Only then, when a grudging captain of the palace guard at last proclaimed them as safe, did the princess come to meet them.
She was shorter than Kestar had expected, not much taller than either Faanshi or Tembriel, though of stockier build than both. Her figure had the fullness of a new mother’s, but her grief-hollowed face and the black gown she wore suggested death, not life. Red hair was pulled back from her face into a severe chignon, and as most of them made their obeisance, eyes of golden brown coolly surveyed them all.
“Well,” she said after a moment to Tembriel, “I suppose I can hardly expect an elf to want to curtsey to me. Will you at least deign to grant me your name?”
“Tembriel of Dolmerrath,” the fire-mage replied with equal coolness. “I come in the name of my steward, Gerren, and the rest of the free elves of the west.”
“And the rest of us, Your Highness, come in the name of the army of Nirrivy,” Kestar said, reaching into the satchel slung from his shoulder for the papers with which the duchess Khamsin had entrusted him. “I bring signed statements from the Duchess Khamsin elif-Darim Sarazen, and from Gerren, steward of Dolmerrath. I ask your intercession so that we may present them to the Bhandreid.”
Margaine swung her attention to Kestar, and for just a moment, some strong reaction he didn’t have time to name rushed across her face before her mask of royal impassiveness returned. “Of course you would not be in a position to know. I regret to inform you, Lord Vaarsen, that the Bhandreid Ealasaid of the House Araeldes returned to the care of the gods this very morning, joining her grandson Prince Padraig—my husband—who died just before the Anreulag’s escape and her attack upon the people.”
Shock blanked all thought from Kestar’s mind. What now? But as always, Celoren was there to lend him support. “Your Highness, please accept our condolences for your losses, particularly in light of the ongoing threat to the realm,” his partner said, while snapping him a meaningful look. “But because of that threat we ask your forgiveness for our urgency. We not only bring the statements Lord Vaarsen speaks of, but also can offer a potential way to put a halt to the Anreulag’s activities.”
The papers. Kestar shook off his uncertainty and began to offer the princess the documents, only for her to cut him off with a swiftly raised hand. “The Anreulag is higher priority. If you know of a way to stop her from destroying anything else or killing any more Adalonian citizens, for the love of all that’s holy, enlighten me.”
“There is a sword, akresha,” Faanshi offered. “A sword that used to be in the hands of the elves. It’s the only thing that can stop her.”
“And ever so conveniently, your people stole it from us eighty years ago. I don’t suppose you happen to have it lying around anywhere in this great mausoleum, do you?” Tembriel’s blunt tone earned her disapproving glares from the guards in the room as well as a visibly fuming Jekke—but Kestar didn’t miss that both Julian and Rab were carefully expressionless, save for a malicious sparkle in Rab’s eyes.
Margaine for her part seemed entirely indifferent to the fire-mage’s hostility. If anything, the sharpness of her gaze only intensified at the mention of what Kestar now knew to be the same battle where his great-grandfather had been killed. “Might I inquire as to the extent of your familiarity with that incident? Were you present at that conflict?”
Tembriel blinked, her eyes narrowing in wary speculation. “I was there, yes. I was one of the witnesses to Prince Riniel’s death. Do you have the sword or don’t you?”
“Your Highness,” the captain of the palace guard put in, “several of these people are known fugitives, and the Bhandreid had issued public orders to the Hawks to bring them in. I strongly recommend against—”
“And I strongly recommend against your offering me counsel I have not solicited.” The princess spared the captain one short glance, long enough for displeasure to turn her tone to ice. Her attention returned to Tembriel and Kestar, first and foremost of the company assembled before her. “Before the Bhandreid died, she revealed to me that the weapon of which you speak was melted down and remade by the order of her father. It is now a gun, one I have already attempted, without success, to deploy against the Voice of the Gods. So I must adjure you now, tell me something more that I can actually put to use, or cease to waste my time.”
Visible fury flared in Tembriel’s eyes, sharp enough that their Hawk escorts and the princess’s guards reached for their weapons, and both Rab and Julian put warning hands upon her shoulders.
