Just before dawn, thunder rumbled so low and heavy that it shuddered through his feet. As the sound faded, he sensed a strange weakening in the Alban soldiers, shields drooping, a spate of unseen movement within the tower. Pressing the advantage, his troops stormed the door and overwhelmed the score of men who had held that gap all night. Stronghand followed the vanguard as they mounted the ladder steps. The tower had fully four stories, each one a broad chamber fitted with the rich furniture and tapestries proper to a royal house. No one remained to resist them, and the rooms were empty, abandoned-until they came to the battlements, the high tower height where he had watched his enemy launch her final, desperate attack.

There the Alban queen waited for them. He had not expected her to be so young, pale-haired, with the blue eyes common to humans bred in northern climates. Her skin was creamy smooth, untouched by sun, and her expression proud and fixed. She wore robes woven of a shimmering silver cloth, chased with gold thread, and a seven-tined circlet of silver at her brow. An old man bearing a staff of living wood crowned with seven sapling-green branches knelt beside her. With his head bowed, he appeared ready for death. Could it be possible she had only one sorcerer to aid her? Or was she herself a sorcerer? Five children huddled against her skirts, silent except for the youngest, who struggled not to sob and so made a gulping sound instead, erratic and irritating.

Beyond the battlements, the city of Hefenfelthe lay in uncanny silence as the sun cleared the river mist and day came. Crows circled above the buildings and smoking ruins.

Seeing him, the queen picked up the smallest child and stood waiting, eager, face flushed and eyes bright. At that moment, he realized she had no magic to protect herself. Even the old man, tree sorcerer though he clearly was, was too weak to protect her.

She expected her enemies to kill her and her companions.

He had been tricked.

He of all people, having witnessed the victory, and loss, at Gent should have remembered human cunning.

'Where are they?" he demanded, but she did not know the Wen-dish tongue. Shouts rose to him from below as Tenth Son appeared on the ladder stairs.

'There's a tunnel out of the lowest level."

'The queen and her sorcerers escaped." Fury clawed him. They had outwitted him! How had he not seen this coming?

'They collapsed the tunnel behind them. I have slaves digging it out. I've ordered patrols out beyond the walls."

But it was already too late. He knew it, as did Tenth Son. As did the girl and her aged companion and the five little ones, left behind to face his wrath.

Sacrifices.

The Alban queens ruled in the old way, offering blood to their gods in exchange for power. The circle god of Alain's people did not reign unchallenged here. Even the gods warred among humankind, seeking preeminence.

Let it be done, then. If these seven had been left behind, then they could not even be worth enough to his enemies to hold for ransom or as a bargaining chip. Lifting his sword, he stepped forward his feet hit the ground so hard that all breath is sucked from his lungs. He staggers, gasping for air so that he can call out to her, but Adica is lost to him, torn away into the whirlwind. He grabs for her, but his hands close on dirt. Grass tickles his face. He smells rain and hears a muted roar, like that of a lion, but it is only the wind caught in trees or perhaps the rush of unseen wings, fading.

Gone.

The hounds lick his face, whining and whimpering, nosing at him, trying to get him to stand. He lifts his head.

Huge shapes surround him. He has fallen into the center of a pristine circle of raised stones. Beyond the circle, four mounds mark the perimeter, grown high with grass and a scattering of flowers. His heart quickens with hope.

But this is not the place he knew and came to love. An encircling forest cuts off any view he might have of lands beyond the clearing. The tumulus, the graves of the queens, the winding river, and the village are all one. What peace he found will be denied him. Adica's love, given to him freely, has been ripped away.

She is dead.

He knew it from the first when he was dragged unknowing into her ountry, but maybe he never believed. Maybe he thought he really had died. After all, he ought to have died. He had been so close to death after the battle with the Lions on that ancient tumulus that a part of him had chosen to believe he wasn't living anymore but rather had passed over to the other side, the field of paradise that borders the Chamber of light, where his soul could rest at last in peace.

Ai, God. Peace mocks him, for what he has seen and experienced this night is surely more horrible than the worst of his fears.

How could the Hallowed Ones have done it? Did they know what they wrought? Was it worth such destruction to spare a few?

The hound Sorrow shoves his head under Alain's stomach and pushes. Rage tugs at his hand. Struggling, he gets to his feet, but he no longer knows where he is or what lies in store for him. The hounds herd him toward the forest's edge where a track snakes away into the trees. Face whipped by branches, he presses along the trail. Eventually, it broadens into a path padded by a carpet of pine needles. He just walks. He must not think. He must not remember. If he only walks, then maybe he can forget that he is still alive.

