Crossing Over - Anna Kendall [59]
“Rise.”
“Your Grace . . . it is as you predicted. The countryside around the island is ours. The Blues gave way with only a brief fight, and the others stand at the west bridge.”
She didn’t move or speak, but something flashed from her, like unseen lightning.
“It is my duty as commander,” Lord Robert continued, “to tell you that this Blue retreat is only temporary. Their army is startled and confused, and they lost soldiers in skirmishes at the bridges. But the main portion of the Blue army was not there, and they will regroup and continue the siege. To bring the others inside—”
“Bring them in,” she said. “Open the west gates to the city and the palace.”
Lord Robert snapped his fingers. A courier set off at an all-out run—running from a throne room, with his back to the queen! She said nothing, however, and her eyes gleamed as bright as her crown. Lord Robert moved to stand with the advisors. He looked odd there, an armored soldier in the strength of his prime amid the old men in their green robes. I saw his big, hard hands clench into fists.
I was confused—the west gate? Queen Isabelle’s army would have marched down from the north. To the west lay only inland villages rising to high, jagged mountains. If there were queendoms beyond those mountains, I had never so much as heard their names. But I remembered all the strangers that had come and gone from Queen Caroline’s former rooms, in the long weeks before the old queen died. They’d all had the look of hard riding, even though a few—clearly couriers—had been barely more than boys. . . .
It was a boy who first entered the throne room.
No older than I, he walked alone across that vast expanse of floor, his head held high. No one spoke or moved or, it seemed, even breathed, and the only sound was the boy’s boots ringing on the stone. Heavy boots, with strange metal caps on the toes. He wore no coat—unless he had left it outside the room—but only tunic and breeches of rough brown cloth and, on his head, a wreath of dead twigs, like the mockery of the flower wreath a girl might wear at midsummer. No sword or other weapon. As he approached the throne, we could all see that his forehead bore strange markings of red dye.
He came right to the foot of the throne steps, and did not kneel.
A murmur ran over the courtiers, like wind in a field. The boy turned toward them. Lady Cecilia, standing closest to him, shrank back, and I felt my muscles tense, ready to spring if he touched her. But instead he turned, walked to the left of the dais, and faced away from the throne. He began to sing.
His voice filled the entire chamber. Powerful, sweet and yet guttural, the song seemed to swell to the vaulted ceiling with strange words:Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Bee-la kor-so tarel ah!
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Now two more figures appeared in the doorway, and these were not boys but men. Warriors. They wore tunics of some shaggy fur, metal-capped boots, and helmets topped with twigs. Each man carried a cudgel, thick around as my leg, and each had a strange metal stick slung across his shoulder. Knives at their leather belts, but no swords. The pair advanced, singing along with the boy in deep, unmusical voices, and beating their cudgels upon the floor as they advanced.
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Bee-la kor-so tarel ah!
Ay-la ay-la mechel ah!
Halfway down the room, the two warriors parted and one marched to and along the left wall, the other the right, stopping several feet from the dais. Two more marched behind them, and two more behind those, and yet two more. All of them sang the guttural song, and pounded their cudgels upon the floor, and stood to line the walls. And still they