'You're safe with me.'

I pushed her gently down until she was lying on her back. I put my head under her skirt, into the darkness between her thighs and kissed their soft skin. I licked the silk of her panties. I poked my tongue around them and started licking her. She gasped and flinched but I calmed her with whispers. I soon found out that she was on her period, a little string sticking out of her. That explained why her scent was so beguiling. Women are most sensual when it's their time of the month.

I pushed her skirt up, her panties down and kept licking. She wasn't used to it; she wriggled and whined and kept looking down at me, one arm across her face, biting her s.h.i.+rt sleeve. I must be giving her so much pleasure...and soon it will be my turn.

The muscles in her legs tensed. Her thighs became more and more rigid, until they were like steel. She grunted and her body stiffened. She clamped her thighs around my head so tightly I nearly suffocated. Then she cried out and all her tension released at once.

I looked up, bedraggled with her juices. Cyan gasped, with an expression of wonder, pure bliss, and started laughing. Her face was open and unguarded for the first time; it was so wonderful I started laughing too. At that moment the chessboard beside the bed slid off its table with an almighty crash.

The chess pieces rolled all over the floor. The floor began to shake. No, the whole building was shaking; I could feel the vibrations. 'What's that?' Cyan shrieked.

The lamp on the window ledge flickered. 'What's happening?' She sat up and drew the blanket round her.

She said something else, but I wasn't listening. I was backing into the doorway of the staircase leading to the roofthe spiral steps wound up into their turret behind me. It's happening again. This is nineteen twenty-five all over again, and the ground's giving way. It was that night when I woke, and lay in my camp bed in the dark tent, listening.

'Jant!' Cyan was yelling at me. 'Jant! Don't go crazy! What are you doing?' Her voice took on a hysterical edge. 'Snap out of it!'

I snapped. I dashed across to the window and grabbed the lamp. If the earth really was falling in and we were locked in the tower I couldn't see how we could survive.

We both looked round as one of the vixen guardswomen appeared in the doorway. She threw something I couldn't see. It bounced off my foot and by the time I had located it on the floor she had disappeared. It was a key.

The cras.h.i.+ng roar grew and grew. It was composed of hundreds of other noises: a gravelly sliding crunch. A landslide...I knew this had to be a landslide...There was the din of rock cracking, thuds as individual stones tore loose and fell. The long hiss of earth s.h.i.+fting; the tremendous roar of water.

Through it we heard the bell on the top of the winch tower clanging; madly, unevenly. Dang...dong. Dang! Dong! No one was ringing it.i.t was tolling of its own accord.

We strained to see. From far out in the darkness came a sense of motion, commotion; gigantic shapes moving. It was like listening to a s.h.i.+p in distress, beyond the mudflats, sinking in the dead of night.

The lights on the tower seemed to tilt, rush forward and down; then they vanished. The deafening roar of a mighty, mighty wave thundered towards us. We could see nothing.

The roar swept past us, obliterating all other noise. The churning of foam and swoosh of falling water resounded on every side.

'The dam!' I yelled. I felt crushed and hopelessa sensation I recognisedthe Circle was breaking. Frostwhat is she going through out there? It started slowly creeping upcame on in a rush.

I felt the Circle go dead. Frost's link had gone and I was loose again. We were aging. I felt separate and lonely without the other Eszai to back me up. Mortals must feel like that all the time...I had forgotten what it was like to feel mortal.

The Circle reformed, gently. I could almost feel the Emperor soothe it back into existence. Why had he left us falling apart into nothingness for so long, like beads slipping off a string? Had he been asleep? Was he deliberately reminding us of mortality?

I was kneeling on the floor. The shock had dropped me to my hands and knees and I was looking at a patch of floorboards covered in dried herbs. Their crispy leaves were sticking to my palms.

I had felt Frost dying. By G.o.d, what had happened to her? I couldn't tell if the overwhelming, crus.h.i.+ng sensation of darkness had been her experience, or if it was my imagination.

'Get up!' said Cyan.

The roar of the wave went on and on. It pa.s.sed us and we heard it receding into the distance. Another noise followed, the same volume, still loud enough to shake the towerthe rush of water swirling in spate, out of control.

Cyan stepped squarely in front of me, shouting, 'Jant! What's wrong with you? Stand up!'

'The Circle broke,' I murmured.

'Daddy!' she screamed, and started crying in terror. 'What's happened to Daddy?'

's.h.!.+ It wasn't Lightning. He's in town.'

