“Look at me, lover. You haven’t forgotten me. How could you when I left you proof? A proof that you love more than anything else in the world. Which, in a way, means I still possess you, Corinn. That’s why you’ll never take another man.”
“No, that’s not why.”
“No?” He shifted. She imagined the curious purse of his thin lips, the way he would lift his eyebrows and fix her with all his charismatic attention. “Then why have you never been with another man?”
“Because none are worthy.”
Hanish laughed. “So after me, no other man is worthy of you? I have ruined you. The pity for the world of men!”
“No, that’s not what I mean.” She still did not wish to talk, but the words came anyway. “You were not worthy either. You were all weak, treacherous. Every man I… Every man who loved me failed me. My father died. He said he would protect me. Instead he died. There, that’s one. Igguldan-”
“Oh, that’s right. He died, too.”
“He spouted love and promises, and then went off and died, yes.”
“Who else?” Hanish taunted. “Your brother, don’t forget him.”
“Aliver died. Dariel disappeared-”
“You can’t hold that against him! He may still be alive.”
“And you…”
“So you’ve been shaped by the failures of men?”
“No, you don’t understand me! None of you shaped me, but all of you taught me to trust only myself. Only myself. You most of all taught me that.”
“I know.” Hanish’s tone changed. Just two words, but they instantly filled with regret, with a sincerity it was hard to doubt. “About me you’re right. I knew what I was doing was vile. I hated it, and yet I went forward. But, Corinn, don’t pretend you don’t understand the pressures of leadership. Didn’t you just have your beloved younger brother’s lover killed? Forgive me if I misunderstood the exchange, but that’s what it sounded like. I know why you did it. I’m not sure you had to, but I understand that you were protecting our son. I can’t fault you for that. I want him safe, too.”
It was so hard not to look at him. It took all her control to keep her eyes pinned to a spot on the wall opposite. “You tried to kill us.”
“If you had a chain of undead ancestors demanding blood, you’d kill for them, too! Besides, I didn’t know you were pregnant. That would have been… complicating. Corinn, if I had known, I would never have tried to go through with it. You know that, don’t you? You must believe me on that. If you had only told me, I’d have turned on the Tunishnevre instead. You and I would still be together. Still in love.”
“No.”
“Let me prove it.”
“No,” she said again. It was hard to make the word, and she got no further.
“You know it’s true. Look at me. I’m here, aren’t I?”
“No, you’re not.”
“Well, not completely,” the apparition conceded. “You almost brought me back. It could have been me instead of Aliver. I was that close. You wanted someone to trust. Someone to help you. Despite everything, Corinn, it was nearly I you brought back to life. Think of that.”
The pipers began to play the hour. Their crisp notes cut short the moment. Corinn stood. “I have another meeting,” she said. She felt the figure move as she did. He reached for her. She quickened her step, out into the hallway and then down it toward Rhrenna, who had risen from her own desk as Aliver arrived. She did not need to look back to know that the figure that had been Hanish Mein fell into vapor as she moved away.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
The summoned group awaited Aliver and Corinn in the assembly kitchen that the servants used to keep food warm and drinks chilled on banquet nights. Corinn chose it, she had explained, because its exterior door opened onto the Terrace of First Light, a semienclosed space near Edifus’s original hold. With the door to it closed, none of those milling around in the room likely even knew of it. Aliver knew little more about what awaited them on the terrace than any of the others, but Corinn had thought it best that he see her work revealed at the same time as the others.
The members of the Queen’s Council jockeyed for position just inside the room. Balneaves Sharratt greeted her first, with Baddel beside him. Talinbeck and General Andeson bowed their heads, and Sigh Saden received them with a thin smile meant to demonstrate the patience he was showing for her benefit. No doubt they all wanted to know why she had gathered them.
