Above the palace three scaled forms were hovering.
For weeks now their malevolent presence had kept her chained to her flesh, and she longed to fly free. But the last time she had tried they had come for her, screeching across the sky. Ulmenetha had barely made it back to her body.
Who had summoned them, and why?
Closing her eyes she loosened the draw-string of her rune pouch and reached inside, her fingers stroking the stones within. They were smooth and round and flat,
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and for a while she continued to stir them. At last one stone seemed to call for her, and she drew it from the pouch. Painted upon it was a cracked goblet. Ulmenetha sat back.
The Broken Flagon was a stone signalling mistrust. At best it warned of caution in dealings with strangers. At worst it signalled treachery among friends.
From the pocket of her white dress she produced two leaves. Rolling them into a ball she placed them in her mouth and began to chew. The juices were acrid and bitter. Pain lanced into her head and she stifled a groan. Bright colours danced now on the edge of her vision, and she pictured the Broken Flagon, holding to the image and freeing her mind of conscious thought.
A silver serpent slithered up and around the flagon, slowly crushing it. The flagon suddenly shattered, the pieces exploding outward, ripping through the curtain of time. Ulmenetha saw a tree-shrouded hollow and four men. Axiana was there. Ulmenetha saw herself kneeling beside the queen, a protective arm around her shoulder. The four men were warriors, and they had formed a circle around Axiana, facing outward ready to fight off some unseen threat. A white crow was hovering over them all, his wings beating silently.
Ulmenetha sensed a colossal evil, about to sweep over the hollow. The vision began to fade. She struggled to hold the image, but it collapsed in upon itself and a fresh scene unfolded. A camp-fire beside a dark frozen lake stretching between high mountains. A man – a tall man – sitting with his back to the lake. Behind him a dark, taloned hand reached up through the ice, then a demonic form pulled itself clear. It was colossal and winged and stood blinking in the moonlight. The great wings spread wide and the demon floated closer to the man at the
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camp-fire. It extended an arm. Ulmenetha wanted to cry out, to warn him, but she couldn’t. The talons rammed into the back of the seated man. He reared up and screamed once, then slumped forward.
As Ulmenetha watched the demon began to shimmer, his body became black smoke, which swirled into the bloody wound in the dead man’s back. Then the demon was gone, and the body of the man rose. Ulmenetha could not see his face, for he was hooded. He turned towards the lake and raised his arms. Through the surface of the ice a thousand taloned hands rose up to salute him.
Once more the vision faded and she saw an altar. Upon it, held with chains of iron, was a naked man with a golden beard. It was Axiana’s father, the murdered emperor. A voice spoke, a soft voice, which she felt she should recognize, but it was blurred somehow, as if she were listening to a distant echo. ‘Now,’ said the voice, ‘the day of Resurrection is at hand. You are the first of the Three.’ The chained emperor was about to speak when a curved dagger sliced into his chest. His body arched.
Ulmenetha cried out – and the vision disappeared. She found her gaze focused now only on the bare, moonlit wall of the royal bedchamber.
The visions made no sense. The emperor was not sacrificed. Having lost the last battle he had fled with his aides. He had been slain, so it was said, by officers of his own guard, men disgusted by his cowardice. Why then should she see him sacrificed in this way? Was the vision symbolic?
The incident at the lake of ice was equally nonsensical. Demons did not live below ice.
And the queen would never be in a wood with a mere