They took two lives and ruined them in order to further their own ambitions.”
Egalion and Garth were now staring at him with their mouths agape.
“Vorstus?” said Garth. “Vorstus was responsible for your horror in the Veins?” He
couldn”t understand it…Vorstus had been the one who had set Garth on the path to being able to
release Maximilian.
“Vorstus is far more than the amiable Abbot of Persimius he appears to be,” Maximilian
said.
“Vorstus,” said the man himself, “has only ever been concerned for your welfare,
Maximilian.”
Maximilian took two strides toward the two mounted men. “And now I suppose I should
be pleased that you have finally found me.”
“We can help you, Maximilian,” Lister said. “Try to believe that.”
Maximilian stared at him a long, silent moment. “Frankly, that is something I find rather
hard to believe.”
He switched his gaze to Vorstus. “Tell me, Vorstus, do you have something of mine in
your pack?”
Vorstus reached behind him and untied a satchel from the back of his saddle. He held it
out to Maximilian. “Your crown, my Lord of Elcho Falling.”
Elcho Falling? Garth thought.
Maximilian turned his head very slightly. “Ishbel? Will you take that for me, and keep it
safe?”
She looked puzzled, but did as Maximilian asked, pushing her horse forward and taking
the satchel from Vorstus.
“Well met, my lady,” Vorstus murmured.
Ishbel ignored him, looking instead at Lister, the man who for most of her life she had
worshipped as the Great Serpent.
“How dare you think yourself worthy of continued breath,” she said, “when you have
destroyed so many lives?”
Then she turned her horse and rode away.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Isembaard
Isaiah lay on the ground, barely conscious, his head ringing with the force of the blow.
“That was for all the people you left behind,” Hereward said. “If my point hasn”t quite
been made, I don”t mind hitting you again.”
Isaiah managed to raise a hand to ward her off. It trembled badly, and that made him
furious.
“Did you think I wanted to leave everyone behind?” he said, trying to sit up, only to
slump to the ground again as he almost blacked out with the movement. He fought
unconsciousness, and only barely won. “Did you think I wanted to leave a single person behind?
I had no way to get everyone out. All I could do was to evacuate as many people as—”
She hit him again, this time with her open hand. Isaiah”s head snapped back, and his neck
cracked, but at least this time he didn”t end up in the dust.
“Have I made my point sufficiently now?” Hereward said.
Isaiah opened his mouth to hiss at her that he was doing all he could, had done all he
could, then thought better of it. Gods, the woman was mad.
“Yes,” he said.
She sank down into the dirt beside him, crossing her legs, arranging her skirts modestly,
and laying the book in her lap. Isaiah peered at it, sure he would see his blood smeared across
it—the woman might have been thin, but she was well muscled—but the leather cover was
unmarked.
Isaiah very carefully managed to sit upright without having to lean on one or both of his
hands, and tried to regain control of the situation. “Why are you here?” he said. “Why—”
“Why am I here, Excellency?” Her voice cracked with sarcasm on that last word. “Oh,
the small matter of Aqhat being overrun with horror. The desire to escape. The desire to live. The desire to—”
“Hereward, please, I am truly sorry for what has happened and, yes, I bear responsibility
for every person who was lost. I cannot even begin to imagine the nightmare that you, as
everyone left behind, has had to endure. How is it you have ended here, on this deserted stretch
of the Lhyl? And how is it that the Skraelings leave you be?”
Isaiah watched the emotion play over Hereward”s face, and knew she was battling the
desire to berate him yet more. But she didn”t, and for that Isaiah was grateful. Very slowly, and
with a fair degree of prompting, Hereward told of her escape from Aqhat on the riverboat, and of
the subsequent slaughter of her companions when the river turned to glass and the Skraelings
surged onto the vessel.
She paused at that point, and Isaiah saw in her eyes and across her face a partial reflection
of the terror, the horror, that she must have endured.
“I knew I was dead,” she said, clutching the book in her lap with white-knuckled hands.
“There was nowhere for me to run. I had backed up against the bulkhead, and in my terror
dislodged this book from a shelf above me.”
She glanced at it. “I had never seen it there previously.”
Hereward looked at Isaiah. “The book knocked me to the deck…and when I managed to
regain my senses I saw the Skraelings standing about me in a semicircle, pointing at the book
and whispering, „A nasty, nasty.” Then they turned and filed out. They haven”t bothered me
since.”
“A „nasty, nasty”? Hereward, can I see the book?”
Hereward”s hands tightened on the book, and Isaiah could see she struggled with herself.
Finally, after a long moment, she lifted it and gave it to him.
He knew as soon as he took it in his hands that it was an object of great power, and he
knew as soon as he opened the leather binding and looked at the chapter page what it was.
It was the Book of the Soulenai, lost now for many hundreds of years.
Lost, or merely biding its time?
“What is it, Isaiah?”
“This book…I know of it. It is many thousands of years old, and originally came from the
north…from a place called Elcho Falling. It came to this land in the possession of a man called
Avaldamon, who passed it to his son, Boaz, and his wife, Tirzah. The woman who came to
Aqhat, my new wife, Ishbel…you remember her?”
“Yes.”
“Ishbel is the descendant of Boaz and Tirzah.”
“The book is mine, now.”
Isaiah gave her a gentle smile. “The book is its own, and chooses who it stays with. For
the moment, yes, it has chosen you.”
He ran his fingers down the list of chapter titles.
The One walks north.
Prepare for confrontation.
Isaiah and Hereward meet with the glass man.
Feed the pretty kitten.
Those four chapter titles were repeated down the page. The first three Isaiah could
understand, but…feed the pretty kitten?
He closed the book and handed it back to Hereward. “A visitor comes, Hereward. I fear
he may not be very pleasant.”
“A visitor?”
The One. Isaiah knew instinctively who that must be.
“The pyramid walks north, Hereward. It wants to talk with me. It wants me. I”m sorry,
my dear, but I think your life is about to get immeasurably worse, and that is, again, all my
fault.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
On the Road to Serpent’s Nest
Ishbel sat in her blue tent, staring at the satchel which lay unopened on the camp table
before her. To one side a brazier glowed, warming the interior of the tent, while the remains of a
meal lay on another small table. Ishbel had not joined Maximilian, Egalion, and Garth this
evening. Maximilian had a great deal to tell them, and she had thought it best she not be there.
Why had Maximilian given her the crown of Elcho Falling?
Ishbel had turned and ridden away from Lister as soon as she”d insulted him. Partly this
was because she simply could not bear to stay in the company of the man who had
cold-bloodedly caused her and Maximilian so much misery, partly it was to escape an already
uncomfortable meeting, and partly because Ishbel could not trust herself to remain in the man”s
company without causing him some bodily harm.
How could she have devoted twenty years of her life to him?
She took a deep breath, staring at the satchel as she tried to distract herself from Lister.
She had not touched it other than to drop it on the table on her return. Hours had passed as she
ate, bathed, dressed in her nightclothes, and then brushed out her long blond hair—listening as
Maximilian and the Emerald Guard arrived back in camp, and half hoping that Maximilian
would drop by to see his crown—but now she could not put the moment off any longer.
The satchel throbbed at her.
Indeed, the crown had been whispering to her from the moment she took the satchel from
Vorstus.
Ishbel supposed she had grown up a little, because the crown”s whispering had not
bothered her to anywhere near the same extent as she”d been bothered by Maximilian”s
whispering rings. She”d managed to put its voice and words out of her mind, aware of its
whispering, but not disturbed by it.
But now there were no more delaying tactics available to her. Ishbel took a deep breath