It wasn’t relief, exactly, that came into the first guard’s face; his eyes were still too frightened for that. But he let out a heavy sigh, relieved, perhaps, to have at least found a recipient for his report. “The Voice of the Gods has been sighted all over the city throughout the last five hours, Highness. She’s been setting all of Dareli aflame. St. Merrodrie’s has lost one of its towers, maybe more—we haven’t been able to get a clear report from anyone there yet. Two ships of the line are sunk in the harbor. One tried to hit Her, but the cannon fire destroyed the dock where She appeared. At last word, half the naval shipyard was on fire.”
“And much of the city as well,” added the other guard in unhappy tones. “We’ve got frightened citizens thronging outside the palace walls, my lady, begging us to let them in. What are your orders?”
The Voice of the Gods. The Anreulag. The wrathful being who’d killed the High Priest had almost slain her too at the sound of that name—but She had provided no other by which to address Her, and Margaine could hardly explain that now. “Has She returned here, or uttered any cause for Her anger? Is the palace in any immediate danger?” As both guards shook their heads, she inclined her own. “Then let the people in. And take me to them at once.”
* * *
There were hundreds of them, a great crowd clustered outside the palace’s grand front doors. Dareli was not a small city, yet Margaine had rarely seen a throng as large as this, not since the one that had gathered in St. Merrodrie’s for her wedding to Prince Padraig. Their clothes marked them as hailing from different social classes and different walks of life—yet all of them were disheveled. Many of their faces were stained with soot or blood, and all of them were wild-eyed with terror. Warm as the night was, none were heavily dressed, and many were still clad in the nightshirts or dressing gowns they were wearing as they fled the safety of their beds. Lampposts set all along the wide courtyard cast flickering light on them all, a disturbing echo of the glow of fire still visible off in the distance, down on the lowlands where the bulk of the city lay.
The instant she stepped out through the doors, flanked by four of the palace guards, a massive wailing rose up to crash over her. She had to fight to distinguish the individual cries.
“For the love of the gods, Your Highness, what’s going on?”
“The priests won’t tell us! St. Merrodrie’s is on fire!”
“Help us, my lady, oh gods, please, help my baby!”
“Our houses are burning! We have nowhere to go!”
“Why is the Anreulag doing this?”
Margaine held up her hands and shouted with all her strength, “Please, all of you listen!” Some of the din subsided, and she kept shouting, determined to press her advantage as long as she could capture the attention of the nearest portions of the crowd. “The palace opens its doors to all citizens of Dareli tonight in this time of crisis. Please allow the guards and the rest of the staff to see you settled in the throne room, and we will make food, water and beds available, as much as we can spare.”
Ragged cheers of relief broke out at this, but not everyone was soothed. “But what about the Anreulag?” a woman toward the front of the crowd called out, even as she knelt between two frightened children and cradled them both close to her. “Why is She attacking us? Why is She angry?”
Oh dear gods, how can I answer them?
How could she tell them what the Bhandreid and the High Priest had done?
They’d been getting telegraph reports for days that Kilmerry Province had been overrun with rioting and even a possible outbreak of rebellion. And with this large a crowd gathered on the palace’s very doorstep, if she were to reveal to them that their Bhandreid and High Priest had committed an offense against the gods, she saw no other outcome but a riot every bit as bad as what was happening in the west. Her gaze lingered on the woman who’d called out, and the children she was trying to comfort. They weren’t nobility; their clothes were too modest for that. But Margaine knew a mother’s anxiety when she saw it, and her heart cracked at the sight.
She couldn’t frighten these people any further, not when her own daughter’s life might be at stake.
“I wish I could tell you,” she said. “Father’s Hand and Mother’s Heart, I swear I do. But all I can do is offer you all what shelter the palace can provide. Everyone, please come inside.”
They obeyed her—how could they not, for what choice did they have? Margaine was loath to send any of them fleeing back into danger, but even so, it took two dozen guards to get them all into the shelter of the palace with as little fuss as possible, and twice as many maids and footmen diverted from their usual duties to bring food and blankets and clean clothes.
As hours blurred together with the settling of them all, Margaine saw scores of people weeping, the children loudly, the parents softly, though the grief and panic stamped into their faces was the same no matter their volume. At least a dozen people muttered unhappily about leaving others trapped in cellars or in the centers of their homes, only to discover that the palace’s own defenders were already stretched thin, and there were few men or women to spare to send out in search of citizens in active danger. Some volunteered—but not enough.
A dozen more prayed under their breaths to the Four Gods, pleading to know what they’d done to turn the Anreulag against them and how they could appease Her fury. No answer came to them. Nor, through the ensuing sleepless hectic hours, did any new answer come to the princess.
Only sporadic reports reached the palace, some from Knights of the Hawk stumbling in from all over the city, and others from the trio of young men who manned the palace’s telegraph tower, who grew progressively more disheveled and frantic every time Margaine saw them. Yet they took turns at their post over that span of hours, preparing at her orders to send out the word across every province in the realm to alert both the standing army and the rest of the Hawks. The telegraphs normally couldn’t be seen at night. But somehow the men found enough lamps to cast illumination onto the shutters on the tower—and enough horses in the stables to ride out to carry alerts across the city to start manning the nearby stations immediately, so that reports could go out as soon as the sun was up.