“Setting the acting Bhandreid of the country on fire would be less than diplomatic,” Julian warned when the she-elf spun to face him. “And exceedingly counterproductive.”
“They melted down Amathilàen,” Tembriel snarled. Her eyes were lambent yellow now, and the air around her momentarily shimmered with heat. “That sword was older than this entire accursed country!”
“Which will not be helped in the slightest by you getting us all shot where we stand.” The Rook didn’t budge, and though he had no magic at his command, steel unsheathed itself in the tenor of his voice.
“Stand down,” demanded the Hawk captain who’d ridden in with them, her pistol out now, pointed straight at Tembriel’s head. “You’re only here because Lord Vaarsen said you could help us, elf. Or you will indeed be shot.”
“No! Wait! Please!” Kestar threw up both his hands, palms out, one toward the guards and the other toward Tembriel, while he threw a pleading glance to Margaine. The princess had blanched, her eyes gone wide and her mouth pulled taut at the signs of active magic before her. As her attention came back to him, he went on, “Your Highness, no matter what’s been done to the weapon, whatever form it’s in now, you won’t have been able to make it work against the Anreulag on your own. Not from what the elves have told me. Amathilàen—Moonshadow—is a magical artifact, and its power can only be invoked when it’s wielded by its intended hands.”
Kestar hadn’t really thought of the probable reactions their news would provoke once they delivered it—in truth, he hadn’t expected to make it all the way into the palace, much less into the presence of a member of the royal family. At best he’d anticipated dismissal, and at worst, arrest by Hawks undeterred by the loss of working amulets.
Not the slightest inkling of insight, from his premonitions or from simple experience with the Order, had prepared him for the princess Margaine pinioning him with a gaze gone flat and fraying. She didn’t mock him, ridiculous though the words sounded in his own ears. She gave no order to the Hawks and the guards to shoot or arrest them. Beneath her stare he abruptly felt as exposed as he’d been to the immutable sunlight of Faanshi’s healing power—yet with this woman, there was no magic. “Which of you possesses the intended hands, Lord Vaarsen?” she asked, and though her composure never wavered, her tone roughened ever so slightly, betraying a sudden, desperate hope.
“I do, Your Highness.” It felt supremely foolish to say it, and yet, Kestar felt an abrupt relief as well—a relief that struck him as equally foolish. I haven’t even laid hands on the damned thing yet, much less stopped anybody with it. “Or so the elves have told me.”
Margaine’s chin lifted, and she gave Tembriel a long considering look that the she-elf returned in equal displeasure; then she considered Kestar once more. “The elves have no reason to want to act on behalf of this realm. Your hot-tempered companion is testament to that. Why must I take them at their word now? And why are you the one to take the gun—what did you call it? Moonshadow?”
“The Anreulag is an elf, akresha,” Faanshi said quietly. “She’s very old and very powerful, and Kestar is descended from the elf king for whom the sword Amathilàen was made. The sword that was made to stop her.”
“She almost destroyed us,” Tembriel said, and though the dangerous heat ebbed out of her eyes, she didn’t blunt the bitter disgust in her voice. “Long before humanity rallied itself to
finish the job—by bending her to your wills. And now Vaarsen’s the last heir of King Janlec Dalrannen’s blood, and yet, he’s mostly human. The irony does not elude me.”
“We need solutions,” barked the palace guard captain, “not elven history lessons.”
But that too earned him a glare of freezing disapproval from the princess, who then immediately demanded of Tembriel, “If the Anreulag is herself an elf, what is her proper name? What do your people call her?”
Thus far their conversation had already been urgent, but sharpness above and beyond that came into Margaine’s words now, enough to make Kestar wonder what exactly this woman had witnessed, and what exactly she knew. The Bhandreid and her heir are dead, he thought, and only then did he realize that the woman before him was now effectively the new Bhandreid of the realm.
“Marwyth,” he offered, and his own words grew hoarse as the gold-brown gaze settled on him once more. “The Black Sun. Gerren, steward of Dolmerrath, says that’s the name they recorded for her in what’s left in his keeping of the histories of Elisiya.”
