“I . . . will . . . be high lord,” Sergei grunted as he squeezed.
Grigori gasped for breath, but all that came out of his mouth was a series of pops. Sergei’s weight crushed Grigori’s chest, and the squeezing on his throat increased intensity. Grigori needed air desperately; he felt darkness beckon.
Sergei cried out in pain.
As the hands came away from Grigori’s throat and Sergei’s weight fell away, Grigori drew in a deep breath of life-giving air. He saw Katerina with a ruby-set ring on her finger. Sergei held his hand to his eye. The ruby glowed with inner fire.
Grigori heard running feet, and four armed palace guards appeared, immediately taking in the scene.
Grigori pointed a wavering finger at Sergei. “Seize him!” the high lord cried.
The guards took hold of the former lord marshal. Grigori climbed to his feet. Katerina clutched her father’s legs and began to sob.
Grigori recalled Amber’s words—she’d tried to tell him the truth. As he realized she’d been right all along, Grigori thought about what he’d told Sergei to do.
“You.” He pointed at one of the guards. “Come with me. The rest of you, hold him here. I will deal with this traitor myself.”
Grigori ran through the palace, collecting soldiers as he went. He dashed down the steps to the dungeons and shouted for the gates to be opened. Keys chimed in shaking hands, and iron crashed as he passed through the sets of barred gates.
Green light bathed him in its glow. Amber lay on her back on a bench, and a dungeon guard glanced up in surprise.
“Get away from her!” Grigori shouted at the dungeon guard.
He rushed to Amber’s side and brushed away a dozen scrabbling spiders. He ran his eyes over her, scanning the Alturan high lord’s wife with concern.
She was blessedly unharmed.
“Release her. Now! Hurry up!”
Grigori held Amber’s hand as she sat up, and he helped her off the bench. Her face was white, and Grigori remembered her screams.
“My Lady, I’m . . . I’m so sorry. How can you ever forgive me?”
Amber drew a shaky breath, and Grigori saw her gaze take in the red marks on his throat.
She was a long time in speaking.
“I’ve been through worse,” she finally said, though her voice trembled.
“Tell me what I can do to make this right.”
Amber fixed her gaze on the green light. She then turned back to Grigori, and the high lord of Vezna saw fierce determination in her eyes.
She told him.
33
Birds flitted from tree to tree, singing sweet songs to one another, filling the lingering silence. Insects hummed in the forest, buzzing and warbling as spring filled the brush with new growth and animal life.
The sounds of the forest were broken by the crash of metal on wood.
Hundreds of men worked together, and Miro worked with them. Each soldier held an axe in his hands, and they struggled in pairs to fell trees, one after the other, each coming down with a mighty crash of breaking branches and thudding trunks.
Every man worked in his armor, and although Miro felt sympathy for the infantry in their confinement of thick steel, armor took time to don, and Miro had to prepare for the unexpected. None complained, and Miro rotated the men to give them regular breaks. Not every soldier could work on the growing barrier at the same time; it would be too dangerous.
Miro leaned back and then smashed his axe into a sturdy tree close to the road while Beorn cut into his backswing. The triangular wedge gouged in the side of the tree grew larger with each cut, and then Miro could see the tree was about to fall.
“Stand back!” Miro cried.
With a cacophony of snapping wood, the tree fell down in the direction of the cut, adding its tangle of branches and foliage to the barrier.
“Come on,” Beorn said. He panted and groaned. “I need a break.”
The beaches were lost, and Miro and Beorn were at the first of seventeen defensive blockades spaced along the long road from Castlemere to Sarostar.
In front of them the massive barrier of fallen trees barred the way from the abandoned defenses. Back behind the blockade some men slept while others ate. Still others nervously rubbed at the hilts of their swords. Strange smells took turns wafting past: the scent of fragrant flowers, the tang of burned flesh, sea salt, melted metal, and above all, smoke.
Since the great explosion that had turned the walls and towers of Miro’s once mighty defenses outside Castlemere to fissures and rubble, they’d retreated back to this blockade and worked at the obstruction. The last colossus still in operation hauled night and day, carrying fallen trees to add to the tangle, until the energy left its manufactured limbs. The last of Halaran’s mighty colossi had now itself been added to the barrier.