The Twisted Citadel

by Sara Douglass

  What did Maximilian want from her? She wasn't sure, and that unsettled Ishbel.

  She wasn't sure what she wanted, either, and that unsettled her even further.

  It might have been better, she thought, easier, had they remained utterly estranged.

  Ishbel went to Maximilian's command tent on the fourth night of their march. She had waited until Madarin told her he was alone, and then gathered her courage and her cloak and set off, winding her way through the horse lines and rows of tents until she reached Maximilian's tent.

  Serge and Doyle were standing outside, talking, and both nodded her through when Ishbel raised her eyebrows at them.

  "Ishbel." Maximilian had been sitting at a side table, reading some reports, and he rose as she walked into the tent.

  "I owe you these." Ishbel placed on the table two tiny clover flowers. "It was all I could find. I am sorry."

  Maximilian picked them up, held them a moment, then slid them into the inside upper pocket of his jacket. "You did not stay long, either time."

  "You could feel me inside the Twisted Tower? I have no secrets from you."

  Maximilian gave a small smile. "You still have a few. How far did you go inside the tower?"

  "No higher than the third chamber. I still feel as if I am intruding."

  "You are not intruding. How many objects did you pick up?"

  "Only a few each time."

  "And their memories?"

  "One or two I found easy to retrieve, others more difficult."

  "Maybe you need me with you."

  "Maybe."

  "Ishbel, sit down, there are a couple of things I need to talk about with you."

  He nodded at two chairs by the brazier, and they sat down. Doyle entered, bearing a tray with two steaming mugs on it.

  "My lady," Doyle said, presenting the tray to Ishbel, "my lord usually has some hot tea at this time of the evening, and I thought that you, too, might like a mug."

  Ishbel thanked him and took a mug, and they both waited silently until Doyle left the tent.

  "The army is splintering," Maximilian said, smiling a little as he looked into his steaming mug. "It will not hold together."

  "You do not sound very worried."

  He gave a little laugh. "Oh, I worry. I worry if I am doing the right thing. I worry that I might create a nightmare that will turn and bite me. I worry..."

  "Maxel?"

  Maximilian sighed. "Ravenna is aiding the generals with her magics. She denies it, but I am almost certain."

  Ishbel didn't know what to say. This conversation had very suddenly skidded onto thin ice, and she was terrified that she'd fall through as soon as she opened her mouth.

  "Ravenna has been a great mistake on my part," Maximilian said.

  Ishbel carefully slid her mug of tea onto the table. She didn't trust herself to hold it anymore.

  The silence strung out, and eventually Ishbel had to speak. "What do you want me to say, Maxel?"

  He made a helpless gesture with a hand. "I just wanted to tell you."

  "Why?"

  Maximilian avoided the question. "Do you see Ravenna about the camp?"

  "From time to time. She and her mother travel much further back in the column. You can understand, perhaps, that I would wish to avoid her."

  "Yes. I can understand that. Ishbel, a few nights ago Drava, who is the Lord of Dreams and Ravenna's former lover, appeared to me. He warned me about her."

  "He left it a little late."

  Maximilian chuckled. "Yes. He did at that."

  "And did he warn you about me?"

  "No. He is, indeed, one of the few who have not."

  Now it was Ishbel's turn to smile.

  "Ishbel," Maximilian said, "you and I--"

  "Don't."

  "Our lives, yours and mine, have become such a mess, Ishbel."

  "They are perfectly delineated to me at the moment, Maximilian."

  He chuckled again, although not with such amusement this time. "Very well, Ishbel. As you wish."

  He rose, and Ishbel looked at him a little warily.

  "There is something you need to see, Ishbel."

  "Oh, the Weeper. I almost forgot."

  Maximilian, who had been reaching into his pack, looked up and almost smiled at the relief in her voice.

  "Yes, the Weeper."

  He drew the cloth-swathed bundle from the pack and unwrapped it.

  "This has caused so many people so much trouble," he said. "What do you know of it, Ishbel?"