But maybe it is never possible just to walk, just to exist. Fate acts, and the heart and mind respond. The path breaks out of the forest onto a ridgeline. A log lies along the ground like a bench, and he pauses here to catch his breath. The hounds lick his hands as he stares at the vista opening before him.

A river valley spreads out below, a handful of villages strung along its length like clusters of grapes. Closer lie the plaster-and-timber buildings of a monastery and its estate. The bleat of a horn carries to him on the stiff wind that blows into his face, making tears start up from his eyes. An entourage emerges from woodland, following the ribbon of a road. He counts about a dozen people: four mounted and six walking alongside two wagons pulled by oxen. Bright pennants flutter in the breeze.

He has to speak, he has to warn them.

Running, he pounds down the path. He has to stop and rest at intervals, but grief and panic drive him on. Always he gets up again, heart still racing, breath labored, and hurries down the path until it levels off and emerges out of forest onto a trim estate, fields laid down in rows, orchard plots marked off by pruned hedges, the buildings sitting back behind a row of cypress. Bees buzz around his head and one lights on his ear, as if tasting for nectar. Geese honk overhead, flying south.

A trio of men in the robes of lay brothers work one of the fields, preparing the ground for winter wheat. One leads an ox while another steadies the plow, but it is the third who sees Alain stumbling out of the woodland. He runs forward with hoe in hand, held there as if he has forgotten it or, perhaps, as if he may use it as a weapon.

Lifting a hand in the sign of peace, the lay brother halts a safe distance from Alain and calls out a greeting. "Greetings, Brother. You look to be in distress. How may we help you?" His comrades have stopped their work, and one of them has already hurried away toward the orchard, where other figures can be seen at work among the trees.

Alain feels the delicate tread of the bee along his lobe and the tickle of its antenna on his skin. Its wings flutter, purring against his ear, but it does not fly.

"Can you speak, Brother?" asks the man gently as, behind him, several robed figures emerge from the orchard and hasten toward them. "Do not fear. No harm will come to you here."

The bee stings. The hot poison strikes deep into him, coursing straight into the heart of memory. Weeping, he drops to his knees as images flood over him, obliterating him: In an instant, magic ripped the world asunder. Earthquakes rippled across the land, but what was seen on the surface was as nothing compared to the devastation left in their wake underground. Caverns collapsed into rubble. Tunnels slammed shut like bellows snapped tight. The magnificent cities of the goblin-kin, hidden from human sight and therefore unknown and disregarded, vanished in cave-ins so massive that the land above was irrevocably altered. The sea's water poured away into cracks riven in the earth, down and down and down, meeting molten fire and spilling steam hissing and spitting into every crevice until the backwash disgorged steam and sizzling water back into the sea.

Rivers ran backward. The seaports of the southern tribes were swallowed beneath the rising waters, or left high and dry when the sea was sucked away, so that they abruptly lay separated from the sea by long stretches of sand that once marked the shallows. Deltas ran dry. Mountains smoked with fire, and liquid red rock slid, down-slope, burning everything that stood in its way.

In the north, a dragon plunged to earth and ossified in that eye blink into a stone ridge.

The land where the Cursed Ones made their home was ripped right up by the roots, like a tree wrenched out of its soil by the hand of a aiant. Where that hand flung it, he could not see.

Only Adica, dead.

Wings of flame enveloped him, blinding him.

',' didn't mean to leave her, but I couldn't see." He has been speaking all along, a spate of words as engulfing as the flood-tide. "The light blinded me."

"Hush, friend."

Voices speak all around him, a chorus close by and yet utterly distant, because his grief has not moved them to stand beside him in their hearts.

"Those are big dogs," mutters one.

"Monsters," agrees another. "Thinkyou they'll bite?"

"Here comes Brother Infirmarian."

A portly man presses forward through the throng and bravely, if cautiously, approaches. Rage and Sorrow sit.

"Come, lad," he says, kneeling beside Alain. "You're safe here. What is your name? Where have you come from?"

"Ai, God. So many dead. No more death, please God. No more killing."

"What have you seen, Son?" asks the monk kindly.

So much suffering. It all spills out in a rush of words, unbidden. Once started, he has to go to the end, just as the spell wove itself to completion, unstoppable once it had been threaded into the loom.

The caves in which Horn's people have sheltered flood with steaming water, trapping the dead and the dying in the blind dark. A storm of earth and debris buries Shu-Sha's palace. Halfway up the Screaming Rocks, Shevros falls beneath a massive avalanche. Waves obliterate a string of peaceful villages along the shores of Falling-down's island. Children scream helplessly for their parents as they flail in the surging water.

