This kind of magic is cold and elusive, graceful and slippery. It allows the wielder to cast illusions, control water . . . even to change their shape . . .
“Kalyba,” said Ead.
The witch was barefoot. She wore a diaphanous gown, white as the snow, which gathered at her waist.
“Hello, Eadaz.”
Ead was tense as a bowstring. “Did you follow me from Lasia?”
“I did. I watched you flee the Priory, and I saw you leave with the Inysh lord on the ship from Córvugar,” Kalyba said, expressionless. “I knew then that you had no plans to return to my Bower. No plans to honor your oath.”
In her grip, Margret trembled.
“Are you afraid, sweeting?” Kalyba asked her. “Did your milk nurse tell you stories of the Lady of the Woods?” She slid the knife along the nut of Margret’s throat, and Margret shuddered. “It seems it was your family who concealed my sword from me.”
“Let go of her,” Ead said. Her horse stamped its hooves. “She has not to do with your grievance against me.”
“My grievance.” Despite the bitter cold, no gooseflesh had risen on the witch. “You swore to me that you would bring me what I desire. On this isle in ages past, you would have had your lifeblood spilled for breaking such a vow. How fortunate that you have something else I desire.”
Ascalon was aglow again. Hidden under shirt and cloak, so was the waning jewel.
“It was here all along. In the haithwood.” Kalyba watched Ascalon. “My sword, laid to rest in dirt and darkness. Even if it had not been buried too deep for me to hear it calling, I would have had to crawl to it on my belly like an adder. Galian mocks me even in death.”
Margret closed her eyes. Her lips moved in silent prayer.
“I suppose he did it just before he went to Nurtha. To his end.” Kalyba raised her gaze. “Hand it to me now, Eadaz, and your oath will be fulfilled. You will have given me what I desire.”
“Kalyba,” Ead said, “I know I broke my oath to you. I will pay for it. But I need Ascalon. I will use it to slay the Nameless One, as Cleolind did not. It will quench the fire within him.”
“Yes, it will,” Kalyba said, “but you will not wield it, Eadaz.”
The witch threw Margret into the snow. At once, Margret began to claw at her own arms, and she retched as if there was water in her chest.
“Ead—” she gasped out. “Ead, the thorns—”
“What are you doing to her?” Ead had dismounted in an instant. “Leave her be.”
“Only an illusion,” Kalyba said, pacing around Margret. “Still, I suppose mortals do tend to suffer in the grip of my enchantments. Sometimes their hearts give out through fear.” She held out a hand. “This is your last chance to give me the sword, Eadaz. Do not let Lady Margret Beck pay the price for your broken oath.”
Ead stood her ground. She would not give the sword up. She also had no intention of letting Margret die for it.
The orange tree had not gifted her its fruit for nothing.
She turned her palms outward. Magefire scorched from her hands and consumed both Margret and the witch, burning away the illusion.
Kalyba let out a soul-wrenching cry, and her body contorted. Every auburn tress was cooked from her scalp. Flesh melted from her limbs and cooled again into pale lines. Black hair rushed and rippled to her waist.
Aghast, Ead forced her hands to close. When the flames dwindled, Margret was on all fours, one hand at her throat, eyes bloodshot.
And Sabran Berethnet was standing beside her.
Ead stared at her palms, then back at Kalyba, who was also Sabran. Margret pushed herself away. “Sabran?” she coughed out.
Kalyba opened her eyes. Green as willow.
“How?” Ead gasped. “How do you have her face?” She drew one of her blades. “Answer me, witch.”
She could not tear her gaze away. Kalyba was Sabran, down to the tilt of her nose and the bow of her lips. No scar on the thigh or the belly, and there was a mark Sabran did not have on her right side, under her arm—but otherwise, they might have been twins.
“Their faces are their crowns. And mine is the truth.” The voice from those lips belonged to the witch. “You said you wanted to learn, Eadaz, that day in my Bower. You see before you the greatest secret in Virtudom.”
“You,” Ead whispered.
Who was the first Queen of Inys?
“This is no enchantment.” Heart drumming, Ead raised the blade. “This is your true form.”