  "That in Coroleas it was revered as the most powerful deity their god priests had ever made. That the soul of a very powerful man had gone into its creation. That it moved heaven and earth, and created a few storms along the way, to get to you. That people have died to lay their hands on it."

  "Aye." Maximilian had uncovered the Weeper now, and it lay in his hands, a beautifully formed bronze likeness of a man. "It has been whispering your name for a while now, Ishbel." He held it out to her.

  "Beware, if you touch it, for it may speak to you."

  Ishbel ignored his last comment and took the Weeper into her hands.

  Ishbel, the Weeper said to her as soon as she took its full weight. I have waited so long for you. So long...

  Maximilian sat watching Ishbel in silence. He was grateful to the Weeper if only for the reason that her study of it gave him the opportunity to watch her.

  Of all the things he had got wrong, how could he have mismanaged Ishbel so badly?

  She looked up, eventually.

  "Maxel?"

  "Yes?"

  She hesitated. "There is a dark and very complex sorcery that has bound this man's soul deep within the statue."

  "But..."

  "I can unwind it. If you like."

  Maximilian's heart suddenly pounded so hard he thought it literally had broken out of his chest cavity and into his throat. "You can unwind it?"

  "Yes. I can free the man's soul. Do you want me to do it?"

  "Yes, oh gods, yes!"

  "Now?"

  Maximilian almost said Yes! again, but stopped just as the word leapt into his throat.

  "Ishbel," he said, "how much danger will that cause you?"

  She took a deep breath. "Some. The workings of the Corolean God Priests are intricate, and I am certain they have left traps. I am certain, however, that I can evade them."

  "It will be dangerous."

  "Yes."

  Maximilian sat thinking a few moments. "Perhaps we can leave it until we get to Elcho Falling...you would be safer there. Elcho Falling can itself grant you some protection."

  "As you wish."

  "Ishbel?"

  "Yes?"

  "Can you tell who the Weeper is? What he might be?"

  Ishbel gave a soft shake of her head. "I'm sorry, Maxel. That I will only know when I reach out my hand to touch his soul."

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  On the Road to Serpent's Nest

  On the sixth day since he had been named as Axis' replacement, Insharah was riding about midway down the column when several men rode to join him. They were longtime friends and comrades, and Insharah greeted them with a smile and a nod for each man.

  "How should we call you now, Insharah," joked a man named Rimmert. "My lord? Sir? Excellency?"

  Insharah grinned. "Insharah will suffice as well as before, Rimmert."

  The men laughed, and for a few minutes there was jocular chatter.

  Then the mood sobered.

  "There has been talk," said a man called Olam.

  "There is always talk," Insharah said.

  "Many among the men," Rimmert said, "have been voicing their concerns about the dreams that we have all been having. Don't deny it, Insharah. I have no doubt that you have been tossing and mumbling in your sleep."

  Insharah said nothing, keeping his eyes ahead on the trail.

  "They are but dreams," Rimmert continued, "but they do reflect the men's inner fears. What is happening to our families
? Is Isaiah and this army of winged ghost men actually going to help?"

  Insharah's face went expressionless.

  "Moreover," said another man, Glimpel, "a man standing guard outside Maximilian's command tent heard Isaiah say that the River Lhyl had been turned to stone, or some such. The water is no more. We all know what that means."

  Again Insharah did not respond, but, yes, he knew what that meant.

  The refugees from the Central Kingdoms had been with the Isembaardians long enough to tell the southerners what they knew about the Skraelings.

  How they butchered every person they came upon, and ate them.

  How there was only one thing that held them back--water.

  And how there was only one person who'd ever had any success against them, and that was Axis SunSoar.

  But Axis SunSoar was still in the Outlands, not south in Isembaard, where he might be saving their families.

  "Damn it," Glimpel said quietly, edging his horse closer to Insharah's. "Everyone likes this Maximilian.

  He's a good man. I'm sure he's been very nice to you. But what in all the gods' names are we doing trudging along this slushy trail toward some mountain called Elcho Falling when our families are dying down south?"

