“By the crest and regalia, the Temnottans look to be indulging Alvior’s fantasy of becoming the next king of Isencroft.” Wilym turned to the side and spat, as if the very mention of Alvior’s name poisoned his tongue.
“Of course they are. They need a puppet king, and Alvior wouldn’t fuss about the terms of the agreement so long as he got a crown out of it.”
“How much do you think it’ll damage the invader’s cause if Alvior dies?”
Cam grimaced. “I doubt they’ve grown that fond of him, except for his usefulness. He’s not the type to inspire loyalty. He probably doesn’t know that most of his former Divisionist followers are hanging from gibbets outside the palace. But it will certainly raise my spirits to part his head from his shoulders.”
Cam looked across the battlefield. What had once been
thousands of acres of farmland and pasture leading down to the shore of the sea was now a pockmarked and burned killing ground. Huge boulders lay where they had landed from the near-constant two-way barrage of catapults and trebuchets, war machines that thundered day and night.
Benhem and his mages had discovered the secret of the invaders’ Destroying Fire, casting waves of flame back on the advancing troops. Between the two entrenched camps, a charred and blackened no-man’s-land attested to the range over which both sets of mages could hurl their curtains of flame. Ingenious use of the Destroying Fire coupled with the reach of the catapults lobbed fiery missiles deep behind both lines.
“We’ve given them a pounding,” Wilym observed, “and they’ve given it back. I had hoped that if we showed fierce resistance, they’d pack up their ships and go home to Temnotta. Maybe they’re more afraid of what’s behind them than what’s in front of them, but now I’m convinced that we’ll have to destroy every last one of them before this over.”
Cam nodded soberly. “I had come to the same conclusion.”
Wilym glanced at Cam. “Is the queen ready for her part in the assault tonight?”
Cam let out a breath and nodded. He was sure that Wilym could read his uneasiness in his face. “I don’t like it, but she’s ready. Damn it, Wilym, if it were Donelan, I wouldn’t think twice about seeing him place himself at risk. Many’s the skirmish that you and I had to chase him to keep up if his blood was high in a battle. But it’s not Donelan. It’s Kiara and she’s pregnant. Two kingdoms hang in the balance. If I had my way—”
“She’d be under house arrest back in Aberponte with an entire division of mages and soldiers to protect her,” Wilym finished for him with a laugh. “I guarantee she wouldn’t be happy about it!”
Cam grimaced ill-humoredly. “If you’ll recall, Donelan didn’t much like it either when we had to put him under guard for his own protection.”
Wilym’s expression grew sober. “And we both know how well that turned out.” He met Cam’s gaze. “Donelan was murdered in his own bed, in a locked room with guards at the door and the two of us in the other chamber. We can do our best, Cam, but we can’t guarantee Kiara’s safety, just like we couldn’t guarantee Donelan’s. It’s the price of the crown, and she accepts it.”
“It doesn’t mean I have to like it.”
Later, Cam and Wilym joined Edgeton, Vinian, and the other generals for a briefing before the night’s attack. Rhistiart, Cam’s valet-turned-squire, was wide-eyed and silent as he kept the group’s cups full of watered wine and refreshed a trencher with cheese and hard sausage. Kiara sat at the head of the assembly, with Cam and Wilym on her right and left. Brother Felix was there, along with Morane and Benhem from the mages. Jae rested near the brazier, exhausted from harrying the enemy. Royster sat on the floor just inside the tent doorway with a leather folder filled with parchment, ink, and a pen, poised to chronicle the moment for history.
It took just under a candlemark to finalize the last details for the battle and to assure that every resource was in place. Throughout the conversation, Cam thought Kiara was quieter than usual, although she leaned forward to listen intently. He guessed that her thoughts strayed to her own, untested role.
“We’ll make an all-out assault once you and the mages are ready, Your Majesty,” Vinian said. “We’ll have the catapults and trebuchets firing in waves, and if we can’t use the Destroying Fire, we’ll settle for good ol’ regular fire. If you’re able to put their mages completely out of action, we’ll drive the bastards back into the sea and drown them.”
