The One could not believe it. He was utterly stunned in disbelief.
Tricked.
By something so simple a child should have thought of it.
He stood at the open doorway of the Twisted Tower, one hand resting on the doorframe, staring down what had once been a path but which was now black, empty nothingness. All the One’s rage had gone. Emptiness had replaced that, too.
Think. He had to think.
Maximilian and Ishbel had cut the ties from their world to the Twisted Tower. They had destroyed their knowledge of how to tread the path between their world and this tower, and thus cast it adrift.
Where was he? Where was he?
Anxiety now replacing his initial disbelief, the One looked about, sensing empty wilderness. Had his connection to Maximilian’s world been lost, too?
Nothing . . . there was nothing?
Now the One had to fight down panic. Surely there must be something . . . some connection remaining?
Nothing. He could sense nothing.
Suddenly the One moved. He took a single step back inside the Twisted Tower, slammed shut the door, and with huge, hungry strides raced up the stairs toward the top chamber.
Chapter 8
The Central Outlands
The Skraelings had not actually left the site where they had camped just outside Isaiah’s encampment.
They had just slewed slightly through reality. Just as they vanished from the sight of Isaiah and Axis and all who accompanied them, so also Isaiah and his companions and army vanished from the Skraelings’ sight. The entire Isembaardian army could have marched through the Skraeling mass and felt nothing more than the brush of air against their legs, while the Skraelings themselves would not have been aware of them.
They had sequestered themselves from reality in order to debate their future.
The Skraelings were consumed by a welter of emotions. Foremost was anger — aimed, initially, entirely at Isaiah. Isaiah had turned them from their enchanted, powerful form into these repulsive creatures who had no beauty and no dignity and no power. He had then forgotten them, leaving them to drift for aeons as creatures hated by all other races. Then, having suddenly remembered his oversight, Isaiah had returned to the Skraelings the power to choose their own destiny, the power to return to their form of River Angels, but only via the medium of water, of drowning.
That was, for the Skraelings, the ultimate cruelty. The ultimate spitefulness. Isaiah knew they hated and feared water. He knew it, yet he’d made it a precondition that they embrace this terror if they wanted once again to be River Angels.
And who really knew if this wasn’t simply some plan to just slaughter them? Tell them some fabulous tale about long lost mystery forms, convince them that all they had to do to regain this form and mystery was to drown themselves.
Maybe Axis had planned the entire thing.
This stank of the StarMan.
Probably backed up by Inardle. She was a Lealfast. She hated them as much as Axis did.
From their anger at Isaiah the Skraelings morphed seamlessly into hatred of Axis. He was the BattleAxe, the StarMan, he the one who had slaughtered so many of their cousins in Tencendor. He was their implacable enemy.
Why had they not killed him when they had the chance? When he sat among them? Why had they not also killed Isaiah and Inardle when they, too, sat among —
“Stop,” Ozll said into the maelstrom of rising, black emotion. “Stop. Isn’t this what condemned us in the first instance? Isn’t this what we want to discard and leave forever behind us? Or is this what we want to remain, forever? Brothers and sisters, cousins and friends, look at us. Look at us. Then remember what Isaiah showed us. That was not a lie. It was memory. Truth. It was from whence our memories of Veldmr came. Stop. Think. We’ve allowed our emotions to overcome our intellect.”
He paused, looking at the doubt in all the faces surrounding him. “Yes,” Ozll said, “we do have intellect, and we could have pride in ourselves again. But we need to discuss this rationally and we need to come to a decision about what to do from a place of calmness. Not from a state of fear or anger or suspicion. Now, who will speak?”
The mass was quiet a long time. The Skraelings found it difficult to damp into quiescence their habitual suspicion and fear and anger. All three states were by now so natural to them it was difficult to let go of them.
Finally, a young female Skraeling by the name of Graq spoke. “What are we now?” she said. “Do we want to stay this way?”
That was rare straight speaking, and the Skraeling mass responded by moaning, their bodies weaving to and fro in distress.
“We are hateful,” one among them hissed.
“Ugly,” said another.
“Far uglier now than before,” another said. “We grow uglier with each day. And more hateful.”
“But don’t we like being ugly and hateful?” someone asked. “All run in fear of us. Don’t we like that? Don’t we feed from their terror?”
Many among the Skraelings began to weep, great painful sobs that left their silvery orbs quivering in distress.
“No,” Ozll said for them all, “we don’t like that. And perhaps we’d like to change, now we have been given the opportunity.”
He hesitated a moment. “And perhaps we have been too consumed by emotion these past days and hours to have noticed something. Something important. Who knows what it is?”
No one spoke for a long time, although many brows creased and mouths mumbled.
“The One is gone,” Graq said, eventually. “The One is gone very, very far away.”
“Yes,” Ozll said. “We are now masterless. Again. And maybe that is a good thing, for maybe we might like to consider the opportunity to be our own masters, for a change.”
Chapter 9
Elcho Falling
Isaiah stood motionless in the dim pre-dawn light. It was a week since Maximilian had succeeded in trapping the One inside the Twisted Tower. Over the past two days Isaiah had moved his army north to the very boundaries of Elcho Falling. He was directly south of it now, within fifty paces of the lake, the citadel looming high above him, his army arrayed in battle gear in formation behind him, Kezial’s force and the Lealfast similarly arrayed some five hundred paces further up the lakeside.
Everyone had deployed yesterday.
The night had been spent waiting.
“You have not slept,” Axis said quietly to one side. The general Lamiah stood to Isaiah’s other side. All three had stood here in lengthy silence, watching, waiting, thinking. “Are you all right? You look exhausted.”
“I have been preparing a treat for Eleanon,” Isaiah said. “I will explain once it is fully light.”
He looked a little anxiously to the east as he said this, and Axis had to bite down a further query.
“What is going to happen today, Isaiah?” Lamiah said.
“You know I think that Eleanon is going to play at keeping us out of Elcho Falling,” Isaiah said.
“Yes,” Lamiah said, “you have told me what you and Axis think. But are you certain?”
Isaiah gave a hollow laugh. “No. I am not. But why else has he allowed us to get this close?”
“Perhaps because he has a trap waiting,” Lamiah said.
Isaiah and Axis said nothing. They also worried about this. It was all very well to theorise that Eleanon had not attacked them because he wanted them to enter Elcho Falling . . . but why would he do that? And what if he actually wanted them to get this far in one piece so that he could catch them in some as yet unsuspected trap? Too many what ifs.
“Too many unknowns,” Lamiah said, echoing the thoughts of the three men. “Eleanon holds all the cards. We are going to be forced onto a tiny exposed causeway to enter Elcho Falling, and he has a massive winged force.”
“Plus Kezial’s force,” said Isaiah.
“Isaiah?” Axis said, nervous and jumpy and wishing Isaiah would tell them what he’d been doing all night.
“Are the men prepared, Lamiah?” Isaiah said.
“Yes,” the general answered, “they know what to do and say if they get into hand-to-hand fighting with Kezial’s men.”
“Are you ready, Axis?” Isaiah said.
“Yes,” Axis replied. “Isaiah, what were you doing last —”
“I see the juit birds are in position,” Isaiah said.
Axis bit back a hiss of frustration. It was growing lighter and he looked toward the lake.
There bobbed the millions of juit birds, apparently oblivious to the extraordinary citadel rising at their backs or the opposing armies gathered on the shore.
Axis and Isaiah had conversed with the birds a week ago. It had been the most amazing conversation; Axis had understood most of it, but it had been difficult. It was similar to communicating with the eagle (Axis glanced up, searching for that speck in the sky, but as yet it was too dark to see him), but more . . . garbled.