Chapter 9 Chapter 8

IT WAS STRANGE, DIANORA THOUGHT, STILL MOVING THROUGH the crowded Audience Chamber as spring sunlight filtered down on Brandins court from the stained- glass windows above, how the so clear ports of youth were alchemized by time into the many-layered liities of adbigu . Sipping from her jeweled cup she considered the alternative. That she had simply allowed things to become nuanced and difficult. That the real truths were exactly the same as they had been on the day she arrived. she had become, and what she had not yet done. It was the central question of her life and once more she pushed it away to the edges of her awareness. Not today. Not in any daytime. Those thoughts belonged to nights alone in the saishan when only Scelto by her door might know how sleepless she was, or find the tracks of tears along her cheeks when he came to wake her in the morning.

Night thoughts, and this was bright day, in a very public place. So she walked over towards the man shed recognized and let her smile reach her eyes. Balancing her chalice gracefully she sketched a full Ygrathen salute to the portly, soberly dressed personality with three heavy gold chains about his neck. "Greetings," she murmured, straightening and moving nearer. "This is a surprise. It is rare indeed that the so-busy Warden of the Three Harbors designs to spare a moment from his so-demanding affairs to visit old friends." Unfortunately Rhamanus was as hard to ruffle or disconcert as he had ever been. Dianora had been trying to get a rise out of him ever since the night hed had her bundled like a brown heifer out of the street in front of The Queen and onto the river gallery.

Now he simply grinned, heavier with the years gone by and, later, his shore-bound duties, but unmistakably the man who brought her here. One of the few men from Ygrath she genuinely liked. "Not so much flavor from you, girl," he mock-growled. "It is not for idle women who do nothing all day but put their hair up and down and up again for exercise to criticize those of us who have stern and arduous tasks that shorten our nights and put gray in our hair.” Dianora laughed. Rhamanuss thick black curls—the envy of half the saishan—showed not a trace of grey. She let her gaze linger expressively on his dark locks.

"I'm a liar," Rhamanus conceded with untroubled equanimity, leaning forward so only she could hear. "Its been a dead-quiet winter. Not much to do at all. I could have come to visit but you know how much I hate these goings-on at court. My buttons pop when I bow." Dianora laughed again and gave his arm a quick squeeze. Rhamanus had been kind to her on the ship, and courteous and friendly ever since, even when shed been merely another new body—if a slightly notorious one—in the saishan of the King. She knew he liked her and she also knew, from dEymon himself, that the former Tribute Ship captain was an efficient and a fair administrator.

She had helped him get the posting four years ago. It was a high honor for a seaman, supervising harbor rules and regulations at the three main ports of Chiara itself. It was also, to judge from Rhamanuss slightly threadbare clothing, a little too near  The seat of power for any real gains to be extracted. Thinking, she clicked her tongue against her upper teeth, a habit Brandin teased her about. He claimed it always signaled a request or a suggestion. He knew her very well, which frightened her at least as much as it did anything else. "This is the merest thought," she said now to Rhamanus quietly, "but would you have any interest at

all in living in north Asoli for a few years? Not that I want to get rid of you. Its a dreadful place, everyone knows that, but there are opportunities and Id as soon a decent man reaped them as some of the greedy clutch that are hovering about here.” "The taxing office?" he asked, very softly. She nodded. His eyes widened slightly but, schooled to discretion, he gave no other sign of interest or surprise. What he did do, an instant later, was glance quickly beyond her shoulder towards the throne. Dianora was already turning by then, an inexplicable sense, almost an antenna, having alerted her.

So she was facing the Island Throne and the doorway behind it by the time the heralds staff rapped the floor twice, not loudly, and Brandin came into the room. He was followed by the two priests, and the priestess of Adaon. over to stand near by, dressed identically to the King except for his cap. The true measure of power, Brandin had once said to her, wouldn't be found in having twenty heralds die a room by proclaiming ones arrival. Any fool in funds for a day could rivet attention that way. The more testing course, the true measure, was to enter unobtrusively and observe what happened.

What happened was what always happened. The Audience Chamber had been collectively poised as if on the edge of a cliff for the past ten minutes, waiting. Now, just as collectively, the court plummeted into obeiisance. Not one person in the whole crowded room was still speaking by the time the heralds muted staff of office proclaimed the King. In the silence the two discreet raps on the marbled floor sounded like echoing thunder. Brandin was in high good humor. Dianora could have told that from halfway across the room, even if she hadnt had a hint from Rhun already. Her heart was beating very fast. It always did whenever Brandin entered a room where she was. Even after twelve years. Even still, and despite everything. So many lines of her life led to or from this man or came together, hopelessly intertwined, in him.

He looked to dEymon first, as always, and received the others expressionless bow, sketched low in the Ygrathen fashion. Then, as always, he turned and smiled at Solores. Then at Dianora. Braced as she was, as she always tried to be, she still could not quite master what happened to her when the gray eyes found and held her own. His glance was like a touch, a gliding presence, fiery and glacial both—as Brandin was. And all this from a look across a very crowded room. Once, in bed, years before, she had dared to ask him a question that had long troubled her. "Is there sorcery involved when you love me here, or when we first meet in a public place?"

She hadnt known what answer she wanted, or what to expect by way of reaction. Shed thought he might be flattered by the implication, or at least amused. You could never be sure with Brandin though, his mind ran through too many different channels and with too much subtlety. Which is why questions, especially revealing ones, were dangerous. This had been important to her though: if he said yes she was going to try to use that to kindle her killing anger again. lost here in the strange world that was the island. Her expression must have been very grave; he turned on his pillow, head propped on one hand to regard her from beneath level brows.

