Tol slashed at Tathman’s already wounded shoulder. The big man parried, parried again, then made a backhanded swipe at Tol’s eyes. Tol brought Number Six up to his cheek, edge outward, and the blade cut deep into Tathman’s wrist. The Wolf captain groaned loudly as the tainted blade fell from his nerveless fingers. Still he did not go down, but only-staggered back. His right wrist, partially severed, was held tight against his body; his left hand gripped his bleeding neck.
Tol struck again. Tathman received Tol’s saber through the knotted muscle of his upper right arm. Howling, Tathman fell.
Incredibly, the villain was not yet finished. After a brief struggle, Tathman made it to his knees.
Up went Number Six. Tathman raised his face and peered at his foe through sweaty, bloody strands of hair. There was no pleading in his eyes, only burning, unquenchable hatred.
The steel blade flashed down, and Tathman died.
Tol hurried to Miya. She held Egrin tightly, both of them shaking from the force of her grief. Egrin’s eyes were closed.
“He’s not breathing!” Miya sobbed.
Tol seized Egrin’s hand, saying harshly, “Don’t go, old man! Our j ob isn’t done!”
His plea was in vain. Egrin Raemel’s son was dead.
Tol rose, stumbling slightly on shaky legs. Kiya, standing behind him, gripped his shoulder. Her face was wet with tears.
Looking to Lord Quevalen, who stood nearby, Tol asked, “Are any of the assassins alive?” Hearing that half the delegation and its escort still lived, he added coldly, “I want their heads. Now.”
The Wolves were stripped of their clerical vestments and marched away. The genuine priests pleaded for mercy. Xanderel explained that he was not the chief priest of Corij. That distinction belonged to his master, Hycontas.
“Our part was forced, great lord!” the elderly priest babbled. “Our brothers in Daltigoth are being held hostage! They will be slaughtered because we have failed!”
Tol was not impressed. Xanderel or his fellows could have warned him. If they had, Lord Egrin would not now be lying dead. He ordered the priests stripped. None bore the distinctive chest tattoo of a Wolf-a crimson Ackal sun above a wolf’s head-so he spared their lives.
A wagon was brought forward, and the severed heads of the Emperor’s Wolves were piled inside. Clad only in their linen loincloths, the terrified priests were forced to sit atop this gruesome cargo.
Xanderel’s terror set his teeth to chattering. “My lord, you can’t mean to send us back this way!” he stuttered. “The emperor will surely put us all to death!”
Even through the hatred and anguish boiling in his heart, Tol knew the priest spoke the truth. He stared at the terrified men for a long moment, panting slightly from the force of his emotions.
“No. No one else will die in my stead. I will face Ackal V,” he said at last. “Alone.”
Quevalen and the other warlords protested vehemently, vowing Tol would be killed long before he reached the Inner City. A few threatened to stop him bodily, but the sight of Number Six, still reeking with Tathman’s blood, dissuaded them.
He turned to take leave of the Dom-shu sisters. Respecting their privacy, the warlords drew off a few paces.
Miya still held Egrin’s body, with Kiya kneeling beside her. Joining them, Tol took Miya’s hand and pressed the Irda millstone into her palm. “Keep this for me, in case I don’t come back.”
“No, take it. It will keep you safe!”
“I won’t need it to do what must be done,” he said firmly. “And I won’t risk it falling into the emperor’s hands.”
Her fingers closed around the braided metal circlet. Face distorted by unaccustomed malice, she whispered, “See justice done, Husband! If it takes every piece of luck the gods owe you, see it through!”
He squeezed her hand tightly. “I will, Wife.”
When he stood, Kiya rose as well. “I must come with you,” she said, hand on her sword hilt. He looked her in the eye, and nodded. Miya bowed her head, weeping all the more.
Tol left Mittigorn, eldest surviving commander, in charge. The warlords, shocked by the emperor’s treachery, were equally dazed by Tol’s decision, yet as one they saluted their peasant general.
Kiya and Tol climbed onto the wagon’s plank seat. To supplement her sword, Kiya brought along a bow and a full quiver of arrows.
