The Hollow Queen (46 page)

Rial's face grew solemn. “Focused, yes, m'lord. She was intensely pragmatic, and seemed to be in little to no distress of body or mind.”

“But not well?”

“She seemed well, m'lord.”

Ashe gritted his teeth, trying to remain calm. “What are you not telling me, Rial?”

The tinge of amusement left the viceroy's eyes.

“If I had not come to know her as well as I have these past five years, I would have said she was extremely well, m'lord.”

“So what does your informed understanding tell you otherwise?”

Rial examined the ground.

“She was not herself when she was here, in my estimation. She was fine, but there was something missing. I asked her upon her arrival why she had been in the Deep Mountains, something she had confided under strictest secrecy to me, and she didn't seem to know. I do not believe she was telling me that I had no business with the information—it was as if she was unable to remember why she had gone there.”

Ashe's stomach turned and his throat tightened, but he merely nodded. “Is that all?”

“Perhaps it was her injury, or the seriousness of the coming conflict, but she seemed to have lost, well, much of her spirit, her essence. She was stouthearted and resolved, as ever, but that—that warmth, that energy that be unique to her, I felt it was diminished, gone, even. No one else has commented on it, however, so perhaps I am just overanalyzing the situation.”

“Perhaps. Thank you for the report. Now, unless you have further need of my presence, I am off. The sailors of Manosse and her naval forces are ready to assist in any of the retrenching, rebuilding, guard duties, whatever you have need of; put them to good use. They came quite a distance to aid the continent; do not allow them to let the tidal wave and the dragon to have done all the work.”

Rial smiled. “Yes, m'lord. So you be heading east?”

“I am,” said Ashe, gathering his belongings and checking his gear.

“I would suggest you begin in Sepulvarta,” said Rial, signaling to one of the nearby Lirin soldiers. “Be so kind as to obtain the finest available mount for the Lord Cymrian,” he ordered.

“It need not be fine, just swift and stalwart,” said Ashe. “Thank you, again, for the report, and for your steadfastness in holding Tyrian safe.”

“Of course. Travel safely, m'lord. And give my fond best wishes to your wife, when you should come upon her.”

Ashe nodded, but the cheer of civility had left his eyes.

He glanced back up at Rial.

Only to see that it was missing from those of the viceroy as well.

 

55

SOUTH OF SEPULVARTA IN THE SORBOLD MOUNTAINS, AT THE RADASHAJN PASS, VORNESSTA

Rhapsody waited until the screaming wind had settled before leaning out of the swirling vortex, then stepped cautiously forward.

She squinted, disoriented, in the blazingly bright light beyond the wind's door; a moment before, in the surf of the Skeleton Coast, the heavy mist and the racing clouds had made the day seem as if it was almost dusk.

Upon looking around, she was slapped almost immediately by a sandy breeze, a dry wind heavy with the odor of battle, of pitch and bitumen, and of blood.

Daystar Clarion's blade was roaring with wind-whipped flame, spilling erratic flashes of light around her. Rhapsody stopped and drew a breath; the wild dance of the fire was owing to how violently her arm was shaking. She steadied herself and glanced about her.

She was standing on the rim of a vast canyon in the mountains, most likely in the southern Teeth, she guessed by the position of the sun, which was descending the welkin of the sky, glowing ominously over her right shoulder.

All around her was the detritus of battle, broken wagons and bodies, pools of blood and urine staining the sandy ground, fingers of smoke hanging heavily in the air, and an endless number of arrow shafts and shattered crossbow bolts. The litter of lives and mat
é
riel went on for as far as she could see.

And rising across the canyon before her was a mountain peak towering menacingly toward the sky, jutting partway over the canyon so that the ground beneath it was in shadow, its face marred by what looked like an enormous door, small by scale to the mountain face.

The door seemed to be vibrating, a distant thudding sound reverberating from it.

Behind her, almost near enough to touch, stood Solarrs, her recent fellow military commander and Anborn's prized scout, bruised of face with his armor bloodied, one of his vambraces slashed open on his forearm.

He was staring past her, down into the canyon.

Anborn's bastard sword at his feet.

“Solarrs,” Rhapsody whispered. “Where is he? Where is—”

The saliva in her mouth dried like a stream in a rocky desert riverbed.

Standing at the base of the jutting mountain cliff in the canyon was the small figure of the Lord Marshal, his arms at his sides, his hand clenched into fists, or so it seemed to her.

He was gazing, his back to her, at the coming onslaught of soldiers of Sorbold, too many to count, just beginning to ride down from over the far rim of the canyon.

Weaponless, shielded only by a stack of sandy rocks, which were deflecting the arrows and bolts being fired at him from above.

Behind her she could hear the noise of distress rising from the soldiers of the Alliance, outnumbered easily ten to one by the advancing Sorbolds. Behind the enemy cavalry, foot soldiers were beginning to swarm over the far rim, blackening the sand-colored rockwalls with their numbers.

“No,” she whispered. “He's—he's trapped—Solarrs—we have to get him out of there—”

Solarrs's non-answer was a guttural sound of anguish.

“Anborn!” she shouted, her voice ringing in Namer's tones and therefore unable to mask her terror. “Anborn—get out of there!”

Her words echoed across the rock valley, even over the cacophony of the approaching army.

The Lord Marshal spun around and shielded his eyes with his hand, searching the rim of the canyon until he sighted her. Even as far away from him as she was, the Lady Cymrian could see his smile upon beholding her on the cliff rim.

“Rhapsody!” he shouted. “Open the door!”

She froze, staring at the coming avalanche of soldiers.

“The door!” Anborn screamed, gesturing behind him at the mountain cliff that hung over the valley behind where he stood.
“Open the bloody door!”