"Not in any way you are thinking. Nothing that I control or shape with my magic, other than the matter of children. I will not have any more heirs, you know that." She did know that; all his women did. He said, after a pause, carefully, "Why do you ask? What happens to you?" For a second she thought shed heard uncertainty in his voice, but one could never be sure of such things with Brandin. "Too much," shed answered. "Too much happens." And shed been speaking, for that one time, the unshielded truth of a no longer innocent heart. There was an acute understanding in his clear eyes. Which frightened her. She moved herself—moved by all the layers of her need—to slide over against his body again and then above and upon it that it might begin once more, the whole process. memory mixed with yearning, as in the amber-colored wine the Triad were said to drink—too potent for mortals to taste. "Are you truly serious about that posting in Asoli?" Rhamanuss voice was soft. Brandin had not gone to the throne but was making a relaxed circuit of the room—more evidence of his benign mood. Rhun, with his lopsided smile, shaked in his wake. "I confess I had never even given it a thought," the former Tribute captain added. With an effort Dianora forced her thoughts back to him. For a second she had forgotten her own query. Brandin did that to her. It was not a good thing, she thought. She turned again to Rhamanus. "Im quite serious," she said. "But Im not sure if you would want the position—even if it were possible. You have more status where you are, and this is Chiara, after all. Asoli can offer you some chance at wealth, but I think you have an idea what would be involved. What matters to you, Rhamanus?" It was more bluntly put than courtesy would have deemed appropriate, especially with a friend. He blinked, and fingered one of his chains of office. "Is that what it comes down to?" he asked eagerly. "Is that how you see it? Can a man not perhaps be moved by the prospect of a new challenge, or even—at the risk of sounding foolish—by the desire to serve his King?" Her turn to blink. "You shame me," she said simply, after a moment. "Rhamanus, I swear you do." She stilled his quick protests with a hand on his sleeve. "Sometimes I wonder what is happening to me. All the intriguing that goes on here." She heard footsteps approaching and what she said next was spoken as much to the man behind as to the one in front of her. "Sometimes I wonder what this court is doing to me." "Should I be wondering as well?" asked Brandin of Ygrath. Smiling, he joined them. He did not touch her. He very seldom touched the saishan women in public, and this was an Ygrathen reception. They knew his rules. "My lord," she said, turning and sketching her salutation. She kept her voice airily provocative. "Do you find me more cynical than I was when this terrible man brought me here?" Brandins amused glance went from her to Rhamanus. It was not as if hed needed the reminder of which Tribute captain had brought him Dianora. She knew that, and he knew she did. It was all part of their verbal dance. to her limits, and then changed what those limits were. She noticed, perhaps because the subject had come up with Rhamanus, that there was as much gray in his beard now as black. He nodded judiciously, simulating a deep concern over the question. "I would have to say so, yes. You have grown cynically manipulative in almost exactly the same proportion as the terrible man has grown fat.” "So much?" Dianora protested. "My lord, he is very fat!" Both men chuckled. Rhamanus patted his belly affectionately. "This," he said, "is what happens when you feed a man cold salt meat for twenty years at sea and then expose him to the delights of the Kings city." "Well then," said Brandin, "we may have to send you away somewhere until you are sleek as a seal again." "My lord," said Rhamanus instantly, "I am yours to command in all things." His expression was sober and intense. Brandin registered that and his tone changed as well. "I know that," he murmured. "I would that I had more of you at court. At both of my courts. Portly or sleek, Rhamanus, I am not unmindful of you, whatever our Dianora may think.” Very high praise, a promise of sorts, and a dismissal for the moment. Bright-eyed, Rhamanus bowed formally and withdrawn. Brandin walked a couple of paces away, Rhun shuffling along beside him. Dianora followed, as she was expected to. Once out of earshot of anyone but the Fool, Brandin turned to her. He was, she was sorry to see, suppressing a smile. "What did you do? Offer him north Asoli?" Dianora heaved a heartfelt sigh of frustration. This happened all the time. "Now that," she protested, "is unfair. You are using magic." He let the smile come. She knew that people were watching them. She knew what they would say among each other. "Hardly," Brandin murmured. "I wouldn't waste it or drain myself on something so transparent." "Transparent!" she bridled. "Not you, my cynical manipulator. But Rhamanus was too serious too quickly when I jested about posting him away. And the only position of significance currently available is north Asoli and so . . .” He let the sentence trail off. Laughter lingered in his eyes. "Would he be such a bad choice?" Dianora asked defiantly. It was genuinely disconcerting how easily Brandin could sound the depths of things. If she allowed herself to dwell on that she could become frightened again. "What do you think?" he asked by way of reply. "I? Think?" She lifted her plucked eyebrows in exaggerated arches. "How should a mere object of the Kings occasional pleasure venture to have an opinion on such matters?" "Now that," said Brandin nodding briskly, "is an intelligent observation. I shall have to consult Solores, instead." "If you get an intelligent observation out of her," Dianora said tartly, "I shall hurl myself from the saishan balcony into the sea." "All the way across the harbor square? A long leap," said Brandin mildly. "So," she replied, "is an intelligent observation for Solores." And at that he laughed aloud. The court was listening. Everyone heard. Everyone would draw their own conclusions, but they would all be the same conclusion in the end. Scelto, she reflected, was likely to receive discreet contributions from sources other than Neso of Ygrath before the day was out. "I saw something interesting on the mountain this morning," Brandin said, his amusement subsiding. "Something quite unusual." This, she realized, was why hed wanted to speak to her alone. Hed been up on Sangarios that morning; she was one of the few who knew about it. Brandin kept this venture quiet, in case he should fail. tease him about it. At the beginning of spring, just as the winds began to change, before the last snows melted in Certando and Tregea and the southern reaches of what had been Tigana, came the three Ember Days that marked the turning of the year. No fires not already burning were lit anywhere in the Palm. The devout fasted for at least the first of the three days. The bells of the Triad temples were silent. Men stayed within their doors at night, especially after darkfall on the first day which was the Day of the Dead. There were Ember Days in autumn as well, halfway through the