I do not have an Azhure in my life.”

The sudden mention of his wife upset Axis more than he’d thought possible. He was shocked to find his eyes filling with tears as a terrible ache consumed him.

“I am sorry, Axis,” Isaiah said, the man of deep compassion now fully returned.

Axis nodded, then turned away.

Two hours later Axis lay awake in his chamber, hands behind his head, staring into the darkness.

Azhure.

He hadn’t thought much about her since Isaiah had pulled him back into life, but Isaiah’s words earlier brought home to Axis how much he missed her.

I do not have an Azhure in my life, Isaiah had said.

Neither, now, did Axis. She was dead, he was alive, and Axis had no idea if he would ever see her again. Who knew how many otherworlds there were? Who knew whether, once he died from this life, he would return to Azhure’s side?

Besides, how long was he to live now ?

The thought of enduring perhaps fifty years without his wife kept Axis awake throughout the night.

“Damn you, Isaiah,” Axis muttered as the dawn light slowly filtered into his chamber, but there was no anger in his voice, only an infinite sadness.

6
PALACE OF AQHAT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

Isaiah did not go back to his private quarters after talking with Axis. Instead, restless and uncertain, he went down to the dark stables, saddled a horse (waving back to their beds the four or five grooms who hurried sleepy-eyed to serve their master), and rode the horse to the Lhyl.

He pushed the horse across the river, then rode south along the river road to where rose the great glass pyramid called DarkGlass Mountain. Isaiah did not once raise his eyes to look at it, but rode directly to a small door in its northern face where he hobbled the horse, and entered.

He walked through the black glass tunnels of the pyramid to its very heart — a golden-glassed chamber known as the Infinity Chamber.

Here Isaiah sat cross-legged in its very centre and meditated.

Kanubai — trapped deep beneath DarkGlass Mountain — and he were enemies. Bitter, terrible, lifetime enemies. Isaiah came here to expose himself to the beast, not only to test his own strength and resolve, but also to sense out his enemy and divine his strengths and weaknesses.

Time was when Kanubai’s weaknesses outnumbered his strengths.

Now, the strengths were gaining.

Isaiah visualised the abyss that sank into the very heart of the world. He concentrated on that abyss until it formed his entire consciousness, until he knew nothing but the abyss.

Then, gathering his courage, he cast his eyes down into the darkness.

When he had first started doing this, he had seen nothing, although he had felt the horror that lurked in the pit of the abyss.

Kanubai, cast down an infinity of ages ago.

But over the past few years Isaiah had started to see as well as sense Kanubai. The gleam of an eye.

Or perhaps a tooth.

The wetness of a tongue.

Now, as he had over the past year, Isaiah’s gaze managed to discern a blackened shape huddled against the walls of the abyss.

Kanubai was rising closer.

He was still far, far below, but every time Isaiah came here he could see that Kanubai was a little nearer.

Thin black fingers suckered into tiny cracks in the abyss.

A darkened face, staring upwards, feeling the weight of Isaiah’s regard.

Kanubai had once been stoppered tight in his abyss, but was no longer. Those ancient cursed Magi who had built the glass pyramid, and then opened it into Infinity, had unwittingly cracked open the stopper Isaiah and Lister had placed over the abyss.

Kanubai had been inching his way through that crack ever since.

Hello, Isaiah.

Isaiah fought down his nausea. Kanubai had been whispering to him for many years now. At first nothing but unintelligible thick mutterings, but now almost every word was clear.

What do you, Isaiah?

Isaiah never replied. The last thing he wanted was to get into conversation with the beast.

Do you know what I will do to your river, Isaiah, when I rise?

Isaiah knew he had to break the connection. He had spent too long in here. He had to leave now before —

He went cold.

In his vision of Kanubai, Isaiah thought he had seen, just for a moment, something clinging to Kanubai’s back.

Or something in his hands, perhaps.

Isaiah opened his eyes, then rose to his feet, stumbling a little in his foreboding as he made for the doorway out of the Infinity Chamber.

Something else rose with Kanubai.

7
THE ROYAL PALACE, RUEN, ESCATOR

Maximilian stepped into the chamber where he met with his Council of Friends and saw that for once he was the last to arrive.

Egalion, Garth and Vorstus regarded him a little warily. Egalion and Garth had been well aware of the tension between Maximilian and Vorstus, but had no idea of the cause. Both Garth and Egalion had, at different times, approached Maximilian cautiously, wondering what the problem might be, but Maximilian had waved away their gentle queries, saying there was nothing wrong save that he was suffering pre-wedding nerves.

Maximilian did not think Vorstus would be any more forthcoming with the two men if they were also to approach him.

Maximilian did not take his seat, but walked over to a window and leaned on the sill, looking out. “I have decided to depart for Pelemere, there to meet with the Lady Ishbel,” he said. “Within the week.”

Egalion and Garth looked at each other, but it was Vorstus who answered.

“But we have not yet heard if the negotiations StarWeb is conducting with the Lady Ishbel on your behalf have been successful.”

“Oh,” said Maximilian, turning about and looking Vorstus in the eye, “I am sure they will be successful, don’t you?”

Vorstus said nothing, holding Maximilian’s eyes easily.

“Maxel,” Garth said carefully, “how can you know?”

“Because I feel it in my bones,” Maximilian said, but mildly enough. The serpent — Light — had sent Ishbel to him. Maximilian had no real idea why, but he hoped it was because Light had decided only that the Persimius line needed a bit of strengthening and the Lady Ishbel’s bloodlines would do nicely. Perhaps she might have some memories with which to re-furniture his Twisted Tower.

The offer of this bride did not have to mean that Elcho Falling was needed.

“Besides,” Maximilian continued, putting a disarming smile on his face, “I grow restless sitting here in Ruen. I want to be doing something, and even if the Lady Ishbel takes one look at my face and decides she’d rather marry a —”

Frog.

“— toad, then at least we’ll have had the joy of many weeks on the road with the wind in our hair and the chance to meet up with Borchard and Malat in Kyros along the way. What say you, Garth, Egalion? Do you feel like a jaunt eastwards?”

Garth laughed. “How can we refuse!”

Maximilian looked at Egalion. “We’ll bring four or five units of the Emerald Guard. They shall keep us safe enough, and make a splendid showing for the Lady Ishbel.”

“But to practical matters,” Vorstus said. “Who shall govern Escator in your absence?”

Maximilian looked at Vorstus. Not you. “The Privy Council of Preferred Nobles have my authority to take what decisions are necessary. I shall not be gone too many months.”

Vorstus gave a little smile and looked away. He was not surprised that Maximilian no longer trusted him.

No matter. Maximilian was doing precisely what Vorstus wanted anyway.

Over the next few days Maximilian busied himself with preparations for departure, as well as briefing the Privy Council. Maximilian was glad to be leaving Ruen. Ever since he’d had his confrontation with Vorstus he couldn’t stop thinking about the fact that Vorstus may have left him down in the Veins deliberately.

Why, Maximilian had no idea, which itself made him question whether he was wrong about Vorstus, but he could not stop thinking about it.

Seventeen years in such horror …

Maximilian had reconciled himself long ago to the loss of those seventeen years. He had thought he’d reconciled himself to the horror he’d endured during that time — the beatings, the constant darkness, the never-ending swing of the pick, over and over, the dust and humidity and heat, the cave-ins, the pain …

The loneliness, the sheer mental desperation, year after year after year.

He thought he’d put all that behind him. Cavor, the man who had condemned him to the mines, was long dead.

Maximilian could walk away from the nightmare.

But what if Vorstus had also been aware of the plot to keep him incarcerated? What if the man who had guided his rescue had also dictated the timing of that rescue?

What if the nightmare was only in remission, not dead ?

8
PAIACE OF AQHAT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

When there came a knock at the door, far earlier in the morning than usual, Axis was surprised to see Ba’al’uz waiting for him.

“Isaiah asked me to collect you today,” Ba’al’uz said, “so that we might meet with him in his private chambers at the tenth hour.”

“But that is two hours or more away,” said Axis.

“I thought perhaps you and I might put those hours to good use,” said Ba’al’uz. “For a chat, perhaps. Do you wish to come like that, or …?”

Axis looked down.

All he had on was a towel from his morning ablutions.

Axis grinned. “You caught me early,” he said. “Give me a moment.”

And but a minute later, clad more respectably in light-coloured trousers and waistcoat with sandals on his feet, Axis set off with Ba’al’uz.

“Isaiah tells me you witnessed his communication with the Lord of the Skraelings,” Ba’al’uz said without preamble as he led them along a corridor with huge, unglazed windows along one side.

“Indeed. It was most curious. I have many questions.”

“It was why I came early for you. I thought you would want to know more.”

“And you don’t mind answering?”

“I have nothing to hide from you, Axis. Isaiah has requested that I indulge your every question, and so I will.”

Axis doubted very much that Ba’al’uz had nothing to hide, but hoped that, under Isaiah’s directive, he might at least provide some answers to Axis’ more pressing questions.

“Who are you, Ba’al’uz,” Axis said. “What are you to Isaiah?”

“I am Isaiah’s maniac.”

“Yes, but what —”

“I am Isaiah’s brother,” Ba’al’uz said, grinning at the expression on Axis’ face. “His elder brother by some dozen years.”

“Then why is he tyrant, and not you?”

“Ah,” said Ba’al’uz. “Thereby hangs a tale. Please, if you will, step through here.”

Ba’al’uz indicated a doorway in the corridor, and Axis walked through into a magnificently tiled verandah commanding views over the surrounding countryside. Ten minutes walk beyond the palace flowed the emerald waters and reed-covered river banks of the Lhyl, and just beyond that, on the far bank, rose the massive pyramid of DarkGlass Mountain. It was covered in blue-green glass and surmounted by a cap of gold.

Axis thought it the most beautiful and yet, somehow, the most deadly thing he had ever seen. He had questions about that, too, but for the moment he was intrigued more by the fact that Ba’al’uz and Isaiah were brothers.

“Do you know of the manner in which a tyrant comes to the throne of Isembaard?” Ba’al’uz said, leaning on the railing and looking out over the countryside.

“No. I’d assumed that Isaiah was his father’s eldest son.”

Ba’al’uz shook his head. “Isaiah was his fathers twentieth son, and there were another eighteen after him. Thirty-eight of us, all told.”

Axis thought that with all the wives Isaiah’s father must have enjoyed, it was amazing he had so few sons. “By what process then, is the tyrant chosen?” he said.

“You know the throne of Isembaard is a warrior throne?”

“Yes, Isaiah told me as much.”

“Well, then, what better way to decide who to sit that throne than with individual combat bouts between the sons.”

Ba’al’uz turned a little so he could see Axis’ face. “To the death.”

Axis could not speak for a moment. He’d battled with his brother Borneheld for Achar, and killed him, but to do that so many times over? Isaiah had seen thirty-six of his brothers die so he could assume the throne?

“Why are you still alive?” Axis finally asked.

“Me?” Ba’al’uz assumed an effeminate pose and an arch expression. “Can you imagine me with a weapon in my hand! No …” he laughed merrily. “There is a strain of madness runs through our family, Axis. In every generation there is one son … not quite right. Strange.” He paused, then hissed, “Crazed Such sons do not battle. Instead we become our successful brother’s maniac. His court wit. His weapon”

Again he laughed, and Axis could indeed hear the faint strains of madness lurking deep within Ba’al’uz’ being.

Genuine, or counterfeit? Axis wondered about a son who, knowing he did not have the skills to succeed in combat, might save his life by pretending madness.

“Weapon?” Axis said.

“A madman sees things, hears things, that no other can,” said Ba’al’uz, and this time Axis thought he could recognise genuine insanity in the man’s eyes.

“He dares things,” Ba’al’uz continued, “that no other can. And he knows things, that no other can comprehend. Madness is a gift of the gods, Axis, and I serve my brother well. Madness is power, yes? Not like that which once you wielded, but power nonetheless. I have my life, and I am grateful, and I do whatever I can to smooth Isaiah’s path through tyranny. I slide through my brother’s court like an evil wind, and in the doing I confound his enemies, and scry out their secrets.”