Time seemed to slow as Rhapsody followed the line of his arm back to the throbbing doors in the mountainside. All sound was now washed out in the thudding of her own heartbeat, the overwhelming clamor of death approaching on horseback and foot.

The words reverberated against her skull, the command of the Lord Marshal.

Open the door!

Then, though she could reckon no reason for the order, she felt her body answer her leader's call without questioning it. Understanding took root in her nonresponsive brain; she turned her attention to the burgeoning door and fixed her mind on it.

She closed her eyes, so as not to see the tidal wave of galloping horses and running enemy soldiers bearing down upon her sworn knight, turned in the direction of the door, and pointed Daystar Clarion at it from across the canyon.

Then she loosed a tone from the back of her throat, her Naming note,
ela,
the same note to which the sword, named itself for the star Seren, had been attuned, and raised the volume of her voice until she was all but screaming the note.

In response, the clarion call for which the sword was also named came forth angrily, righteously, winded like a great battle horn. It blasted across the canyon, the ripples of sound skittering over the top, avoiding the valley altogether, and redounded off the mountain peak and its vibrating door.

In the back of her mind she could hear Solarrs shouting orders to the soldiers behind them, positioning them for the onslaught that was coming, a wall of enemies that dwarfed their numbers and threatened to swallow the whole of the army in the backwash of the tidal wave they were now visiting upon the valley in the canyon. Rhapsody shook her head, pushing the competing sounds from her mind, and, having successfully connected the Naming note through the sword, she changed the pitch and spoke the word in Ancient Lirin.

Evit
. Open.

She felt, rather than heard, the sickening
crack
, the rumble of rock and steel, the screaming of old hinges.

Then a roar the like of which she had never heard before, as if the Earth itself was bellowing.

Her eyes snapped open.

The gigantic stone doors slammed open at the same instant, up against the mountain face. From behind them a massive flood of rock and slag was vomiting forth, forming a massive wave of stone death, burying the infantrymen that were charging beneath the mountainous outcropping, and rolling forward, chasing those who had outrun it initially.

“Rhapsody!”

The joyful shout echoed in her brain, as if it had been spoken by another Namer.

She looked down into the valley and saw the source of the call.

Anborn stood before the coming tide of horses, soldiers, and sliding slag, his arms open, dwarfed by the oncoming flood, his hands pointed at the ground.

His grin was as wide and unabashed as she had ever seen it, even from as far away as she was. He raised a hand in her direction in a final salute.

“
Goodbye,
my Lady!” he shouted merrily from the bottom of the canyon. His hand went to his face, where he pressed his lips against his fingers, and threw the kiss at her across the canyon.

Then, as the Sorbold army bore down on him from beyond the barricade of rocks, he looked westward, inclining his head and shielding his eyes in the setting sun that was bathing his face in an ethereal light. His final words were spoken more softly, far more reverently.

“Hello, my Lady.”

They had scarcely passed his lips when the momentum of the charging onslaught of men, horses, and slag behind him, spilling over and around his rock shield, snapped him from the ground and hurled his body skyward, where it pitched, feet over head, and then was swallowed into the tumult of pounding violence and thrashing rage, disappearing beneath the trampling hooves, the blows of cudgels and swords, and then, moments later, a hellacious rain of rock waste pouring down from the open doors of the mine in the mountain above. It seemed to her that a severed helmed head that spun around in the fray might have been his, seeing where he had fallen, but it was impossible to tell.

Rhapsody's scream of anguish was lost in the roar.

In the noise that swallowed the valley and spilled up the canyon wall to the top of the ridge where she stood, she could not hear her own voice, nor that of Solarrs, who stood beside her in the agony of twitching futility, his sword shaking in his hand, his mouth open in its own scream, every muscle in his body clenched in hatred.

She screamed again, this time in rage, her voice blending with that of Anborn's ancient comrade. As if of one mind, they stepped angrily to the canyon's rim and braced for the onslaught of soldiers who were scurrying up the rock face, hate in their own eyes.

The cavalry, more of which had survived the flood of slag than had the infantry, reined their mounts to a halt and swung their crossbows forward, unleashing a hail of bolts now that they were within range of the southern rim.

“Here!”

Rhapsody felt the clang of metal resonate through her body as one of the field commanders shoved an enormous shield in front of her. A moment later the pinging sound of bolts impacting the steel rang in front of her, and the commander fell back, his forearm pierced with a bolt.

Still in shock from watching Anborn's gruesome death, she clenched her teeth until she tasted blood in the back of her mouth and glared down the Sorbold soldiers climbing beneath the rim. Before the one closest to her was even in reach, she slid down over the rim and grabbed on to a rocky outcropping, leaning almost completely upside down and, with a grim hatred in her swing, slashed Daystar Clarion across his hands, separating one of them from his body and opening the back of the other; then she swung back and slapped him with the blade, causing him to fall, screaming, into the line of soldiers climbing below him, taking three more of them down to the canyon floor with him.

“What are you
doing?
”

A firm grip, bound with a leather glove, seized her by the upper arm and dragged her unceremoniously back up over the rim, tossing her to the ground. Rhapsody looked up in rage to find herself staring into the face of Solarrs, whose visage was even angrier than hers.

“M'lady, don't let your fury make you foolish,” he said, clearly struggling to keep from saying something harsher and fouler as he positioned himself between her and the ridge. The other soldiers of the Alliance were engaged now, firing down into the canyon, beating back the Sorbolds scaling the wall. “You would dishonor the Lord Marshal if you fell to your death or died rashly at the hands of a Sorbold dog, given what he has sacrificed to protect you. If you are meant to die in this battle, make it count and take as many of the bastards with you as come your way.”