A very long, very slow breath eased out of Margaine, and when she’d released it she nodded, a single time, almost as if to herself. “Lord Vaarsen, you have just answered a question that’s plagued this entire city for the past many days. It behooves me therefore to inquire about the accuracy of your aim. I am aware that your Order has disavowed you, but you were Hawk-trained, and I can only therefore presume you are capable of handling a firearm.”
“I can hit what I aim at, yes.” Kestar didn’t dare overstate his marksmanship, for this was no time for boasting—but neither was it a time for false modesty. “I have many issues with the Order, but their weapons training is not among them, Your Highness.” Then he paused. “Or should we address you as Your Majesty?”
“The proprieties of my title are entirely irrelevant at this time, as my main concern is making sure we all live long enough for the Assembly of Lords to decide that very question,” Margaine said. “In the meantime, what marksmanship you can provide will have to do. I trust you realize that you are in essence volunteering to lay down your life for your country if your aim is insufficient to the task—a country against which your home province has arisen in rebellion, and with whose enemies you have stood accused of conspiring? What do you hope to gain by coming here to make this sacrifice?”
Every person in the room went silent, and in that moment Kestar could almost hear the nervous hammering of his own pulse. None of them had discussed it on the hard, swift ride out of Kilmerry Province—not in so many words, at any rate. But in his companions’ eyes he saw the same stark, clear resolve that had taken hold within him, and with those looks on their faces, he was able to give the princess a steady answer.
“Freedom, Highness. We ask that the provinces once known as Nirrivy be free to take back that name and their own sovereignty. We ask for the liberation of every elf slave in Adalonia’s borders, and for all free elves to be able to live without fear among us, or to reestablish their own homeland if they so desire. And we wish to set right the great wrong that the Church has committed against the people…” Now at last he had to catch himself, but then again, there was no turning back now. “And against Marwyth. We don’t want to kill her. We don’t want her to kill us. But if we must to save the people of all our provinces—Adalonia and Nirrivy, human and elf—we are prepared to take the risk. Will you allow us to take Moonshadow?”
“I will. Captain, if you please, let Lord Vaarsen have the weapon. It has only two shots remaining. Pray use them wisely. The armorers tell me no other bullets seem to work with it.” This time, when Margaine turned to the captain of the guard, it was with less frost in her eye and more focused purpose. The man was still palpably distressed by everything that had transpired before him, and the other guard and the two Hawks were little more at ease. But the man stepped forward, drew the pistol he’d been wearing in the holster at his side, and checked it over with a practiced eye. Kestar glimpsed the round of chambers for bullets within it, seven in all, most of which were already empty. Then the captain held the butt of the gun out for him to take.
It was in the room this whole time?
His breath catching in his throat, Kestar reached out to take the weapon. Amathilàen. Moonshadow. Both names seemed too otherworldly for something as prosaic as a pistol. Yet as the weapon passed from the guard’s hand to his own, he took in the silver-white sheen of its metal, its strangely delicate lines, and the sigil of clouds obscuring a moon worked into the leather that adorned the grip. A shudder of recognition coursed through him at the sight of the symbol—it looked like his father’s amulet. Then his fingers closed around the grip, and the room and everyone in it abruptly vanished from his sight.
Her head snapping up in reaction, like a she-wolf’s scenting blood. Her pain and rage and confusion flowing together into pure molten wrath, while her power stirred and began to build, lightning seeking its next place to strike.
“Dear gods,” he whispered when his vision cleared. “She’s coming.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Somewhere in the city of Dareli, Jeuchar 24, AC 1876
There was no mistaking when Dalrannen’s heir laid his hand on Amathilàen, for it was as if a sun kindled in her consciousness. It burned into corners of her memory buried beneath ancient layers of shadow, through the rage at her enslavers and the dull red agony of one of Amathilàen’s bullets still lodged within her flesh.
She saw the weapon again in its first and truest form, a blade born of power and of light, given life by the hand of the king for whom it had been forged. She saw Janlec Dalrannen once more, each detail of his face so crisp and clear in her recollection that she could almost stretch forth her hand to touch him—but then he changed, his eyes growing smaller, his ears rounder. Changing as Amathilàen itself had changed. Changing from elf to human. One of her enslavers.