Of their own accord, the men of the Juramona Militia gathered on either side of the palisade gate and raised their spears, as Tol drove the wagon and its grisly cargo past. He looked left, then right, acknowledging their salute, then fixed his gaze on the distant Dragon Gate ahead.
The night air was warm and stiflingly still. Sweat was trickling into Tol’s eyes. Every small jolt of the wagon felt like a blow. His hands were clenched around the reins of the two-horse team. The priests behind him were quiet except for an occasional whimper or moan. The only other break in the silence occurred when, after a particularly hard jolt, the large head of the Wolf called Argon rolled over and thudded against the side of the wagon. The sight was too much for a younger priest, and he was sick over the side of the slowly moving wagon.
The torches flanking the Dragon Gate came into view. Their light played over the reliefs that surrounded the monumental portal: the hero Volmunaard’s battle against the black dragon Vilesoot. The images seemed alive, moving and shifting in the orange glow.
The gate was open.
Tol pulled the horses to a stop. Both the entry gate-an opening large enough for two riders abreast-and the great ceremonial portal stood wide. The latter yawned like a primeval cavern, black and endless. Twenty horsemen riding boot to boot could fit through it. No guards were in sight.
“This isn’t right,” Kiya muttered.
“It’s perfect.” Tol snapped the reins, setting the horses in motion again.
They passed through the broad tunnel of the gatehouse and into the city proper. The streets were devoid of people. The windows of every house and business were shuttered. No light showed. Wind stirred along the stone canyons, pushing rubbish before it. Somewhere a dog barked.
Against the cloud-streaked night sky, the Tower of High Sorcery glowed like a pearlescent lamp. Its light gave the Inner City wall and palace towers a gray, insubstantial look, as though they were edifices of fog. Kiya recalled the cloud faces that had watched her from the summer sky. She lifted a hand and touched her burial beads, tied around her neck. If Tol noticed, he did not say anything.
Following the route he well remembered, Tol guided the creaking wagon through the empty streets.
At a square just outside the Inner City gate, they found two thousand Riders, bearing the standards of the Scarlet Dragon and Whirlwind hordes, waiting for them. The Riders sat in close ranks, their horses snorting and bobbing their heads in the humid night air.
Tol halted the wagon. Four men in officer’s garb left the front ranks and rode forward.
“My lord Tolandruth!” The one who hailed him was about Tol’s own age, with a close-cropped blond mustache and pale blue eyes. Tol didn’t know him. “I am Gonzakan, warlord of the Whirlwind Horde.”
“Ah. You have come to arrest me.”
The officer frowned and leaned forward in the saddle, as though trying to see better. “I did not picture you arriving by wagon, my lord. What cargo do you carry?”
“The Emperor’s Wolves.”
Astonished, the four warlords rode closer. They swore eloquently.
“The Wolves never looked better!”
“By Corij, he got Tathman! And Argon!”
“He got them all!”
The blond officer addressed Tol in an awed voice.
“We know your errand, my lord.”
“And you mean to stop me?” His fingers tightened on the sharkskin grip of Number Six.
“No, my lord.”
Tol’s eyes narrowed. He suspected a jest, but Gonzakan quickly explained. After the emperor’s execution of nine blameless commanders for failing to stop Tol e
arlier, the warlords of the Great Horde had come to a momentous decision:
they would no longer defend Ackal V. They were not acting to save the empire, but out of a sense of collective dishonor. For years Ackal V had tormented his people, from the highest priest to the poorest peasant, but Ergoth had known tyrannical rulers before. He had ordered his hordes to fight hopeless battles, but that was a Rider’s lot in life, willingly accepted. To fall in battle was expected, hoped for. However, a pointless, dishonorable death at the emperor’s own hands could not be tolerated. By unanimous assent, the Riders had abandoned the emperor to whatever fate Corij decreed for him-fate in the form of Tolandruth of Juramona.
Tol was stunned. What of the Household Guard? The Horse Guards? The imperial courtiers?
“Some have resisted,” said Gonzakan. “They are being dealt with. Since you’ve disposed of the Wolves, no one now stands between you and the emperor.”
Valaran is mine!
The thought made Tol shiver, in spite of the night’s heat.