Axis gave an uncomfortable laugh. “What have you scried out from me, then?”

“That you are a burnt-out hero, Axis, and that Isaiah has nothing to fear from you.” He grinned as he said it, and with such malevolence that Axis actually leaned back a little.

Stars, how did Isaiah stand the man?

He couldn’t, Axis realised. Isaiah may have sent Ba’al’uz to answer any questions Axis had, but the underlying purpose of Isaiah’s request was that Axis see once and for all Ba’al’uz’ true nature.

Ba’al’uz was a frighteningly dangerous man, and Axis wondered what his secret ambition was, how he meant to achieve it and what it would mean to all about him. Maybe Isaiah hoped Axis could tell him.

“Well, then,” said Axis, “why not tell this ‘burnt-out hero’ —” he wished he had the control not to grind the words out “— the purpose of that pyramid across the river. It is most intriguing.”

“Ah,” said Ba’al’uz, “DarkGlass Mountain. It is intriguing, is it not?”

“Who built it? For what purpose?”

“Be patient, Axis, and I shall tell you what I know.” He leaned on the balcony railing again, looking at the glass pyramid. “From what anyone can gather — and my forebears spent their lives checking records — DarkGlass Mountain was built about two thousand years ago.”

“By whom?” asked Axis. The momentary antagonism between them had vanished, and Axis leaned on the railing as well, looking curiously at the massive pyramid.

“A group of men known as the Magi caused its construction. The Magi worshipped numbers, particularly the One. The Magi were mathematical geniuses. They used the power of the One in order to build a device by which they could touch more intimately the power of the One, and, by so doing, reach out to touch Infinity. Creation. Call it what you will.”

Casual words for what made Axis’ soul turn cold. Touching the power of Creation. Was there anything more powerful, or more dangerous?

“Then, the pyramid was not known as DarkGlass Mountain,” continued Ba’al’uz. “It was called Threshold.”

Threshold, thought Axis. A doorway. “Did the Magi manage it?” he said. “Did they touch Infinity?”

Ba’al’uz’ lip curled. “Yes, they did. But when DarkGlass Mountain was first opened up to the power of Infinity, something went wrong.”

Axis went even colder. Something went “wrong”.

A catastrophe, more like.

“There was … a small rebellion, I believe,” said Ba’al’uz, “initiated by those jealous of the Magi and the power they commanded. The Magi lost, and were all but slaughtered. DarkGlass Mountain was stripped of its glass, and left to be buried in sand drifts.”

“But here it stands in all its glory.”

“Yes,” Ba’al’uz said, very slowly. “Strange, is it not?”

Axis waited, refusing to ask the question, and Ba’al’uz pouted and continued. “Perhaps several hundred years ago, DarkGlass Mountain regrew itself.”

“What?”

“After the rebellion, when the Magi were slaughtered and their knowledge condemned,” said Ba’al’uz, “DarkGlass Mountain’s glass was stripped away, its chambers blocked, and its capstone buried. The glass was supposed to have been broken, but it was buried instead. For a thousand years and more, DarkGlass Mountain sat covered in hessian and sand, a mound only. Then, one day, some of the sand slid away, and a little more the next day, until over the space of two or three years the entire structure was revealed. Stone only, for DarkGlass Mountain had yet to reclad itself in glass and capstone.”

“Someone must have been —”

“No,” Ba’al’uz said softly, his gaze fixed on DarkGlass Mountain, “the tyrant at that time set men to watching. No one came near the pyramid. It simply … regrew. Once its stone structure was uncovered, the blue glass began to appear, growing up from the ground, gradually covering the pyramid’s sides. It flowed up from the depths of burial. Very, very slowly, but the glass flowed.

“That process took five years to accomplish. Then the rest. The capstone, and all of DarkGlass Mountain’s internal chambers.”

“Internal chambers?”

“There are tunnels and shafts,” said Ba’al’uz, “all of which lead to a central chamber of the most exquisite glass. The Infinity Chamber. You must ask Isaiah to show it to you some day. He sits there, on occasion.”

Axis shuddered. “What is it, Ba’al’uz? What is its purpose?”

“No one knows. Isn’t that amusing? Here it sits, a great beautiful glass pyramid, positively humming with power on some days, and no one knows.” Ba’al’uz tapped his nose, and assumed a conspiratorial look. “I can tell you this, Axis, because only I and Isaiah know. The tyrants, long ago when DarkGlass Mountain regrew itself, built their palace of Aqhat here so that it would appear they used the pyramid to bolster their power. Look at me, Great Tyrant of Isembaard, who controls the mysterious power of DarkGlass Mountain. But between you and me and Isaiah, Axis, none of the tyrants have known anything about the pyramid, let alone how to use it. They use it as … oh, as a piece of stage. Every so often Isaiah embarks on a great ceremonial procession across the river, strides — alone — into the Infinity Chamber, sits there for an hour twiddling his thumbs, and then walks out again, proclaiming that he has had converse with the gods and they have shown him the way forward. Of course nothing of the sort has happened, but who is to know that? The tyrants have closely associated their throne and power with DarkGlass Mountain, and yet none of them has the faintest idea what it is!”

Ba’al’uz burst into a peal of laughter.

“How is it Lister also controls the power of the pyramids?” Axis said.

Now Axis had caught Ba’al’uz off balance. “What?”

“The glass pyramids that Lister gave Isaiah and yourself. They are powerful treasures, are they not? Perhaps Lister knows some of the secrets of the DarkGlass Mountain. Secrets that you have not yet learned.”

Ba’al’uz frowned. “No. Surely not. Lister said he found them.”

Axis laughed softly, disbelievingly, and Ba’al’uz flushed.

“He said he found them!”

“And you believed him. The Lord of the Skraelings. No wonder Isaiah needs my advice. Perhaps he and DarkGlass Mountain are in league, eh? Perhaps they spy on you with those pyramids, yes?”

“No. Lister knows nothing about DarkGlass Mountain. Nothing. It does not speak to him.”

Oh, there was a question there begging to be asked, but Axis did not think Ba’al’uz was aware of his slip, and he thought it best not to alert the maniac.

“How did Isaiah and Lister come to ally?” Axis said smoothly, leading Ba’al’uz away from what he’d just revealed. “I cannot imagine they met in a tavern, or on a chance walk along the river bank.”

“Lister approached Isaiah two years ago,” said Ba’al’uz, his eyes narrowed, trying to work out how Axis had suddenly assumed the lead in the conversation. “A whispered word from a shadowed envoy. You were a king, you must know how these things work.”

Axis shrugged. “And then Lister sent the pyramids to you.”

“Yes,” Ba’al’uz said slowly, then added, a trifle hastily, “We don’t trust him, you know.”

“Good,” said Axis, “for I doubt very much he is to be trusted. Now, the sun grows hot, and I am somewhat wearied of the view of DarkGlass Mountain. Shall we go to Isaiah?”

Ba’al’uz nodded. Reluctantly, and with a final glance at DarkGlass Mountain, he led Axis towards Isaiah’s private apartments.

The palace of Aqhat was an amazing collection of buildings, spires, minarets, echoing audience and dining chambers, air walks, underground passages, hidden doors, soaring arches and windows, and, above all, of dazzling displays of wealth and power. Gold and jewels glittered on the walls and around the frames of doors and windows in every public chamber.

In stark contrast, Isaiah’s private chambers were almost bare. The walls were unadorned, the furnishings simple if comfortable, and the few accoutrements present subtle. Isaiah allowed few people in here: not even his many wives, for Axis had heard he kept a special chamber for entertaining them in the evenings.

Apart from Ba’al’uz, Axis had never seen anyone else in the quarters, not even servants. While here, Isaiah served himself.

Isaiah beckoned them to a group of chairs set by a window to catch a cooling breeze from the Lhyl.

“You will not be surprised to hear,” Isaiah said to Ba’al’uz as they sat down, “that Axis has agreed to advise me from time to time. I always think it best to have an independence of opinion about my decisions.”

“I am indeed not surprised,” Ba’al’uz said smoothly. “Axis SunSoar has a wealth of experience regarding the Skraelings. We would be wise to listen to him.”

“And thus he sits in on this conversation,” said Isaiah. “Ba’al’uz, I have talked to Lister, and he and I agree that you must go north within the week.”

Isaiah looked at Axis. “As you have realised,” Isaiah said, “Lord Lister and I mean to ally in an invasion of the north. Ba’al’uz is to go north for the next several months in order to, how shall I say this, sow the seeds for our success.”

“Create mayhem and confusion,” said Ba’al’uz, with a decidedly cheerful air. “A small conflict or two as well, should I be lucky.”

“You want to divide the Northern Kingdoms before you invade,” said Axis. “Set them at each other’s throats so they are less likely to notice you sneaking up at their backs, and far less able to respond well. Divide and conquer is surely the first maxim learned by all good tyrants.”

Isaiah looked hard at him at the last, but did not comment on it.

“On the other hand,” said Axis, “you will find the Northern Kingdoms with their forces already mobilised and battle-hardened. The ploy may work as much against you as for you. How good are their generals?”

“The Outlanders have some good leaders, but they are experienced only in inter-tribal warfare. I doubt they could manage a response to the kind of armies Lister and myself can command.”

No one can manage a good response to an invasion of Skraelings, thought Axis.

“Pelemere and Kyros have several good generals,” Isaiah continued.

“Who I intend to take care of,” said Ba’al’uz, studying the fingernails on one hand.

“And the kings and princes?” said Axis, regarding the other two over steepled fingers. “You need only one charismatic leader to take a hopelessly divided muddle of peoples and turn them into victors.”

“As you would know,” said Isaiah. “But there are none who strike me as any potential threat.” He paused. “Or is there someone you think I should know about … ?”

Axis thought about it. It wasn’t so much that he needed the time to think of a name, but to decide if he should mention it to Isaiah and Ba’al’uz.

“There’s a wildcard,” he said finally. “Maximilian Persimius, King of Escator.”

Ba’al’uz smiled derisively. “Escator is a tiny kingdom, and all but ruined. It can hardly raise enough policemen to keep market day traffic under control, let alone an army to repel forces such as Isaiah and Lister command between them.”

“I am not talking of forces,” said Axis. “I am talking of charismatic leaders.”

“You know this Maximilian?” said Isaiah.

Axis shook his head. “I have never met him, but my son Caelum did, and Maximilian was for some time considered a match for my close friend Belial’s daughter. He is highly, highly regarded. You know his story?”

“That he was imprisoned in Escator’s gloam mines for … what … fifteen or more years?” Isaiah said. “And that he was released on the endeavours of several youths and a cohort of ancient monks from what I can recall of the story. Maximilian has ever since been somewhat of a recluse. Axis, why mark him as a charismatic leader?”

“I think of him only as a possibility,” Axis said. “The man survived seventeen years under conditions that killed everyone else within six months. That says something for his character and tenacity. It tells me that he is, to put it simply, a survivor, and that he has depths that should not be lightly disregarded. He is also liked by all who meet him. Highly regarded, as I said. The man has something.”

“But not an army,” said Ba’al’uz. “And unlikely to raise one anywhere. He is also stuck far away on the west coast of the continent. He is no threat.”

Axis shrugged. “You asked, I told.”

Isaiah studied Axis a moment, then looked to Ba’al’uz. “When shall you leave?”

“Within a few days,” said Ba’al’uz. He smiled, all geniality and affability. “I do so like the idea of a vacation.”

When Ba’al’uz was gone, Axis turned to Isaiah and said, “That man is your brother?”

“He terrifies me more than my other brothers did combined,” said Isaiah. “The trouble is, I cannot know if he will be more trouble to me dead than alive. At the least he is travelling north and I shall be rid of the man for a few months.”

9
THE ROAD EAST, ESCATOR

“Well?” said Maximilian. “Tell me of this strange offering from the Coil

StarWeb flopped down on a stool in Maximilian’s chamber in the wayside inn, trailing her wings to each side. She had arrived less than an hour previously, exhausted from the long, arduous flight from the Outlands, but Maximilian had not even allowed her time to wash and rest.