The battle with Dalrannen had almost destroyed her. Yet the memory of it was hers, and she clung to it with ferocious strength, for it was her last memory of free will. She couldn’t let them take the recollection from her, or change Dalrannen’s heir to something he was never supposed to be.
She called all her power to her, and willed herself to follow the pull of the weapon that was her bane—so that she could find the one who wielded it, and kill him to liberate them both.
The royal palace, Dareli, Jeuchar 24, AC 1876
Kestar never heard what orders the princess called out to mobilize the guards and the Hawks under her command, or even what his companions said to one another as they began to scatter in all directions. Only one command of Margaine’s, on the edge of his awareness, pierced the haze of unreality that swept across his thoughts: the need to get every man, woman and child in the palace under cover.
“Get them all inside,” he shouted. It might as well have been another’s voice entirely, for the words barely seemed to come from him at all. The weight of the weapon in his hand was a pistol’s weight, but the ghost of a sword haunted his senses, a blade he could feel every bit as palpably in his grasp. It was akin to Faanshi’s magic overwhelming his thoughts all over again—yet this time, the echo in his mind was born of his own blood and bone. The hand on the gun was his. The hand on the sword, though, was someone else’s entirely.
Janlec Dalrannen. Kestar had only the name, but the name was enough, filling him with the sudden inexorable certainty that he couldn’t stay within the palace. She’d come for him wherever he stood, and within the palace’s walls, he put others at risk. Whether the others called to him and whether he replied, he had no idea. The knowledge of where he had to be sent him bolting out of the antechamber as fast as he could move, crying out to everyone he passed. Faces turned to him in startled incomprehension, and only when he made it outside did he realize he was speaking words he had no business knowing.
He was speaking Elvish.
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It should have frightened him, along with the way the vast expanse of the palace grounds spread out before him, much of it filled with the tents and shelters of the people of Dareli. But there was no room in him for fright now, not even with the wraiths of another city entirely shimmering in and out of his sight. Starhame, he supposed. Astàlleramè. Later, if he survived the day, he’d have to ask the elves what they remembered of their ancient city, and what his ancestor himself would have known.
For now, he had to focus on surviving the day.
Most of the city folk were camped on wide lawns and in courtyards close to the palace’s grand main entrance, and so Kestar picked the first path he could find that would take him away from them all, as far and as fast as possible. That sent him sprinting off across expanses of jewel-green grass, around the edges of a rose garden, and right past startled groundskeepers who screamed as he charged by. There were shouts behind him too, voices that might even have been Celoren or Faanshi, but he didn’t look back or slow his headlong rush to give them time to catch up. He ran faster than he could remember ever running before, and when he finally stumbled to a halt, chest heaving as he drew in great gasps of air, he found himself at last on a lawn at the edge of a hedge maze.
Here. Was the thought his own, or an echo from the magic in the gun? Either way, it didn’t matter now. He was far enough away from the palace that the chances of anyone else getting hurt were lessened, and that was all he could hope for—for the Voice of the Gods gave him no time for anything else.
She appeared out of nowhere as she’d done at Arlitham Abbey and again at Dolmerrath, with a thunderclap that split the air and dazzled his eyes with an all too familiar blue-white light. Amulet light, he realized, all of it now called back to its source. Now, though, she was bereft of the illusions that had made her the Anreulag in the eyes of the Church and of the people. Now she was wolf-lean and bone-white, her hair a wild tangle lashing in the force of her magic, her face streaked with dirt and ash and blood. Blood also marked the place where the princess’s last shot with Amathilàen had struck her, leaving a jagged red tear in the already scanty rags she wore, and an angry wound in her too-pale flesh. For the first time Kestar looked at her and saw not a goddess or an avatar, but instead, a wounded and feral creature ready to attack anything and everything that threatened her. He saw a living being, whose form and face named her the distant kin of Gerren and Alarrah and even Faanshi.
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