If I ever have the power, I’ll knight all three of them for service to the realm, she vowed to herself.
The Father and Mother were merciful, and as the hours inched into morning, the Voice of the Gods made no appearance to threaten those at the palace. But that was little comfort when Margaine kept receiving word of sightings all over the city, interspersed with efforts to counter the blazes ignited by the Anreulag’s wrath and save the city’s citizens, if not their homes or shops. By noon the sightings began to slow, although no one could tell Margaine where the Anreulag had gone—only that sometime after dawn, bleeding in a dozen places, She’d disappeared. The Hawks couldn’t track Her, for all those who survived an encounter reported in dread that their amulets had flared and died in Her presence, turning into useless scraps of silver.
So Margaine had no choice but to keep moving, and to keep issuing directives to manage the care of all the citizens who’d come to seek the safety of the Crown and Church. Only when she had a few moments alone did she spend the time to pray that the Anreulag would not appear again in their midst and kill them all.
During one of those moments the doctor found her. “Your Highness, I really must insist that you get some sleep. You’ve been awake for over twenty-four hours now, and you cannot maintain your leadership in this crisis if you’re unconscious on your feet.”
His voice wasn’t loud enough to override the din of the great hall, packed as it was, but its urgency reached Margaine nonetheless. She snapped her head up, realizing in a moment of panic that she’d forgotten where she was. She’d paused around a corner on her way back into the massive room, carrying another stack of blankets in her arms, and the palace’s head physician was sta
nding right in her path.
Tamber Corrinides was tall and slim, handsome in an ascetic sort of way, and normally clad in the impeccable height of fashion. Now he looked every bit as ragged and exhausted as Margaine felt. The shadow of a beard darkened his jaw. Traces of dirt and blood streaked his face and clothes, and the disarray of his dark auburn hair had at some point in the past many hours lost all pretense of art. His gaze was sharp enough to pierce her through, but nonetheless, she didn’t miss the shadows at the corners of his eyes.
“I think, sir,” she said, drawing herself up to her full height, “that you are not in a position to chastise me for devoting time to caring for those in need. How long have you been attending to the injuries of our guests?”
By now the great hall was transformed, with dozens of pallets set up. Families were huddled together against many of the fine paneled walls, and in the open stretches of the floor they’d set up ordered rows between which people could walk. Palace servants as well as the physician’s own assistants regularly strode along those rows, stopping to check on injured persons, or to ask if they needed anything else. Margaine had applied herself to the same work. With the Anreulag turned against them all, everyone was needed to do their part, and she could not imagine anyone cared whether a princess did a nurse’s work.
If Doctor Corrinides had cared, he certainly hadn’t said as much to her, and he’d accepted the bandages and boiled linens from her hands as willingly as from any others. But it was all too clear now that he’d paid her more heed than she’d expected. “I do not have an infant who needs her mother’s attention,” he pointed out coolly. “For your daughter’s sake if not your own, my lady, I urge you to get some rest.”
“Consider that an order,” came an acerbic voice from behind her. “It will be the one worthy thing you’ll have accomplished in the last two days.”
Ealasaid.
The princess stiffened, lambasting herself mentally for letting the necessity of monitoring the Bhandreid’s condition slip her mind, and with the greatest of efforts she made herself incline her head. “My lady.”
“Your Majesty, I must give you the very same advice,” the doctor said. “Your heart must not be endangered further. Especially not now.”
His bow to Ealasaid was every bit as respectful as his tone, yet Margaine didn’t miss the discomfort that flared in his eyes for the briefest of instants before vanishing behind a deferential mask. Nor could she fault him for it. It had been only a matter of time before Ealasaid roused, no matter what orders Doctor Corrinides tried to enforce. He no more had the power to keep her in bed than anyone in Dareli had to stop the Voice of the Gods—and in truth, Margaine was more frightened of her aged queen than of the Anreulag. Both had the power to destroy her. But only Ealasaid was able to shatter her life without actually taking it.
On her feet again for the first time since the doctor had treated her, the Bhandreid was ashen-faced, every seam and wrinkle of her aged countenance giving stark testimony to her condition. Her eyes were far too bright, with a wild gaze that seemed to the princess to stare straight into the lowest of the hells. “As my personal physician, your first duty is to get out of my way when I require it,” she said.
Tamber Corrinides bowed once more and stepped aside. Rather than striding past him, however, she turned the pale embers of her eyes toward Margaine, disdain and challenge upon her face.
With immense reluctance, Margaine too stepped aside to clear the way into the great hall so that the Bhandreid could pass.
Ealasaid paused a moment more. The woman Margaine had thought she knew was far too well-bred to flagrantly express her scorn. But this Ealasaid curled her lip in contempt, and the hoarseness of her voice only accentuated the whip-crack of her tone. “Get out of my sight, girl, and stay out of it. If I see you again, I will have you flogged.”