He wanted to know about Ishbel.

“She trails secrets like some women trail the scent of their perfume,” StarWeb eventually said. “I don’t trust her.”

Maximilian crossed his arms and leaned against a window frame. “You don’t like her,” he said.

“No.”

“Why not? Everyone trails secrets about them. It is a necessary condition of life.”

“I do not think she would be a good wife for you. She is too unquiet.”

“Hmmm. Unquiet is not good. Secrets I can tolerate, but not unquietness.”

“You’re making fun of me.”

Maximilian grinned. “Not at all. So tell me, how went negotiations? Did you broker me a wife?”

“Yes. She agreed too readily.”

“To all the conditions?”

“Not quite. She agreed that the marriage would not be ratified until she is carrying a child. She refused to wait until it was born. She also refused to hand over her dowry until the marriage was ratified. I said that would ensure her your immediate amorous intentions.”

“You must have pushed her hard.”

“I think it is fair to say she loathes me.” StarWeb paused. “I told her I was your lover.”

Maximilian went very still. “That was not wise, StarWeb, and most certainly not fair to Ishbel.”

StarWeb shrugged, moving away from Maximilian. “I was honest with her. I hoped to startle some honesty from her in return, but was disappointed.”

“I am surprised she conceded as much as she did,” Maximilian said. “She must want me very much.” Or perhaps she is under strict instructions.

StarWeb shot him a look. “I did not tell her you were a. good lover.”

Maximilian raised a small smile. “Nonetheless, she wants marriage with me badly, it seems. Perhaps tales of my attractions have spread.”

“It is suspicious, Maxel.”

“Yes. Perhaps.”

StarWeb sighed. Maximilian was in one of his uncommunicative moods.

“What was she like, StarWeb?”

“Lovely, if you like the sharp-edged kind.”

Now Maximilian smiled far more genuinely. “I like you.”

“Ha. Well, she is lovely, but curiously gauche. She is uncomfortable among people, constantly watching others as if she needs prompts on what to say and do. I think she has been hidden among the Coil for too long. God knows what they taught her, but social skills must not have been high on their list. Maximilian, if she is to be your queen, then she shall need some hasty lessons in the arts of conversation and etiquette once she reaches Ruen.”

StarWeb paused, thinking. “She is not comfortable to be around, and I think that is mainly because she is desperately uncomfortable around others.”

“I was not the world’s best conversationalist when first I stepped forth from the Veins, either, StarWeb.”

“You are curiously defensive of a woman you have never met, Maxel.”

Maximilian opened his mouth, then shut it again, and contented himself with a small shrug in answer.

StarWeb rose, weariness evident in her every movement. “I am going to take some rest, Maxel. Perhaps we can meet later?”

“Yes. Perhaps.”

StarWeb looked at Maximilian a long moment, wondering why he’d decided to leave Ruen for Pelemere before hearing from her, then decided she was too tired and Maximilian was too uncommunicative to justify the question.

She turned and left the chamber without another word.

Maximilian did not move for an hour or more, leaning against the window frame, thinking.

He was not foolish enough to think that a bride sent to him from the heart of the Mountain at the Edge of the World from an order devoted to the Great Serpent was mere coincidence, but he had convinced himself that the only reason Light, in his guise as a serpent, had sent her was that he’d decided the Persimius line needed new, stronger blood.

Or that perhaps Maximilian was doing so badly at finding a bride on his own, when an heir was so badly needed, that he’d send one himself.

Elcho Falling was not stirring. Maximilian was sure of it. He’d spent the night before he left Ruen standing in front of the crown, trying to see any chance, any sign of life.

But the crown of Elcho Falling was as it had been for millennia. Absolutely quiet.

Besides, there was no crisis, no desperation, no reason to think Elcho Falling was needed.

He need not worry.

He need not fret about the emptiness of the Twisted Tower. That would be for one of his descendants to worry about perhaps, but not he.

Maximilian took a deep breath, consciously relaxing his shoulders as he exhaled. He had brought the emerald and ruby ring with him. He knew that he and Ishbel would marry. They would live calm, settled lives, gradually building a marriage, and having many children.

All would be well.

Of course it will, said his ring. Naturally. Just like your youth and early manhood was calm and settled and happy.

Irritated, Maximilian pulled the ring from his finger and slipped it into the pocket of his outer robe.

10
HAIREKEEP, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

Ba’al’uz faced a long and arduous journey north into the Northern Kingdoms. The Northern Dependencies of the Tyranny of Isembaard themselves could be difficult at this time of the year, while the FarReach Mountains beyond were not well known for their winter bonhomie. Nonetheless, Ba’al’uz was looking forward to the experience. As much as he loved DarkGlass Mountain and Kanubai’s whisperings, there was also knowledge to be gained and trouble to be caused in the Northern Kingdoms, and Ba’al’uz couldn’t wait for either.

Isaiah and Lister might well think Ba’al’uz was laying the ground for their invasion, but in reality Ba’al’uz meant to prepare the ground for Kanubai.

But all that lay in the delectable future. For now Ba’al’uz was merely glad to remove himself from his brother’s company. Ah, that Isaiah! Strutting about wrapped in his muscles and jewels and black, black braids, thinking himself lord of all, sneering behind Ba’al’uz’ back.

Ba’al’uz could not wait to see Isaiah ground into the soil under Kanubai’s heel.

Isaiah had always been irritating, but Ba’al’uz had discovered new depths of loathing and resentment towards his brother at the arrival of Axis SunSoar.

Axis’ arrival dismayed Ba’al’uz, because, firstly and most importantly, Ba’al’uz had no idea how Isaiah had managed it. Isaiah was a tyrant, and he was a warrior, but surely he had not the skills or powers of a priest.

Yet no one but a priest, or the most remarkable of magicians, could have pulled Axis SunSoar from the Otherworld into this one.

Isaiah should not have been able to do it.

The fact that he had appalled Ba’al’uz, because it meant that Isaiah was harbouring secrets from him, and secretive power.

Axis’ arrival dismayed Ba’al’uz for a second reason — it meant that Isaiah meant to replace Ba’al’uz as his most intimate advisor.

Ba’al’uz loathed his younger, prettier brother, and the only thing that had made their close relationship bearable was the fact that Isaiah needed Ba’al’uz as his advisor and weapon within the volatile politics of Isaiah’s court.

Now Isaiah had Axis and Ba’al’uz’ jealousy and bitterness festered deeper with the passing of each hour.

Now he would do anything to ensure Isaiah’s downfall.

With Kanubai’s aid and the power of DarkGlass Mountain, then who knew? With Isaiah dead, then who knew …?

The tyrant throne would be empty, and who better to sit it, eh, than Kanubai’s best and most loyal friend?

Five days after his conversation with Isaiah and Axis, Ba’al’uz set out for his adventure in the kingdoms beyond the FarReach Mountains. He did not travel alone — Ba’al’uz had no intention of warding off brigands by himself, or of cooking his own lonely roadside meals — but with an escort of eight men, all of whom he had handpicked from the shadowy underworlds of Isembaard’s cities. Ba’al’uz trusted them completely, for he had purchased their souls with bribes and obscene gifts many years ago. They were his factors, his apprentices in the arts and crafts of deception and treachery.

Ba’al’uz would have need of them in his journey. He called them his Eight, and he regarded them with an almost brotherly affection.

From the palace of Aqhat, Ba’al’uz and the eight took a riverboat north and then east along the mighty Lhyl. They stopped each night, either at a riverside village or town, to commandeer the best accommodation and food possible, or to make their own encampment on the fertile floodplains of the river, setting up tents and comfortable beds, and roasting river lizards on spits beside cheerful camp fires. There, at night, Ba’al’uz would entertain the eight with twisted tales that sprang from the whispers in his mind.

Within days the eight were more devoted to Ba’al’uz than ever. Their journey might be dangerous, and deceitful in the extreme, but the rewards at its successful conclusion were … entrancing.

The journey along the Lhyl was deceptively pleasant; Ba’al’uz knew that conditions would deteriorate from the moment they left the river. Normally, if he took the river journey north and then east with Isaiah to Isembaard’s capital, Sakkuth, they would disembark where the Lhyl turned north once more so they could continue the journey to the city on horseback. Ba’al’uz liked Sakkuth. The city was a viciously immoral place and seethed with opportunity for such as Ba’al’uz. Indeed, he had found five of his Eight within its depraved depths. But on this journey Ba’al’uz embarked into the unknown, for he did not leave the river and ride east for Sakkuth at all, but continued on the river, drawing ever closer to the FarReach Mountains.

This far north the river journey was no longer. pleasant In its lower reaches the Lhyl was a broad, serene waterway, but close to its source the river narrowed and became an ever more unruly travelling companion. The travellers swapped their initial broad-beamed riverboat for a narrow and much smaller vessel, which depended on both sail and the raw brute force of rowers to enable them to continue against the current. There was little room, with both travellers and rowers crammed onto benches, and Ba’al’uz had to put up with the indignity of having the stench and grunting of the rowers in his face twelve hours a day.

It was a relief finally to disembark, pay the riverboat captain, and continue their journey by horseback.

After almost three weeks on the river, Ba’al’uz and his companions were now in the very north of the En-Dor Dependency, itself the northernmost of the Tyranny’s dependencies. Directly north rose the foothills of the FarReach Mountains, and beyond them the soaring pink and cream sandstone snow-tipped peaks of the mountains themselves. Ba’al’uz faced many days on horseback across a dry and barren landscape to reach Hairekeep, Isaiah’s northernmost fortress which guarded the entrance to the Salamaan Pass in the FarReach Mountains.

Once they’d left the Lhyl water was hard to come by, and they needed to carefully plot each day’s travel to ensure that they reached the next water source alive. The travel was a strain on both men and horses, and Ba’al’uz was heartily relieved to finally reach the fortress at the dusk of a particularly hot and uncomfortable day.

The fortress of Hairekeep had been built almost three centuries ago by one of the Isembaardian tyrants to control travel through the Salamaan Pass, which connected the lands of the Tyranny to the kingdoms north of the mountains. For travellers — apart from braving the treacherous sea passage between Coroleas and the Tyranny, or sailing down the Infinity Sea to the east (and in both cases there were no large ports on the Tyranny’s coastlines at which trading vessels could dock) — the Salamaan Pass was the only dependable passage between the north of the continent and the south, and the soldiers stationed at Hairekeep ensured that it remained closed to all but the very few who had the necessary permissions.

Ba’al’uz thought the fortress resembled nothing less than a massive stone block rising vertically out of the rock-strewn landscape. For almost twenty paces from ground level there were no windows in those walls, then only slits for a further ten paces, and only after forty paces did windows punctuate the stone to allow light inside. The walls continued vertically for another fifty paces to parapets that commanded magnificent views, not only of the Pass to the north, but of all the surrounding countryside. Despite its forbidding aspect, the fortress was stunning: built out of the sand and rose-coloured stone of the FarReach Mountains themselves, it glowed with an almost unearthly radiance in the twilight, reminding Ba’al’uz of the small glass pyramids Lister had given himself and Isaiah.

The fortress commander was expecting them, and treated them to a good meal and the promise of an evening of good company.

But Ba’al’uz was tired, and impatient to retire to his quarters, so he made his excuses as politely as he might, and made his way to his chambers set high in the fortress.

Here, having fortified himself with a glass of wine, and washed away most of the grime of his journey, Ba’al’uz unwrapped his own rosy glass pyramid that he’d carefully stowed in his pack.

Ba’al’uz sat, fingering it for some time.

He didn’t like Lister. He was a complication in Ba’al’uz’ life. No one had been more surprised than Ba’al’uz at the arrival of Lister’s offer to ally with Isaiah. Ba’al’uz was even more surprised at the gift to himself, from Lister, of one of the rosy pyramids.

Beautiful things they were, and powerful. Ba’al’uz had thought initially they were connected in some manner to DarkGlass Mountain, but use demonstrated that they were different entirely. The power associated with Lister’s pyramids was colder, and far more horrid, than that which DarkGlass Mountain radiated. Ba’al’uz didn’t particularly like using the pyramid, but it was useful, enabling him to discover what Lister was about and also to aid Lister’s and Isaiah’s plans to invade the kingdoms north of the FarReach Mountains.