Kiara nodded. To Cam’s eye, she already looked older than when she had returned to Isencroft, and in her eyes, he saw the burden he had so often glimpsed in Donelan’s expression.
“Well done,” Kiara said. “Drive the invaders toward the sea. As soon as we’re confident that the attack on their mages has succeeded, the water mages will bring down a large wave to drown the Temnottans and a wicked current to drag them under and out to sea. Mind that our men are well back from it. An ocean is not a precise weapon.”
Vinian chuckled dourly. “Warning taken, m’lady.”
Kiara stood. Even with her armor, it was evident that her pregnancy was advancing. Cam took a deep breath, forcing back protective instincts, reminding himself that Kiara undertook both her risk and her role knowing the danger involved.
“I ask the favor of the Lady on our venture. May Chenne bless you with her sword and protect you with her shield. Tonight, we determine the future of Isencroft. Go with the blessing of the crown.”
Cam lingered to be the last to leave the tent. He looked to Rhistiart and then Royster. “I want both of you to accompany Kiara behind the line of battle tomorrow,” he said. Rhistiart opened his mouth to protest, but Cam shook his head.
“Tomorrow is going to be bad. We’re evacuating all noncombat personnel, so don’t take it personally. I’ll feel better knowing that you two are well behind the lines. Help her any way you can.”
He turned to Kiara. “I need to ask you, have you determined how you want to deal with Alvior? Is he to stand trial?”
Kiara’s eyes took on a hardness Cam had not seen before. “Alvior of Brunnfen abetted the Divisionist plot to murder my father and put the crown of Isencroft under the heel of invaders. He arrives on our shores with a foreign army, to fight against his own countrymen and seize the throne. He is guilty of treason. The sentence is death.” She met Cam’s gaze. “You are the Champion of the Queen of Isencroft. Execute Alvior, in the name of the crown.”
Cam nodded grimly. “That’s all I needed to hear.”
Another candlemark passed before Kiara was in position. The late afternoon was cold, and clouds gathered on the horizon, threatening rain. Despite her armor and her woolen cloak, Kiara shivered, and she wondered whether it was the cold or nervousness about the workings of the evening to come that sent the blood from her fingers and chilled her to her core.
Kiara stood in the center of a large circle whose boundary was set out with the rune stones from the ghost in the crypt, each carefully turned facedown to present blank bone. At the four points of the compass, Brother Felix carefully laid thin disks of iron that he had blessed and charged with protective wardings. A thin stream of salt ran from disk to disk. As Felix laid the iron and salt, Morane followed behind him, smudging the circle with a
burning bundle of pine and sage, and then returning to the center to raise and lower the smoking bundle bathing Kiara in its sacred smoke. High in the air, Jae flew in wide circles, serving both as protection and as an early warning should anyone approach.
Kiara stood atop a parchment map Felix had made showing their position relative to places of power throughout the kingdom. Aberponte was on the map, said to be located above one of the rivers of the Flow. Temples and sacred burying grounds, shrines, and sanctified groves were included. Felix and Royster had done a remarkably thorough job of marking them all and drawing lines to run from each place of power back to Kiara, the better for her to call upon their energy.
“You look like you’re about to be sick, my dear,” Brother Felix murmured to her. “Is it the baby?”
Kiara gave him a wan smile. “Not this time. I’m just a little nervous about what we’re going to do.”
Felix chuckled. “You’re wise to be nervous. But after the demonstration you gave us a few days ago, this may be our first real chance to push Temnotta back where they came from.”
Kiara nodded. “I know, but that doesn’t make my stomach any happier about it.”
Benhem, Felix, and Morane took their places on the quarter marks of the warded circle. Joining them was Sister Eunice, one of the rogue mages who had left the Sisterhood to aid the army. Royster sat off to one side, parchment, pen, and ink at the ready to record everything as it transpired. Rhistiart had been put to work as a healer’s helper, should the magic go wrong. He stood next to Cerise, who had refused to remain in the camp despite the danger.