Kiya leaned close. “Let’s go, before the dream ends and they change their minds!” she whispered.
Tol dropped the reins. Jumping down from the wagon, he told Kiya to wait there. Like a sleepwalker, he passed between the lines of mounted men, crossing the broad square under the eyes of two thousand warriors.
Iron scraped. A warrior in the front ranks drew his saber and raised it high.
“Tolandruth!” he shouted.
Two thousand sabers thrust up toward the starry sky. “Tolandruth! Tolandruth!”
The Inner City gate was open and unguarded, but the imperial plaza wasn’t empty. Dark stains covered the mosaic. Farther on were several bodies, shapeless mounds illuminated by the glow of the Tower of High Sorcery.
He found more broken weapons and blood on the palace steps. There’d been a brisk fight here, but the Householders had been swept aside.
Once Tol had seen Emperor Pakin III stand on these steps, bathed in the adoration of his loyal subjects, Tol included. Now there was only the sound of the night breeze and Tol’s own harsh breathing. Only one of the iron sconces by the palace doors held a lit torch, and the double doors themselves were ajar. A brass lamp, stamped flat by a heavy boot, lay in the doorway.
The imperial palace felt like a cemetery-potent with the feeling that people had once been here, but now were gone. Tol finally encountered living occupants, small knots of courtiers or servants hiding in alcoves and whispering. More than once he heard his name spoken with the sort of frightened reverence usually reserved for forces of nature. Fire. Flood. Plague. Tolandruth.
The audience hall was barred to him. Its floor-to-ceiling double doors did not yield when he leaned against them. Tol smote the panels with the pommel of his sword and shouted. Ruddy light bloomed in the thin gap between doors and floor. A heavy bolt clanked. The left door swung inward.
Tol lifted Number Six, prepared to face a reserve contingent of Wolves or even Ackal V himself. The face that greeted him was pale, hollow-eyed, and indescribably lovely.
“By all the gods,” Valaran breathed, lifting her oil lamp higher. “It is you!”
Tol’s breath caught and held. She was thinner than he remembered, her chin sharper, and her cheekbones more prominent, but her eyes were still the clear, bottomless green of fine emeralds and her hair a warm, deep chestnut. She was clothed in white, with a delicate tracery of crimson thread decorating her gown’s close-fitting bodice.
“Valaran.” How sweet it was to speak her name aloud! “Valaran,” he said again. “I have come for you.”
She moved back a step so he could enter. She swung the ponderous door shut and threw the bolt. Without warning, Tol suddenly found her in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder. She held him tightly, her body shaking.
“I have worked so long for this moment,” she said, lips close by his ear. “So long and so hard, and I thought many times I’d failed. Yet here you are!”
The catch in her voice touched him deeply. Her scent filled his head, making him dizzy with desire. He lifted his hand and carefully rested it on her shimmering hair.
“I swore I would return.”
A small laugh, faintly edged with hysteria. “I know.”
They kissed, tentatively at first, then with increasing fervor. He had nearly forgotten his rage and his mission, until Valaran drew back and said, “Come, my love.”
She took his hand and led him down the carpeted path that ran the length of the long, high-ceilinged audience hall. Only a few candles in the room’s numerous candelabra were lit. Most of the enormous iron racks were overthrown, candle wax spattered over the floor. Elegant chairs were overturned, tables smashed.
Valaran led him to the rotund body of a man, clad in fine burgundy velvet, lying facedown on the marble floor. A wide bloodstain spread out from the man’s head.
“One of his most loyal chamberlains-Lord Fedro,” she said. “He killed him himself.”
Tol wondered what had happened here, but was given no time to ask. Valaran drew him onward.
The far end of the hall was brighter than the rest of the cavernous room. The throne of Ergoth was flanked by flaming braziers. The seat was vacant.
“Dal! Dal!” Valaran called with quiet urgency.
A small boy emerged from behind the throne and ran to her, clutching her gowned legs.
She smiled^ laying a hand on the child’s thick mop of black hair. “This is my son, Crown Prince Dalar of Ergoth.”
The child had his father’s high forehead and sharp features. His eyes were Val’s, emerald green and enormous in his pale face.