year, when the time of mourning came for Adaon slain on his mountain in Tregea, when the sun began to fade as Eanna mourned and Morian folded in upon herself in her Halls underground. But the spring days inspired a colder dread, especially in the countryside, because so much depended upon what would follow them. Winters passing, the season of sowing, and the hope of grain, of life, in the summers fullness to come. In Chiara there was an added ritual, different from anything elsewhere in the Palm. On the Island the tale was told that Adaon and Eanna had first come together in love for three full days and nights on the summit of Sangarios. That in the surging climax of her desire on the third night Eanna of the Lights had created the stars of heaven and strew them like shining lace through the dark. And the tale was told that nine months later—which is three times three—the Triad was completed when Morian was born in the depths of winter in a cave on that same mountain. And with Morian had come both life and death into the world, and with life and death came mortal man to walk under the newly named stars, the two moons of the nights warding, and the sun of day. And for this reason had Chiara always asserted its preeminence among the nine provinces of the Palm, and for this reason as well did the Island name Morian as guardian of its destiny. Morian of Portals, who had sway over all thresholds. For everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world. A truth known under the stars and moons, if not always remembered by the light of day. Every three years then, at the beginning of each Year of Morian, on the first of the springtime Ember Days, the young men of Chiara would vie with each other in a dawn race up to the summit of San-garios, there to pluck a blood-dark sprig of sonrai, the intoxicating berries of the mountain, under the watchful eye of the priests of Morian who had kept vigil on the peak all night long among the waking spirits of the dead. The first man down the mountain was anointed Lord of Sangarios until the next such run in three years time. In the old days, the very old days, the Lord of Sangarios would have been hunted down and slain on his mountain by the women six months later on the first of the Ember Days of fall. Not anymore. Not for a long time. Now the young champion was likely to find himself in fierce demand as a lover by women seeking the blessing of his seed. A different sort of hunt, Dianora had said to Brandin once. He hadnt laughed. He didnt find the ritual amusing. In fact, six years ago the King of Ygrath had elected to run the course himself, the morning before the actual race. He had done it again three years past. , for a man of his years, considering how hard and how long the runners trained for this. Dianora didnt know what to find more whimsical: the fact that Brandin would do this thing, in such secrecy, or the ebullient masculine pride hed felt both times hed made it up to the summit of Sangarios and down again. In the Audience Chamber Dianora asked the question she was clearly expected to ask: "What did you see, then?" She did not know, for mortals seldom do know when they approach a threshold of the goddess, that the question would mark the turning of her days. "Something unusual," Brandin repeated. "I had of course outstripped the guards running with me." "Of course," she murmured, giving him a sidelong glance. He grinned. "I was alone on the path part of the way up. The trees were still very thick on either side, mountain ash, mostly, some sejoias." "How interesting," she said. This time he quelled her with a look. Dianora bit her lip and schooled her expression dutifully. "I looked over to my right," Brandin said, "and saw a large gray rock, almost like a platform at the edge of the trees. And sitting on the rock there was a creature. A woman, I would swear, and very nearly human.” "Very nearly?" She wasn't teasing anymore. Within the actual archway of a portal of Morian we sometimes do know that a thing of importance is happening. "Thats what was unusual. She certainly wasn't entirely human. Not with green hair and such pale skin. Skin so white I swear I saw blue veins beneath, Dianora. And her eyes were unlike any Ive ever seen. I thought she was a trick of light—the sun filtering through trees. But she didn’t move, or change in any way, even when I stopped to look at her.” And now Dianora knew exactly where she was. The ancient creatures of water and wood and cave went back in time as far as the Triad did almost, and from the description she knew what he had seen. She knew other things as well and was suddenly afraid. "What did you do?" she asked, as casually as she could. "I wasn't sure what to do. I spoke; she didn't answer. So I took a step towards her and as soon as I did she leaped down from the rock and backed away. She stopped among the trees. I held out my open palms , but she seemed to be startled by that, or offended, and a moment later she fled.” "Did you follow?" "I was about to, but by then one of the guards had caught up to me." "Did he see her?" she asked. Too quickly. Brandin gave her a curious look. "I asked. He said no, though I think he would have answered that way, regardless. Why do you ask?" She shrugged. "It would have confirmed she was real," she lied. Brandin shook his head. "She was real. This was no vision. In fact," he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "she reminded me of you." "With . . . what was it? Green skin and blue hair?" she replied, letting her court instincts guide her now. Something large was happening here though. She labored to hide the turmoil she felt. "I thank you so much my gracious lord. I suppose if I talked to Scelto and Vencel we could achieve the skin color, and blue hair should be easy enough. If it excites you so dramatically . . .” He smiled but did not laugh. "Green hair, not blue," he said, almost absently. "And she did, Dianora," he repeated, looking at her oddly. "She did remind me of you. I wonder why. Do you know anything about such creatures?" "I do not," she said. "In Certando we have no tales of green-haired women in the mountains." She was lying. She was lying as well as she could, wide-eyed and direct. she had just heard, what he had seen. Brandins good humor was still with him. "What mountain tales do you have in Certando?" he queried, smiling expectantly. "Stories of hairy things that walk on legs like tree stumps and eat goats and virgins in the night." His smile broadened. "Are there any?" "Goats, yes," she said with a straight face. "Fewer virgins. Hairy creatures with such specific appetites are not an incentive to chastity. Are you sending out a party to search for this creature?" A question so important she held her breath awaiting his reply. "I think not," Brandin said. "I suspect such things are only seen when they want to be." Which, she knew for a fact, was absolutely true. "I havent told anyone but you," he added unexpectedly. There was no dissembling in the expression she felt come over her face at that. But over and above everything else there was something new inside her with these tidings. She badly needed to be alone to think. for a long time yet today; best to push his story as far back as