The two Akarans acknowledged the other senators and nobles in attendance. They kept their exchanges clipped until they reached the cluster of men standing with Jason. Aliver had met them for the first time only a couple of nights before: Ilabo, a slim Bethuni man wearing the long, intricately stitched robe of his people, and a Candovian called Dram, who looked more Meinish with his pale skin and high cheekbones and gray eyes than he did like the sloe-eyed people he claimed.
Corinn faced the crowd. “You may have guessed that you were not summoned here just to enjoy my company.”
Baddel piped that that was enough of an enticement by itself. Polite murmurs of assent.
“There’s more to it than that,” Aliver said, remembering the lines Corinn had given him. He grinned and lifted his slim glass of wine. “These two are the best horsemen to be found in the empire, or so we’ve been told. Is it true?” Neither of them boasted, but Dram’s involuntary chin lift could have spoken for both of them. “Dram of Candovia is so skilled he rides without reins! He talks to his horse through his legs, while above he launches arrows with a master’s speed and accuracy. And we have Ilabo of the Bethuni.” Aliver released the imaginary bow he had used to demonstrate Dram’s prowess. He set a hand on the young man’s shoulder. “I’m sure everyone here knows that the Bethuni have kept up a horseback riding tradition that faded in most of Talay. Ilabo has, since his early teens, been his nation’s champion at the games. Those games, mind you, can be deadly.”
Having named them both, Aliver stood smiling. Corinn brushed past a servant offering her a drink from a silver tray heavy with wineglasses. She asked the two men, “Do you know why you’re here?”
“To ride,” Dram said.
“You’re correct,” Corinn said. “You will ride. I’m offering a way for you to carve a place in history for yourselves. I want for you to be the arms and legs and wings of the empire, as Aliver is the heart and I the head. Do you wish to know what I’m inviting you to ride?”
She walked briskly out the door. A servant opened it just in time. The others followed, looking at one another, and then squinting as they emerged into the bright afternoon light. They came through singly or in pairs, so it took some time for the entire party to emerge, especially as some paused in the doorway, stunned by what they saw. They had to be pushed forward by the weight of curiosity behind them.
Aliver felt it as much as any of them.
There they stood, Elya’s children, preening within the high walls that hemmed in most of the terrace. The young were not as they had been only days ago. All four of them lifted heads bigger than river crocodiles’, with snouts as long as those reptiles’, frightening in their length. Their eyes were each the size of a man’s fist. Po’s golden orbs studied the group with cold indifference. What had once been soft-feathered plumage now looked more like spiny plates. They still held the shape of feathers, but when Tij’s crests flared, they rose like blue sword blades. Thais stretched her head up high and chirruped a greeting to Corinn. It was no longer the high, light sound it had been. Now it thrummed out with bass notes that Aliver felt as vibrations tossed through the air.
He nearly rushed forward to pull his sister away and shout the beasts back, but he knew that Corinn would not want that. His mouth only opened enough to inhale. His legs only moved forward a few steps.
“Behold my winged children,” Corinn said. She descended the stone stairway that brought her down to their level. “Mine. Not Elya’s. Not Mena’s. These children belong to me and to the empire. Mena may have been the
first to ride a flying mount, but these are not feathered lizards, as you can see.”
She reached Tij. The dragon lowered her head toward Corinn, causing gasps from watchers. Po growled in response, his crest plumes spread. Corinn rubbed Tij under her snout. “They are war mounts, fit for the bravest men the empire has to offer. They will be your mounts, if you are men enough to strap yourselves on them and fly. Doesn’t that sound enticing?”
“Your Majesty,” Dram said. “They have no… wings.”
“Of course they do,” Corinn said. “Po, show them your wings!”
As if knowing that he was to make the most impressive show he could, the dragon stretched its neck toward the sky and roared. He shook his black, scaled torso furiously. His shoulders gyrated for a few awful seconds, until the protrusions on his back audibly cracked open. Wings erupted out of either side. Each section snapped into place with concussions of sound like tree trunks breaking. Kohl followed Po’s lead, with Tij and Thais just behind her. In jolting, sinuous waves of motion, each dragon bellowed wings into existence. Where there had been nothing moments before, mighty frameworks of bone suddenly blocked out the sky. They hung, glistening, moist from their creation, with flaps of skin the same various hues as their bristly plumage.
