CHAPTER FOUR

Salamaan Pass, Northern Kingdoms

R avenna had no idea where Maximilian was. She’d searched up and down the column, had virtually exhausted herself and her horse, and almost burst into tears of relief when she saw him, StarDrifter, and Salome riding to rejoin the column from a path that led into the mountains.

“Maxel? Where have you been? I’ve been so worried.”

He gave her a glance, but kept riding so that Ravenna had to push her horse to catch up enough to hear his answer.

“I’ve been out riding,” he said.

Ravenna looked at StarDrifter and Salome, knowing something had happened, but that they were not likely to tell her.

What were they up to? It involved Ishbel, no doubt. A pang, part of anger, part of jealousy, shot through her.

“Maxel?” she said again.

“We’ve been speaking with Isaiah,” Maximilian said. “It was nothing important, Ravenna.”

“You were not so very surprised at the story I related, Axis,” Isaiah said. He and Axis were left alone atop the mountain peak.

Axis gave a shake of his head. “I’d heard a little bit of it from Maxel before we left Sakkuth. The rest…well, the details I did not know, but none of it surprised me.” His mouth twitched. “And I am glad it won’t be me to save the world this time.”

“Considering you did such a shitty job of it the last time around, Axis, I’d be hardly likely to hand it on to you.”

Axis laughed. He waved a hand at the column grinding its slow way through Salamaan Pass. “And this is evacuation rather than invasion, am I right?”

Isaiah nodded. “Invasion was the only concept my generals could accept.”

“The Skraelings are heading south.”

“They will provide Kanubai with his army.”

“Stars, Isaiah, what about the millions of people left behind?”

“We can leave the Salamaan Pass open for some weeks after the Skraelings have moved into Isembaard, but once Kanubai moves, we shall have to close it against his eventual march into the north.

People will be able to flee north once word of the Skraelings spreads.”

They were quiet a moment, thinking about the terror that would spread throughout Isembaard. Axis hoped that the news would spread fast, and that many would have the chance to make their escape.

“And me, Isaiah?” Axis said eventually. “I have a feeling that there is a far greater reason for you to have dragged me back from death other than to have a useful counselor for your more insecure moments.”

“Aye, there is. The first reason that I, that Maximilian, needed you back you can see before you.

Kanubai is going to invade the north, Axis. He is going to try and destroy both Elcho Falling and its lord before they have a chance to destroy him. Maximilian will need an army, and he is going to need a general who can command it for him. You are that man.”

Isaiah now turned to look at Axis directly.

“The second reason Maximilian needs you is because he is going to need a friend. Someone who has been through what he now faces—the assumption of an ancient title, the resurrection of an ancient realm, in order to repel an even more ancient enemy. There is no one about him now who can provide that friendship, save you.”

“Not Ishbel?”

“No,” said Isaiah, “not Ishbel.”

That evening, just as Maximilian and his group were finishing their evening meal, Ishbel walked into the circle of firelight.

“Maximilian? Would it be possible to speak with you?”

She looked gaunt and anxious, and held her cloak gripped tightly about her.

“Have you not done enough?” Ravenna said. “You can’t just walk in here and—”

“Ravenna,” Venetia said in a low voice, gripping her daughter’s arm.

“Maximilian,” Ishbel said, ignoring Ravenna. “We need to talk about what Isaiah said today. Please.”

Maximilian gave a nod, rising to his feet.

“Maxel—” Ravenna began, making to rise herself, but Venetia literally hauled her back to the ground.

“No!” Venetia hissed as Maximilian and Ishbel faded away into the night. “You need to let them speak, Ravenna. Alone!”

Ravenna stared at her mother, then reluctantly nodded.

Venetia studied her, wishing she knew what to say. She’d watched her daughter work her way into Maximilian’s bed, and she’d seen—clear to anyone save her blinded daughter—his reluctance to keep her there. Venetia had traveled with Maximilian for many weeks now, and she thought she knew the man.

Guilt and honor bound him tightly, as did his wish not to hurt Ravenna’s feelings, whom he felt he owed for his release from the Veins.

But guilt and honor and debt did not make a good foundation for a relationship, particularly when Maximilian still yearned for Ishbel.

“Ravenna,” Venetia said gently, “Maximilian will break your heart eventually. You do know that, don’t you?”

“He loves me.”

Venetia looked across the fire to Salome and StarDrifter, both watching and listening carefully.

“He does,” said Ravenna. “We’ve been through so much together. You just don’t understand.”

“Maximilian, I had no idea you were the Lord of Elcho Falling. I’m sorry.”

They had found a spot relatively isolated from the campfires and people, but one with enough light cast from the many fires that they could see each other’s faces.

Maximilian looked at her, noting the hollowed cheeks, the overly bright eyes. She looked very tense and nervous, but she also looked more open and honest than he’d ever seen her.

He wished she could have found that honesty far sooner. He wished he could have been the kind of man she could have been honest with.

“You never gave me a chance to tell you,” he said.

“What I said, in the woodsman’s hut…”

She couldn’t go on, but both of them heard her words echo through their minds.

I hate him. Over the years I’ve had visions of him, and always I know that if ever he catches me, then he will wrap my life in unbearable pain and sorrow, for pain and sorrow trail in the darkness at his shoulders like a miasma. I know he will ruin my life. He will ruin the world.

“Do you still feel that way, Ishbel?”

She hung her head, fiddling with her hands.

“Do you still dream of me, Ishbel?”

Her head came up again, her eyes bright with tears. She nodded.

“And are they still the same?”

“Worse,” she whispered.

Maximilian sighed. “What did you want to say to me tonight, Ishbel?”

“Just…just that…that I was sorry. I wish…”

“Don’t get started on the apologies and the wishes, Ishbel. It is far too late for that.”

“There is something else.”

“Yes?”

“What I learned today—that you had been kept in the Veins for seventeen years—made me feel ill. I find it difficult to believe that someone could do that to you.”

“I don’t want to talk about it, Ishbel. It does no good. Besides, they also put you through the horror of your parents’ deaths.”

“But seventeen years, Maxel!”

He noted the use of the familiar, but was too tired to correct it.

“It is over and past now, Ishbel.”

“No,” she said, “I don’t think it is.” She paused, deliberating what to say next, knowing it could drive a further wedge between them, but wanting quite desperately to let him know she did know what it had been like for him.

“A long time ago,” Ishbel said, “when we were almost happy, that night in the woodsman’s hut, when we made love…Maxel, one of my skills is to uncoil memories. When you slept, I lay my hand on that scar on your left hip, and uncoiled—”

“I don’t want to hear this, Ishbel!”

She was crying now, silent tears that slid down her cheeks. “I know what it was like for you, Maxel.”

He half turned away, moving a hand slightly as if to wave away her words.

“What do they want of us?” she said after a lengthy silence.

“To save this land from Kanubai.”

“I have no idea how.”

He gave a small smile at that. “Neither do I. I fear it is a great mistake choosing me to try to save the world.”

“I could not think of anyone better to choose,” Ishbel said softly, but Maximilian did not hear it, for he had turned and walked away.

Five days later, Isaiah’s invasion force moved into the Outlands.

They met with some minor resistance from small bands of men, but they were quelled within hours.

There was nothing between Isaiah and the north.

Nothing between Maximilian and Elcho Falling.