"I can't leave Matarh," he said. "Talis will be back soon."

She shook her head. Her hands pressed tighter against his. His skin was warm, so warm, and she felt the child within her jump at the touch-the stirring of life, the quickening. She gasped slightly at the feel. "No," she told him. "I'm afraid Talis is dead, Nico."

She saw the tears start in his eyes and his lower lip trembled. Then he sniffed again and blinked. "That's the truth?"

She nodded. "The truth, Nico. I'm sorry. I'm very sorry."

He was crying fully now, the words coming out between the sobbing breath. "But my matarh . . . I can't . . . They just left her . . . She's asleep and I . . . can't wake her up. . . ."

"Your matarh would want you to go with me. Look at her, Nico. She loves you so much, I know she does, but I don't know if she's ever going to wake up, and the city is full of soldiers and death. She would want you to go with me because I can keep you safe. I will keep you safe."

"But I did this to her," Nico said. "It was my fault. I want her to know that I'm sorry."

She pressed Nico's hand around his matarh's. "She knows. Nico, we need to hurry."

She pulled his hand away from his matarh's, prying away the fingers gently. He released his grip reluctantly but without protest. "Give her a kiss," she said. "She'll feel it, and she'll know."

Nico stood up. Leaning over his matarh's body, he gave her a kiss on the cheek. He put her hand, dangling over the side, on the table, and patted it. He looked back over his shoulder, then, his eyes swimming with tears that didn't fall.

"I promise you, Nico-I'll find her again if she lives and bring her back to us. I promise you."

He nodded. She held out her hand to him, and he took it. She brought him to her, hugging him briefly, then releasing him with a sigh. She took his hand again.

"It's time," she told him.

Together, hand in hand, they made their way from the smoldering, ruined city.

Allesandra ca'Vorl.

"HERE YOU ARE, MATARH. It's all yours. I hope it makes you happy."

Jan's words were scalding water poured over her. They burned and seared her, delivered with an appalling and terrifying scorn and distance. He gestured grandly and mockingly in the direction of the Sun Throne. Allesandra stared at the ma.s.sive piece of carved crystal, sitting-strangely misplaced-in the middle of the ruined Old Temple. The throne had been cracked and badly repaired; a cloth with strange geometric patterns was draped over it, the ruins of the shattered dome and its lantern littered the broken tiles behind, and all around the hall were the remnants of some feast. Rats prowled the corners of the room, and the air stank of smoke and rotting meat. Near the rear there was a body, with one of the tapestries thrown hastily over it.

Allesandra knew whose body was under the covering: Sigourney, her staked head lolling separately near the throne.

The Regent and the two Numetodo were standing limned in sunlight by the open doors of the temple, too far away to hear her and Jan's conversation. Starkkapitan ca'Damont called out orders in the temple's plaza, sending out patrols to make certain that all the Westlander troops were gone from the city and to stop any looting by the survivors.

Allesandra heard the sc.r.a.pe of footsteps at the temple doors; she glanced over her shoulder to see Archigos Semini stepping carefully over the rubble on the floor. Jan saw him also. "Ah, Archigos Semini," Jan said. "I'm glad you're here, since this is also yours. I give you Nessantico. You won't be in Brezno any longer."

"My Hirzg?" Semini asked, glancing worriedly from Allesandra to Jan. "I was considering that perhaps the Archigos should reside in Brezno now, given the destruction here. I could a.s.sign an a'teni to Nessantico . . ."

"Oh, I agree," Jan said, and his smile made Allesandra shiver. It was the grim, bloodless smile her vatarh used when he was angry. She had seen it many times in her childhood, and in her adulthood after he had finally brought her back to Firenzcia. Now here the scornful, mocking expression was again, returned. Jan's face was smeared with soot and blood, and his right arm and leg were heavily bandaged. He limped, he seemed barely able to lift his sword arm. She wondered what her son had seen, what he was feeling. She longed to fold him into her arms and comfort him as she had when he'd been a child, but he stood a careful step from her as if he were afraid of exactly that. "You see, there will be an Archigos in Brezno. As to whether there's one in Nessantico, well . . ." Jan shrugged, coldly. "That's your choice. You might wish to claim the t.i.tle and hold it for a while-though you've always said you wanted a reunited Faith. Or perhaps the Archigos in Brezno will let you be the a'teni here in Nessantico, though I'll advise the Archigos against that."

"Hirzg?" ca'Cellibrecca spluttered. His face had gone the color of the white that sprinkled his dark beard and hair, the contrast strong. "I don't understand."

"Perhaps Matarh will explain it to you, since this is now her city," Jan said.

Allesandra stared at the throne. She felt dead, numbed. If someone cut her now, she thought, she would feel nothing, not even the heat of the blood on her skin. "My son gives me Nessantico, but he has informed me that Firenzcia will not be rejoining the Holdings," she told Semini, and her voice was as dead as her emotions.

"Consider it my wedding gift, Matarh," he told her. "For the wedding I never had, with the woman you sent away from me."