“Now, you may have noticed that there are two of you and four mounts,” Corinn shouted above the dragon cries and the peoples’ gasps and confused babbling. “Two of these mounts-Tij and Thais-are for you. The other two are for Aliver and me, so that we may join Mena in the skies. Perhaps one day Dariel will fly with us as well. I pray that will be so. But now, if you are ready to be legends, I offer you the reins to ride into them.”
She grasped for the leather cord attached to Tij’s harness. The slim length of hide hung from her fingers, swaying, waiting for someone to step forward and take it.
Aliver felt tremors ripple across his cheeks, the precursors to an expression that could not manage to form itself. He was not sure what the expression would be. He could not make up his mind. This was wrong . For a moment he knew it. Whatever Corinn had done to Elya’s children was a mistake. A crime. Whatever goodness there had been in them-and there had been much-had been twisted. That could not be good. Just like Elenet, Corinn was creating things that should not be created. He knew this with a burning intensity that he almost pushed past his lips into words.
But when Corinn turned to him and smiled and dipped her eyes toward Kohl, Aliver felt his chest swell. Yes, he thought, why not fly above the world? It seemed a wonderful idea.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Midmorning of the day on which he would first see the Sky Isle, Dariel dropped behind the others and stood ankle-deep in a narrow little brook, one of many that flowed toward the Sky Lake. He welcomed the cool touch of it on his feet. He was here. Those were stones beneath his feet. The water brought an icy chill, cleansing. Bashar and Cashen both crashed through the underbrush nearby, filled with exuberant energy. He was here, and in just a few minutes he would see the man he had come all this way to meet. Would their interaction be as profound as the days he spent with Na Gamen? That hardly seemed possible.
“Dariel?” Anira came toward him. “Are you ready? You can see it over the next rise. The others are waiting. Come. The Sky Isle awaits. Take my hand.”
She stretched out her hand. He grasped it without a second thought, content to feel the strength and gentleness of her grip. Here was another thing. They had not spoken of their intimacy beside the pool, but it was there between them. He was sure it would happen again, and he wanted it to. It felt right. He did not think too often of Wren, as he feared he might. He promised himself he would later, but really he felt no shame in what he had done with Anira. That had to mean something.
They joined the others on the grassy slope of a hill that tumbled down toward a horizon-wide lake. They all watched as he and Anira approached. They must know, Dariel thought. He could not tell if it mattered. By Birke’s smile and Tam’s indifferent expression and Mor’s impatience he surmised that it did not. Something about this disappointed him. Mor, at least, should have shown some emotion. Jealousy was too much to hope for. He would have settled for derision. It would only have been fair, considering the effort it took for him to turn his thoughts from her. And that made no sense either. He had done nothing with her. Never would. Why did his thoughts about Mor feel like betrayal of Wren while his actual intimacy with Anira did not? He would never understand matters of his heart. Best to stop trying.
Looking at the vista beyond them, he said, “I can see where the name came from.”
The Sky Isle appeared to hover above the earth. Its peak was the smooth, pointed cone of a volcano. Partway down, its slopes disappeared into a narrow circlet of clouds. Beneath them ran a hazy band, colorless and vague above the sparkling green waters of the lake. It looked as if they would be able to sail across the waters and pass beneath the mountain, gazing up into the clouds upon which it floated.
The hike down took an hour. As they dropped out of the heights Dariel lost sight of the lake. They picked up a path and wound through a forest of slim, silver-skinned trees. Their bark came away in delicate peels that crunched underfoot. The leaves of the trees formed triangular points, tiny kites that quivered when the breeze brushed their boughs. They had a touch of red mixed with the green. Dariel could not tell if this was their regular coloring, or if it was a sign of the winter season. It should be winter, but this land gave so little sign of it.