  "Insharah," said Olam, who had been watching his commander's face carefully, "what do you know?"

  Insharah did not reply, staring ahead.

  "Insharah?" Rimmert hissed.

  "The Lealfast will do nothing against the Skraelings," Insharah said. "They will not fight them. They are kin."

  "Shetzah!" Rimmert and Olam exclaimed together.

  "But Maximilian said they would help!" Olam said. "Gods, Insharah...this is unbelievable! What the fuck are we still doing here?"

  "What are you suggesting, Glimpel?" Insharah said.

  Glimpel exchanged a glance with Rimmert, Olam, and the others.

  "We would do better south, Insharah," Glimpel said. "Tell me, where did you leave your wife and children?"

  Insharah sent him a stricken look.

  "Ah," said Glimpel, "they're in Aqhat, aren't they? So is my wife, as also Rimmert's."

  "And if they're in Aqhat," said Olam, "then they're already--"

  "Silence!" Insharah said. "Enough of this talk, you understand? Do you really suggest that we ride south?

  We'd not get there for weeks at best, and in that time..."

  "Better that than sitting on our arses trailing along behind some man to whom we owe no allegiance, with whom we share no common cause," snapped Rimmert, "and who has sent uselessness to `save' our families!"

  With that, he jerked his horse's head to the side, peeling away from Insharah, the others following him within a heartbeat.

  Insharah rode in silence for some time, brooding over what he'd heard from his companions and how he felt about it. He was jerked from his reverie by the galloping hooves of a horse and rider coming from the rear of the column.

  He pulled his own horse out to intercept the rider.

  "What is it?" he barked.

  "There are soldiers approaching from the rear," the man said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Isembaard

  Isaiah moved rapidly through the north of Isembaard. He had his own methods of speeding travel; none so impressive as that used by the Lealfast, but good enough that he covered more territory per day than other men could.

  He met no one. By this point anyone who had been in the extreme north of Isembaard had already traveled into the Salamaan Pass. In any case, this part of his tyranny had always been sparsely populated.

  The soil was poor this close to the FarReach Mountains, unable to sustain any farming communities, and the only inhabitants had been goat herders and peddlers, traders and soldiers moving through in order to reach somewhere else.

  Isaiah could feel a presence to the south. He couldn't define it any more than that, but it was very keen and he knew that it knew he was here.

  It wasn't Kanubai, although Isaiah could sense some shadow of Kanubai hanging about it.

  Kanubai was dead. Eaten.

  On the third day after he left Bingaleal and the Lealfast, Isaiah came upon what was left of the River Lhyl.

  His feet slowed as he approached, his heart thumping. Its wrongness leapt out at him, even from a great distance, and that sense grew stronger as he approached.

  The river suffered. It still lived, but under such a burden of powerful and dark enchantment that its entire existence had become a torment. Here, where the Lhyl emerged from the FarReach Mountains, it should have been a narrow torrent of foam and joy, but all Isaiah could see was a jumbled morass of dulled, fractured glass.

  He dropped to his knees on the riverbank, staring.

  There was nothing but the glass. Isaiah had wondered if only the surface had been affected by the enchantment, and had hoped that beneath this horror the water still flowed, but every single drop of water down to the riverbed had been turned to glass.

  Glass. The pyramid.

  A tiny green frog crept from Isaiah's hand and inched its way to the river's edge. It reached out a pad and touched a glassy wave hesitantly.

  It sprang back immediately, and hid once more within Isaiah's flesh.

  Isaiah stood, and turned south.

  He could feel the presence in the south watching him ever more closely.

  "What do you want?" whispered Isaiah.

  The One stared north. About him Skraelings milled, begging favors, but he ignored them. For the moment he wanted nothing to do with them--they could roam as far through Isembaard as they liked, eating what they wanted. Later they would be useful, but not now.

  But north...

  Isaiah the river god was back.

  The One smiled sardonically. Come to release his beloved river? Come to save Isembaard from the Skraelings?