Margret scrambled to her feet and hastened to stand behind Ead, her girdle knife thrust out again.
“Truth you desired. Truth you received,” Kalyba said, ignoring their blades. “Yes, Eadaz. This is my true form. My first shape. The shape I wore before I mastered sterren.” She clasped her hands at her midriff, making her look, if possible, even more like Sabran. “I never intended to reveal it. Since you have seen, however . . . I will tell you my tale.”
Ead kept her gaze fixed on her, the blade angled toward her throat. Kalyba turned her back, so she faced the moon.
“Galian was my child.”
It was not what Ead had expected to hear.
“Not a child born of my womb. I stole him from Goldenbirch when he was a nursling. At the time, I thought the blood of innocents might help me unlock a deeper magic, but he was such a charming baby, with his eyes like cornflower . . . I confess that I gave way to sentiment, and raised him as my own on Nurtha, in the hollow of the hawthorn tree.”
Margret was standing so close, Ead could feel her shivering.
“When he was five and twenty, he left my side to become a knight in the service of Edrig of Arondine. Nine years later, the Nameless One emerged from the Dreadmount.
“I had not seen Galian for many years. But when he heard of the plague and the Nameless One wreaking terror in Lasia, he sought me out again, pleading for my help. His dream, you see, was to unite the warring kings and princelings of Inys under one crown, and to rule a country according to the Six Virtues of Knighthood. To do that, he had to earn their respect with a great deed. He wanted to slay the Nameless One, and to do that, he would need my magic. Like a fool, I gave it him, for by this time I loved him not as a mother. I loved him as companions do. In return, he swore he would be mine alone.
“Blinded by love, I gave him Ascalon, the sword I had forged in starlight and in fire. To Lasia he rode, to the city of Yikala.” She let out a huff. “What I had not realized was what else Galian wanted. To unite the Inyscan rulers and strengthen his claim, he desired a queen of royal blood—and when he saw Cleolind Onjenyu, he wanted her. Not only was she unwed and beautiful, but in her veins ran the old blood of the South.
“You know a little of what happened next. Cleolind disdained my knight and took up his sword when he was injured. She wounded the Nameless One and disappeared with her handmaidens into the Lasian Basin, there to bind herself forever in marriage to the orange tree.
“I expected Galian to seek me out, but he broke his promise and my heart. I was sick in love, and oh, I raged.” She turned away. “Galian began his journey home without glory or a bride. I followed.”
“You do not seem the sort to resent being spurned,” Ead said.
“The heart is a cruel thing. His hold on mine was firm.” The witch paced around them. “Galian was crushed by his failure, lost to hatred and anger. I did not know then how to change my shape. What I did know well was dreams and trickery.” Her eyes closed. “I stepped out of the trees, in front of his horse. His eyes glazed over. He smiled . . . and called me Cleolind.”
Ead could not tear her gaze away. “How?”
“I cannot tell you the mysteries of starcraft, Eadaz. All you need know was that sterren gave me a foothold in his mind. Through an enchantment, I made him believe I was the princess who had rebuffed him. Half in dream, his memory blurred, he could not remember what Cleolind had looked like, or that she had banished him, or that I had ever existed. His desire made him malleable. He needed a q
ueen, and there I was. I made him lust for me, as he had for Cleolind on the day he saw her.” A smile touched her lips. “He took me back to the Isles of Inysca. There he made me his queen, and I took him to my bed.”
“He was like your son,” Ead said. Disgust coiled in her belly. “You raised him.”
“Love is complex, Eadaz.”
Margret pressed a hand to her mouth.
“Soon I was with child,” Kalyba whispered. Her hands came to her belly. “Birthing my daughter took a great deal of my strength. I lost too much blood. Finally, as I lay racked with childbed fever, close to death, I could keep hold of Galian no longer. Clear-eyed at last, he threw me into the dungeons.” Her voice darkened. “He had the sword. I was weak. A friend helped me escape . . . but I had to leave my Sabran. My little princess.”
Sabran the First, the first queen regnant of Inys.
All the scattered fragments of the truth were aligning, explaining what the Priory had never understood.