Behind them came a commotion of limbs snapping. Dariel spun to see the tree crowns near one side of the path behind them swaying and trembling. Something large pushed through them and stepped out onto the path with a sickening, lumbering grace. A kwedeir. A man stood attached to its back, high behind its wolfish head.
Bashar and Cashen bristled and growled. Dariel clawed for the dagger strapped to his leg, but before he got it loosened Mor had raised an arm in greeting. She called something to the rider in Auldek and snapped at Birke. Birke squatted between Bashar and Cashen, pulling them to his side and soothing them. The mount came forward. It walked on its wing limbs, all angles and joints, flaps of skin like oil-black leather. The rider answered, and then found Dariel with his eyes. Stared.
No more was said. Birke nudged Dariel back into motion by handing him Cashen to carry. He hefted Bashar himself. The kwedeir and rider followed them the rest of the way. Dariel would have looked back more if the hounds had not done so for him. Between them they passed their growling displeasure back and forth.
A little farther on they passed guards posted on either side of the path. Before long they had an escort flanking them: two older men with short swords sheathed at the thigh; a youth who walked with a limp; a tall, rangy woman with a bow and arrow pinched between the fingers of one hand.
A group of a dozen old men and women awaited them on the shore. Behind them a pier crooked out into the lake, a barge secured to it, motionless on the clear, mirrorlike water. In the distance the volcanic peak of the Sky Isle thrust up into view again, still growing from an island of cloud. The air was moist with the smell of the lake. It was strangely saltless. It’s not the sea, Dariel thought.
He glanced at Mor. She looked breathless with relief and joy. For a moment, her guise of control and detachment fell from her face. By following her gaze, Dariel picked out Yoen. That was who the look was for, the look of a daughter seeing a father. Yoen stood at the center of the elders. A short, frail-looking man, he favored one leg over the other, leaning on a cane of carved wood. His hair was disheveled, unruly like a child’s that had been tousled. His skin was Acacian brown, a complexion just like Dariel’s. He smiled, briefly, at Mor.
They stopped in front of the waiting elders. For a moment no one spoke. Dariel remembered the squirming burden in his arms. He set Cashen down. The pup stood, unsure of the moment’s protocol.
The woman to one side of Yoen wore a circlet woven of leaves. It looked like it could be dismantled by a light breeze. Her features had more so
lidity, and her voice was Talayan. Dariel could tell from the timbre of it, even though she first spoke Auldek. Mor answered her, bowing her head as she did so. The two spoke for a moment, and then the woman turned toward him.
“Are you the one they call Dariel Akaran?” she asked, speaking Acacian.
“I am.”
“Did you speak with Na Gamen, the Watcher of the Sky Mount?”
“Yes.”
The man whom Dariel already thought of as Yoen asked, “Did he tell you to come here?”
“Yes.” Dariel looked at him, realizing that he wore no signs of belonging, no tattoo or piercing or any other enhancement.
“What did he tell you of the circle?”
“That it could be closed,” Dariel said.
“It can be, though the way is hard.” The man lifted his left arm, crooked in an invitation to an embrace. “I am Yoen. Come to me.”
Dariel stepped forward. He raised his arms, thinking that he would set them lightly on the man’s thin shoulders so as not to harm him. He was completely unprepared for what happened next.
It was not that the old man was fast, but just that the action did not make sense until it was completed. Yoen’s lowered hand snatched the hilt of Dariel’s dagger. He slipped the blade free from the sheath and thrust it upward into Dariel’s gut with a force that should not have been possible from such a frail-looking arm. The impact doubled Dariel over on top of Yoen. The pain did not stop. It stayed, the moment of impact sustained and unrelenting. It was so great that the burning sensation on his forehead barely registered.
When Yoen pulled back, Dariel looked down at the shaft of the dagger, the blade deep in his abdomen. “I am sorry,” the old man said. “This had to be done. You had to be killed, so that…”
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