There was nothing more Ba’al’uz wanted than to see Isaiah out of Isembaard.

So Ba’al’uz pretended to be Lister’s ally, for at the moment it suited Ba’al’uz’ purpose. He wondered, at times, if Lister thought he might use Ba’al’uz against Isaiah, and would smile at the thought of everyone plotting against everyone else.

Life sometimes could be so much fun.

Ba’al’uz took a deep breath, settled himself more comfortably on his bed, and wrapped his right hand about the pyramid.

As with Isaiah’s pyramid, so Ba’al’uz’ glowed first a radiant pink, then red, then flared into sun-bright gold before subduing to a soft yellow.

Ba’al’uz removed his hand and there, waiting for him as arranged, was Lister, the Lord of the Skraelings.

“Where are you?” said Lister.

“Hairekeep. Well on my way to the north.”

“You will need to negotiate the FarReach Mountains yet, my delightfully crazed friend.”

Ba’al’uz grinned. “You know you can depend on me.”

Lister laughed. “Yes, I know that. Now, tell me about Isaiah. He is hiding something. I felt it the last time I spoke with him.”

“He has a new friend. Axis SunSoar. Perhaps you have heard of him?”

There was a brief silence when Ba’al’uz could almost feel Lister’s surprise, but then Lister spoke calmly. “Surely. The Skraelings curse with his name. But I thought Axis was long dead, sunk beneath the waves of the Widowmaker Sea along with his land. The Skraelings drank themselves silly with jubilation the day that happened, I can tell you.”

“Some months ago Isaiah made a weekend foray down to Lake Juit. He took a punt out into the lake, and from its waters dragged forth Axis SunSoar. Remarkable, eh?”

“I imagine that you must have aided him in this,” Lister said.

“I did not. Isaiah managed it all on his own. Do you know how he did it, Lister?”

“Me? How should I know? I cannot begin to imagine what Isaiah could want with the man.”

“Surely you can work that one out, Lister. Isaiah doesn’t trust you, and who better to tell him how to outwit the Lord of the Skraelings than Axis SunSoar.”

Lister managed a small smile. “Then he is sadly mistaken if he thinks Axis can better me. I have far more secrets than the Skraelings to batter at Isaiah should he think to outwit me.”

“Really? What? Do tell. You know you can trust me.”

Lister waved a hand, dismissing Ba’al’uz’ question. “Tell me, beloved friend, how goes DarkGlass Mountain?”

Ba’al’uz frowned. What did Lister know? “What do you mean?” he said.

“Just curious. I find myself fascinated with the mountain. It doesn’t … chatter to you at all?”

“No! Never! Have you lost your senses, Lister?” Ba’al’uz wondered if Kanubai was whispering to Lister as well, and felt a knot of jealousy in his belly.

Again that dismissive wave of the hand from Lister. “So. You travel north to create havoc and mayhem in order to prepare the way for Isaiah and myself?”

“Yes. Much havoc and mayhem.”

“You are a good lad, Ba’al’uz,” said Lister, “and in the new order, once Isaiah and I have succeeded, you can be assured of many and mighty rewards.”

Fool, thought Ba’al’uz. In the new order you can be assured of a swift and bitter end.

“We shall keep in touch,” said Lister, “just to let each other know what is going on, yes?”

“Of course,” said Ba’al’uz.

Lister put his pyramid on the table in the central chamber of his castle of Crowhurst deep in the frozen north and looked at his companion. The man lounged back in his chair, snowy wings spread out to either side of him, one foot resting on the seat of another chair, frost trailing down one bare shoulder and arm to where a hand rested on the tabletop, and regarded Lister with grey eyes alive with amusement.

He was a strange creature, at first sight an Icarii, but at second … something else. His form was not completely solid, but made up rather of shifting shades of grey and white and silver, and small drifts of frost. Even his eyelashes were frosted, and when he lifted a hand from where it had rested on the table it left a patch of icy condensation, which quickly evaporated in the warmth of the chamber. He was of a race called the Lealfast, and they had, for their own reasons, closely allied themselves with the Lord of the Skraelings.

“Did you hear?” Lister said.

“Yes,” said his companion, Eleanon. “DarkGlass Mountain has begun its infernal whispering, as much as Ba’al’uz tries to deny it.”

“And caught Ba’al’uz in its clutches,” said Lister. “The question is, my friend, do we continue to use the madman, or dispose of him here and now?”

Eleanon gave a small shrug. “He is moving away from DarkGlass Mountain. He should still be malleable. Besides, you need him in the Central Kingdoms. Isaiah has to invade, and none of us wants to have an army waiting to meet him at the other end of the Salamaan Pass. Ba’al’uz can create the chaos to prevent that.”

“True,” Lister said, his fingers tapping on the table. “We will need to keep an eye on Ba’al’uz, though. One never knows which way his loyalties will dart next.”

“I loathe it that he has one of the spires,” said Eleanon, speaking of the glass pyramids. “If I’d known you would give one to that vile creature then none of us would have consented to give them to you.”

“He does not know what it is,” said Lister. “He has no means at all to comprehend it. But to the real news. Isaiah has brought Axis SunSoar back from the Otherworld. All on his own.” Lister gave a little laugh. “I’d never thought Isaiah would have the initiative to do something like that. How do you feel about it, Eleanon? The legendary StarMan back from the dead?”

“He means nothing to me.”

Lister gave him a long look. “Of course not. And he is, after all, so far away. But what if, Eleanon — just suppose, if you please — one day Axis thought to command you?”

“I answer only to you, Lister.”

Lister gave a small smile, and then a nod. “And, of course … ?”

“And, of course, to the Lord of Elcho Falling.”

11
PALACE OF AQHAT, TYRANNY OF ISEMBAARD

Axis enjoyed Ba’al’uz’ absence. Without Ba’al’uz’ sly, insidious terror, the entire palace relaxed: servants smiled as they went about their daily duties, the frogs who lived in the reed banks of the River Lhyl sang more melodiously, the sun shone less fiercely and Isaiah spent less time at his official duties and more time at leisure, when Axis could join him.

One of the first things Axis noticed was that, in the weeks following Ba’al’uz’ departure, he was allowed far more liberty to move about the palace and its surrounds. Guards were either unobtrusive or utterly absent. Axis still could not ride out into the countryside by himself, but in all other respects he was given the freedom of Aqhat.

Axis did not abuse the privilege. There was nowhere he wished to “escape” to, anyway. His family, everyone he loved, existed in a world other than this, and Axis did not fret for them. They were safe, and he believed that Azhure would know something of where he was. She would not fret, either, although Axis was sure she missed him.

He most certainly missed her companionship and love. Not desperately, but it was a constant ache in his otherwise peaceful existence at Aqhat. To counter it, Axis spent hours each night writing Azhure long letters about what he’d done during the day, and his observations of Isaiah and of Isembaardian life in general. Axis had never been a great wordsmith. As BattleAxe and then StarMan the pen had always been Axis’ least favourite weapon of choice. Indeed, he’d hardly written anything save the occasional battle order, and he and Azhure had always been able to communicate by more magical means than letters during their occasional absences from each other. But now Axis found a great serenity in writing, and found himself enjoying playing with words, and expanding his literary skills.

Most of all, though, Axis found it beneficial to order his experiences and thoughts. The mere process of revising his day onto paper deepened his experiences: he remembered odd comments or sights that he might otherwise have forgotten, and was able to glean new insights in relating individual experiences to each other.

Once Axis had finished a letter, he carefully folded it, wondering what Azhure might think of what he’d written: how her interpretation of his experiences might differ from his, how she’d laugh over some amusing incident … or his cumbersome prose. The closing of the letter, and his imagining of Azhure’s reaction to its contents, was the sweetest moment of the entire process, and one he looked forward to greatly.

Then, once it was folded and sealed, Axis left the letter on the table in his chamber and went to bed accompanied by the agreeable chorus of the frogs coming in the window.

In the morning, every morning, the previous night’s letter would be gone.

Axis didn’t know where the letters went. Perhaps, by some magic, they were actually transported to Azhure’s hand. More prosaically (and far more likely), Isaiah had a servant creep in during the night and remove the letter to Isaiah’s hand. Axis often had a quiet laugh to himself, imagining Isaiah secreting himself away in a corner somewhere to read what Axis had written, and he wondered if Isaiah kept the letters, or burned each one once he’d read it.

Whatever the reason — Ba’al’uz’ absence, or Axis’ letters — he and Isaiah were becoming closer. They spent many evenings together, and days were spent riding out across the plains to the east. More importantly, Isaiah began to include Axis into his public persona as tyrant.

One day Isaiah asked Axis to attend him in his privy chamber in the third hour after dawn. Axis was curious. Isaiah had kept Axis very much in his personal sphere to this point, but Axis knew that the privy chamber was where Isaiah met with his generals and governors, as well as other high-ranking officials, and where he conducted the day-to-day business of the Tyranny.

From his time spent with Isaiah, as well as occasional discussions with other household officials, Axis had gleaned that Isaiah, as all tyrants before him, governed his vast empire via the twin mechanisms of military generals and civil governors. Each dependency of the Tyranny was administered by a governor who reported directly to Isaiah, either in person three or four times a year, or via one of the governor’s most senior and trusted aides.The entire tyranny was also co-administered by Isaiah’s vast military. There was a similar number of generals to governors, and the generals played as important a role in the daily administration of each dependency as the governors.

Axis thought it an unwieldy system, and one designed to create frustrations between the governors and the generals, but he understood its necessity as far as Isaiah was concerned. In-fighting between governors and generals meant that Isaiah could the more easily maintain control over men otherwise more than likely to challenge him.

The generals were there to keep the governors in order, the governors there to inform on the generals and their troop movements.

From what Isaiah had said to him — or, rather, from what Axis had inferred from what Isaiah had not said — a tyrant spent most of his reign trying to outmanoeuvre his generals. They were the main threat to his throne. Any perceived weakness on the part of the tyrant, and the generals might think themselves strong enough to move against him. Isaiah was already in a vulnerable position, having lost his initial campaign of conquest against the Eastern Independencies, thus his generals watched him with constantly speculative eyes.

Axis could only imagine how desperately Isaiah was needing to succeed in his invasion of the kingdoms north of the FarReach Mountains. Fail there, and he would lose both throne and life.

A soldier escorted him to Isaiah’s chamber. It was set high in the palace, with airy views over the Lhyl and the plains beyond.

The one window that would have given view directly on to DarkGlass Mountain was kept shuttered.

Isaiah was already there, as were his five senior generals, and Isaiah introduced Axis.

“Axis SunSoar,” said Isaiah, “of Tencendor. Its StarMan. I know you have heard his tale.”

Axis repressed a grin as he nodded at each of the five men in turn. That single pronouncement of Isaiah’s had rendered them speechless. Axis had no idea why the generals had been called to a conference with Isaiah, but he wagered they had not thought to meet a redundant legend. As he made eye contact with each one, he tried to evaluate them.

The eldest and most experienced general was a white-haired, but tall and fit man called Ezekiel, who had commanded for Isaiah’s father as well. He had tight, watchful eyes, but Axis thought Ezekiel was possibly too old now to try for power himself. Nonetheless, he might prove an invaluable ally for someone else’s attempt.

Axis thought that attempt was most likely to come from the three generals in mid-age: Morfah, Kezial and Lamiah. They looked tough and experienced, but were young enough to hunger for power.

Axis wondered if they spent more time watching each other than eyeing Isaiah for any possible weakness.

He distrusted the youngest of the generals, Armat, the most. Axis had heard from Isaiah earlier that Armat had only recently joined the ranks of the generals, and had the least experience of the five men. He was also, judging by the calculation in his dark eyes, the most ambitious. That ambition was combined with inexperience meant Armat was potentially the most dangerous. Where the others might hold back, Armat might well leap forward.

It was Armat who stated what every one of the generals was thinking.

