The Born Queen - J. Gregory Keyes [180]
He slipped through the lines of his men, past their fires and amid their grumbling. The enemy had withdrawn into Eslen-of-Shadows and crouched behind a low wall that had never been meant to serve as a fortification. Still, they had managed to hold it passably well. Crotheny might have lost its witch-queen and her ability to slay thousands with a wish, but if anything, the leadership of the army had improved.
He slipped over the barrier and wove through the alert front ranks, back through where men were sleeping, into the houses of the dead.
He knew his knights were questioning an attack that was not only sacrilegious and unprecedented but to their minds nonsensical. The only approaches to the castle from the shadow city were steep and fully exposed to anything the guards on the city walls might want to launch or drop on them for hundreds of kingsyards.
What he wanted, of course, was control of the throne, which finally had shown itself a few days after he had killed Anne.
He hadn’t intended things to be this messy; he’d intended to seize control of Anne’s gifts as he had the former Fratrex Prismo’s. Her power married with his own would have made it easy enough to slay any who opposed him in Eslen and let his army walk in.
Instead, he had to make do with talents he already possessed, at least until he appropriated the sedos throne and then took control of the others. That shouldn’t be so hard, with the Vhen throne empty and measures taken to keep it so. When he had both of those, he would find the keeper of the Xhes and dispense with him.
He had hoped to have Eslen-of-Shadows pacified to make the task of winning the throne easier, but he felt the power swelling toward the proscribed moment, and he also sensed the other foe he had dreamed about so long ago. He had no way of knowing who was stronger at this point, but he had taken plenty of risks, and this one last gamble for the greatest prize was surely worth it.
He was nearing the tomb itself when a soundless explosion of red-gold light came pouring from the door frame. He shrank against a cold marble wall, gathering his will to hide himself as completely as he could yet also ready for battle.
Something came flying out of the opening, a dark cloud, and a woman, glowing…
He blinked. It was Anne. It was the throne.
She was the throne. She was what he had come to claim. But how—
Anne was the flashing heart of a thunderhead, moving out over his men, bolts of blue-white lightning arcing out from her to the waiting earth, replacing silence with ear-aching thunder. He watched, frozen for the moment, as knights and soldiers and Mamres monks all perished alike, as Anne Dare—the Born Queen—only shone brighter and brighter.
His vision had started like this. Had he failed? Was there any chance to stop her now?
The Black Jester. If he could take his strength, add it to his own…
“Hespero!” a voice called over the din.
He jerked around and saw, to his great surprise, Stephen Darige.
“Brother?”
“Nice trick,” Stephen said. “Good for sneaking about. Too bad you were distracted.”
And with those words, their battle began.
CHAPTER TEN
BASICS
THE CANDLES all flickered when Brinna touched her fingers to the hammarharp, and the small room filled with the sound. Leoff waited, almost forgetting to breathe.
There it came, Mery whispering a note and then, suddenly, the same tone issuing, clear and perfect, from the mysterious woman at the keys. It shivered up his spine to know that she was hearing the sound itself, not in this world but in the other. He wished with all his being that he could hear what Brinna and Mery did. He knew it in his mind, of course, but his ears hungered for it, too.
Now Areana joined in with the quick line, starting low but climbing higher separately from the first theme, never touching it, as if two deaf musicians were playing side by side, each unaware of the other. The melodies wandered like that for a while, tightening