Sara Douglass – The Serpent Bride – DarkGlass Mountain Book 1

curiosity as he”d marked the army beyond the city”s walls.

Generally the crowds displayed a mix of deference, genuine awe (or perhaps fear), and a

decided reluctance to look directly at the face of Isaiah, or any of his closest

companions—among which included Ishbel, who rode directly behind Isaiah, the pair of them

kept closely guarded by several squadrons of heavily armed men.

This morning, when Axis had gone to mount his horse, he”d noted that Isaiah and Ishbel,

who had regained all her strength and vitality after the baby”s birth, had attired themselves in

great majesty. Both wore great golden and bejeweled collars that draped over their shoulders,

robes of fine embroidered silks, and two or three golden bands on each of their bare arms.

Isaiah appeared calm and relaxed, Ishbel a little less so, and Axis thought he saw slight

lines of strain about her eyes and mouth.

Axis was ambivalent about their relationship. He knew they were now sleeping together,

and was honest enough with himself to admit there was a small kernel of jealousy there. But he

didn”t know what Ishbel wanted. Did she truly wish to be Isaiah”s wife? Was she just marking

time until she could manage a means to leave him? How did she actually feel about arriving back

in her homeland on the tide of a massive invasion and on the arm (and in the bed) of the invader?

To none of these questions did Axis have an answer, and he hadn”t had the opportunity of

asking Ishbel. He”d not seen her alone for weeks—a situation he realized was fully managed by

Isaiah as well as by Ishbel herself—and any time he did spend with her was in the company of Isaiah, who deflected any conversation away from Ishbel if he felt it too personal.

Ishbel was now clearly out of bounds to Axis.

Ah! What did it matter to him? Ishbel was her own woman, and old enough to know what

she was doing with her life.

But still…Axis wondered if she had really thought through what she did.

He dismissed the thought the next moment as ungenerous and undoubtedly born of his

own jealousy.

Stars, would he have refused if Ishbel had come to him?

No. He wouldn”t.

Axis sighed, looking about. He was some four or five riders behind Isaiah and Ishbel, and

enjoying not being the center of attention for once. It gave him so much opportunity to observe

freely.

He looked at Isaiah, sitting his horse with such confidence and such natural arrogance

that it appeared he could fear nothing.

Axis suddenly thought of the assassination attempt on Isaiah at Aqhat and, his heart

thudding in his chest, glanced upward at the roofline.

Straight into the eyes of his father.

Maximilian had been transfixed by the sight of Ishbel. She looked so beautiful, and very

obviously no longer pregnant.

His eyes quickly scanned back through Isaiah”s column, looking for the nursery litter, a

wet nurse cradling the child, anything, then decided that perhaps the baby would come into the

city later, when everything was calmer, or that, gods forbid, Ishbel had left it behind from

wherever she had come.

Would she have done that? Why?

Then, four or five horsemen back from Isaiah, a man had looked up directly at the roof

where Maximilian and his party stood, and StarDrifter had cried out, softly and heart-achingly,

“Axis!”

Maximilian acted instantly. He grabbed StarDrifter, now stepping forth to the very edge

of the building, and hauled him backward toward the trapdoor that led from the flat roof down

into the bakery.

“Everyone back, now!” Maximilian hesitated. “Save you, Serge. Watch as carefully as

you can. Let me know if you think Axis has reported us.”

“Axis will keep his mouth shut!” StarDrifter hissed.

“Yes?” said Maximilian, angry with frustration at being so near Ishbel and yet so damned

distant, and angry also that he hadn”t thought to use either his power or that of Venetia and

Ravenna to cloak them from prying eyes. Gods, what had he been thinking? Had the thought of

seeing Ishbel so addled his wits?

And where was their child?

“Really?” Maximilian continued, his grip tightening about StarDrifter”s arm. “He”s been

living in Isembaard with Isaiah for many months at the least, and he didn”t look a reluctant

captive to me just then, eh? Downstairs. Now!”

