Maxel. Please. Hear what I have to say.” She paused. “Maxel, we need to talk about our child,
and I will not do that with all these swords surrounding us.”
“You were the one to bring the swords, Ravenna.”
“Maxel, please.” She hesitated. “Do not cast me off discourteously. Do not make me
beg.”
Something in Maximilian”s face altered at that last. “Where do you want to meet,
Ravenna?”
“Maxel—” Axis said, but Maximilian put a hand on his shoulder.
“It is all right, Axis,” he murmured. Then, in a louder voice, “Ravenna?”
“Meet me in the Land of Dreams,” Ravenna said. “You are skilled enough to find the
way, and you know it will be safe there for both of us. Meet me in the Land of Dreams,
tomorrow night.”
Then, before Maximilian could answer, she turned around, and all the soldiers with her,
and walked down the stairwell and back into the vaulted chamber.
“Follow them, and make sure they depart,” Axis said to the sentries.
Then he looked to Maximilian. “How did they get in, Maxel?”
“The baby,” Maximilian said. “Elcho Falling recognized the baby.”
“As your child?”
“As the heir to Elcho Falling,” Maximilian said.
“You can”t do it.”
Axis was with Maximilian, Ishbel, Egalion, and Garth in a chamber high in Elcho
Falling.
“Maxel,” Axis said, “you can’t do it. It is too dangerous.”
“She won”t hurt me,” Maximilian said.
Axis looked at Garth.
“I don”t think she will, either,” Garth said. “Ravenna has done many things I can”t
condone, but she would never stoop to harming Maxel.”
“For all the stars” sakes,” Axis said, “she allied herself with Armat! She was prepared to
threaten you tonight with invasion! She killed her own mother! What won’t she stoop to?”
“I agree with Axis,” Ishbel said. “You can”t trust her, Maxel. She wants Elcho Falling for
herself and her child.”
“If Ravenna wanted Elcho Falling for herself and her child,” Maximilian said, “then she
wouldn”t be parleying. She would have simply led Armat and his two-hundred-thousand-odd
men inside the arch this night and most of us would be dead by now. Axis, did you have defenses
in place to repel that kind of intrusion?”
Axis shook his head. “Defenses would have been in place by tomorrow night, but even
then…”
Maximilian grunted. “She could have had us all,” he said, “but she didn”t take the
opportunity. She wants to talk, and I think I should hear what she has to say. For all I know she
wants to negotiate with me against Armat.”
“Maxel,” Axis, Ishbel, and Egalion said as one.
Maximilian waved a hand, dismissing their objections.
“You should have known Elcho Falling would recognize the child,” Axis said quietly.
“I had not thought,” Maximilian said.
“Don”t go,” Ishbel said.
“I must,” he said.
CHAPTER THREE
Land of Dreams and Elcho Falling
Ravenna?”
Maximilian moved through the Land of Dreams carefully. He walked down a damp
gravel path. To either side of him were mist-shrouded marshes, studded with gray-green trees
draped in moss that reached twiggy fingers through the tendrils of mist to tweak at Maximilian”s
hair as he passed.
“Ravenna?”
He wondered if the Lord of Dreams was about, but he couldn”t sense him. No doubt he”d
want to avoid Ravenna.
“Ravenna.”
She appeared ten or so paces before him on the path, emerging slowly from the mist as if
she glided on ice.
“Maxel.” She halted, and Maximilian thought she looked weary and low of spirit.
“What do you want of me, Ravenna?”
“You must know. I want you to acknowledge this baby as your heir. No, wait, please. Let
me finish. This is your son, Maxel. Your heir. Elcho Falling knows it, why can”t you
acknowledge it?”
He didn”t answer her.
She sighed, moving her shoulders as if trying to loosen them from tension. “Maxel, the
only dispute between us is Ishbel. I have said enough to you that you know how I feel. Ishbel
will murder you and this land. And know you know why. Isaiah has sent word to you that—”
“You know that?”
“Yes. Lister could overhear the communication between Axis and StarHeaven.”
Maximilian”s face tightened, and he looked away from her.