she could, with all the other things she was always pushing to the edges of her mind. "Thank you, my lord," she murmured, aware that they had been talking privately for some time. Aware, as ever, of how that would be construed. "In the meantime," Brandin suddenly said, in a quite different tone, "you still have not yet asked me how I did on the run. Solores, I have to tell you, made it her first question." Which carried them back to familiar ground. "Very well," she said, feigning indifference. "Do tell me. Halfway? Three-quarters?" A glint of royal indignation nickeled in the gray eyes. "You are presumptuous sometimes," he said. "I indulge you too much. I went, if you please, all the way to the summit and came down again this morning with a cluster of sonrai berries. I will be extremely interested to see if any of tomorrows runners are up and down as quickly.” "Well," she said quickly, unwisely, "they won't have sorcery to help them." "Dianora, have done!" And that tone she recognized and knew shed gone too far. As always at such moments she had a dizzying sense of a pit gaping at her feet. She knew what Brandin needed from her; she knew the reason he granted her license to be outrageous and impertinent. She had long understood why the wit and edge she brought to their exchanges were important to him. , undemanding shelter. The two of them, in turn, balancing dEymons ascetic exercise of politics and government. And all three of them in orbit around the star that Brandin was. The voluntarily exiled sun, removed from the heavens it knew, from the lands and seas and people, bound to this alien peninsula by loss and grief and revenge decreed. She knew all this. She knew the King very well. Her life depended on that. She did not often stray across the line that was always there, invisible but inviolate. When she did it was likely to be over something as apparently trivial as this .It was such a paradox for her how he could shrug off or laugh at or even invite her caustic commentary on court and colony—and yet bridle like a boy with affronted pride if she teased about his ability to run up and down a mountain in a morning. At such times he had only to say her name in a certain way and endless chasms opened before her in the delicately inlaid floor of the Audience Chamber. She was a captive here, more slave than courtesan, at the court of a Tyrant. She was also an impostor, living an ongoing lie while her country slowly died away from the memories of men. And she had sworn to kill this man, whose glance across a room was as wildfire on her skin or amber wine in her mortal blood. Chasms, everywhere she turned. And now this morning he had seen a riselka. He, and very possibly a second man as well. Fighting back her fear she forced herself to shrug casually, to arch her eyebrows above a face schooled to bland unconcern. "This amuses me," she said, reaching for self-possession, knowing precisely what his need in her was, even now. Especially now. "You profess to be pleased, even touched, by Soloress doubtlessly agitated query about your mountain run. The first thing she asked, you say. How she must have wondered whether or not you succeeded! And yet when I—knowing as surely as I know my own name that you were up on the summit this morning—treat it lightly, as something small, never in doubt . . . why then the King grows angry. He bids me sternly to have done! But tell me, my lord, in all fairness, which of us, truly, has honored you more?" For a long time he was silent and she knew that the court would be avidly marking the expression on his face. For the moment she cared nothing for them. Or even for her past, or his encounter on the mountainside. here that began and ended in the depths of the gray eyes that were now searching her own. When he spoke it was in a different voice again, but this tone she happened to know exceedingly well and, in spite of everything that had just been said, and in spite of where they were and who was watching them, she felt herself go weak Suddenly. Her legs trembled, but not with fear now. "I could take you," said Brandin, King of Ygrath, thickly, his face flushed, "on the floor of this room right now before all of my gathered court." Her throat was dry. She felt a nerve flutter beneath the skin of her wrist. Her own color was high, she knew. "Perhaps tonight would be wiser," she murmured, trying to keep her tone light but not really managing it, unable to hide the swift response in her eyes—spark to spark like the onset of a blaze. The jeweled khav chalice trembled in her hand. He saw that, and she saw that he did and that her response, as always, served as kindling for his own desire. She sipped at her drink, holding it with both hands, clinging to self-control. "Better tonight, surely," she said again, overwhelmed as always by what was happening to her. She knew what he needed her to say though, now, at this moment, in this room of state thrown with his court and emissaries from home . She said it, looking him in the eyes, articulated carefully: "After all my lord, at your age you should marshal your strength. You did run partway up a hill this morning." An instant later, for the second time, the Chiaran court of Brandin of Ygrath saw their King throw back his handsome, bearded head and they heard him laugh aloud in delight. Not far away, Rhun the Fool crackled in simultaneous glee. "Isolla of Ygrath!" This time there were trumpets and a drum, as well as the heralds staff resounding as it struck the floor by the double doors at the southern end of the Audience Chamber. Standing most of the way towards the throne, Dianora had time to observe the stately progress of the woman Brandin had called the finest musician in Ygrath. The assembled court of Chiara was lined several rows deep, flanking the approach to the King. "A handsome woman still," murmured Neso of Ygrath, "and shes fifty years old if shes a day." Somehow he had managed to end up next to her in the front row. His unctuous tone irritated her, as always, but she tried not to let it show. Isolla was clad in the simplest possible robe of dark blue, belted at the waist with a slender gold chain. Her hair, brown with hints of gray, was cut unfashionably short—although the spring and summer fashion might change after today, Dianora thought. The colony always took its cue in these matters from Ygrath. Isolla walked confidently, not hurrying, down the aisle formed by the courtiers. Brandin was already smiling a welcome. He was always immensely pleased when one or another of Ygraths artists made the long, often dangerous, sea voyage to his second court. Several steps behind Isolla, and carrying her lute in its case as if it were an artifact of immeasurable worth, Dianora saw—with genuine surprise—the poet Camena di Chiara, clad in his ubiquitous triple-layered cloak. : she wasn't the only one caught off guard by this. Instinctively she threw a glance across the aisle to where Doarde stood with his wife and daughter. She was in time to see the spasm of hate and fear that flickered across his face as his younger rival approached. An instant later the revealing expression was gone, replaced by a polished mask of sneering disdain at Camenas vulgar lowering of himself to