his horse into a gallop toward the warriors.
You aren’t going to survive this. This is going to be your last battle.
The thought came to him as a certainty. A prophecy. He shivered even as he shouted encouragement to the chevarittai, even as they pounded toward the warriors.
Then…
A wave of intense cold washed over him, as if winter had come early; as it passed, even with the fury of their charge, he realized that the constant rain of spells from the Tehuantin forces had stopped. The warriors ahead of them had realized it as well. They’d pulled up their horses, looking back toward their own lines. Jan worried that the spellcasters were preparing another mass spell like the war-storm. But instead, a visible wave rushed across the land from east to west, one that caused Jan to pull back on the reins in amazement. They could all see it: in the shimmering air, in the dust it raised from the ground as it moved. Where the pulse touched the advancing front line of the Westlanders, the warriors were tossed and thrown back even though it left their own people untouched. Jan heard screams and wails, then a greater single voice.
“Go! This is Cenzi’s Gift. Go!”
The shout seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.
Jan felt a sudden faint hope. A war-teni’s fireball went screaming overhead toward the Tehuantin. There was no response to the spell: no deflection, no impotent explosion far above. The fireball shrieked death and plowed into the Westlanders ranks, exploding untouched. Another followed, and another-all of them went through. The hope within him surged, and his injuries no longer mattered. “Turn!” he shouted to the troops, to the offiziers. “Turn! Follow me!”
He raised his sword as the chevarittai took up his shout. He heard it echoing faintly down the the lines, and the retreat halted, then slowly turned. Jan was already riding hard toward the Tehuantin. All along the battlefield, as far to the south as Jan could see, the retreat was turning. Black and silver began to flow westward.
With the chevarittai around him, Jan plowed into the stunned line of the Westlanders, driving toward the banner of the winged snake. The first warriors he passed were strewn on the ground; whether dead or rendered unconscious by the massive unknown spell, he didn’t know. Then he hit resistance, and he pushed through a sea of flashing blades, his pains forgotten in the fury of battle. The chevarittai shouted as they hewed through the Westlanders toward their commander, all of them pushing forward. They could hear the roar of the onrushing gardai behind them.
There was no answer from the Tehuantin spellcasters. Whatever had happened had stolen their magic. But the Tehuantin warriors-at least those away from the initial pulse, were unaffected. They fought as fiercely as ever, and now that the initial euphoria had passed, the exhaustion and the pain were making themselves felt again. The assault slowed, though now the banners of the winged snake were agonizingly close. Every strike of his sword into the press of warriors sent a shock streaking up Jan’s sword arm. His legs ached, and he could barely hold his seat on the warhorse. His ribs stabbed him with ivory knives at every breath.
He wondered where Brie was. He wondered who would tell his children, and what they would say.
You must at least make the story worth the telling.
Groaning, he brought his sword up to protect his side against a sword thrust, his blade cleaving down past the attack into the warrior’s neck. He saw the man’s mouth open, his eyes go wide. Something stabbed hard at his thigh on the left, and he swung around to face the warrior with a spear, the point embedded in his leg just above the cuisse. Jan yanked the reins hard to the left and the warhorse lifted its hooves, striking the attacker and trampling him as the spear’s tip was torn from Jan’s thigh. He could feel blood soaking the padding under the cuisse.
He was closer. He could hear the snake banner flapping. “To me!” he called the chevarittai, but he heard no reply. He didn’t know where they were, had no time to search for them. Scowling, he plunged forward, letting the horse run over the warriors between. He broke into a small opening:, he could see the Tehuantin leader, his shaved skull adorned with a red eagle that spread its wings over his cheeks. The man was older than Jan, bulky in the Westlander armor and astride his own horse, a magnificent piebald. Next to him was one of the Westlander spellcasters, a young one, with his spell-staff in his hand and a golden band on his arm.
Jan gathered what strength he still had. He raised his sword and shouted challenge. He kicked the warhorse forward.
