sipped beside crackling fires, of walks with her father and even images of her mother in health. A place of sunrises and sunsets and the ever-changing play of the light on the crowns of trees and over the granite outcroppings that jutted up like islands amid waves of foliage. It had been here that Corinn had bested Hanish at archery, thinking she hated him at the same time she was falling in love with him.
Now, having just climbed off Po’s back along with the ghost of Hanish beside her, she could not even recognize the field in which they had loosed their arrows. The lodge itself had been obliterated. Smashed and scoured clean from its granite foundation, nothing remained of it save the bases of the timbers that had secured the building to the stone. The outbuildings, stables and storehouse: all jumbled piles of lumber, broken and strewn about. The woodland in the valley had been scorched, trees snapped, others uprooted, splintered. Some of the largest trees twisted at bizarre angles, as if they had rendered temporarily molten. Great gashes festered in the earth, smoking, reeking of death. It was like this as far as the eye could see, an enormous scar with the former site of the lodge at its center.
Po cried out in frustration as he flew over the valley. In all that expanse no other living thing moved, nothing for him to hunt. He fled from place to place, chased by evil vapors in the air, uneasy. He wanted to leave, but Corinn did not respond to the wish.
In all of it she recognized the same accursed song that had set worms eating through her flesh. In all of it, Santoth rage. Had she any tears left within her, she would have cried. She took the scene in dry-eyed. She had called this devastation upon the place. What right did she have to cry over it now?
“It is changed, but we knew it would be.”
I should not have sent them here.
“You had to send them somewhere,” Hanish said. “This place… was full of memories for you. For us. It came into your head when you needed to name a destination. You could have chosen much worse places to send them, Corinn.” As he talked he walked around her, trying to sift through the ashes with his feet. He did not seem to notice that the toe of his boot did not really push objects about. He left no footprints, touched nothing in the world except for her.
You don’t know all of it, Corinn thought to him.
“No, I don’t. But still, let’s not talk about this.” He straightened and took in the desolation of the valley again. “What we should be asking is, where are the Santoth now?”
That’s clear enough. They don’t exactly walk lightly on the ground. They’re out there. They won’t stop searching. Corinn gestured with her chin, indicating the wide world around them. They’ve gone in different directions. No doubt some are heading back toward Acacia. We soared so high on the way here. Perhaps we flew over some of them. This is like the rage they experienced when Tinhadin exiled them. They may yet kill many people.
“That’s why we’re going to stop them. Call Po back. We should-”
A woman’s voice reached them. “Queen Corinn? Is-is that you?”
They both spun around, searching for the speaker. She was so still that Corinn’s eyes passed over her, only to snap back a moment later. A woman stood with something gripped to her chest, half hidden behind the rubble of a collapsed wall. She stepped out from behind it. “It is you, isn’t it?”
Corinn touched a hand to her cowl, which still hid the lower portion of her face. Realizing that was not a gesture that would serve as an answer here, she nodded.
The woman said something over her shoulder. A second woman emerged. Like the first, she bore a bundle in her arms. Just after, a third head peeked out. She came more reluctantly. As they picked their way forward through the debris, Corinn recognized them both. The first woman: Wren, Dariel’s lover. The second, Gurta, Rialus Neptos’s recent bride. The third was a girl who worked in the lodge, Peter’s daughter. She could not remember her name.
“Steady, Corinn,” Hanish said. He stepped up close, one hand at her elbow, one at the small of her back. “They are not ghosts. They live, and so, I think, do the babes they carry.”
He was right. The bundles in the women’s arms were unmistakable, as was the care with which they cradled them. Corinn felt her breath escape her. She leaned more heavily into Hanish.
“You see?” he asked. “There is still life here.”
When Wren reached them, she bowed her head and said, “Your Majesty.”
Gurta tried to do the same, but her eyes were round circles that would not leave the queen’s face. “What’s happening?” she asked. “They came here and destroyed everything. They killed everyone but us. We would not have survived if Bralyn hadn’t hidden us. She knew of a cave.” She paused, looking from the queen to Wren, a desperate intensity in her eyes. “It was horrible. They… I don’t know what to call it. They tore the world apart. They stayed for days, raging. They were demons. I know it sounds mad, but look around. Only great evil could do this. Queen Corinn, you should not be here. They may come back. The place may be cursed. It is cursed. I can feel it. Isn’t it cursed, Wren?”
The slim woman kept her smoothly lidded eyes on Corinn. She did not seem to be listening to Gurta at all, except that when prompted she did speak. “Queen, how do you come to be here? Alone?”
Corinn shook her head.
Wren misunderstood her. “I saw you ride in. I know that… thing out there is yours. But are others coming?”
Hanish said, “Show them.”
Corinn did. She pulled down the cowl and tucked it under her chin. All three women drew back, staring, aghast. Yes, that’s the horror of me. They could not hear her, of course, or see or hear Hanish. Unsure how to proceed, Corinn just stood, looking into the women’s faces as if into three mirrors, each of which showed a different reflection.
Wren began the conversation again. “Those ones did this to you, didn’t they? The same ones that came here.”
Corinn nodded.
“Oh, Queen, I’m sorry. They are so awful. You… you’re chasing them, aren’t you?”
Again, the queen nodded.
“Tell me you are going to destroy them.”
Blinking her eyes closed for a moment, Corinn answered with a third nod.
“Good,” Wren said. “I don’t know how you could possibly do that, but if anybody can, I guess you can. That’s what Dariel would say.”
At the mention of her brother, Corinn’s eyes went to the bundle in the woman’s arms. She stepped closer and pulled back the blanket to reveal a tiny child’s sleeping face. So small, with thin tendrils of black hair and a fist, a little ball of a fist, clenched just beside its face. “This is my baby,” Wren said. “Your niece, if you ever wish to call her so. She was born early. I got ill, bad ill. She wanted out of me. She’s all right, though. Small but strong. Like me.” The woman smiled.
Corinn almost collapsed. I got ill, bad ill. That sentence, next to that smile and beside that child was almost too much for her to stand. She sensed that Po felt her distress and wanted to return to her. She ordered him not to. Do you see the things I’ve done, Hanish? I tried to kill this child. I tried to kill this woman, and yet she smiles at me.
“She has every reason to,” he said. “She lives. Her daughter does, too.”
“She doesn’t have a name yet. I’ve not had time to think about it. But… she’s my little girl.”
Gurta found her voice again. “I got mine out, too,” she said. “I was cursing him for coming, but I’m glad he was out and at the breast before them ones came and did all this. He’s got more sense than his father; I can tell that already.”
Corinn reached in to see the infant’s face. She saw only an ear and a soft, lumpy curve of his head, but she peered in for a long time. She could smell the child, a scent that was sticky with his birthing but somehow lovely all the same. Mostly, though, she listened as Gurta continued her nervous rambling. She sounded more like a maid now than ever. The young woman had annoyed Corinn before. She could not imagine why anymore. Her voice was lovely, kind and warm. Without guile.
Rialus was lucky to have had you.
Touching her back again, Hanish said, “Tell her that so she can hear it. Find a way to talk to them, Corinn. Tell them the things you need to. Time is short.”