serve as porter for an Ygrathen. Still, Dianora considered, this was an Ygrathen court. Camena, she guessed in a flash of intuition, had probably had one of his verses set to music. If Isolla was about to sing a song of his it would be a dazzling coup for the Chiaran poet. More than sufficient to explain why he would offer to further exalt Isolla—and Ygrathen artists—by serving as a bearer for her. The politics of art, Dianora decided, was at least as complex as that of provinces and nations. Isolla had stopped, as was proper, about fifteen steps from the dais of the Island Throne, very close to where Dianora and Neso stood. Neatly she proceeded to perform the triple obeisance. Very graciously—a mark of high honor— Brandin rose to his feet to bid her welcome. He was smiling. So was Rhun, behind him and to his left. For no reason she would ever afterwards be able to name or explain Dianora turned from monarch and musician back to the poet bearing the lute. Camena had stopped a further half a dozen paces behind Isolla and had knelt on the marble floor. What detracted from the grace of the tableau was the dilation of his eyes. Nilth leaves, Dianora concluded instantly. Hes drugged himself. She saw beads of perspiration on the poets brow. "You are most welcome, Isolla," Brandin was saying with genuine pleasure. "It has been far too long since we have seen you, or heard you play." Dianora saw Camena make a small adjustment in the way he held the lute. She thought he was preparing to open the case. It did not look like an ordinary lute though. In fact— Afterwards she was able to know one thing only with certainty: it had been the story of the riselka that made her so sharp to see. The story, and the fact that Brandin wasnt certain if the second man—his guard—had seen her or not. One man meant a fork in the path. Two men meant a death. Either way, something was to happen. And now it did. All eyes but hers were on Brandin and Isolla. Only Dianora saw Camena slip the velvet cover off the lute. Only Dianora saw that it was not, in fact, a lute. And only she had heard Brandins tale of the riselka. "Die, Isolla of Ygathl" Camena screamed hoarsely; his eyes bulged as he hurled the velvet away and leveled the crossbow he carried. With the lightning reaction of a man half his years Brandin reflexively threw out his hand to cast a sorcerers shield around the threatened singer. Exactly as he was expected to, Dianora realized. "Brandin, no!" she screamed. "Its you!” And seizing the gape-mouthed Neso of Ygrath by the near shoulder she propelled herself and him both into the aisle. The crossbow bolt, aimed meticulously to the left of Isolla on a line for Brandins heart, buried itself instead in the shoulder of a stupefied Neso. He shrieked in pain and shock. Her momentum drove Dianora stumbling to her knees beside Isolla. She looked up. And for the rest of her days never forgot the look she met in the singers eyes. She turned away from it. The emotion, the hatred was too raw. She felt physically ill, trembling with aftershock. She forced herself to stand; she looked at Brandin. He hadnt even lowered his hand. There was still the shimmer of a protective barrier around Isolla. Who had never been in danger at all. The guards had Camena by now. Hed been dragged to his feet. Dianora had never seen anyone look so white. Even his eyes were white, from the drug. For a moment she thought he was going to faint, but then Camena threw his head back as far as he could in the iron grip of the Ygrathen soldiers. He opened his mouth, as if in agony. "Chiara!" he cried once, and then, "Freedom for Chiara!" before they silenced him, brutally. The echoes rang for a long time. The room was large and the stillness was almost absolute. No one dared to move. Dianora had a sense that the court wasnt even breathing. No one wanted the slightest attention drawn to them. On the mosaic-inlaid floor Neso moaned again in fear and pain, breaking the tableau. Two soldiers knelt to tend to him. Dianora was still afraid she was going to be sick; she couldnt make her hands stop trembling. Isolla of Ygrath had not moved. She could not move, Dianora realized: Brandin was holding her in a mindlock like a flower pressed flat on a sheet. The soldiers lifted Neso and helped him from the room. Dianora stepped back herself, leaving Isolla alone before the King. Fifteen very proper paces away. "Camena was a tool," Brandin said softly. "Chiara has virtually nothing to do with this. Do not think that I am unaware of that, I can offer you nothing now but an easier death. You must tell me why you did this." His voice was rigidly measured, careful and uninflected. Dianora had never heard such a tone from him. She looked at Rhun: the Fool was weeping, tears streaking his distorted features. Brandin lowered his hand, freeing Isolla to move and speak. The blazing flash of hatred left her features. In its place was a defiant pride. Dianora wondered if she had actually thought the deception would work. If after the King had been slain she had really expected to walk freely from this room. And if not—if she had not expected to do so—what did that mean? Holding herself very straight, Isolla gave part of an answer. "I am dying," she said to Brandin. "The physicians have given me less than a season before the growth inside reaches my brain. Already there are songs I can no longer remember. Songs that have been mine for forty years.” "I am sorry to hear it," said Brandin formally, his courtesy so perfect it seemed a violation of human nature. He said, "All of us die, Isolla. Some very young. Not all of us plot the death of our King. You have more to tell me before I may grant you release from pain.” For the first time Isolla seemed to waver. She lowered her gaze from his eerily serene grey eyes. Only after a long moment did she say, "You had to have known that there would be a price for what you did.” "Exactly what is it that I did?” Her head came up. "You exalted a dead child above the living one, and revenge above your wife. And more highly than your own land. Have you spared a thought, a fraction of a thought, for any of them while you pursued your unnatural vengeance for Stevan?” Dianoras heart thudded painfully. It was a name not spoken in Chiara. She saw Brandins lips tighten in a way she had seen only a handful of times. But when he spoke his voice was as rigidly controlled as before. "I judged that I had considered them fairly. Girald has governance in Ygrath as he was always going to have. He even has my saishan, as a symbol of that. Dorotea I invited here several times a year for the first several years.” "Invited here that she might wither and grow old while you kept yourself young. A thing no Sorcerer- King of Ygrath has ever done before, lest the gods punish the land for that impiety. But for Ygrath you never spared a thought, did you? And Girald? He is no King—his father is. That is your title, not his. What does the key to a saishan mean against that reality? He is even going to die before you, Brandin, unless you are slain. And what will happen then? It is unnatural! It is all unnatural, and there is a price to be paid.” "There is always a price," he said softly. "A price for everything. Even for living. I had