“This is Florien Ferox-son, my firstborn, my heir. Let him take up the shield of Gaheris and mastery of all his father’s lands. I bid you honor him as once you honored me.”
The silence was that of a crypt, and the earls and servants were specters in the dark. Lady Mintha’s face filled with horror, and Alistair’s was hidden in shadows. Leta felt her heart stop and then begin to race as a collision of thoughts battered her brain so hard that even the silence seemed cacophonous.
The earl’s hand lowered once more. He drew his son closer, and with a painful rasp he spoke his last. “I have done you no service. They will try to kill you.” He closed his eyes as though a knife were even now being driven into his skull. His final word came out in a struggling breath.
“Run.”
The Chronicler got to his feet. The earl lay immobile upon his bed, his chest rising and falling with the labor of his final moments. All tears or traces of sorrow were gone from the face of his son so long denied, at last acknowledged. Every eye in the room fixed upon him, and none there could discern the workings of his mind.
He backed away: one step, then two. He turned and, passing Leta without a look, continued on to the door, through to the hall.
Leta, holding her breath, heard the sound of running footsteps fading down the passage.
No one moved. No one breathed but Earl Ferox. He drew a breath, and another. And then, with a final dry gasp, he was still.
Lady Mintha stepped forward. She put a finger to his pulse, rested her ear near his cold lips. Then she stood.
“The earl is dead. Long life to Alistair, Master of Gaheris!”
“Long life” came the murmured echo, cold as a broken oath, dark as a death sentence. Leta stared around at the faces of the earls, Ferox’s onetime friends. She saw horror; she saw betrayal; she saw murder in every face. In her father’s face. In Mintha’s.
She turned and started for the door. But Lady Mintha leapt forward with the quickness of a cat and caught her by the arm. Without a word to Leta, she barked to those servants standing nearest, “Bring the dwarf to me.”
“No!” Leta cried and tried to break free.
“Shut your mouth,” Lady Mintha said. “Look carefully to your loyalties now.”
Leta stared up at the strong woman holding her and saw the viciousness of a vixen. She turned to her father, but the Earl of Aiven was giving his own orders to his men. Desperate, she looked around for Alistair.
Her husband-to-be was gone.
Gaheris rang with the crashing footsteps of those who sought Earl Ferox’s son.
Outside of Time there rests beneath a mountain a merry realm where yellow-headed little people dance and sing, and dance and sing some more. Their shadows, cast by brilliant torches, ring the stony hall of Ruaine-ann-Rudiobus, cavorting in the joy of song.
In their midst, singing loudest, dancing wildest, was scarlet-clad Eanrin. His bright voice rang above the throng, echoing in the highest vaults of the stone cavern hall of King Iubdan.
“Fair Gleamdrené, in splendor’s vault thou art
Shining lone and sweet among the flow’rs of night!”
The poet sang with a hand on his heart to a lady seated on a humble stool before the great Queen Bebo. The lady refused to look his way or even to smile at the devotion painted across the poet’s handsome face. But Bebo saw it and saw more besides, and she thought many thoughts that she kept to herself.
A star approached from the shadows.
Bebo turned, surprised at its coming. It wrapped itself in disguises so as not to frighten the Merry People dancing in that fey hall. But the queen saw this celestial being come to earth, shining and beautiful, its flanks tinged with blue light.
“Cé,” she whispered in quiet greeting, not wishing to draw the attention of her subjects.
It bowed before her.
Fair Bebo, it said, I come with word for you.
“Tell me, shining one,” said the queen.
Its voice was deep and far and full of multitudes singing when it replied. The gates are unwatched. The Flame is building. And the Murderer has found his heir.
“Ah,” said Bebo, nodding. “So the time has come. Good. Very good indeed.”
She turned and looked across the wild dance floor, watching the scarlet poet sing.
6
I LEFT ETALPALLI, THE REALM OF MY BIRTH, flying with my back to the Sun and Moon Towers, my head turned away from the ugly, devouring Mound of Cren Cru. I do not know who saw me go. I wondered if the Twelve would try to stop me, but I wasn’t a firstborn; perhaps they had no interest in my fate.
However it was, I crossed through Cozamaloti Gate, the shimmering cascades of falling water that formed the boundary between our world and the Between. And behind me, Tlanextu placed a lock, a work of magic, some would say. Its substance was this: No one should pass through Cozamaloti again except for the sake of another. With this lock, he hoped to prevent any other evil from slipping into Etalpalli while the city was weakened by Cren Cru and his slaves.