Realm of Light - Deborah Chester [133]
Kostimon’s greatest living general, the supreme leader of the entire imperial force, stood at Albain’s gates. She could just glimpse her father standing before the Lord Commander, arguing with vehement gestures.
Her heart sank, and she knew that her hopes were indeed over.
While the walls of Albain’s stronghold were immense and tall, impossible to scale, and a symbol of her father’s considerable power, the infinity of the army diminished it, threatened it as nothing ever had.
The army had seige machines and catapults of fire. They could assault the stronghold, batter it and hold its inhabitants pris- oner until starvation decimated every person within these walls. Worst of all, with all the warlords of Gialta trapped inside, the rest of the province was vulnerable.
Elandra wiped away tears of bitter defeat. How had they marched here without a warning being given? Had her father’s sentries and scouts all failed in their duties? Or, if warnings had come while Albain had lain ill, who had received them in his stead? Lord Pier?
When she was finally able to drag her gaze away from the army, she looked up at the sky and saw a wall of black cloud stretching across the horizon—something she hadn’t seen since she left Imperia.
Fresh fear swept through her. It suddenly seemed to her that this massive, silent force that had come from nowhere was in fact the army of Beloth, risen at last from the realm of shadow.
As she stared, their crimson uniforms changed to vestments of black. She stared down at the snorting, pawing horses and instead saw terrible steeds that snorted flame and reeked of destruction.
“It has come,” she whispered, her voice raw with panic. “It has come at last!”
She pushed herself back from the balcony, her gaze still mesmerized by the vision. Her heart thundered inside her. She felt dizzy and cold as though she might faint.
“Elandra!” Caelan’s hands gripped her shoulders from behind. Spinning her around to face him, he shook her until she regained her wits. Once again the soldiers looked like ordinary soldiers, mortal men in crimson and steel.
She shivered and pressed her face against Caelan’s chest. For a moment he held her tight, murmuring reassurance into her hair, and she could pretend that all would yet be well, that they still had a chance, that they could get away and find refuge elsewhere.
But her fantasies were in vain. If she ran away, she would not be able to live with herself. She would carry with her the guilt and shame of her own cowardice. There could be no refuge from that. If she ran away, the imperial army would label her father a traitor and tear his palace down. He would die in disgrace, stripped of everything because of her. Gialta itself would be plundered and burned, the peasants dragged away into slavery, the land impounded under imperial ownership.
How well she knew the imperial wrath.
“Pier must have known they were coming,” she said hollowly, shivering. “While Father lay unconscious, Pier—”
“It doesn’t matter now,” Caelan said. “They are here.”
“Is no one loyal any more?” she asked. “Has all honor and courage vanished from the world?”
“Men are afraid,” Caelan said. “Their minds are twisted and rendered confused by things that should be simple and are not. The darkness comes. Look at the jungle, Elandra. Look at the river.”
Only now did she look past the army to see birds streaming out of the trees in huge flocks as though driven. Monkeys on the move chattered, teeming in the trees. Animals, even the large predator cats, fled to the river, swimming across to bound out on the other side into the paddies and fields.
The jungle was one of the most savage places she knew. The predators were fearless. Every creature in it was a master of survival. But animals fled their natural habitat only in times of great disaster, such as fire or annihilation.
She looked again at the cloud, awed and afraid of the menace it represented. “Does it stretch all the way from Imperia?” she whispered.
“Yes.” Caelan lifted his head high, his eyes studying the cloud.