not expected to pay it in my own family." There was a silence. "Isolla, I must extend my years to do what I am here to do.” "Then you pay for it," Isolla repeated, "and Girald pays and Dorotea. And Ygrath.” And Tigana, Dianora thought, no longer trembling, her own ache come back like a wound in her. Tigana pays too; in broken statues and fallen towers, in children slain and a name gone. She watched Brandins face. And Rhuns. "I hear you," the King said at length to the singer. "I have heard more than you have chosen to say. I need only one thing further. You must tell me which of them did this." It was said with visible regret. Rhuns ugly face was screwed up tightly, his hands gestured with a random helplessness. "And why," said Isolla, drawing herself up and speaking with the frigid hauteur of one who had nothing left to lose, "should you imagine their purposes to be at odds in this? Why the one or the other, King of Ygrath?" Her voice rang out, harsh as the message it bore. Slowly he nodded. The hurt was clear in him now; Dianora could see it in the way he stood and spoke, however much he controlled himself. She didnt even need to look at Rhun. "Very well," Brandin said. "And you, Isolla? What could they have offered to make you do this thing. Can you really hate me so much?” The woman hesitated only for an instant. Then, as proudly, as defiantly as before, she said, "I can love the Queen so much.” Brandin closed his eyes. "How so?” "In all the ways that you forsook when you chose exile here and love of the dead over the heart and the bed of your wife.” In any normal, any halfway normal time there would have been a reaction to this from the court. There would have had to be. Dianora heard nothing though, only the sound of a great many people breathing carefully as Brandin opened his eyes again to look down upon the singer. There was an unveiled triumph in the Ygrathen womans face. "She was invited here," he repeated almost wistfully. "I could have compelled her but I chose not to do so. She had made her feelings clear and I left the choice to her. I thought it was the kinder, fairer action. It would appear that my sin lies in not having ordered her to take ship for this peninsula.” So many different griefs and shapes of pain seemed to be warring for preeminence within Dianora. Behind the King she could see dEymon; his face was a sickly grey. He met her eyes for only an instant then quickly looked away. Later she might think of ways to use this sudden ascendancy over him but right now she felt only pity for the man. He would offer to resign tonight, she knew. Offer, probably, to kill himself after the old fashion. Brandin would refuse, but after this nothing would be quite the same. For a great many reasons. Brandin said, "I think you have told me what I had need to know.” "The Chiaran acted alone," Isolla volunteered unexpectedly. She gestured at Camena, in the bone- cracking grip of the soldiers behind her. "He joined us when he visited Ygrath two years ago. Our purposes appeared to march together this far.” Brandin nodded. "This far," he echoed quietly. "I thought that might be the case. Thank you for confirming it," he added gravely. There was a silence. "You promised me an easy death," Isolla said, holding herself very straight. "I did," Brandin said. "I did promise you that." Dianora stopped breathing. The King looked at Isolla without expression for what seemed an unbearably long time. "You can have no idea," he said at last, in a voice little above a whisper, "how happy I was that you had come to make music for me again.” Then he moved his right hand, in exactly the same casual gesture he would use to dismiss a servant or a petitioner. Isollas head exploded like an overripe fruit smashed with a hammer. Dark blood burst from her neck as her body collapsed like a sack. Dianora was standing too near; the blood of the slain woman spattered thickly on her gown and face. She stumbled backwards. A hideous illusion of reptilian creatures was coiling and twisting in the place where Isollas head had been mashed to a formless, oozing pulp. There was screaming everywhere and a frenzied pandemonium as the court backed away. One figure suddenly ran forward. Stumbling, almost falling in its haste, the figure jerked out a sword. Then awkwardly, with great clumsy two-handed slashes, Rhun the Fool began hacking at the dead body of the singer. His face was weirdly distorted with rage and revulsion. Foam and mucus ran from his mouth and nose. With one savage butchers blow he severed an arm from the womans torso. Something dark and green and blind appeared to undulate from the stump of Isollas shoulder, leaving a trail of glistening black slime. Behind Dianora someone gagged with horror. "Stevan!" she heard Rhun cry brokenly. And amid nausea and chaos and terror, an overwhelming pity suddenly laid hard siege to her heart. She looked at the frantically laboring Fool, clad exactly like the King, bearing a Kings sword. Spittle flew from his mouth. "Music! Stevan! Music! Stevan!" Rhun shouted obsessively, and with each slurred, ferocious articulation of the words his slender, jeweled court sword went up and down, glinting brilliantly in the streaming light, hewing the dead body like meat. He lost his footing on the slippery floor and fell to his knees with the force of his own fury. A grey thing with eyes on waving stalks appeared to attach itself like a bloodleech to his knee. "Music," Rhun said one last time, softly, with unexpected clarity. Then the sword slipped through his fingers and he sat in a puddle of blood beside the mutilated corpse of the singer, his balding head slewed awkwardly down and to one side, his white-and-gold court garments hopelessly soiled, weeping as though his heart was broken. Dianora turned to Brandin. The King was motionless, standing exactly as he had been throughout, his hands relaxed at his sides. He gazed at the appalling scene in front of him with a frightening detachment. "There is always a price," he said quietly, almost to himself, through the incessant screaming and tumult that filled the Audience Chamber. Dianora took one hesitant step towards him then, but he had already turned and, with dEymon quickly following, Brandin left the room through the door behind the dais. With his departure the slithering, oleaginous creatures immediately disappeared, but not the mangled body of the singer or the pitiful, crumpled figure of the Fool. Dianora seemed to be alone near them, everyone else had surged back towards the doors. Isollas blood felt hot where it had landed on her skin. People were tripping and pushing each other in their frantic haste to quit the room now that the King was gone. She saw the soldiers hustling Camena di Chiara away through a side door. Other soldiers came forward with a sheet to cover Isollas body. They had to move Rhun away to do it; he didnt seem to understand what was happening. He was still weeping, his face grotesquely screwed up like a hurt childs. Dianora moved a hand to wipe at her cheek and her fingers came away streaked with blood. The soldiers placed the sheet over the singers body. One of them gingerly picked up the arm Rhun had severed and pushed it under the sheet as well. Dianora saw him