The Deceiver had himself been deceived.
“Galian ripped down every likeness of me that had been painted or carved and forbade any more to be created for the rest of time. Then he went to Nurtha, where I had raised him, and hanged himself from my hawthorn tree. Or what was left of it.” At this, the witch grasped her own arms. “He ensured his shame would go with him to the grave.”
Ead was silent, sickened.
“I watched a house of queens rise in his place. Great queens, whose names were known throughout the world. All of them had so much of me, and nothing of him. One daughter for each, always with green eyes. An unexpected consequence of the sterren, I suppose.”
It was almost too strange a tale to believe. And yet magefire had not burned away that face.
Magefire never lied.
“You wonder why Sabran dreams of my Bower?” Kalyba asked Ead. “If you will not believe the truth from my lips, believe it from hers. My Firstblood lives within her.”
“You tormented her,” Ead said, voice hoarse. “If all of this is true—if all of the Berethnet queens are your direct descendants—why would you make her dream of blood?”
“I gave her dreams of the childbed so she would know how I suffered birthing her ancestor. And I gave her dreams of the Nameless One, and of me, so she would know her fate.”
“And what is her fate?”
“The one I made for her.”
The witch turned to face them then, and her face fractured. Her skin divided itself into scales, and her eyes became serpentine. The green bled into the whites and burned. A forked tongue lashed between her teeth.
When the last piece of the puzzle fell into place, the very foundations of the world seemed to tremble beneath Ead. She was in the palace again, cradling Sabran, blood slippery on her hands.
“The White Wyrm,” she whispered. “That night. It was you. You are the sixth High Western.”
Kalyba returned to her true, Sabran-shaped form once more, a faint smile on her lips.
“Why?” Ead asked, stunned. “Why would you destroy the House of Berethnet when you made it? Has this all been a game to you—some elaborate revenge on Galian?”
“I have not destroyed the House of Berethnet,” Kalyba said. “No. That night—the night I struck down Sabran and her unborn child—I saved it. In ending the line, I earned the trust of Fýredel, who will commend me to the Nameless One.” There was no amusement or joy in her now. “He will rise, Eadaz. None can stop him. Even if you were to plunge Ascalon into his heart, even if the Long-Haired Star returns, he will always rise anew. The imbalance in the universe—the imbalance that created him—will always exist. It can never be righted.”
Ead tightened her grip on her sword. The jewel was icy cold against her heart.
“The Nameless One will let me be his Flesh Queen in the days to come,” Kalyba said. “I shall give him Sabran as a gift and take her place on the throne of Inys. The throne Galian took from me. No one will know the difference. I will tell the people that I am Sabran, and that the Nameless One, in his mercy, has allowed me to keep my crown.”
“No,” Ead said quietly.
Kalyba held out a hand once more. Margret placed hers on Ascalon, still buckled into the saddle.
“Give me the sword,” Kalyba said, “and your oath will be fulfilled.” Her gaze flicked to Margret. “Or perhaps you will return it, child, to undo the wrong your family did me by hiding it.”
Margret faced the Lady of the Woods, her childhood fear, and kept her hand on Ascalon.
“My ancestors were brave to keep it from you,” she said, “and not for anything will I give it to you.”
Ead locked gazes with Kalyba. She who had tricked Galian the Deceiver. The White Wyrm. Ancestor of Sabran. If she took the sword, there would be no victory.
“Very well,” Kalyba said. “If we must do this the hard way, so be it.”
Before their eyes, she began to change.
Limb stretched and bent on itself. Her spine elongated with cracks like gunshots, and her skin was scrolled taut between new bones. In moments, she was as big as a house, and the White Wyrm was before them, towering and terrible. Ead grabbed Margret away just before razor teeth clamped around the horse, smothering the light of Ascalon.
Leathery wings slammed down, bringing with them a hot wind. Horse blood sprayed across the snow as Kalyba launched herself into the night.
As the wingbeats faded into the distance, Ead slid to her knees, shoulders heaving. Spattered with blood, Margret knelt beside her.
“There were thorns,” she said, shuddering. “In my— in my throat. In my mouth.”