Ravenna took a half step toward him. “Ishbel will murder this land if you put that ring on
her—”
“Ishbel won”t, you fool! It is the One who carries destruction at his heels!”
“I know you love her, Maxel, but you need to rid yourself of Ishbel in order to save Elcho
Falling, and to save the land. You can allow neither to fall to the bleakness that approaches.”
“Ravenna, all you want is power, and you use any argument you can to seize it.”
“It is not power, my love, but you that I want. I love you, I am here, ready at your hand,
for whatever you want. I have waged war for you, Maxel. All for you. Do not cast me off again.”
“I am tired of this, Ravenna. Too tired. If there is nothing else you want save but to
slander Ishbel, then go.”
“Do not put the ring to her finger, Maxel. Your very life depends on that.”
“It is too late, Ravenna. I slid that ring to her finger the night before last.”
Ravenna went white, her gray eyes glistening madly. “No! Tell me you did not—”
“I have made my choice, my lady. Ishbel is my choice, and my wife. I choose her before
you, and in defiance of the One.”
“No! ”
“Too late,” said a new voice, and Armat stepped out of the mist at the side of the path,
and, as Maximilian started back in alarm, brought down his sword in a murderous arc, slicing
Maximilian open from chest to groin.
There was a sudden, horrifying spurt of blood, and then Maximilian vanished from the
Land of Dreams.
Armat rested the sword on the ground, staring at the pool of blood on the pathway.
“I needed a second stroke,” he said.
“It does not matter,” Ravenna said, her voice and face wooden. “That was a death blow.
If not in the first instant, within the next ten minutes.”
Then she turned and walked back down the path, leaving Armat leaning on his sword,
staring at the blood soaking into the gravel.
Axis was sitting in a chair in one of the bedchambers that ran off the main command
chamber. He watched Maximilian insensible in his own chair partway across the room. Ishbel sat
close to him; Egalion and Garth stood further back in the chamber.
Everyone”s eyes were on Maximilian.
He”d been largely still as he traveled the Land of Dreams, although Axis had seen the
muscles in Maximilian”s face tighten and clench as if he spoke, or reacted to something said to him.
Everyone was tense, no one wanting Maximilian exposed to this danger.
Then, in an instant so horrific that Axis knew he”d never forget it, Maximilian”s body
exploded. Blood and tissue erupted in a great arc from the front of his body, and he jerked out of
the chair and slid to the floor.
For an instant everyone looked, then, as Garth, Axis, and Egalion all made for
Maximilian, Ishbel turned on them.
“Garth stays,” she snapped. “Everyone else out. Now! ”
They obeyed her.
There was nothing else to be done.
Both Axis and Egalion had enough experience to know a death blow when they saw one.
CHAPTER FOUR
Elcho Falling
Shit,” Axis said. Then again. “Shit! ”
He looked at Egalion. The man was ashen.
“We”ll need to move fast,” Axis said, speaking in a low but urgent voice.
They needed to move fast, yes, but giving Egalion something to do would break him out
of his fugue faster than anything else.
“Ravenna and Armat will know Maximilian is dead,” Axis continued. “It is just past
midnight…Egalion, we can expect an attack before dawn. There will be nothing to prevent them
now. Get Georgdi and Ezekiel, and get every damned soldier you can find and station them
either in the vaulted chamber entrance or in the balconies lining the great stairwell. Remember
how Ravenna got those thousand men in previously. Damn it, she likely has enough power to
shroud Armat”s entire army. Egalion?”
“Yes,” he said. “Yes.”
“Move! ” Axis said, and Egalion stared at him a heartbeat longer before running for the
door.
StarDrifter, Axis called. BroadWing.
In the ten minutes or so it took for them to reach him, Axis paced the chamber, looking
every now and again at the closed door to the chamber holding Maximilian, Ishbel, and Garth.
Maximilian would be dead by now. Stars, he”d been eviscerated. That had not been just
blood erupting from his belly wound.
Axis closed his eyes for a moment, fighting to forget what he”d just witnessed.
Shit! If only he had the power to turn back time and prevent Maximilian walking into
Ravenna”s trap.
“Axis?” StarDrifter and BroadWing arrived together, folding their wings as they walked