do that. There seemed to be blood all over her face. On the very edge of losing all control she looked around for help, any kind of help. "Come, my lady," said a desperately needed voice that was somehow by her side. "Come. Let me take you back to the saishan.” "Oh, Scelto," she whispered. "Please. Please do that, Scelto.” The news blazed through the dry tinder of the saishan setting it afire with rumor and fear. An assassination attempt from Ygrath. With Chiaran participation. And it had very nearly succeeded. Scelto hustled Dianora down the corridor to her rooms and with a bristling protectiveness slammed the door on the nervous, fluttering crowd that clung and hovered in the hallway like so many silk-clad moths. Murmuring continuously he undressed and washed her, and then wrapped her carefully into her warmest robe. She was shivering uncontrollably, unable to speak. He lit the fire and made her sit before it. In docile submission she drank the mahgoti tea he prepared as a sedative. Two cups of it, one after the other. Eventually the trembling stopped. She still found it difficult to speak. He made her stay in the chair before the fire. She didnt want to leave it anyway. Her brain felt battered, numb. She seemed to be utterly incapable of marshaling any understanding, of shaping an adequate response to what had just happened. One thought only kept driving the others away, pounding in her head like the hammer of a heralds staff on the floor. A thought so impossible, so disabling, that she tried, with all she could, through the blinding pulse of an onrushing headache, to block it out. She couldnt. The hammering crashed through, again and again: she had saved his life. Tigana had been a single pulsebeat away from coming back into the world. The pulsebeat of Brandin that the crossbow would have ended. Home was a dream shed had yesterday. A place where children used to play. Among towers near the mountains, by a river, on curving sweeps of white or golden sand beside a palace at the edge of the sea. Home was a longing, a desperate dream, a name in her dreams. And this afternoon she had done the one thing she could possibly have done to bar that name from the world, to lock it into a dream. Until all the dreams, too, died. How was she to deal with that? How possibly cope with what it meant? She had come here to kill Brandin of Ygrath, to end his life that lost Tigana might live again. And instead . . . The shivering started once more. Fussing and murmuring, Scelto built up the fire and brought yet another blanket for her knees and feet. When he saw the tears on her face he made a queer helpless sound of distress. Someone knocked loudly on her door sometime later and she heard Scelto driving them away with language she had never known him to use before. Gradually, very slowly, she began to pull herself together. From the color of the light that gently drifted down through the high windows she knew that the afternoon would be waning towards dusk. She rubbed her cheeks and eyes with the backs of her hands. She sat up. She had to be ready when twilight came; twilight was when Brandin sent to the saishan. She rose from her chair, pleased to find that her legs were steadier. Scelto rushed up, protesting, but when he saw her face he quickly checked himself. Without another word he led her through the inner doors and down that hallway to the baths. His ferocious glare silenced the attendants there. She had a sense that he would have struck them if they had spoken; she had never heard of him doing a single violent act. Not since he had killed a man and lost his own manhood. She let them bathe her, let the scented oils soften her skin. There had been blood on it that afternoon. The waters swirled around her and then away. The attendants washed her hair. After, Scelto painted the nails of her fingers and toes. A soft shade, dusty rose. Far from the color of blood, far from anger or grief. Later she would paint her lips the same shade. She doubted they would make love, though. She would hold him and be held. She went back to her room to wait for the summons. From the light she knew when evening had fallen. Everyone in the saishan always knew when evening fell. The day revolved towards and then away from the hour of darkness. She sent Scelto outside, to receive the word when it came. A short time after he came back and told her that Brandin had sent for Solores. Anger flamed wildly within her. It exploded like . . . like the head of Isolla of Ygrath in the Audience Chamber. Dianora could scarcely draw breath, so fierce was her sudden rage. Never in her life had she felt anything like this—this white hot caldron in her heart. After Tigana fell, after her brother was driven away, her hatred had been a shaped thing, controlled, channeled, driven by purpose, a guarded flame that shed known would have to burn a long time. This was an inferno. A caldron boiling over inside her, prodigious, overmastering, sweeping all before it like a lava flow. Had Brandin been in her room at that moment she could have ripped his heart out with her nails and teeth—as the women tore Adaon on the mountainside. She saw Scelto take an involuntary backwards step away from her; she had never known him to fear her or anyone else before. It was not an observation that mattered now. What mattered, all that mattered, the only thing, was that she had saved the life of Brandin of Ygrath today, trampling into muck and spattered blood the clear, unsullied memory of her home and the oath shed sworn in coming here so long ago. She had violated the essence of everything she once had been; violated herself more cruelly than had any man whod ever lain with her for a coin in that upstairs room in Certando. And in return? In return, Brandin had just sent for Solores di Corte, leaving her to spend tonight alone. Not, not a thing he should have done. It did not matter that even within the fiery heat of her own blazing Dianora could understand why he might have done this thing. Understand how little need he would have tonight for wit or intelligence, for sparkle, for questions or suggestions. Or desire. His need would be for the soft, unthinking, reflexive gentleness that Solores gave. That she herself apparently did not. The cradling worship, tenderness, the soothing voice. He would need shelter tonight. She could understand: it was what she needed too, needed desperately, after what had happened. But she needed it from him. And so it came to be that, alone in her bed that night, sheltered by no one and by nothing, Dianora found herself naked and unable to hide from what came when the fires of rage finally died. She lay unsleeping through the first and then through the second chiming of the bells that marked off the triads of the dark hours, but before the third chiming that heralded the coming of grey dawn two things had happened within her. The first was the inexorable return of the single strand of memory shed always been careful to block out from among all the myriad griefs of the year Tigana was occupied. But she truly was unsheltered and exposed in the dark of that Ember Night, drifting terribly far from whatever moorings her soul had found. While Brandin, on the far wing of the palace sought what