At Felix’s nod, Kiara lifted the lens. She took a deep breath and tried to still the nervousness she felt. Morane began a low chant, and Kiara closed her eyes, feeling the power build around her. She focused her thoughts on the lens in her hands and on sensing the magic that radiated from the four mages in the circle. In her mind’s eye, she saw their power begin to stream to her in bright yellow tendrils, and the lens began to glow.
Once Kiara felt confident that the magic of the four anchor mages was channeled through the lens, she took another deep breath and cast her regent magic farther, down beyond the slight hillock that shielded them from the view of the enemy, to the dozen battle mages among the soldiers who were ready to take an active part in combat. As her magic touched them, she saw golden tendrils of power unwind from around them, undulating through the air, seeking the lens.
The burning glass was growing warm in her hands. Kiara cast her thoughts toward the map at her feet. She had memorized the position of the sacred places, and she began to work her way around the map clockwise, fixing her thoughts on each place of power in turn, using her regent magic to call to it to aid them. For a few moments, there was nothing except the slow inhale and exhale of her own breath. Then Kiara felt a nudge from the magic as new tendrils of golden light slipped through the wardings that opened for them and found their way to the glass in her hands. As she slowly turned her attention from one shrine to the next, she could see each of the places of power clearly. Not only were their images clear to her, but for each, she had associations of sound and scent so that their waterfalls and fountains, their fragrant groves and
burning incense were as real to her as if she stood in each of the sacred spaces.
As Felix and Morane had taught her, Kiara lifted the burning glass into the air, holding it firmly with one hand on either side, turning its broad lens toward the battlefield. In the distance, her regent magic identified the location of the enemy mages. Kiara could feel their power. She fixed their places in her mind, making them glowing red dots on her mental image of the battlefield. But unlike during their practice, Kiara did not focus her magic on drawing in the power of the Temnottan mages. Instead, with a forceful exhale of breath, Kiara willed the combined magic in the lens to release its power toward the enemy mages, an invisible, lethal blast that crackled along the currents of magic, traveling at the speed of thought.
Kiara felt the magic burn its way toward its intended targets. As the power struck the first Temnottan mage, Kiara was unprepared for the momentary link opened up by the magic, a link through which she felt the enemy mage’s surprise, his terror, and then the awful, consuming fire.
Kiara staggered but held fast to the burning glass. Eight, then nine, then ten of the Temnottan mages fell, and Kiara reeled from the momentary, intimate link as the magic burned its way toward its victims. She doubted that she would ever silence their death cries in her memory, or the blinding instant of pain as the power burned them from within. A pounding reaction headache was severe enough to make her nauseous. She fought every instinct to drop the lens and fall to her knees retching.
I have killed before in battle with a sword
, she told herself, struggling for control.
A blade brings no less of an
agonizing death. If I were able, I would be with Cam and Wilym in the thick of the fighting, killing soldiers myself. The magic changes nothing
. Yet in her heart, Kiara knew that the momentary connection to her quarry changed everything, because for one awful instant, she felt their pain and knew their fear.
Now I know something of what Tris feels on a battlefield, when he can see the spirits rise from their bodies as they die. If all men could feel this, surely no one would ever choose to wage war
.
Before the magic reached the eleventh Temnottan mage, Kiara felt a warning tingle and an undulating crimson wall of power slammed up to deflect her magic. Even at a distance, the crimson wall stank of blood magic and death. Kiara took a deep breath and mustered the magic once more, and this time, she shattered the wall of power. She heard the screams of the dying mage in her mind as she turned the power in search of the next Temnottan sorcerer.
Again, a blood-red curtain of magic rose to block her. “They know they can’t stop you, but they’re hoping to wear you out before you can strike all of them,” Brother Felix warned. “Draw on the power of the lens. Don’t draw on your own power.”
The crimson wall became a lightning bolt, streaking back across the tendrils of power. Instinctively, Kiara moved the lens to intercept the bolt, bracing herself as the bolt slammed into the concave surface of the burning glass with a force that shuddered down her arms like a sword strike. She gasped for breath, staggered by the sheer force of the blow. A pounding headache throbbed in her temples, but she grasped the lens more firmly, using it to absorb the full power of a strike that was meant to kill. Kiara sank to one knee, still holding tightly to the lens.