“I thought you were dead,” he said.

“As I was,” Axis said, knowing what Isaiah needed him to say, “until Isaiah pulled me out of my afterlife and back into this world. Your tyrant is a powerful man, gentlemen, with many hidden abilities.”

As one, the generals all shifted their gaze to Isaiah, who shrugged as if the matter was not even worth the discussion.

“A small trick,” Isaiah said, “taught to me by an old and wise man, many years ago.”

Now the generals all exchanged glances between themselves, and Axis almost smiled.

Isaiah was a good manipulator.

“Why resurrect a dead man?” said Ezekiel. “One who has lived his life.”

Axis repressed a grin. That last sentence of Ezekiel’s translated directly to “an old and useless legend”.

“I felt myself in need of an impartial advisor,” Isaiah said, moving to a table where several maps and sheaves of documents were spread out. “One who could step into any of your shoes,” his eyes slipped over the five generals, “should I be so unfortunate as to lose any one of you. You are all, naturally, aware of Axis’ stunning prowess as a military commander.”

Stars, thought Axis, now I shall have to look out for the knife in my back, as well!

He happened to catch Ezekiel’s glance, and was surprised to see amusement dancing there. Axis instantly revised his earlier estimation of him, thinking that the man might prove a worthwhile ally one day.

Ezekiel was true to Isaiah, and would support no rebellion against the tyrant.

“To matters at hand,” Isaiah said, waving the generals forward to the table. “We need to discuss our preparations for invasion. Reports?”

For the next half an hour each general gave a terse summary of the current state of readiness. At this point, approximately a year away from actual invasion, the emphasis was on gathering new recruits, training, and on stockpiling equipment and supplies.

Axis was stunned by the size of the army that Isaiah was gathering — it would be at least half a million men, and probably much, much larger.

“I would also like to raise the subject of resettlement at this time,” Isaiah said.

“Resettlement?” Axis said, then apologised for his interruption.

“Whenever a tyrant gathers to himself a new dependency,” Ezekiel said, “he ensures its ‘loyalty’ by moving into its territories large numbers of Isembaardians to settle the new lands.” He looked at Isaiah. “But this is not normally something we plan until our victory is assured.”

“Consider my victory assured,” Isaiah snapped, “and consider it time to begin the planning for resettlement now.” He pulled a map towards him, then tapped the upper corner of it. “The north-west of the Tyranny — the FarReach and En-Dor Dependencies — are poor and their peoples struggling,” he said. “They shall be happy to remove themselves to the gentler and more fertile pastures of the Outlands or the Central Kingdoms above the FarReach Mountains.”

The five generals just stared at him.

“But —” Morfah began.

“You will be responsible for their organisation, Morfah,” said Isaiah, “together with Ezekiel. Unless you both feel yourselves incapable.”

No one said anything, but again there were hurried glances among the generals.

“Or unless you wish me to bring someone else back from death to deal with it for you,” Isaiah said.

“Your order,” said Ezekiel in a smooth, calm voice, “is as always my command. Let us not disturb the dead any more than we need to. Morfah and I will see to it, Excellency. At what point after the invasion do you wish the peoples of En-Dor and the FarReach Dependencies to begin the long trek north into —”

“They shall move with the invasion,” Isaiah said. “Thus they shall need to be informed now that new lands await them and they need to begin making preparations for their journey north.”

“With the invasion?” Lamiah said, adding almost as an afterthought, “Excellency?”

“The Outlands and Central Kingdoms are very far away from the main bulk of the Tyranny,” said Isaiah. “They need to be settled as rapidly as possible. The peoples of the En-Dor and FarReach Dependencies shall follow directly behind the main military convoy.”

“They are not going to be happy to be ordered from their homelands,” Morfah muttered.

“Then your silver tongue shall be needed to persuade them,” Isaiah said. “And persuade them you will, Morfah … Ezekiel.”

They both gave small, stiff bows of acquiescence.

“Together with the army and the settlers,” Axis said once the five generals had left, “how many people will there be in the convoy, Isaiah?”

“A million, maybe a little more.”

Axis could say nothing for a moment. A million people? “The logistics …” he said.

“Are a nightmare,” said Isaiah. “No wonder I needed you back from death to advise and aid me, eh? I cannot be everywhere at once.”

Axis just shook his head. A million people. He couldn’t escape the feeling that Isaiah was heading directly for his second military fiasco.

Stars alone knew what the generals were thinking.

12
WEST OF PELEMERE, CENTRAL KINGDOMS

They had been on the road for weeks, and Maximilian was enjoying the freedom. He appreciated the chance to catch up with old friends. He knew all the kings of the Central Kingdoms, some better than others. Malat, who ruled over Kyros, was a good friend, and his son, Borchard, an even better one. Maximilian had enjoyed his four-day stay in Kyros immensely, although the good-natured pre-nuptial ribbing of Borchard was something he was thankful to escape.

He worried a little about leaving Escator, but that worry was mainly engendered by guilt at enjoying his freedom so greatly. The Privy Council were capable enough of managing the kingdom’s daily affairs, and all would manage nicely without him.

Some of Maximilian’s enjoyment began to pall as they drew closer to Pelemere. Ishbel was near, an equal distance to the east of Pelemere, according to the report of a passing Icarii, as he was to the west and now all of Maximilian’s attention was focused on their meeting.

What would she truly be like, this serpent bride? What was her purpose: to become his wife and bear his children, or to deliver a darker message into his life?

Together with his increasing anxiety about Ishbel, Maximilian was also growing a little irritable with the constant company. Garth and Egalion were his close friends, and he knew the men of the Emerald Guard intimately. While he enjoyed their company, Maximilian was so solitary by nature, a trait exacerbated by his seventeen-year imprisonment, that he found the constant company trying. He found himself dreaming about pushing his horse into a gallop across a vast plain, seeing nothing but the gently rolling grasslands ahead of him, enjoying no company save that of his horse, having to respond to nothing more than the sun on his face and the wind in his hair.

And soon he would have a wife.

Six days out of Pelemere, Maximilian’s rising anxiety and irritation combined to push him to a sudden decision.

“Egalion,” he said, as they dismounted for the evening, “I am going to take a few stores, and a bedding roll, and ride off by myself for a few days.”

“Maximilian —”

“I need to get away, Egalion. Just by myself. Just for a few days. You know how …”

Maximilian’s voice drifted away, and Egalion nodded. Yes, he knew “how”. Maximilian had spent seventeen years chained to a gang of men, and Egalion knew that sometimes it seemed to Maximilian as if those chains had never vanished.

“You need to keep safe,” Egalion said.

“I don’t need a guard.” Maximilian’s voice was sharp.

“I won’t send men to shadow you, Maximilian. But keep safe.”

Maximilian tried a small smile, which didn’t quite manage to warm into life. “What part of the world can be more boring, more safe, than the western plains of Pelemere, my friend?”

Garth had wandered over and had heard enough of the conversation to know what was happening. “Maxel?”

“The hanging wall,” Maximilian said, referring to the ceiling of rock that had hung over him for so much of his life, “is bearing down on me, just a little too much. Let me go, Garth.”

Garth and Egalion exchanged a glance, then Garth nodded. “Keep safe, Maxel.”

“I will rejoin you a day outside of Pelemere.”

Maximilian stepped back, his eyes holding those of Egalion and Garth for just a moment, then he vanished into the gloom of dusk.

Maximilian pushed his horse for five hours into the night, angling a little north-east of the route Egalion, Garth and the Emerald Guard would take, until the animal was almost dropping from weariness. He halted in the shelter of a small grove, made his horse comfortable, then gathered enough dry wood for a fire.

Maximilian felt exhausted himself, but he knew he would not sleep.

There was something he wanted to do.

He just didn’t know what Ishbel represented. Contentment, or the ruination of peace? Maximilian wasn’t even sure that meeting her would solve the puzzle: Ishbel was likely to be an enigma not easily explained within the first five minutes of acquaintance.

Once the fire was blazing, Maximilian set out some food … then ignored it.

He would eat once he was finished.

Pushing the food to one side, he slid the Persimius ring from his left hand, then took the queen’s ring from his cloak pocket. Holding them loosely in his hand for a moment, Maximilian took a deep breath, then set them down, slightly apart from each other, before the fire. The Whispering Rings could do more than just set his day on edge with their irritating chat.

Trying not to think too much about what he was about to do, Maximilian took a long stick, poked it into the fire, then scraped a goodly quantity of the bright coals over the rings.

They hissed, then hissed again, more violently than previously.

“Tell me what you see,” Maximilian whispered.

For a moment nothing happened, then vision consumed his mind.

He strode through a corridor that appeared as if it stretched into eternity. Its walls glowed turquoise and white.

Behind him, he knew the corridor vanished into the darkness that trailed from his shoulders like a cloak.

Maximilian strode ahead, his steps determined.

He walked the hallways of Elcho Falling.

He turned a corner, and halted, transfixed.

A woman sat in a bath, her back to him, her fair hair caught up about the crown of her head with pins, tipping water from an exquisite goblet encrusted with frogs over her shoulders so that it trickled slowly down her spine.

She turned very slightly as she became aware of his presence.

“My love? Is that you?”

He felt overwhelming grief at the sight of her, and could not understand it, for he knew also that he loved her.

He turned, and resumed his walk down the corridor, brushing irritably at a weight about his brow.

After some time (hours, days perhaps), he became aware that something approached from behind him.

He turned, thinking (hoping) it might be the woman.

Instead, it was something so dark, so terrible, that Maximilian screamed, throwing his arms up about his face.

It was not a creature or person at all. Instead, Maximilian found himself staring into the open doorway of the Twisted Tower, and seeing that it was now entirely empty.

Not a single object remained in any of the chambers.

He had lost everything, every memory, every ritual, every piece of magic, that he needed to resurrect Elcho Falling.

He woke, his heart still thudding, just after dawn.

All he could remember for the moment was the horror of staring into the doorway of the Twisted Tower and realising it was now entirely empty.

Terrified, but knowing he had to do it, Maximilian closed his eyes once more, and called forth the Twisted Tower. Trembling, he laid his hand to the handle of the door and opened it.

The first chamber lay before him, groaning with the weight of its objects.

Relieved beyond measure, Maximilian opened his eyes, looking across once more at the fire.

The rings lay in cold, drifting ash.

Maximilian reached over and picked them up, sliding his own ring on his hand, and slipping the queen’s ring away in his cloak.

What was he supposed to make of what he’d dreamed?

He busied himself with some breakfast, discovering himself starving. He set aside the problem of the dream for the moment, instead concentrating on the simple tasks of breaking camp, grooming and saddling his horse, and riding out.

Towards the end of the day, when he was dismounting from the horse in order to make camp, Maximilian realised that there was something about the vision that he had not been conscious of while he’d been experiencing it, but of which he’d become aware, very gradually, in the past few hours.

As he’d been striding the corridors of Elcho Falling, he’d carried the weight of a crown about his head.

Maximilian had his answer.

Elcho Falling was waking.

He sank to his haunches, absolutely appalled, lowering his face into one hand.

Elcho Falling was waking, and he was the one who would need to assume once again the responsibilities of its crown.

For several minutes he crouched in turmoil, unable to order his thoughts. Finally, however, Maximilian managed a deep breath.

What should he do?

Carry on, put one foot in front of the other, until the way ahead became clear.

Taking another deep breath, Maximilian finally rose to his feet. Perhaps this Ishbel Brunelle would have some answers.

13
PELEMERE, CENTRAL KINGDOMS

The train of carts and horses and riders wound its slow, miserable way towards the city of Pelemere. Winter had set in and grey sleet drove down over the train, drenching horses and riders and even those Icarii sheltering inside the canvas-covered carts. Everyone huddled as deep as they could within cloaks, heads down against the driving rain, hands almost too cold and stiff to keep grip on reins. Horses plodded forward, heads down, tails plastered to their hind legs, eyes more than half closed against the rain. Mud splattered up from their hooves, coating their underbellies and the legs of their riders.