"I was protecting you, Jan," Allesandra told him, though there was no energy to her protest. "Elissa was a fraud. An impostor."

"I know," Jan told her. "She'd been hired to kill Fynn."

"What?" That brought her head up and caused fire to course through her briefly. Allesandra swung to face him. "What are you saying? The White Stone killed Fynn."

"Indeed, she did," Jan told her, with that same infuriating smile. "Let me tell you something you might not know, Matarh, though you should have: Elissa was the White Stone. She used me in order to get to Fynn."

"That's not possible," Allesandra said. It couldn't be; it wasn't possible. The voice she'd heard, the woman go-between; no, it wasn't possible, yet . . . She remembered the voice, higher than she might have expected for a man. And she had never seen the Stone. She had just a.s.sumed . . .

"Believe whatever you need to believe," Jan was saying. "I really don't care." He gestured again toward the throne. "Take your new seat, Matarh. Don't be shy. You've waited for it for so long, after all, and Regent ca'Rudka has renounced all claim to the t.i.tle. You can have Semini give you a blessing. Maybe the ca'-and-cu' will come back to the city now, so you can tell them that there's a new Kraljica."

Jan started to walk away toward the open doors. She took a step and caught at his wounded arm. "Jan. Son . . ."

He wrenched his arm away from her, grimacing with obvious pain as he did so, and that was more an agony to her than any sword cut. "Sit, Matarh. Take your Sun Throne. You have what you've always wanted. Enjoy the gift I've given you."

With that, he walked away toward ca'Rudka and the others. She watched him leave, wanting to call out to him, to keep him from leaving, to stop the pain.

She didn't. She watched him reach the bright doorway, and she heard his laugh as he clapped ca'Rudka on the back with his uninjured hand. The four of them walked away and sunlight collapsed around them.

Semini was staring up at the sky where Brunelli's dome had once been, his breath loud in his nose. Allesandra walked slowly to the Sun Throne.

She sat.

In the depths of thick crystal, there was no light. No response at all. The throne remained sullenly dark.

Epilogue: Nessantico.

SHE WAS SHATTERED. She was broken.

She had been scorched by fire and magic; she had been slashed with steel. She had been looted and ravaged. Her greatest treasures were damaged or gone. The buildings that had been her crown were tumbled ruins and piles of blackened stone. The jeweled necklace of the Avi a'Parete no longer glistened in the night. Now there were only stars in the sky above, gleaming mockingly down at her darkness.

Half her population was dead or had fled. She had felt for the first time in long centuries the tread of conquering soldiers along her streets: had felt them not once, but twice. A Kraljica sat on the Sun Throne, but she looked out on an empire that had withered and shrunk.

There was no denying the gauntness of the visage that stared back at the city from the filthy mirror of the A'Sele: the city's face was a crone's face, a blasted face, a face of scars and open wounds and pain. There was no beauty here, no glory, no wonder.

That was gone, as if it had never been.

When the rains came, as they did frequently that autumn, it was as if the entire world wept for her: the city, the woman. The storms washed away the soot and extinguished the fires, but they could not heal. They cooled and soothed, but they could not restore. They flushed away the bodies and garbage and soil that choked the river, but their thundering could not shatter the memories.

The memories would stay.

They would stay for a long, long time. . . .

S. L. FARRELL'S.

MAGNIFICENT FANTASY SERIES.

FROM DAW:.

THE NESSANTICO CYCLE:.

A MAGIC OF TWILIGHT.

A MAGIC OF NIGHTFALL.

THE CLOUDMAGES:.

HOLDER OF LIGHTNING.

MAGE OF CLOUDS.

HEIR OF STONE.

Appendices.

PRIMARY VIEWPOINT CHARACTERS.

(by rank, then alphabetical order)

Audric ca'Dakwi [AHD-ric-Kah-DAWK-whee] The Kraljiki in Nessantico.

Sergei ca'Rudka [SARE-zhay Kah-ROOD-kah] The Regent of Nessantico until Audric comes into his majority at sixteen.

Karl ca'Vliomani [Karhl Kah-vlee-oh-MAHN-ee] Amba.s.sador of the Numetodo from the Isle of Paeti, friend of Archigos Ana and Regent ca'Rudka.

Allesandra ca'Vorl [Ahl-ah-SAHN-drah Kah-VOORL] Daughter of the Hirzg of Firenzcia, and once the heir to that t.i.tle herself.

Jan ca'Vorl [Yahn Kah-VOORL] Son of Allesandra and Pauli.

Eneas cu'Kinnear [Eh-NIGH-us Coo-ken-EAR] An offizier with the Garde Civile in the h.e.l.lins, fighting the Westlanders.

Varina ci'Pallo [Vah-REE-nah Kee-PAHL-low] A Numetodo.

Nico Morel [NEE-koh Mohr-ELL] A young boy living in Oldtown.

Niente [Nee-EHN-tay] The Nahual (chief spellcaster) of the Westlanders (Tehuantin).

The White Stone An a.s.sa.s.sin.

SUPPORTING CAST.