Through that weakness she will destroy you. Ishbel will midwife nothing but sorrow into this
land.”
Maximilian regarded her, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I know you mean
only goodness, Ravenna, but I need to speak with Ishbel. I should not have walked away from
her in that manner and I need to make sure she is all right.”
“She will seduce you!”
He laughed, genuinely amused. “Not even Ishbel would think of that in this great chill! I
treated her most badly, Ravenna. Let me go, I pray you, so that I may speak a little more gently
to her. I will not linger, and I promise to you that I shall not allow myself to be seduced.”
He started to pull back from Ravenna, but she clasped both her hands about his,
tightening her grip. “There is something I should show you, Maxel.”
“Not now, Ravenna.”
“No. Now! Maxel, I know you think my aversion to Ishbel either a product of womanly
jealousy or of blind bigotry—but it comes from a knowledge I have yet to share with you.”
“Ravenna—”
“Let me share it now, Maxel.”
He was still leaning away from her, but not so strongly now.
“Let me show you, Maxel,” she whispered, and the snow about them vanished.
Maximilian pulled his hand from Ravenna”s, but it was too late. The snowy ground about
the army encampment disappeared and he found himself standing with Ravenna on a gravel path
that wound through a misty marshland. Water festered in dank, black muddy pools to either side
of the path, and thick mist drifted through stands of gray-green trees almost denuded of leaves,
its tendrils becoming momentarily hooked on the trees” skeletal branches before twisting free
and floating onwards.
It was very warm and Maximilian loosened his cloak.
“This is the Land of Dreams,” Ravenna said. “My land.”
“Why are we here?” Maximilian said. He was annoyed with Ravenna, but more so with
himself. He wished, quite desperately, that he had not behaved so ungraciously toward Ishbel.
And he needed to find some solitude, so that he might wonder if he’d made the right
decision…or not.
“I want to show you something,” Ravenna said.
“Ravenna, I need to get back.”
“No,” she said, “you need to see this.”
She waved a hand to her right, and the mists cleared.
Maximilian saw a roadway, winding its serpentine way toward a distant mountain,
gleaming with gold at its top, set among the clouds.
Elcho Falling.
Bodies of men and horses littered the roadway. Icarii lay among the dead, and Emerald
Guardsmen, and Maximilian could see Georgdi lying atop a heap of Outlanders to one side.
Look, whispered Ravenna.
An army now moved along the road toward Elcho Falling, pushing aside the bodies of the
fallen as it went. The army consisted of creatures distorted into gruesome form, their eyes wide
and starting—lost and hopeless. At their head strode a man of darkness.
This is what Ishbel shall generate, Ravenna said.
No, Maximilian said.
The army marched its way to the doors of Elcho Falling, and Maximilian and Ravenna
saw, as if they stood only feet away, the man of darkness reach forth and pound his fist on the
gates.
They will not open for him, said Maximilian.
They shall, said Ravenna.
The gates shrieked, and opened, and Maximilian saw Ishbel crawl forth on her hands and
knees, weeping.
The man of darkness reached down to her and lifted her left hand, and Maximilian saw
the Queen”s ring gleaming on Ishbel”s fourth finger.
“You have delivered to me Elcho Falling,” said the man of darkness to Ishbel, “and have
sent its Lord into death. You have done well.”
“If you slide that ring onto her finger,” said Ravenna, “you marry darkness to Elcho
Falling and ensure your own death. Ishbel is your doom, Maximilian Persimius.”
Maximilian could not speak. He continued to stare into the mist where the vision had
appeared a moment ago.
“Ishbel will murder you and ruin this land,” Ravenna said. “I know you love her, but she
will bring you and Elcho Falling and this entire land nothing but sorrow.”
“Enough!” Maximilian said. “For pity”s sakes, Ravenna, don”t you know when you have
won? Don”t you know when best to stop?”
Kanubai felt his hand slide into the glass and instantly knew what was happening.
All at once, the Lord of Elcho Falling seemed the very least of his problems.
The pyramid sucked him deep into its blackness where, for what seemed to Kanubai like
an infinity of time, he and it did great battle.