No one noticed the rider emerge from the shadows of a small wood and attach himself to the rear of the train. Within heartbeats he looked as though he had been there since the train had set out from Margalit weeks previously, face hidden beneath the hood of a sodden cloak, shoulders hunched against the cold.

A deputation from Pelemere met the train some four miles out of the city. It wasn’t a very large deputation, for this was the train only of the possible wife of the rather poor King of Escator (when Maximilian arrived he would rate a slightly more ostentatious welcome), but it was a welcome, and Baron Lixel, riding at the head of the train, was pleased to see them.

If nothing else the deputation meant food and shelter and a warm bed were nigh.

There were a few brief words of welcome, faces from the Pelemere deputation peering through the gloom to nod at the Lady Ishbel sitting her mare five or six riders back, and then everyone headed as fast as they might for Pelemere. No one wanted to remain outside in this weather.

The city had almost entirely shut down for the night, but there was one gate left open and it was through this small, insignificant side gate that the Lady Ishbel Brunelle and her train were escorted to their residence in the eastern quarter of the city. The house was one which the king, Sirus, had lent to Ishbel for the coming weeks as a gesture of goodwill towards Maximilian. It was not particularly large, but it had a covered courtyard, and Ishbel was never so glad of anything as she was of that sudden relief from the wind and rain when she pulled her mare to a stop with cold-numbed hands.

A servant from the house hurried forward to help her to the ground, then left her to aid someone else.

Ishbel stood, alone in the milling activity of the courtyard, wishing only for someone to escort her to a bath and a bed.

For an instant a gap opened in the crowd of horses and riders, and Ishbel saw a heavily cloaked man watching her from the far edge of the courtyard.

There was a moment when Ishbel felt that their eyes met even though his face was hidden beneath the hood of his cloak, and then a horse moved between them, the moment was broken, and Ishbel turned away.

Please, please, she thought, let someone lead me away from this cold and misery soon.

Then Baron Lixel was at her side, and a man who Lixel introduced as Fleathand, who was the steward of the house, and within moments Fleathand was leading her inside, and Ishbel could finally, gratefully, contemplate some solitude, some warmth, some rest and, perhaps amid all that, a little bit of comfort.

Two hours later, fed and bathed and sitting alone in her chamber, Ishbel finally felt as if she could relax.

But she dared not. Relaxing meant Ishbel might weep with exhaustion and anxiety and overstrung emotion, and she was not quite ready to give in to tears.

She sat in her chair by the shuttered window, clad in her night robe with an outer wrap pulled loosely about her, and tried to relax. The past weeks since leaving the Coil had been taxing; she was constantly on edge, alert for any stray word that might betray her, and the emotional wrench at her parting from everything she loved and trusted grew worse with each passing day. Well might Aziel, the Great Serpent, and the entire firmament for all she cared, insist that she would return one day, but right at this moment Ishbel could not see that eventuality. She felt utterly lost and abandoned and, caught in her loneliness and melancholy, she simply couldn’t believe that she would ever return to her home.

If only she knew why this marriage was so important. If only the Great Serpent would tell her. It was all very well to argue that this marriage was the only thing that would save her homeland from devastation, but Ishbel could not see why. It made no sense to her.

Ishbel thought about how she had been loved and valued and cherished by the Coil.

Then she thought about Maximilian, and about her humiliation at his insistence through Star Web’s demands.

She sighed, the sound ragged and heart-rending. She tipped her head against the headrest of the chair, closing her eyes, and tried to think about something, anything, happier than her current situation.

It was only after long minutes that Ishbel came to realise she was not the only person in the chamber.

She jerked to her feet, staring wildly into the dimness beyond the lamp, and finally saw him.

He was standing in the shadows at the very rear wall of the large chamber, dressed in damp travelling leathers, leaning against the wall, arms folded, as still as the darkness itself, watching her.

Ishbel knew instantly who it was.

14
PELEMERE, CENTRAL KINGDOMS

Maximilian had travelled hard and fast once he’d left his first night’s campsite to reach Pelemere at the same time as Ishbel. He was numb at the realisation that Elcho Falling was probably waking, but as he had no idea what direction he should take, or what he should do, Maximilian simply continued on as he had originally planned.

Meet Ishbel, discover for himself what she was like.

The only thing that Maximilian knew was that, whatever else, Ishbel was somehow integral to Elcho Falling.

No one had spotted him as he slipped in at the back of Ishbel’s train. Maximilian was dressed in clothes similar to those of Ishbel’s escort, plus everyone’s attention was on Pelemere and the necessity to get there as soon as possible, rather than on the actual number of men trailing along behind.

He dismounted in a quiet corner of the yard, looking about for Ishbel.

Maximilian had spotted her almost immediately, and his first thought was that she was the woman he’d seen in his vision.

The second was that he’d never seen anyone more alone than she was at that moment.

She had no retinue. No one. Not a maid, not a valet, not a single companion that she could trust and lean on for support.

Absolutely isolated, and looking lost and afraid because of it.

Maximilian had seen the look on her face, and had recognised it instantly. He’d seen it on face after face of men condemned to the Veins — a hopeless, trapped expression that was impossible to fake.

She must truly be driven, then, to come all this way for a marriage she could not want.

Ishbel eventually vanished behind the milling horses and their dismounted riders, and Maximilian had taken the opportunity to slip into the house, and merge with his old friend, the darkness.

He’d stood there, completely motionless, allowing the dark to curl about and hide him while Ishbel unpacked a single valise, ate a meal brought to her by a servant, and bathed in the hip bath set by the fire. He’d waited and watched, motionless, secreted, as Ishbel had dried herself, pulled on her nightgown and then the robe, summoned the servant to take away the bath, and then sat in the chair by the shuttered window, resting soft and silent and very, very still until the moment she tipped her head back against the chair and sighed with such misery that Maximilian felt his heart turn over.

It was the ultimate betrayal, this silent watching of a woman’s most intimate moments, but Maximilian had needed to do it. He hadn’t hoped to discover any of the secrets StarWeb had said Ishbel trailed behind her, nor had he hoped to discover the true reasons behind her journey to this point (whatever Ishbel thought they might be). What he’d wanted to do was discover, as best he might, the real Ishbel, the woman behind whatever intrigue she carried with her, and this was, he thought, one of the few times he would be able to observe her completely naked, physically, emotionally and spiritually.

What he had discovered was that, no matter the exterior she showed to the world, Ishbel was very vulnerable, and very sad.

He had discovered that she didn’t have the mark of the Coil anywhere on her body.

And Maximilian had discovered that he wanted this woman for his wife.

It was not so much her physical beauty — Ishbel was a lovely woman with her mass of dark blonde hair, her soft hazel eyes, translucent skin and strong lithe body — but her quietness of movement that attracted Maximilian. StarWeb had said that Ishbel was very unquiet, but her movements about the room had been so soft, so simple, so contained, that Maximilian thought that she would be a very peaceful woman to have at his side.

If he could ever trust her, and if she could ever forgive him this inexcusable intrusion into her privacy.

He moved, breathed just a little more heavily, disturbed the shadows clinging to him, and Ishbel instantly realised his presence.

She leapt to her feet, staring at him, and Maximilian very slowly unfolded his arms, straightened up from the wall, and stepped forward.

“Ishbel —”

“You are Maximilian.”

He came to a halt some three or four paces from her and gave a slow nod, his eyes not leaving hers. She was angry and hurt and frightened, and he was surprised by none of those. He was also intrigued: she had not taken a step back at his approach, and, even with her knowing who he was, he would have expected that.

“How long have you been standing there?”

“Since you entered,” Maximilian said.

She drew in a long breath, her eyes huge, her face paling, then suddenly flaring in colour.

“Yes,” Maximilian said, “you may think all those things of me, and more. My behaviour has been inexcusable, but necessary.”

“Why?” The word was shot at him, almost hissed.

“Because I needed to see you for who you are, without any artifice.”

“And for that you used all the artifice you could muster.”

He tilted his head, conceding the point, his eyes still locked onto hers.

“I am sorry you are so very alone here,” he said, and that sympathy accomplished what his previous words had not.

Her eyes flooded with tears, and her shoulders sagged. She half turned away from him, a hand over her mouth.

“Can we talk?” Maximilian said. He had taken a step closer to her.

“No. Go away.”

“It is better we talk now, than be forced to talk before our assembled retinues at our ‘official’ meeting at my ‘official arrival’ in three days’ time. Far better we talk now, Ishbel.” He took another step closer.

“Go away!”

“Ishbel …” Now Maximilian was very close, and she turned back, ready to throw off his hand.

But he was standing again as he had been when first she’d seen him, arms folded, leaning this time against the high post at the end of the bed.

“Why do you want to marry me?” he said.

“I don’t.” Ishbel was too tired, and still too shocked by Maximilian’s appearance, to dissemble.

“Then why are you here?”

“Because the Coil told me to come. They were the ones who insisted I marry you.”

“Why?”

A small hesitation. “I don’t know.” And that was only a small white lie, Ishbel thought. She had no idea at all why the Great Serpent thought marriage to this man would make a difference.

“They are prepared to offer me you and all your riches … just because …”

“I have never questioned the way of the Coil,” Ishbel said, relieved that a measure of dignity had crept back into her voice.

He smiled, and Ishbel was taken aback by the difference it made to his face. He had striking looks with his aquiline nose and deep blue eyes, but was somewhat forbidding (not even considering the circumstances of his arrival into her room). But his smile lit up his face and made his eyes dance with mischievousness.

“You were honest,” he said. “Thank you. But you do realise,” he went on, “that once married to you, I will owe the Coil no debt? They have offered you, but I shall not be tied to them through that offering.”

“They would not expect it.”

“I am marrying you, not the Coil.”

“I did not realise we had settled definitely on the marriage.”

He smiled again, that slow, mischievous smile.

“And Star Web?” Ishbel said, desperate to say something, anything.

He sobered immediately. “I apologise for StarWeb. She took matters too far. She —”

“She took matters as far as you gave her licence.”

“I wanted to push you. To see if —”

“You have almost pushed me too far,” Ishbel said, very softly.

“Then take my hand,” he said, holding out his left hand, “and let me pull you back from the brink.”

She waited a full five heartbeats, wishing she had the strength and the resources to clasp her hands behind her back and step away from him. Then, with a soft sigh of resignation, Ishbel offered up her hand.

Maximilian clasped it in his, then jerked a little, his eyes widening.

In that instant, as his flesh touched hers, Maximilian’s entire world tipped on its axis. Gods! He had expected everything but this!

Ishbel might bear the name Brunelle, but she carried within her the ancient bloodlines of Persimius.

Maybe she did carry with her the ancient, lost memories!

While Maximilian’s mind and heart were in turmoil, his calm exterior returned virtually instantaneously.

“I seem to have arrived most unexpectedly,” he said, “and do not have a place for the night. May I sleep in your bed, my Lady Ishbel Brunelle?”

15
PELEMERE, CENTRAL KINGDOMS

Ishbel allowed him to do what he wanted, for two reasons. Firstly, the Great Serpent had told her to allow nothing to stand in the way of this marriage, and Ishbel supposed that refusing Maximilian here might anger him enough to withdraw his offer. But the principal reason Ishbel allowed Maximilian to lead her slowly, gently, towards the bed was that he overwhelmed her utterly. She had expected to find a man who was … tedious. Someone she might regard with contempt. Nothing she’d heard had prepared her for the sheer presence and, she had to admit it, charm, of the man. She was tired and emotionally overwrought, but she could use neither of these states as an excuse.

Ishbel was simply incapable of refusing him.

Besides, when he’d touched her, something had happened. He had been shocked for a moment, and she … well, there had been something … enough, when combined with everything else, to strip Ishbel of all resistance.

He led her to the bed, took her face in gentle hands, and kissed her.

Ishbel struggled momentarily, then relaxed, again succumbing to whatever presence it was that Maximilian commanded. She allowed him to unclothe her (he had already witnessed her naked, what did it matter now?), and to run his hands and mouth over her body, and to bear her down to the bed and then, eventually, to mount and enter her.

It was not as abhorrent as she had expected. It was easier to relax and to allow his warmth and care to comfort her than it was to resist, or fear.