“It was nothing real.” Ead leaned against her. “We lost the sword. The sword, Meg.”
Her hands burned, but she kept them closed. She would need all her siden for the fight that was to come.
“It can’t be true.” Margret swallowed. “All she said about the Saint. The face she wore was trickery.”
“I revealed it with magefire,” Ead murmured. “Magefire is revelation. It tells only the truth.”
Somewhere in the trees, an owl let out a chilling scream. When Margret flinched, dread in her gaze, Ead reached for her hand and squeezed it.
“Without the True Sword, we cannot kill the Nameless One. And unless we can find the second jewel, we cannot bind him,” she said. “But we might be able to raise enough of an army to drive him far away.”
“How?” Margret’s voice was desolate. “Who can help us now?”
Ead rose, pulling Margret with her, and they stood in the red-stained snow beneath the moon.
“I must speak to Sabran,” she said. “It is time to open a new door.”
56
West
Loth had spent his morning writing to the Virtues Council, telling them of the imminent threat and calling them to Ascalon. It was an exhausting process, but since Seyton Combe had been released and taken over building a case against Igrain Crest, some of the burden was off his shoulders.
Sabran joined him in the afternoon. A rock dove perched on her forearm, cooing. Its piebald feathers identified it as having come from Mentendon.
“I have received a reply from High Princess Ermuna. She demands justice for the unlawful execution of Lady Truyde.” She laid the letter on the table. “She also says that Doctor Niclays Roos has been abducted by pirates, and blames me for withholding his pardon for so long.”
Loth unfolded the letter. It had been sealed with the swan of the House of Lievelyn.
“The only justice I can offer for Truyde is the head of Igrain Crest.” Sabran unlatched the doors to the balcony. “As for Roos . . . I should have relented a long time ago.”
“Roos was a swindler,” Loth said. “He deserved punishment.”
“Not to that extreme.”
He sensed there was nothing he could say to deter her. For his part, Loth had never liked the alchemist.
“Fortunately,” Sabran said, “Ermuna has agreed, given the urgency of my request, to have the Library
of Ostendeur scoured for knowledge about the reign of Empress Mokwo. She has sent one of her servants to find the records, and will send another bird with all speed when she has them.”
“Good.”
Sabran held up her arm. The rock dove hopped off it and fluttered away.
“Sab.”
She looked at him.
“Crest told me something,” Loth said. “About . . . why she arranged for your mother to die.”
“Say it.”
Loth let her have a moment without the knowledge. He tried not to think of how Crest had looked throughout the questioning. Her disdainful gaze, her brazen lack of remorse.
“She told me that the Queen Mother committed adultery with a privateer. Captain Gian Harlowe.” He hesitated. “The affair began the year before she became pregnant with you.”
Sabran closed the doors to the balcony and took the seat at the head of the table.
“So,” she said, “I may be a bastard.”
“Crest thought so. That was why she took such a great role in your upbringing. She wanted to mold you into a more virtuous queen.”
“A more obedient queen. A manikin,” Sabran said curtly, “to be manipulated.”
“Prince Wilstan may have been your father.” Loth placed a hand over hers. “The affair with Harlowe might not even have existed. Crest is clearly not in her right mind.”
Sabran shook her head. “Part of me has always known. Mother and Father were loving in public, but cold in private.” She pressed his hand. “Thank you for telling me, Loth.”
“Aye.”
She reached in silence for her swan-feather quill. Loth kneaded the stiffness from his neck and continued with his work.
It was peaceful to be alone with her. He found himself glancing at his childhood friend, wondering.
Had Sabran been in love with Lievelyn and turned to Ead for comfort after his death? Or had her marriage to Lievelyn been one of convenience, and it was Ead who was the root of her heart? Perhaps the truth was somewhere between.
“I have a mind,” Sabran said, “to make Roslain the new Duchess of Justice. She is heir apparent.”
“Is that wise?” When she only continued writing, Loth said, “I have been a friend to Roslain for many years. I know her devotion to you—but can we be sure her part in this was innocent?”
The Priory of the Orange Tree Page 60
