Shadowmarch

suffering. I regret it. Make her comfortable.” She narrowed her eyes. “Do you have some feelings for her?”

“No!” He flushed: she was certain she had touched a nerve.That made her grow even more chill, although she did not know why. “No, Highness. Responsibility, perhaps—she is like a child and she trusts me. But although she seemed just as lost in the Shadowline dream as Dyer and the others, she also found a way out again for us. She seems to be in some middle ground between the two…”

“We have no time or patience to try to make sense out of some unfortunate young woman. If the magic took her and confused her, she is no use to us. Make her comfortable. Bring me the others tomorrow at ten of the clock.”

Vansen bowed and went out, looking not exactly like one reprieved, but perhaps like one who had found out the gallows makers were all ill with a bad fever.

She sat for a long time after he was gone, her thoughts an unsettled swirl. She had only an hour or so before she had to meet with the nobles and make a plan of war. She would have liked to go to Utta—she missed the Zorian sister’s wisdom and calm—but she knew there was a more important visit she had to make. Whatever complicated feelings she might have and whatever terrors might be punishing him, she did not wish to go to this evening’s council without her twin.

* * *

The Scourge of the Shivering Plain stood on a hillside at the edge of the line of trees, looking down on the valley and the town that bestrode the river at its bottom. The sun had vanished behind the top of the hills and lamps were already being lit all along the dark valley, even though evening was still an hour away.

Yasammez turned and reached out with her thoughts, feeling back toward the Shadowline. The mantle of shadow, the web of careful, ancient enchantments that had trailed behind her for days like a cape of mists, the vast, mortal-bewildering essence of the Qar heartland that had hidden and protected her marching army, had now stretched to its limits and was beginning to thin. She knew that it would reach no farther into these fields, that where she went from now on she must do beneath the bright sun or the unclouded stars. That was why she waited for night.

The Seal of War glowed on her chest like a coal. Its weight was both comforting and terrifying. For year upon long year she had waited for this hour to come. Whatever befell would have much to do with her decisions in the days ahead, and she would have had it no other way. Still, many would die, and many of them would be her own kind. Like almost all warriors, no matter how fierce, it was not easy for her to see her own killed, whatever the need.

She turned and walked back up the hillside. Although her armor was covered in long spines and the trees grew close together here, she made no sound.

In the woods along the hilltop her army had gathered. With the mantle’s weakening their bright eyes glittered in the gathering dark like a sky full of stars as they watched her pass. No fires had been lit. Later, when she had a better idea of what she faced, had learned something of the mettle of her sunlander enemies, Lady Porcupine might find it useful to let them see her army’s fires burning on the hills and plains, let them count the blazes -with chilling blood—but not tonight. Tonight the People would come down on their foes like lightning from a cloudless sky.

Her tent was a thing woven of silence and thickened shadow. Several of her captains awaited her inside its surprisingly large expanse, seated around the dim amethyst glow of her empty helmet in a circle like the Whispering Mothers who nursed the Great Egg.

Yasammez wished she could send them all away—there was always that still moment before the noise and the blood and she preferred to spend it by herself—but first there were things she had to do and even a few hated formalities she must observe.

Mormng-in-Eye of the Changing People was waiting, her naked chest heaving. She had just run a long way. “What do you bring me?” Yasammez asked her.

“They are no more than they seem, or else they have grown a thousand times more skilled in trickery than they once were. A small garrison lives inside the town gates. There are other small forces of armed folk in the larger houses, and an armory that suggests they can muster more when need be.”

“But the armory is full?”

Morning-in-Eye nodded her sleek head. “Pikes and helmets, bows, arrows — none have been given out. They do not suspect.”

Yasammez showed nothing, but she was pleased. An easy victory would bring its own problems, but it was more important that her army’s first blooding not be too perilous. Even with all those she had mustered, the People were still vastly outnumbered by the mortals who now filled the lands that once had belonged to her folk. She relied on surprise and terror to increase the size of her host tenfold.

“Hammerfoot of Firstdeep?”

“Yes, Lady.”

“It is long since we have come against mortal men or their works. When the village is afire, take some of your women and men and pull down the walls. See to the way of their building. It is only a town, but perhaps we will see something of what we must defeat when we come against the Old Place.”

“Yes, Lady.”

She turned to Gyir, the most trusted of her captains, and for a moment their thoughts commingled. Compared to her or even many of the others present he was merely a stripling, but his ferocity and cunning were second only to hers. She tasted his cold resolve and was pleased, then spoke so that the others might hear. “When we are putting the town to fire and the people to slaughter, it is my wish that a large number be allowed to escape, or at least to believe that they are escaping.” She paused for a moment, considered unflinchingly the horror that would come. “Let them be mostly females and their young.”

Stone of the Unwilling stirred, flickered. “But why, Lady? Why show them mercy? They never showed us any —when they found my people’s hive in the last great battles they burned it and clubbed our children to death as they came out, screaming and weeping.”

“It is not mercy. You should know that I of all the People have no such failing when it comes to the sunlanders. I wish the news of what happened here to spread —it will fill their land with terror. And the females and young we allow to escape will not take up arms as their males might, but in the cities we besiege they will need to be fed and watered, taking resources from those who do stand against us.” She slipped Whitefire from its sheath and laid it beside her helmet. There was no fire in her pavilion of shadow; the sword’s lunar glow gave all the light. “We have not spilled the blood of mortals since we retreated behind the Shadowline. Now that is ended. Let the Book of Regret remember this hour even beyond the world’s end. “ She raised her hand. “Sing with me, for the sake of all the People. We must now praise the blind king and the sleeping queen and swear our fealty to the Pact of the Glass—yes, we will all swear to it together, think what we might—then we will take flame and fear to our enemies.”

Part Three FIRE

… And Perin went among them and heard their cries, and when they told him, not knowing who he was, of the terrible beast that beset them, he smiled and patted his great hammer and instructed them not to be afraid…

—from A Compendium of Tilings That are Known, The Book of the Trigon

27. Candlerstown