  "What do I want, Isaiah?" he whispered. "For the moment, I want you, I want what that foolish girl holds so close to her heart, and I might as well take this opportunity to begin some amusing diversionary tactic to keep you and Maximilian occupied and your eyes away from the Lealfast."

  Maximilian would be expecting something, some move on the One's part, and the One was ready to oblige.

  He started walking north, taking great strides that ate up the distance, and he walked directly up the center of the glassy surface of the River Lhyl.

  Isaiah walked south along the riverbank. Occasionally he saw Skraelings roaming in small bands. The first band he saw, just after he'd started south, had moved toward him, patently thinking him an easy meal.

  But when they were about twenty or thirty paces away they'd pulled up in their tracks, hissing, their terrible jackal faces twisting in disappointment, and backed off. They'd shadowed Isaiah for an hour or two, but eventually drifted away.

  They'd been warned away from him.

  In the afternoon, after he'd traveled nonstop for almost nine hours, Isaiah stopped suddenly, peering ahead.

  At the very limits of his vision he could see the figure of a woman standing on the riverbank, her arms wrapped about something she clutched to her chest.

  She was looking directly at him.

  It took Isaiah another half hour to reach her. He approached slowly, not knowing who or what she was, nor why she would be standing out here so vulnerable.

  Yet so intact.

  The Skraelings had left her as alone as himself.

  As Isaiah came close, he wondered if he knew the woman. She looked somewhat familiar. She was pretty--or could be if she had some decent clothes, if her hair was combed and neatly arranged, and if she didn't look so worried--but a little too thin for Isaiah's liking. She also had the demeanor of a servant. She clearly recognized Isaiah, and he saw her arms tremble slightly as she held the book to her chest.

  He stopped a pace or so away from her. The woman was very anxious now, and Isaiah suspected it took all her courage to stand her ground.

  He supposed she was fighting the instinct to abase herself.

  I
saiah gave a nod of greeting, holding her eyes with hers. "Do I know you?" he said.

  The skin across her cheekbones tightened, and Isaiah thought she might be angry. Gods alone knew why.

  Surely she didn't expect him to remember the name of every one of the hundreds of servants who had attended him?

  "My name is Hereward," she said. "I was your kitchen steward at Aqhat. You'll remember Aqhat. It was a big, sprawling palace. Very beautiful. Not anymore. It is covered in blood now."

  "Hereward--"

  "You arrogant bastard," Hereward said. She stepped forward, lifted the book, and with all her strength slammed it into the side of his head.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  On the Road to Serpent's Nest

  Maximilian heard the pounding of the approaching horse, and wheeled his own about to meet the rider.

  "Yes?" he said, wishing his voice wasn't so curt, but hoping also that the man didn't bring bad news.

  "There is a column of soldiers approaching, my lord. They are not far behind the end of our column.

  They've come from the west."

  "Malat and his men?"

  The soldier shook his head. "No. They are well uniformed and weaponed. There are at rough estimate some four thousand, with supply and cooks' wagons bringing up the rear."

  "And the manner of their uniforms?"

  "I could not see too closely, my lord, but their jacket coats are a brilliant emerald, and--"

  The soldier stopped, his mouth open.

  Maximilian had gone, his horse booted into a gallop.

  He rode like a madman, reining in his mount only as he approached Ishbel on her horse.

  "Maxel?"

  "Come with me, Ishbel. Come, please. You can ride that horse at a gallop?"

  "Yes, but--"

  "Come."

  He was gone, and Ishbel, uncertain, waited a moment or two before she, too, turned her horse and rode after him.

  "Egalion! Garth! Gods, gods, it is good to see you!" Maximilian pulled his horse to a halt and dismounted in one movement, hugging to him first Egalion, Captain of the Emerald Guard, and then Garth Baxtor, his old friend and court physician, as they also dismounted. "You are well? You look well! And you have bought the entire Emerald Guard? Ah, thank you, thank you! Escator--how is it? Did the Skraelings..."