He was, she supposed, a good lover. She understood that he took great care with her, was infinitely gentle, and suffused their bedding with a self-deprecating humour that had her, unbelievably, smiling with genuine humour on one or two occasions.

There was some pain, a little discomfort, but mostly … an extraordinary sense of sinking into someone else’s care. Ishbel had expected to feel used, or violated, but Maximilian made her feel none of these things.

Everything about him was not what she had expected.

They lay in the dim light in silence for some time, then Maximilian propped himself on an elbow.

“You are such a mystery,” he said. “Not what I expected.”

“Neither are you what I expected,” she said, a hint of dryness in her voice.

“Tell me about where you come from. Tell me about the Coil.”

She tensed. “They took me in and cared for me when no one else would. I owe them everything.”

“Save your loyalty, for that you shall shortly owe me.”

She turned her head and looked at him. “Of course.”

“Of course,” he echoed. “Ishbel, I need to know that when you become my wife, then your loyalty will be mine, not left lingering with a … a …”

“With what? A bunch of murderous soothsayers?”

“They do not provide the best family for any bride, Ishbel. Why did they send you to me?”

“I don’t know.”

Maximilian wondered if she was lying. He didn’t know her well enough to tell. Did she understand the ancient mysteries, or had she no knowledge at all? She sounded genuine, but …

“All your estates and inheritances,” he said, “to be given to me, along with yourself. Why? Surely there were greater and better alliances the Coil —”

“All I know is that Aziel, the archpriest, told me that the Great Serpent instructed him that we would make a good marriage, and that it would be good for the land.”

“Ah …” For a moment Maximilian tried to believe that the only reason Light had sent Ishbel to him was to strengthen the Persimius line. It was a seductive and reassuring idea — that was the only reason Ishbel had come to him — but Maximilian knew he could not ignore the vision he’d had on the way to Pelemere. “What about your family, Ishbel? The Brunelle family. Is Brunelle an Outlander name? Or an émigré from … somewhere else?”

“Outlander.” Her voice and body were more relaxed now. “We have always been Outlanders.”

“Hmmm. The family had no contact with Escator?”

“I was eight when I lost my family, Maximilian. I have no idea who my father corresponded with.”

“I’m sorry. I am asking too many questions, but I want to understand you so much.” He paused, one hand gently stroking her shoulder and upper arm. “Tell me about when you lost your family. When the plague struck and—”

“I’d rather not.” Ishbel paused. “Not now. Sometime else perhaps.”

“Of course. We have, after all, a lifetime.”

“And will you tell me about your time in the Veins, if I ask?”

“Yes, I will do that.” Ishbel was very touchy, which Maximilian could understand given the circumstances of the night, and he also understood that further questions likely would not be a good idea, but he wanted desperately to know how much she understood about her bloodlines. Thus far she’d given no indication she understood anything, either about her Persimius heritage, or about Elcho Falling.

“When I first received the offer of your hand from the Coil,” Maximilian said, “I looked at a map of the Outlands to see where Serpent’s Nest was. A mountain home, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Right on the edge of the world,” Maximilian said softly, watching Ishbel carefully.

“Serpent’s Nest is on the east coastline of the Outlands,” she said. “It is …”

“Yes?”

She shrugged. “I was going to say that it is my home.”

“Was.”

She did not reply.

“A mountain is a strange place for a home.”

She sighed. “Maximilian …”

“I know, I’m sorry.” He leaned over, and kissed her softly. She did not return it, and he knew he had stayed long enough. Besides, it would be dawn soon, and he had a long ride ahead of him to rejoin Egalion and Garth and the Emerald Guard — all of whom were no doubt fretting about his continued absence.

“I have to go,” he said. “I should be out of the house by dawn.”

“You need to leave while the darkness still affords you cover,” Ishbel said.

He hesitated a little before replying. “Yes. I shall tell you about that one day, if you want.”

She nodded, not really knowing what to say, only wishing that having said he would go, he actually would. The thought of solitude brought her a rush of relief. Perhaps, then, she could finally relax and snatch a few brief hours of sleep.

As if in answer to her prayers Maximilian rolled away from her and rose from the bed. He hunted about in the dark for his clothes, dressed, then sat down on her side of the bed as he pulled on his boots.

Having buckled both boots, he sat still, looking at her. “I had no idea I would want you so much,” he said. “I distrusted you, and —”

“Still do,” Ishbel said.

“Aye, yes, still do, although I distrust the motives of the Coil more. I shall be a watchful husband, Ishbel.”

“We have not yet agreed on marriage, Maximilian.”

He laughed, then leaned down and kissed her. “You must marry me, Ishbel. You have completely ruined my reputation with your seductions, and only marriage will save my name.”

She smiled, reluctantly, but with genuine humour.

Maximilian rose. “The King of Escator shall arrive with his full retinue in three days, Ishbel. He shall be gladder to see you than he had expected.”

He took several steps to the door, hesitated, then strode back to the bed and kissed Ishbel one more time, hard. “Three days, Ishbel,” he whispered, then left her.

Maximilian cloaked himself once more in the darkness, walking through the house undiscovered. Once in the stable, he located his horse’s stall, then stood for a long moment, his forehead resting gently against the horse’s neck, thinking.

Elcho Falling was more likely than not about to stir, and Maximilian needed to marry this woman, and return to Escator. There to … well, there to see what happened next. If Elcho Falling was about to stir, then Maximilian would need to be home in Escator.

Ishbel. Gods knows how they were blood-connected, or how many generations ago the Persimius family had splintered, but connected they most certainly were. Maximilian had not planned to seduce her. But having once taken her hand, he was unable to resist her. Partly this was their shared Persimius blood, but mostly it was the woman herself.

She was astounding. Maximilian replayed every moment of their lovemaking in his mind, remembering how she had felt beneath his hands and body, her scent and her taste. If, one day, she might respond to him with genuine passion … oh, gods … what a day that would be.

His ring chattered softly, asking if they were leaving soon. It had been quiet all night, as Maximilian had instructed it when they’d entered the house, and now it was restless.

“Yes,” whispered Maximilian. “Yes, we are leaving now.”

After Maximilian had left, Ishbel slept.

She dreamed.

She walked through a hall that glittered with glass and colour that spiralled in strange corkscrews far overhead.

She dreamed people filled this hall, tens of thousands of them, all standing back to allow her passage, all watching her.

She dreamed that she was filled with loss and sorrow, and in her dream she sobbed, because she knew what that sorrow portended.

In her hands she carried a goblet. It was heavy, made of exquisitely carved glass, with leaping frogs all about its outer rim.

It was a gift for the man who stood, his back to her, at the far end of the hall.

He was a dark man, and blackness seethed about him.

More than anything Ishbel wanted to turn and run, but her feet would not follow her command. Instead they carried her inexorably forward, until she stood before the man, and then her traitor legs bent beneath her, and she abased herself, and held out the Goblet of the Frogs to the Lord of Elcho Falling.

He turned his head a little, looking at her over his shoulder, and darkness and despair engulfed Ishbel’s life.

PART THREE

1
PELEMERE, CENTRAL KINGDOMS

Ishbel stood in the covered courtyard, listening to the approach of Maximilian Persimius, King of Escator. Maximilian had arrived in Pelemere the previous afternoon, received by King Sirus of Pelemere in two formal ceremonies: the first at the city gates, the second at the palace itself. Maximilian had then stayed at Sirus’ palace overnight, being royally dined and entertained.

To none of these events had Ishbel been invited. She was still merely the Lady Ishbel Brunelle, prospective wife of the King of Escator, and until Maximilian formally accepted her as his bride, Ishbel was excluded from the royal receptions and entertainments. Today, however, having partaken of Sirus’ hospitality and having also, presumably, slept the night away in a luxurious apartment within the king’s palace, Maximilian was paying a visit to the Lady Ishbel’s house in order to meet her and, should that meeting prove satisfactory, perhaps open more personal negotiations for a marriage.

What a farce all this is, thought Ishbel, listening to the sound of horses’ hooves and jingling bits getting closer. Four nights ago he spent the night in my bed, and here we must act as if we’ve never seen each other.

Ishbel had expected Maximilian might appear in her bedchamber last night as well. She’d spent virtually the entire night awake, watching every shadow, listening, waiting. But Maximilian had not appeared, and Ishbel supposed Sirus had provided more amusing entertainments for Maximilian.

Perhaps StarWeb was with him.

Ishbel was far more nervous than she liked. She didn’t know how she would feel when she saw Maximilian again, and she had a tiny, niggling, horrible fear that when Maximilian rode into the courtyard it wouldn’t be the same man she’d slept with a few nights ago.

Twisted in with all her anxiety and nervousness was a horrible sense of resentment; had Maximilian spent last night with StarWeb? Was she going to have to share her husband with the birdwoman?

There were shouts from the guards at the gate now, and Ishbel barely had time to draw in a hasty, shaking breath before Maximilian rode into the courtyard at the head of a retinue some twenty strong. Dressed in a wine-coloured velvet jacket quilted with seed pearls over dark leather breeches, he looked very different from the night he’d appeared in Ishbel’s chamber. Very regal and, impossibly, even more certain of himself.

Ishbel’s first emotion was one of profound relief — this was the man who had come to her bedchamber.

Her second emotion was one of overwhelming confusion at just how glad she was to see him again, and how desperately she hoped StarWeb wasn’t in Pelemere.

Strangely, although Ishbel continued to resent everything to do with this marriage, as well as the marriage itself, Maximilian was the only thing she had resembling a friend within eight weeks’ travel.

Maximilian pulled his horse to a halt, lifted his right leg over the horse’s wither, and slid to the ground.

His eyes never left Ishbel the entire time.

She was very nervous. She held herself extremely still, watching him with apparent calmness, but he could see her nerves in the spots of colour in her cheeks, in her overbright eyes, in her rigidity of bearing and in the manner in which she pressed the palms of her hands too close to her silken skirts.

Behind him the rest of his entourage drew their horses to a halt. They would not dismount, not even move, until Maximilian had greeted Ishbel.

He walked up to her, very deliberately, slowly pulling the leather gloves from his hands. The wind whipped his dark hair into his eyes, but he didn’t blink, or make any move to brush it away.

“My Lady Brunelle,” he said, coming to a halt before Ishbel. “How pleasant to finally meet you. I trust your journey to this point has been comfortable?”

She wanted to shout at him, he could see it in her face, and his eyes crinkled in amusement. Taking a final step forward he took her right hand and raised it to his lips. “Thank the gods I picked the right bedchamber four nights ago,” he murmured. “All this time I’ve been terrified I might have seduced the laundress instead.”

She relaxed. Her shoulders lost their tension, and she let out her breath on a shaky soft sigh.

“Are you all right, Ishbel?” he asked, serious now.

“Yes,” she said, having pushed her dream of the Lord of Elcho Falling to the very back of her mind. “Yes, I am.”

Baron Lixel now stepped up, greeted Maximilian warmly, and made the formal introductions. Then Maximilian turned and waved forward two members of his entourage: a young man who Ishbel thought was a year or so younger than herself, and an older man who was the captain of Maximilian’s escort and who wore an emerald uniform jacket with a Manteceros outlined in brilliant blue on its front.

“Commander Egalion,” Maxel said, introducing the older man first. “He captains my Emerald Guard, and is one of my closest friends.”

Ishbel held out her hand for Egalion to take. “Commander,” she murmured politely.

“And this is Garth Baxtor,” Maximilian continued as Egalion stepped back to make way for the younger man. “Garth is court physician, another close companion.”

Baxtor had an open, attractive face, very non-threatening, and Ishbel liked him immediately. She smiled as she held out her hand for Garth.

“Physician Baxtor,” she said as his fingers closed about hers.

Unlike Egalion, Garth did not immediately let go of Ishbel’s hand. A strange, but not unpleasing, warm sensation passed through Ishbel’s fingers and suddenly all the friendliness in Garth’s eyes vanished.

“My Lady Brunelle,” he said, dropping her hand before stepping back so abruptly it was almost rude.