Then she strode out into the hall, making the nearest of the guards on duty scramble to announce her arrival—and leaving Tamber Corrinides to blink from Bhandreid to princess and back again. Margaine didn’t linger to enlighten him. She bolted in the opposite direction, for the refuge of the nursery where her baby daughter waited in her nursemaid’s care. If they lived through another morning, for both their sakes, she’d get her child out of the palace.
Padraiga, the last thing she had in a world beginning to crumble around them all.
Somewhere in Dareli, Jeuchar 5, AC 1876
Her enslavers had ordered her to make war, more than once. The battles stood out sharply in the swirling vortex of her memories, for they were the only times she’d been allowed to unleash her power’s fullest strength. To make war now on the city of her enslavers kindled joyous fire in her heart, to meet and match the flame of her magic. It was almost irrelevant that they’d wounded her with their rifles—instinct fueled by the need to defend her freedom let her remember how to set her power to mend such hurts, though it woke ravenous hunger in her when she did so. She took only a short time to hide within the shelter of another building before she resumed her attack on the city—and as she did, she took fierce pleasure in destroying the structure when she emerged. Another church, from the look of it, though not as great as the one she’d attacked first.
It burned nevertheless, with a bright and purifying flame.
Their buildings crumbled beneath her might. Their old ones and children ran from her in terror, and she didn’t bother to waste her power on them when their warriors strove to rally against her. It exhilarated her. The weak ones were not worth her trouble, but the warriors met her in rightful combat, and so she rejoiced in bathing them in fire. And more—for with each blast of magic she hurled into the soldiers and Hawks who met her in the streets, long-buried recollections of the true potential of her power fought their way up from the depths of her recall.
Fire was not all she could do.
With wind, she hurled her enemies into the rubble she left of their buildings. With the responsive earth, she crushed the bones of their corpses into dust. With the waves that rolled up to meet the harbor, she sank more of their ships and drowned the round-eared ones who sought to bring her down with cannon fire. And with the uncoiling of nothing but her will, she ripped their bodies asunder.
Yet as hard as she fought, her enslavers outnumbered her. Their rifles and arrows could not easily reach her to damage her flesh—but some among the round-ears had aim almost worthy of her own people. Every so often, a bullet or an arrow managed to draw her blood.
And though it galled her to discover it, her flesh was not without its limits.
Weariness began to overtake her, as well as the mounting demands of her hunger. After hours of fury, though she still mowed down her enemies, her aim began to falter. When a new sun rose upon the fires she’d set loose through the city, she grudgingly acknowledged she would need to find some way to sustain herself.
Food and sleep stole across her consciousness, needs not quite as forceful or brilliant as the light of the stars—yet with an undeniable pull. At first it vexed her, for it distracted her from making war. But it came to her that these were the simple needs of her own flesh, and that her body, like her magic, was her own to command once more. She could answer its needs at her own pleasure, and none would stand in her way.
It took little effort to find what places in the city made or sold food, for much was left behind as the people fled her coming. Along one street she found a market full of wares for sale, all manner of foodstuffs ripe for her picking. Her senses almost swam with the impact of it—bread and fruit, fish and meat and cheese, all of them reawakening memories her enslavers had forced her to ignore. They’d given her nourishment, but never more than the barest minimum necessary to keep the flame of her magic alight, and never anything to tempt her with anything like pleasure.
This was different. Here she found temptation in all directions. There was more than enough to make her belly roar with hun
ger, as loud as the roar of exultation she let loose as she plundered the market for what she wanted. Everywhere she looked, she found and claimed her rightful spoils of war.
Then she willed herself away before the soldiers could find her, to find another refuge where she could rest and hide and nourish herself—and rebuild her strength for the next wave of her assault.
Chapter Two
Outside Shalridan, Kilmerry Province, Jeuchar 4, AC 1876
It wasn’t safe to stop for very long. But as Khamsin Kilmerredes had learned on the battlefields of her youth, every threat to body and blood had its own lesson to teach. In the days to come, her children would have to learn those lessons, just as she had done before them.
When she and her retinue reached a clear enough spot on the slopes that overlooked the city, the duchess gave the order to halt. Her guard captain, Follingsen, didn’t like the delay, and he liked her bringing little Yselde out of the shelter of their carriage even less. “My lady, I cannot emphasize enough that it is foolish for us to stop,” he protested even as he opened the carriage door for them. “Every moment we’re not moving is another moment we’re less able to guarantee your safety.”
“War is breaking out in this province, Mr. Follingsen. It may be at our own people’s direction, but by its very definition, our safety will not be guaranteed for the foreseeable future. But we won’t be long. I want my daughter to see this.”
Most of the roads out of Shalridan had been choked for hours, filled with people fleeing by foot and horse and wagon. On the heights, those who fled rode on finer horses or in the carriages of the gentry, but they fled nonetheless, defending their passage with sword and pistol. Khamsin’s retinue had passed three other parties in the past half hour alone. Only now, with the road clear before them and behind, could they take a few moments for the duchess’s purpose.
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