From her hiding place behind the tapestries along the rear wall, Rochelle watched them carry the Kraljica into the hall. Allesandra’s armor was spattered with red, and there was a hole punched through the chest plate from which blood still flowed. Her face was pale and drawn, her graying hair disheveled and as stiff as straw around her face. “Put me on the throne,” she heard Allesandra husk. The woman’s voice was an exhausted, skeletal croak. The gardai bearing her obeyed, placing the woman on the Sun Throne. Rochelle expected the throne to blaze into light as the Kraljica sat in its crystalline embrace, as all the tales said, but the throne responded with only the palest of glows, barely visible in the sunlight.
She wondered if that was because the Kraljica was close to death.
“Someone find the Kraljica’s healers,” she heard Sergei say. “The rest of you, go to the Hirzgin for orders; she is in command. Go!”
They scattered. Rochelle watched as Sergei crouched beside the throne. “What can I do for you, Kraljica?” he said.
“Water, Sergei,” she whispered. “I’m so thirsty.”
He limped toward a stand near the servants’ door; he was missing his cane and moved slowly. Rochelle slipped out from behind the tapestry. With a few bounding steps, she was on the dais, the knife in her hand. Sergei heard her, and he cried out her name-“Rochelle! ”-but he was too far away and too slow to stop her. The pale stone-laced in its pouch around Rochelle’s neck-seemed to pulse whitehot against her skin.
“You will kill her, and as she dies, you will tell her why so she goes to Cenzi knowing it…”
Allesandra looked at Rochelle with confusion in her pained eyes. “Hello, Great-Matarh,” Rochelle said. “I’m Rochelle.”
“Rochelle? Great-Matarh?” The confusion deepened on the woman’s face. She glanced at the knife and her eyes narrowed. “I know that weapon,” she said, licking her dry lips. She coughed, and bubbles of red froth flecked the corners of her mouth. “I killed Mahri with that. Where did you…?”
“From your son,” Rochelle said. “From my vatarh.”
Her eyes widened again. “Your vatarh? Jan?”
“Rochelle, don’t do this.” That was Sergei. He took a few faltering steps toward the dais, his hand stretching out toward her. She ignored him. A swipe of the blade, and she could be through any of the doors and away before he could do anything to stop her.
“Yes, Jan is my vatarh,” Rochelle told Allesandra. Her free hand clutched at the tiny leather bag that held the flat, nearly white pebble that contained her matarh and all their victims. “And my matarh
… She was the White Stone. Elissa, you called her at the time, though that wasn’t her real name.”
“Elissa…” Allesandra’s eyes closed for a moment. Her breath rattled; the eyes opened again. “Jan…”
“She loved him,” Rochelle told Allesandra, leaning close to her. She placed the blade against her great- matarh’s neck. Allesandra put her hand over Rochelle’s, but there was no power in her grasp. Her skin felt like wrinkled parchment.
“Rochelle, the woman’s dead already,” Sergei said. “You don’t need to do this. The White Stone’s dead. Leave her that way.”
Rochelle glanced at him. “Why do you care, Ambassador? Your hands are far bloodier than mine.”
“I said it to you in the carriage: it’s not too late for you, Rochelle. You’re not your matarh. You don’t have to become what she became.”
The knife trembed in her hand. “Promise me…”
“Do this,” Sergei said, “and you are forever the White Stone, the hated assassin who murdered the Kraljica. You’ll be hunted for the rest of your short and miserable life. You’ll never feel safe, never feel comfortable. Eventually you’ll make a mistake and be caught, and you’ll be dragged back here in chains and executed. That’s your fate, Rochelle, the only fate you have if you do this.”
“And if I don’t? Aren’t I still the White Stone, who killed Rance and others?”
Sergei shrugged. “I don’t know,” he said. “Your life will be your book to write. If the White Stone vanishes, there’s no one to chase.”