Maximilian frowned, but then Lixel was ushering them all inside, and Maximilian contented himself with taking Ishbel’s arm and asking her about her journey to Pelemere as they entered the house.

All the light had gone from Garth’s day. All he wanted now was to speak with Maximilian urgently, but Maximilian was not leaving Ishbel’s side. They had gone from the courtyard into the main reception room of the house where, to Garth’s surprise (and Lixel’s, and just about everyone else’s except, he noted, Ishbel’s), Maximilian pronounced an intention to get down to the nitty-gritty of the final details of the marriage contract between himself and the Lady Ishbel immediately.

“You have no objections, my lady?” Maximilian said to Ishbel.

She hesitated very slightly, then shook her head. “None, my lord.”

“Well then, Lixel,” Maximilian said, “to work! Do you have the necessary documents to hand?”

Still looking taken aback, Lixel showed Maximilian and Ishbel into a secondary chamber, where Maximilian closed the doors firmly on the entourage.

Garth and Egalion exchanged a look. “What was that all about?” Egalion said.

“I have no idea.” Garth stared at the closed door, almost too shocked to be capable of coherent thought. For weeks and weeks Maximilian had been extremely wary. Over the past day or so, however, since his return from his time spent alone, his mood had changed, and he’d appeared far more confident and relaxed about the proposed marriage. Even so, Garth had hardly expected him to leap off his horse, take the lady’s hand, and immediately drag her and Lixel into final conference about the matter.

“What do you think of her?” Egalion said. “I’d half anticipated a dumpy pockmarked crone … but …” He gave a soft laugh. “No wonder Maxel has hurried her off to sign what papers he must.”

“I hope he doesn’t sign them too fast,” Garth murmured. “I need to speak to him. Badly.”

Egalion looked at him, frowning. “What did you feel from her, my friend?”

As Maximilian and Ishbel sat down at the table, Lixel retrieved the marriage contracts from a satchel. He couldn’t believe Maximilian was moving this precipitously. By gods, there hadn’t even been the time for a convivial glass of wine first, let alone any time put aside for Maximilian and Ishbel to see if they liked each other or not.

As Lixel sat down at the table, sliding the contract towards Maximilian, he rather hoped that Maximilian had been so smitten by Ishbel at first sight that the king would grant Lixel immediate permission to return to Escator.

“I believe you have hashed out the contract with StarWeb, Ishbel?” Maximilian said.

“Yes,” said Ishbel, and Lixel was not surprised to see a hardening of her expression and a tightening of her shoulders at the mention of StarWeb.

Maximilian nodded, running his eye over the document. “Are you prepared to sign?” He looked up at Ishbel then, and something passed between them that Lixel could not identify.

“If you are agreeable,” she said, softly.

“I am agreeable, Ishbel,’ Maximilian said. “Shall we make a marriage, then?”

There was a long pause, then Ishbel dipped her head. “Yes.”

Lixel’s mouth dropped open. Never had he witnessed such an unemotional, almost clinical assenting to a marriage. Why not spend time together, getting to know each other? Wasn’t that what this entire exercise of meeting in Pelemere had been about?

“Lixel,” said Maximilian, “can you fetch Garth and Egalion in to witness?”

Lixel closed his mouth, nodded, and did as he was told.

Garth had not answered Egalion’s question truthfully. He couldn’t. Not before he’d spoken to Maximilian. He’d fudged an answer, and was grasping about for something to say to distract Egalion when the door to the secondary chamber opened, Lixel appeared, and requested Garth and Egalion enter.

Garth could not believe what was happening. Maximilian was about to sign the contract within a few minutes of meeting the woman for the first time. What in the name of all gods was he doing?

Maximilian was running through the clauses, checking them, as Garth and Egalion entered.

“This one …” he said, tapping the document and looking between Ishbel and Lixel. “How did this come to be here?”

“StarWeb insisted on it,” said Ishbel, her tone strained. “She said you would not ratify the marriage, declare it valid, until I was … um …” She glanced up at Garth and Egalion, clearly embarrassed.

As she has every reason to be, thought Garth, getting angrier by the moment.

“Until you were pregnant and in Ruen,” said Maximilian. “Well, I think we can dispense with that, yes?” and with a single stroke of the pen he drew a thick black line through the clause. “Now, Ishbel, if you would sign here, if you please —”

“No!” Garth broke in. “No. Maxel, I beg you, a moment of your time, please.”

Maximilian looked at him. “Explain yourself, Garth.”

“Maxel,” Garth said, “a moment of your time, I beg you. If you care or trust me at all, then grant me this moment. Please.”

Maximilian looked at Ishbel. “I apologise most sincerely for this unwelcome intrusion,” he said, then rose, walked over to Garth, took his elbow in an ungentle hand and ushered him out of the room.

“Garth!” Maximilian said. “What was the meaning of that?”

“Maxel, Ishbel is pregnant.”

Maximilian went utterly still. “What?”

“Not much, perhaps a week … she has only just conceived. But she is pregnant. You know I can feel this.”

Maximilian nodded. Garth had the Touch; determining an early pregnancy was but a trivial task for him. “And so,” he said, “your point is …”

Garth was growing more astounded by the moment. Maximilian’s anger had faded and he was now regarding Garth with an amused air.

“The Lady Ishbel is not as virtuous as you had hoped, Maxel,” Garth said, wondering if he needed to put this into one-syllable words for Maximilian to comprehend. “Dear gods, my friend, you would take a woman to wife when she’s carrying someone else’s bastard?”

Maximilian grinned, the expression so surprising that Garth felt his mouth drop open. “It’s my child, Garth.”

Garth was now so shocked he could not speak.

“Where did you think I went,” Maximilian said, “when I rode ahead of the main retinue and left you and Egalion to your own company for well over a week?”

Garth gazed at him, struggling to come to terms with what Maximilian had done. “You said … the forest …”

“Yes, yes,” Maximilian said, waving a hand dismissively. Then he smiled, and actually winked. “Changed my mind. Thought I’d see if I couldn’t make Ishbel’s acquaintance under less strained circumstances than a formal meeting.”

“Well, you surely made it very well,” Garth muttered.

Maximilian laughed, and clapped Garth on the shoulder. “She is well with the child?”

“Yes. Yes, she is well. There is no problem that I could feel.”

“Good. Then perhaps you can come back in and apologise to my future wife for your behaviour.”

Garth wasn’t going to allow Maximilian to get away with this entirely. “And perhaps, later, when your future wife is safely out of hearing range, you can apologise to Egalion and myself for your deception.”

“A bargain,” said Maximilian, and led the way back into the room.

Ishbel was growing more certain that her entire time as Maximilian’s wife would be spent in this terrible state of feeling completely overwhelmed. Maximilian had arrived, greeted her, swept her inside, asked for the marriage contract, scratched out the clause StarWeb had fought so hard for, and all within a relatively few short minutes. Ishbel doubted that enough time had yet elapsed from his arrival for his entire entourage to have completely dismounted.

Adding to this sense of feeling completely overwhelmed by Maximilian was a stab of hurt that Garth Baxtor had so obviously taken an immediate and deep dislike to her. Ishbel had liked Garth — he had such an open, friendly attractive face which invited instant trust — but then he’d taken her hand and within a heartbeat his face had closed over and he had turned his back to her.

And now he’d demanded that Maximilian talk with him privately.

What had Garth discovered? Ishbel’s heart was beating fast, pounding in her chest, and her hands were damp where she clutched them in her lap. Garth had felt something when he’d touched her … Great Serpent, please let it be that he hadn’t felt —

Maximilian and Garth re-entered the room, and Ishbel jumped slightly in sheer nervousness.

Maximilian looked at her with amusement — and something else that she couldn’t quite fathom — although at least the amusement reassured Ishbel somewhat, but Garth’s change in attitude was nothing short of extraordinary.

“My Lady Ishbel,” he said, dropping to one knee beside her chair, his face alive once more with friendliness, “I must beg your pardon for my behaviour earlier. Sometimes I can be a clump-headed fool, and too often I underestimate Maxel’s courage and daring. Will you forgive my former behaviour? I promise herewith that in future I shall ask before judging.”

Ishbel had no idea at all what was going on about her. She glanced again at Maximilian, more for reassurance than anything else, then, at his slight nod, gave Garth a small and somewhat uncertain smile.

“Of course,” she said.

Garth’s smiled broadened slightly, then he rose. “I beg everyone’s forgiveness for my rudeness.” He winked at Egalion, who was looking as confused as Ishbel felt, then stepped back a little from the table.

“‘Maxel’?” Ishbel said to Maximilian, more to fill in the silence than out of any real curiosity.

“Maximilian is such a mouthful,” he said. “Those closest to me always call me Maxel, and I hope you will, too.”

Ishbel gave another uncertain smile, unable to stop herself imagining StarWeb calling out the name in the grip of passion, then cursing herself yet again for being weak enough to allow StarWeb to rattle her. By the Great Serpent, Ishbel thought, what has happened to me? l am a stronger person than this.

“Now.” Maximilian sat down and spun the marriage contract towards him. He picked up a pen. “All we need decide on is a date for the marriage. I don’t think we need wait, Ishbel. Shall the day after tomorrow be suitable?”

“I do not see the need to rush,” Ishbel said. “I had thought this period in Pelemere was to be spent getting to know each other. I —”

“Ishbel,” Maximilian said quietly.

Ishbel made the mistake of looking at him, and seeing the expression in his eyes. Seeing the memory in his eyes. Why do 1 bother with this? she wondered. The Great Serpent wants me to marry him, after all.

“The day after tomorrow,” she agreed, and Maximilian smiled, then signed the document. He pushed the contract and pen over to Ishbel and, after the barest of hesitations, she signed as well, wishing she had the courage to list her true titles under her name.

2
PELEMERE, CENTRAL KINGDOMS

Ishbel’s status changed the instant she signed the marriage contract. Suddenly no longer the Lady Ishbel Brunelle, orphan of the Outlands and potential wife to King Maximilian of Escator, now she was the affianced wife of Escator, due all the respect and honour that position commanded.

As soon as Ishbel laid down the pen, Maximilian was standing, requesting Egalion to send a member of the Emerald Guard back to Sirus’ palace and inform him of the upcoming marriage. King Sirus, who had happily ignored Ishbel to this point, would now allocate Ishbel quarters within the palace for her use over the next two days, and would prepare to regally welcome her as if she was only newly arrived into Pelemere.

“You don’t have much to pack, do you?” Maximilian asked Ishbel. “Perhaps we can depart for the palace before noon and have you settle in.”

“I can be ready soon,” said Ishbel, turning for the door.

“Ishbel.”

She turned back, looking at Maximilian.

“Sirus has no idea of your association with the Coil,” he said. “No one outside this room does. I would prefer it stay that way. You are the Lady Ishbel Brunelle of Margalit. Not Ishbel of the Coil. Your association with them ends as of this moment.”

Garth Baxtor, watching, saw Ishbel’s face mottle with emotion, and he had his first intimation of how much loyalty she owed the Coil. He sympathised with that — they had, after all, taken her in when no one else would — but he also thought she must surely understand Maximilian’s request. A Queen of Escator — a queen of anywhere — simply could not have any ties at all with something as controversial and abhorrent as the Coil.

“You know how much I owe the —” Ishbel began.

“I know it,” said Maximilian, “but you must also know full well how reviled the Coil are beyond its front gates. For good reason. You are now my affianced wife, and soon to be queen. Your association with the Coil ends here and now.”

Garth looked between them, intrigued by this clash of wills.

Ishbel was by now very pale, and holding herself absolutely rigid. Garth thought she was very close to losing her composure completely. He wondered if this was why Maximilian had chosen this very public time to have this conversation with Ishbel — she would likely be more circumspect in public than she would in private.

“Turn your eyes forward, Ishbel,” Maximilian said very quietly, holding her furious gaze. “Look forward now to your new life. Forget the Coil. You’ll never go back.”

At that moment Garth saw something flare deep in Ishbel’s eyes. She struggled with herself, managed to control her temper with a supreme effort, gave a jerk of her head, and left the room.

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