Tol nodded awkwardly at the boy, then looked beyond him. Protruding from behind the throne was a foot clad in a crimson slipper. It twitched. Tol strode around the imperial seat to find the emperor lying on the floor. His robe of gold and imperial scarlet was twisted around his legs and torso, as if he’d been thrashing about on the floor. His eyes were half closed, his fingers twitched convulsively, and he was mumbling into the carpet.
Taken aback, Tol said, “What happened to him?”
“Drugged.” Valaran shrugged at his shocked expression, adding, “I put a sleeping draught in his wine. With the Wolves gone, and him so preoccupied, he didn’t notice until it was too late.”
Tol rolled the semiconscious man onto his side. Ackal V reeked of sweat and sour wine. A bloody dagger lay on the rug beneath him-the same blade, Valaran said, that he’d used to slay his unfortunate chamberlain.
He felt Valaran’s hand on his shoulder. “Everything is ready,” she murmured. “The Great Horde has forsaken him. The Household Guards are beaten and scattered. His Wolves are gone. I knew they couldn’t kill you! No one remains to defend him.”
Tol stood. Valaran put her arms around his waist from behind. She pressed the trembling length of her body against his.
“This is the reason I lived, for this moment! I tried to kill myself, but he stopped me. Then there was Dalar-another reason to live until you came back to me. I dreamt of this, Tol, awake and asleep, for nearly seven years! Only one deed remains. Just one act, and I am yours forever.”
He felt the feather-touch of her lips against his neck. “Kill him, Tol.”
Tol looked down at his enemy. There was no one in the world he hated more than this man. Haughty, cruel, vicious Prince Nazramin, who had murdered his own brother to steal his throne. No one deserved death more than the man who had worked such evil against Tol, from the moment they’d first met up to this night.
Yet Tol did not move.
To hear the woman he adored say, “Kill him, Tol,” as easily he had said, “I love you,” was more than Tol could bear. The touch of her lips had sent a wave of desire through him, but those words brought a nauseating rush of revulsion. His sword arm seemed turned to stone.
“Tol, my love, what are you waiting for? Kill him!” Valaran said, more loudly.
Prince Dalar was watching them, peering around the golden throne of Ergoth. What did the
boy make of this? Tol wondered. What did he think of his mother, kissing this strange, savage-looking man and demanding that he kill Dalar’s father? The child’s wide-eyed gaze only deepened Tol’s revulsion. He shook off Valaran’s embrace, stalking away. She followed.
“Where are you going, Tol? This is the culmination of our dreams! We’ve waited so long for this night! Finish him! No one will weep for such a monster!”
The gods alone knew how much Tol wanted to kill Nazramin! When he’d been driven out of Daltigoth, broken inside and out, it was the hope of Valaran’s love and the dream of Nazramin’s death that had kept him alive. He had always imagined killing his enemy, but in some honorable fashion. Never once had he considered slitting the throat of a helpless, drooling drunkard.
Valaran circled the throne to stand by Dalar, who clung to her hand. The great chair stood between her and Tol. “Don’t be misled by pity!” she insisted. “Great men are not moved by such feelings. You are the finest warrior of the age! Look at what you’ve done: slain monsters, bested wizards, conquered nations! Your deeds will live forever! Only one challenge remains. You must complete the saga of Tolandruth of Juramona! Kill the emperor, and both my love and the throne of Ergoth will be yours!”
Valaran’s face was no longer pale, but suffused with blood and contorted by hate. The woman he loved was suddenly a stranger to him. Was this the woman of his dreams?
He had to clear his throat twice before words would come. “I never wanted that,” he told her. “The empire would be destroyed. Riders and nobles would never tolerate a peasant on the throne.”
She made an impatient sound and waved his objections aside. “Any who objected could be put down! You have an army, don’t you?”
Taking up her husband’s dagger, she offered it to Tol.
“Don’t worry, my love.” Her voice was soft, caressing. “You can rule as regent until my son is old enough to reign for himself. Teach him to be as honorable and forthright, as you are.” She extended the blade closer. “How else can we be together? I’ve lived half my life as wife to men I did not love, and lover to a man I could not have. Do you know what that’s done tome?”
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