The blood and viscera of stricken dragons rains down on the humans desperately and uselessly taking shelter against seven stones, burning flesh into rock. A sandstorm buries the oasis where the desert people have camped, trees flattened under the blast of the wind. The lion women race ahead of the storm wave but, in the end, they too are buried beneath a mountain of sand. Gales scatter the tents of the Horse people, winds so strong that what is not flattened outright is flung heavenward and tossed back to earth like so much chaff. All the trees for leagues around Queen's Grave erupt into flame, and White Deer villagers fall, dying, where arrows and war had spared them. Ai, God, where are Maklos and Agalleos? Hani and Dorren?

Where is Kel?

They are all dead.

Is this the means by which the sorcerers hoped to bring peace? Did they really know what they were doing? Can it be possible they understood what would happen?

"Adica can't have known. She'd never have agreed to lend herself to so much destruction if she'd known."

He has to believe it is true.

But he will always wonder if she knew and, knowing, acted with the others anyway, knowing the cost. Did they really hate the Cursed Ones so much?

"It was all for nothing. They're still here. I've seen them." Ghost shapes, more shadow than substance, walk the interstices between Earth and the Other Side, caught forever betwixt and between. Those Cursed Ones who did not stand in their homeland when it was torn out of the earth were pulled outward with it; they exist not entirely on Earth and yet not severed from it, as all that comes of earth is bound to earth.

Yet isn't it true that no full-blooded Cursed One walks the same soil as humankind now? Didn't the human sorcerers get what they wanted? Isn't Earth free of the Cursed Ones?

"We can never know peace," he cries, turning to the men who have flocked around him. He has to make them understand. "What is bound to earth will return to earth. The suffering isn't over. The cataclysm will happen again when that which was torn asunder returns to its original place."

"Thank the Lady, Father," says the infirmarian as the gathered brothers let a new figure through. "You've come."

The abbot is a young man, vigorous and handsome, son of a noble house. He has a sarcastic eye and a gleam of humor in his expression, but he sobers quickly as he examines Alain and the placid but menacing hounds. The portly infirmarian keeps a light touch on Alain's wrist, nothing harsh, ready to grab him if he bolts.

"It's a wanderer, Father Ortulfus," says the infirmarian. His fingers flutter along Alain's skin. Like the bee, he seems to be probing, but he hasn't stung yet.

"Another one?" The abbot has wildly blue eyes and pale hair, northern coloring. Adica's people were darker, stockier, black-haired. "I'vetnever seen so many wanderers on the roads as this summer. Is he a heretic?"

"Not so we've noticed, Father," says one of the monks nervously. "He's babbling about the end times. He's right out of his mind."

"Hush, Adso," scolds the infirmarian before he addresses the abbot. calm words slip from his mouth smoothly. "He's not violent, just troubled." He turns to regard Alain with compassion. "Here, now, son. You'll not be running away, will you? Don't think you'll come to any harm among us. We've a bed you can sleep in, and porridge, and work to keep your hands busy. That will ease your mind out of these fancies. You'll find healing here." The hot poison strikes deep. These words hurt far worse than any bee's sting.

No one will believe him.

And Adica is dead. No one will mourn her with him, because they cannot. They do not even know, nor can they believe, that she exists. He has come home as a stranger, having lost everything that mattered. Having, in the end, not even kept his promise to die with her.

What point is there in living?

Stronghand's foot hit, jolting him into awareness. One step he had taken, only one. The sky lightened, and the river's silver band glinted as sunlight drove the mist off the waters, dazzling his eyes. A torrent of images washed over him. All of the colors of Alain's being had overflowed in that vision to drown him.

Joy ran like a deluge. Yet joy had spoken in a terrible voice.

So many dead. No more death, please God. No more killing.

'No more killing." Hearing his own voice, he shook himself free of the trance. The girl turned to throw the youngest child over the battlements.

He leaped forward and wrenched the child out of her grasp, knocking the kneeling sorcerer aside. The girl scrambled onto the battlements herself, making ready to jump.

'Stop her!"

Quickly all seven of the Albans were taken into custody. The child he held squirmed and began to sob outright in fear.

'Hush!"

It ceased its weeping.

'No more killing." His voice seemed unrecognizable to him, yet it sounded no different than it ever had. Was it wisdom that made him speak? For better or worse, he was scarred by the strength of the contact between him and Alain, bound by a weaving that even the WiseMothers did not comprehend.

Where had Alain gone? He had vanished from Stronghand's dreams and apparently from Earth itself for over three years. What was the meaning of this vision of destruction on such a scale that it dwarfed even the slow deliberations of the WiseMothers?

In those years when Alain had been gone, the span of months between the battle at Kjalmarsfjord and this day's rejoining, he had thought and planned and acted the same as ever, but something had been missing. It was as if the world had gone gray and only now did he see its colors. For truly the world was a beautiful place, worn down by suffering, painted by light, never at rest.