comfort he could in Solores di Corte, Dianora lay as in an open space and alone, unable to deflect any of the images that now came sweeping back from years ago. Images of love and pain and the loss of love in pain that were far too keen—too icy keen a wind in the heart—to be allowed at any normal time. But the finger of death had rested on Brandin of Ygrath that day, and she alone had guided it away, steering the King past the darkest portal of Morian, and tonight was an Ember Night, a night of ghosts and shadows. It could not be anything like a normal time, and it was not. What came to Dianora, terribly, one after another in unceasing progression like waves of the dark sea, were her last memories of her brother before he went away. He had been too young to fight by the Deisa. No one under fifteen, Prince Valentin had proclaimed before riding sternly north to war. Alessan, the Princes youngest child, had been taken away south in hiding by Danoleon, the High Priest of Eanna, when word came that Brandin was coming down upon them. That was after Stevan had been slain. After the one victory. They had all known; the weary men who had fought and survived, and the women and the aged and the children left behind—that Brandins coming would mark the end of the world they had lived in and loved. They hadnt known then how literally true that was: what the Sorcerer-King of Ygrath could do and what he did. This they were to learn in the days and months that followed as a hard and brutal thing that grew like a tumor and then festered in the souls of those who survived. The dead of Deisa are the lucky ones. So it was said, more and more often, in whispers and in pain in the year Tigana died, by those who endured the dying. Dianora and her brother were left with a mother whose mind had snapped like a bowstring with the tidings of Second Deisa. Even as the vanguard of the Ygrathens entered the city itself, occupying the streets and squares of Tigana, the noble houses and the delicately colored Palace by the Sea, she seemed to let slip her last awareness of the world to wander, mute and gentle, through a space neither of her children could travel to with her. Sometimes she would smile and nod at invisible things as she sat amid the rubble of their courtyard that summer, with smashed marble all around her, and her daughters heart would ache like an old wound in the rains of winter. Dianora set herself to run the household as best she could, though three of the servants and apprentices had died with her father. Two others ran away not long after the Ygrathens came and the destruction began. She couldnt even blame them. Only one of the women and the youngest of the apprentices stayed with them. Her brother and the apprentice waited until the long wave of burnings and demolition had passed, then they sought work clearing away rubble or repairing walls as a limited rebuilding started under Ygrathen orders. Life began to return towards a normality. Or what passed for normality in a city now called Lower Corte in a province of that name. In a world where the very word Tigana could not be heard by anyone other than themselves. Soon they stopped using it in public places. The pain was too great: the twisting feeling inside that came with the blank look of incomprehension on the faces of the Ygrathens or the traders and bankers from Corte who had swarmed quickly down to seek what profit they could among the rubble and the slow rebuilding of a city. It was a hurt for which, truly, there was no name. Dianora could remember, with jagged, sharp-edged clarity, the first time shed called her home Lower Corte. They all could, all the survivors: it was, for each of them, a moment embedded like a fish hook in the soul. The dead of Deisa, First or Second, were the lucky ones, so the phrase went that year. She watched her brother come into a bitter maturity that first summer and fall, grieving for his vanished smile, laughter lost, the childhood too soon gone, not knowing how deeply the same hard lessons and absences were etched in her own hollow, unlovely face. She was sixteen in the late summer, he turned fifteen in the fall. She made a cake on his naming day, for the apprentice, the one old woman, her mother, her brother and herself. They had no guests; assembly of any kind was forbidden throughout that year. Her mother had smiled when Dianora gave her a slice of the dark cake—but Dia-nora had known the smile had nothing to do with any of them. Her brother had known it too. Preternaturally grave he had kissed his mother on the forehead and then his sister, and had gone out into the night. It was, of course, illegal to be abroad after nightfall, but something kept driving him out to walk the streets, past the random fires that still smoldered on almost every corner. It was as if he was daring the Ygrathen patrols to catch him. To punish him for having been fourteen in the season of war. Two soldiers were knifed in the dark that fall. Twenty death-wheels were hoisted in swift response. Six women and five children were among those bound aloft to die. Dianora knew most of them; there werent so very many people left in the city, they all knew each other. The screaming of the children, then their diminishing cries were things she needed shelter from in her nights forever after. No more soldiers were killed. Her brother continued to go out at night. She would lie awake until she heard him come in. He always made a sound, deliberately, so she would hear him and be able to fall asleep. Somehow, he knew she would be awake, though she had never said a word. He would have been handsome, with his dark hair and deep brown eyes if he hadnt been so thin and if the eyes were not shadowed and ringed by sleeplessness and grief. There was not a great deal of food that first winter—most of the harvest had been burned, and the rest confiscated—but Dianora did the best she could to feed the five of them. About the look in his eyes there was nothing she could do. Everyone had that look that year. She could see it in her mirror. The following spring the Ygrathen soldiers discovered a new form of sport. It had probably been inevitable that they would, one of the evil growths that sprang from the deep-sown seeds of Brandins vengeance. Dianora remembered being at an upstairs window the day it began. She was watching her brother and the apprentice—no longer an apprentice, of course—walking through a sun-brightened early morning across the square on their way to the site where they were laboring. White clouds had been drifting by overhead, scudding with the wind. A small cluster of soldiers came from the opposite side and accosted the two boys. Her window was open to air the room and catch the freshness of the breeze; she heard it all. "Help us!" one of the soldiers bleated with a smirk she could see from her window. "Were lost," he moaned, as the others quickly surrounded the boys. He drew sly chuckles from his fellows. One of them elbowed another in the ribs. "Where are we?" the soldier begged. Eyes carefully lowered, her brother named the square and the streets leading from it. "Thats no good!" the soldier complained. "What good are street names to me? I dont even know what cursed town Im in!" There was laug