“I’m going with you,” she stated.
“A fine idea,” said Egrin immediately. “Someone should guard your back. I am forbidden to go, but Kiya is a foreigner. She may do as she likes.”
As he descended the steps a little ahead of the other two, Egrin added, “I shall rest easier knowing Tol doesn’t enter this deathtrap alone.”
Tough soldier that he was, Tol was pleased to know the marshal’s affection hadn’t dimmed with time and distance. Having Egrin standing by with ten thousand men ready to sweep into Verdant Isle was a great comfort- almost as much as the presence of Kiya at his side and the nullstone in his pocket.
Dawn was still far distant when Tol and Kiya mounted up outside Rumbold villa. The air was crisp with a presentiment of autumn. A tapestry of stars glittered overhead. The white moon, Solin, was just setting among the rooftops and towers of the New City.
Kiya was unhappy, not because of their potentially dangerous mission, but because Miya still had not returned home.
“She’s a grown woman,” Tol said gently. “She has the right to be happy with the man of her choice.”
Kiya shook her head stubbornly. “Our father would be angry if he knew. She dishonors you, Husband.” She lowered her chin to her chest and added, “I will not desert you.”
Tol blinked. After all this time, had he acquired a wife in Kiya without noticing it?
Now was not the time for such thoughts, so he set them aside. Egrin and a handful of men from the Eagle horde had come to see them off.
“Watch your back,” Egrin said.
“Ah, I have a pair of eyes back there,” Tol answered, smiling toward Kiya.
They mounted. When their farewells were said, Tol touched heels to his mount’s sides.
“What happens after?” Kiya asked suddenly.
He pulled back on the reins and regarded her in confusion. “After what?”
“After we come back. The emperor is crowned, the old emperor sleeps with his ancestors. What happens to us after that?”
It was a question none of them had considered yet. With the great coronation ceremony concluded, and Pakin III buried, the warlords gathered in Daltigoth would soon disperse. Tol had been on campaign for ten years. His home had been a tent, pitched in field or forest. If there was no war to fight, what would he do? What about Valaran? Could he bring himself to leave her again?
The more he thought about it, the more bereft he felt. Struggling for an answer, he said, “Maybe I’ll travel- visit Juramona or the Great Green. Would you like to see the forest again?”
Kiya only shrugged and looked away.
One of the Eagle horde men overheard them and said, “If I were you, my lord, I’d ask for a foreign posting. Tarsis, maybe. With you in command of the garrison there, I’m sure the syndics would behave themselves.”
“All but one,” Kiya replied dryly, still looking toward the horizon.
“Let’s go.” Tol spurred his horse forward before Kiya revealed anything more.
The two clattered through the sleeping city, leaving the Quarry district for the New City. Here they found the first stirrings for the new day-vendors rolled out pushcarts or opened stalls, servants and housewives scrubbed their stoops. Since the death of Pelladrom Tumult in the market square riot, there had been markedly fewer disturbances in the streets, and the coronation of Ackal IV had diminished tensions over the succession still further. Of course, the arrival of Enkian Tumult had created a new cause for worry.
They left the city by the north gate, called Kanira’s Door by most folk. The eccentric Empress Kanira had built an elaborate ceremonial gate as the starting point of the great paved road she envisioned reaching all the way to the empire’s northern territories. The gate and fifty leagues of road were completed, then a bankrupt treasury had halted the entire enterprise. Such wild extravagance had precipitated her fall at the hands of her stepson, Ergothas II, widely considered one of the empire’s greatest rulers.
Kanira’s Door comprised columns of red granite, alternating with lofty cylinders of pink marble. The columns were placed so close together a sword blade could not fit between them. The line of columns curved outward from the city wall in a great half-circle to the gate proper: a massive slab of sculpted granite that hung over a deep pit in the road. The slab pivoted vertically, and when open, it rested flat on the ground, making a bridge over the pit. In the closed position, the vertical slab left a gaping chasm before it. Although a formidable defensive position, such a gate was so complex and expensive to build it had never been duplicated.
An ingenious mechanism lowered the ponderous stone platform while Tol and Kiya waited. Two ogres, legs shackled and bodies joined at the waists by another weighty chain, cranked furiously at a monstrous stone flywheel. The motion of the wheel turned pulleys and gears, and the gate swung down and open without the slightest scrape. Both horses cantered across the granite bridge, iron-shod hooves clattering loudly.
The land beyond Kanira’s Door was more hilly than the southern or eastern approaches to the capital. In the final bloom of summer, the fields and orchards were heavy with fruit and sparkled with dew. The fecund smell of ripeness was strong in the still morning air.
Kiya remarked it was not the warrior hordes of Ergoth but its fields that had first impressed her with the empire’s power.
“How so?” asked Tol.
“To clear and cultivate such vast amounts of land requires planning. Anyone can assemble a big army. Warriors can always be found when needed, but the effort required to feed an empire is a far surer gauge of a nation’s strength.”
As he stared out across the great fields, seeing the first workers come to tend the crops, Tol had to admit there was much truth in what she said.
Once they left the farm country near the city, the land became more wooded. The sun rose as they crossed and recrossed many small, winding streams.
The morning was glorious, bright and balmy, and they passed numerous farm carts laden with laborers. Tol was recognized frequently and hailed by the farmers. He always returned their greetings. No matter how far or how high he went, he would always be a farmer’s son.
The carters he questioned said they’d seen no riders in the area, no strange warriors. Their very presence testified to the truth of that. Farmers did not linger where mounted soldiers rode.
When Tol and Kiya reached the banks of Salamander Creek at the edge of Verdant Isle, they had to ride along the bank looking for a fording place. Despite its name, the “creek” was twenty paces wide and as much as eight to ten feet deep in spots.
In the quiet rush of flowing water, Kiya spoke after a long silence.
“Do you ever think about death?”
Tol continued to scan the water for a likely crossing. “What warrior doesn’t? “
“I mean, do you wonder how you will die?”
“Not really, no. Why?”
Kiya’s buff-colored horse shifted slightly beneath her, and she slackened the reins so it could put its head down to drink. Water splashed over boulders half-submerged in the creek. In the silence, the sound of the water seemed very loud.
“I know how I’m going to die,” she finally said. “I asked a shaman of the Riverside Tribe to divine it for me many years ago.”
Again there was a pause, and again Tol said nothing, letting her tell it in her own time. She rode slightly ahead of him and he could see only her profile. “He said I would die at the hands of my best friend, and it would be a great blessing that I did.”
The words shook Tol, and he frowned. “Why are you telling me this?”
“Two events were foretold to precede my death. First, I would leave the forest to dwell in a land of stone and iron.” She had certainly done that. “Second, my sister would leave me for a man of smoke and fire.”
That description certainly suggested Elicarno. More often than not, his hands and clothes were stained with soot from his workshop forge.
“How much time is supposed to pass between these events and your death?”
“The wise one did not say.”