Axis couldn”t think. He could not manage a single, damned coherent thought. He sat his

horse in a state of shock, riding forward with Isaiah”s train automatically, trying to marshal some

sense from his brain.

StarDrifter. StarDrifter. Stars, his father was here in Sakkuth!

Axis had not thought of StarDrifter in many, many weeks. To see him now, here, of all

places, left him breathless not merely in shock, but in joy as well.

His father.

Oh, gods…what should he do?

Axis managed to glance behind him again, trying to see the roof where he”d seen

StarDrifter, but they”d ridden forward too far, and around a slight curve in the avenue, for him to

be able to make it out.

His brain, finally, managed to send out a few cautious observations.

The darker man who had grabbed at StarDrifter, pulling him away.

“Oh no,” Axis whispered, knowing intuitively who that must be. He had no reason at all

to know it was Maximilian, but somehow he just knew. Axis” hands, which to his amazement he

discovered were trembling, tightened about his reins, making his horse jitter a little.

What should he do?

He looked ahead.

Isaiah had turned on his horse and was smiling at Ishbel, then laughed at something she

said.

Axis” face lost all expression. Isaiah and Ishbel had underestimated Maximilian. Very

badly.

He glanced upward again, although he knew he had no hope of seeing StarDrifter.

What should he do?

Nothing. Watch. And wait for his father.

Axis knew StarDrifter had seen him as well, and he knew his father well enough to know

that StarDrifter would seek him out.

And what was Maximilian going to do?

He looked ahead once more to Isaiah and Ishbel, revising his opinion that he should say

nothing. But what to say? If he told Isaiah that Maximilian was in Sakkuth, would Isaiah then

close down the city while soldiers searched door to door? Was that fair to Maximilian? To

StarDrifter?

Was it fair to Ishbel not to tell her that her husband was in town?

“Stars,” he muttered, “what should I do?”

Once more safely ensconced in the storerooms under the bakery, Maximilian finally let

StarDrifter go and turned to Ravenna.

“Tonight,” he said. “You and me only. Isaiah”s palace.”

“Maxel—” StarDrifter began.

“Ravenna and me only,” Maximilian snapped, and such was the expression on his face

that no one argued the point.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sakkuth, Isembaard

The supply column?” Isaiah said.

“Already heading through the Salamaan Pass,” said Morfah. He tapped the map on the

table about which Isaiah, Axis, and the five senior generals were standing. “There are already

supplies of food positioned here, here, and here.” His finger stabbed down at locations in

northern Isembaard between Sakkuth and Salamaan Pass, and then once at a point a third of the

way through the pass. “And the supply train will encamp just before the pass widens into the

plains leading to Adab. The army will move smoothly, Excellency, and shall not lack for food,

equipment, or weapons.”

Axis stood to one side, still in a quandary about Maximilian and StarDrifter. He”d not had

a chance to speak privately either to Isaiah or Ishbel, and could hardly say something in front of

the generals. With luck, he might manage a word once the generals had left.

“Good,” said Isaiah. “And the settlers?”

“They are traveling in a convoy just behind the army column,” said Ezekiel. “They are

well provisioned and tightly organized. No laggards among them. Several Rivers”—a River was

a unit of ten thousand soldiers—“come behind.”

Axis set aside his quandary about Maximilian for the moment, thinking instead about the

resettlement issue. It seemed extraordinary to him that Isaiah would want to weigh down the

invasion column with women and children and great-aunts, plus their belongings and livestock,

but Isaiah was insistent. The Outlands were to be colonized with native Isembaardians as rapidly

as possible.

Axis wondered how the settlers felt about this—ordered from their homelands into the

unknown—but from all the reports he”d heard they appeared resigned. He remembered what the

country had been like in the northwest when he”d ridden to meet Ishbel, and thought that perhaps

they might even be a little glad to leave a land of arid and poor soil.

“This is a huge column,” Axis said, keeping his thoughts about the settlers to himself.

“You are not concerned that its existence, lurking just inside the northern entrance to the

Salamaan Pass, will not be reported to the Outlanders?”

“No one is being allowed through the pass to discover the column,” said Morfah. “We