Whelan turned to the window. “But I will swear this. If I don’t find my companions today, I will return to Eriscoba and the Free Kingdoms and beg the Knights Temperate to defend Balsalom as if it were the Citadel itself.” He turned to go.
As Whelan stepped through the doors, she almost stopped him, abdicated her power to follow him on the crooked path, or wherever this man wished to go. For she did not so much wish a political alliance, she realized, as an alliance with Whelan. Alas, she let him go.
That night, the grand vizier re-anointed Kallia in an official ceremony. Cragyn had taken the Scepter of Balsalom, emblem of Balsalom, wrought from the blackened iron of the star stone, but Saldibar found a diamond tiara with a red ruby at its crest in the vaults below the palace, and placed this on her head. Saldibar lay Mol Khah’s black and crimson helm at her feet and proclaimed her the Jewel of the West, and the Hammer of Veyre. The people crowding the banquet hall, the largest unburned room in the palace, let out a great cheer, hope rising in their faces.
It was, she thought, much as Whelan had said. A marriage vow between herself and her people. There wasn’t room for anything else.
-end-
The Dark Citadel continues in book two: The Free Kingdoms.
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The Dark Citadel Page 24