He could never be free of that connection. He did not want to be. Before Alain had freed him from the cage at Lavas Holding, he had been, like his brothers, a slave to the single-minded lust for killing, war, and plunder that imprisoned his kind. He had been no better than the rest of them and, because of his smaller stature, at a disadvantage.

Was it Alain's dreaming influence that had altered some essential thread that wound through his being?

Around him, his troops murmured restlessly, still filled with battle lust. They had taken Hefenfelthe, but they had no clear victory.

'Why kill these hostages?" he asked, turning to look at them, one by one. These would carry the message to his army, each brother to another, spreading the word of Stronghand's wisdom. "The queen of Alba and her sorcerers gain power by sacrificing the blood of their subjects. They left these ones behind as sacrifices, knowing we would kill them in anger once we had seen we were thwarted of our prey. So if we kill them, we do their will and strengthen their magic. Therefore we will not kill them. They will become our prisoners. The power of the queen and her sorcerers will become a slave to our power."

The girl wept when she understood that she would not serve her queen as she had been commanded.

One of his Rikin brothers emerged from the tower, carrying his standard. Stronghand sheathed his sword and, with the child still held in his left arm, walked to the battlements and hoisted his standard high, so his army, below, could see him. A roar lifted from their ranks, echoing through the conquered city. The magic that lived in the staff hummed against his palm. The breeze made the charms that hung from the standard sing, bone flutes whistling, beads and chains chiming softly, melding with the clack and scrape of wood, leather, and bones. Once again, the magic woven by the priests of his people had protected him against the magic wielded by his enemies. Out in the fields beyond the walls the last refugees, those who had crept out of their homes while the battle raged around the citadel, fled into the shelter of distant trees. The fields and forest of Alba stretched away in all directions, cut by the broad river and a nearby tributary. It was a rich land.

But it was not his land yet.

'We seek the queen and her sorcerers."

'Where can we find them?" asked Tenth Son.

Stronghand glanced at the weeping girl with her silver circlet and its seven tines. Six sacrifices waited with her, seven souls in all. It could be no accident that Alain appeared to him after so long in the embrace of a stone circle so like the circle made by the WiseMothers on the fjall above Rikin Fjord.

'They will retreat to a place of power. Alert the forward parties and the scouts. All prisoners will be questioned about forts or marshes where a small force can defend itself. But we should also seek a standing circle of stones, perhaps one with seven stones. I believe that is where we will find the queen." v: TS AN:.

SUN LIGrJHL I washed the plank floor of the attic room, illuminating three months' worth of dust that layered the floor and empty pallets as well as the trail of Banna's footsteps cutting a straight line from the trapdoor to the window. It was so hot up here that she could scarcely breathe. She stumbled against one of the shutters, unhooked and laid on the floor, and kicked it aside before leaning out to gulp in fresh air.

In late spring the king had ridden south with Queen Adelheid to fight the Jinna pirates infesting the southeastern provinces. Hanna had arrived in midsummer after a grueling trip over the mountains, but the palace stewards had not allowed her to ride after Henry's army. She could not expect, they told her, that her cloak and Eagle's badge would grant her safe passage in those parts of the country not yet loyal to the king.

She had to wait.

She wiped sweat from her forehead and ducked back into shadow, but decided that the blast of the sun in the open air was preferable to the smothering heat of the attic sleeping quarters. Adjusting her brimmed hat to ward off the worst of the direct glare, she leaned out again. A stew of smells rose from the surrounding buildings: ma nure, piss, slops, roasting pig, and a hint of incense almost lost be neath the perfume of human living. From this angle and height sh looked out over rooftops toward the delicate spire marking the roya chapel and beyond that the outer walls and the gulf of air shimmering above the lower city with its massive stone edifices. The river cut a thread of molten iron through streets hazy with heat, dust, and cook fires.

Unbelievably vast, Darre seemed a warren of alleys and avenues with so many houses that no person could possibly count them. Beyond the outermost walls lay fields and vineyards and, farther out, distant hills and a dark ribbon marking the route to the sea. Wisps of cloud pushed over those sere heights, promising relief against the heat later in the day. Was that smoke drifting up from the tallest peak? Had someone lit a fire at its height? She couldn't tell, and it seemed a strange thing to do in any case.

Hanna had explored as many corners, sinks, and privies, as many balconies, shady arbors, and storage pits as she was allowed into in the regnant's palace. She had even toured the prison down in the city, and the tower where other Aostan regnants had confined their enemies, although Adelheid kept no hostages now. All the tower rooms lay empty, stripped of furniture, heavy with dust.

She had asked about Margrave Villam.

Dead of a tragic fall when he was drunk.