Then, suddenly, the pyramid tired of its play, and it destroyed Kanubai, taking of the
ancient creature only what it wanted.
Flesh. Breath.
“It is enough,” Maximilian said, finally pulling his hand from Ravenna”s grasp. He
stepped back, his booted heel crunching into the snow.
“Don”t go to her,” Ravenna said. “Don’t.”
“I—” Maximilian said, then he stopped, one hand half raised to his face as if his head
ached.
“Maxel?” Ravenna said, putting a hand on his arm.
Maximilian said nothing, staring into the black night, snow catching at his dark hair.
Kanubai! he thought. What has happened?
Ravenna didn”t know what to do. She felt helpless in the face of his fatal fascination for
Ishbel. What else could she say to Maximilian, what else could she show him, to bring him to his
senses?
“Ravenna,” he said, “I must go. There”s something I—”
She grabbed his arm. “Don”t go to her, Maxel!”
He tore himself loose, almost stumbling with the violence of his movement. “Just leave it
be, Ravenna! Just for one hour, I beg you!”
Before Ravenna could say anything, he was gone, half jogging into the night.
The score or so of Skraelings who had watched Kanubai get sucked into the glass now
cowered in a corner of the Infinity Chamber, terrified. Before them they could see Kanubai”s
form in the glass, twisting this way and that, being stretched first in one direction, then in
another.
From time to time the glass walls bulged outward as Kanubai fought for his freedom,
then they would snap back into rigidity as the Lord of Chaos weakened.
“What should we do?” whispered one of the Skraelings, its hand clutching at the shoulder
of its nearest companion.
“Watch and wait,” the other Skraeling replied. It grinned suddenly, its long pointed teeth
glistening within the ambient light of the Infinity Chamber, its silvery orbed eyes bright with
calculation.
“And then?” said the first Skraeling.
“Whatever necessity dictates,” replied the second.
Some time passed—the Skraelings could not calculate how much—when suddenly the
last vestige of Kanubai”s form vanished.
The Infinity Chamber fell into stillness.
“What should we do?” hissed another of the Skraelings.
“Wait,” whispered the pragmatist. “Wait.”
And so they waited and, eventually, something stepped forth from the glass.
It was the height and shape of a man, and with the head of a man, which was slightly less
intimidating than the jackal head which Kanubai had assumed. In other respects, however, the
creature was entirely un-manlike. Its flesh was not made of tissue and blood, but appeared to be
formed of a pliable, and utterly beautiful, blue-green glass. Deep within the creature”s chest a
golden pyramid slowly rotated.
Its head was also glasslike, the creature”s eyes great wells of darkness.
The Skraelings abased themselves upon the floor of the Infinity Chamber.
“Who are you, great lord?” asked the bravest among them.
“I am the One,” the creature said. “I am perfection incarnate, for I am indivisible. I am
Infinity, in its purest form.”
“Then we are your servants,” said the Skraelings, who, while understanding almost
nothing of what the One had just said, were nothing if not realists.
As Maximilian strode into the night, and the Skraelings abased themselves before the
One, Lister stood with three of the Lealfast atop a peak in the FarReach Mountains, looking
southward toward Isembaard. Snow and icy wind coiled slowly about them, but none of the four
paid the cold any mind.
At first sight seeming to be Icarii, with the same elegant human form and huge spreading
wings, the Lealfast were at second glance something else. Their forms were not completely solid, but made up of shifting shades of gray and white and silver, and small drifts of frost clung to
their features.
“Something bad has happened,” Lister murmured, peering into the night as if he could
physically see south to DarkGlass Mountain. “Kanubai has gone!”
Slightly to one side and behind him, the three Lealfast—Eleanon, Bingaleal, and
Inardle—exchanged a quick glance.
What they felt could not be said before Lister.
Something perfect had just occurred.
CHAPTER TWO
The Sky Peaks Pass
Ravenna watched him walk away into the night. She tugged her cloak about herself,
feeling her failure to keep Maximilian from Ishbel even more keenly than the cold. She had truly
thought for a while that he realized the danger. He”d told Ishbel that Ravenna was carrying his