'How do you know?'

'It was Frost. I knew what she was doing...She broke the dam.'

I felt different, and I realised that I was actually feeling the Circle. It was the Circle that had changed. Its sensation was subtle, just background; then it had gone. No one can feel the Circle or distinguish individuals in it unless its equilibrium was disturbed. I realised I was so used to its ever-present sensation that I had taken it for granted, and now I was feeling it's slightly altered shape. Frost's qualities had gone, and the combined effects of everyone else's, whether enhancing or cancelling each other out, had settled into a new equilibrium.

'Frost was in the Circle when I joined,' I said. 'I was always aware of her without knowing.'

'Look!' She pointed down. The spent flood waters, hissing and edged with foam like a wave running onto a beach, poured up to the base of the tower and broke around it. We watched the level start to nudge up the wall.

Our lamp reflected parts of the water's surface rus.h.i.+ng past. It picked out eddying lines as flickers of silver and eel-like flashes. It was moving so fast it was backing up its own bulk into peaks and troughs of great, corrugated standing waves.

Continuous rapids hurtled over where I knew farms had been, now reduced to rubble. The rock outcrops were drowned metres deep. We looked out to Slakethe wide expanse of churning, crinkling flood waters between us and the town reflected its lights.

There was nothing left but water. Everything had been swept away. Everything in the path of the ma.s.sive wave had vanished and we could hear nothing over its roar.

'"The waters will take two days to subside,"' I repeated.

'What?' said Cyan.

'That was Frost's message. She worked it all out.'

Cyan sought out my hand. She sighed, head bowed, looking at the gus.h.i.+ng torrent. We stood next to each other, hand in hand in the warm night, and watched out of the window until the faintest light of dawn began to splinter onto the floodwaters.

CHAPTER 24.

MODERATE INTELLIGENCER.

TROOPS ADVANCE INTO DEVASTATED VALLEY.

Exclusive special report by our own correspondent in Slake Cross I stand on the observation platform of Tower 10, a st.u.r.dily built peel tower close to Slake Cross. Beside me stands a veteran artillerist of the Lowespa.s.s Select, calling out directions to his trebuchet team in their bombardment positiona makes.h.i.+ft construction of logs and sandbags providing a stable platform on the soggy ground. Another barrel of burning pitch jerks up into the sky, joining half a dozen more, as they crash down on a distant ridge of paper.

Two days have pa.s.sed since the dam collapsed and the waters have now receded sufficiently to allow infantry to advance. I am further forward than any journalist has been so far. Only the cooperation of the enlightened artillerist has got me past the provosts, pa.s.sed off as part of his battery. At such elevated points alone can any real picture of the situation be gained; the land is an otherwise flat quagmire, nearly devoid of vegetation and dotted with thousands of dirty pools. Divisions advance cautiously over this ground, pioneers laying brushwood tracks for the fyrd to follow.

A Plainslands unit clears the way north of us, their spears audibly 'popping' eggs that have been scattered by the dam collapse. To my left flamethrower crews are moving forward under the guidance of the Sapper. Occasional bursts of fire mark their encounter with a clutch of undeveloped Insect larvae still wriggling in a pool. The same scene is being re-enacted all the way along a twenty-kilometre front. It is strangely orderly because it is, with few alterations, the plan envisaged years ago.

The intention then, though, was to drain the lake gradually. The Castle has confirmed that Frost sacrificed herself deliberately to destroy her own creation. The gates could not be opened with Insects freely swarming over the dam. Frost's terrifying calculation was that only by engineering a collapse from inside the dam could the lake be emptied. In a single catastrophic torrent, adult Insects have been drowned, their eggs have been left to wither in the sun and their hideous young have been smashed by debris or washed into the sea's fatal salinity.

The mood of the troops, though, is sombre. This promised bloodless advance has proved to be anything but. Their mood stands in stark contrast to the optimistic banter when they, the largest force mustered in the Empire's history, prepared to attack three days ago. Many dwell on lost comrades, the casualties of the recent battle greatly exceeding those of the famous defeat one hundred years ago. Their exact numbers will not be known for weeks; the remains have been swept away by the inundation, complicating the sad task. The immortals have also suffered heavily, adding Hurricane and Frost to their losses, with Serein critically injured.

Still more wonder what the recent changes in the Insects portend. Whilst the horrific larvae are now lying dying or dead, many are openly sceptical of the Castle's a.s.surances that the mating flights were caused by the dam. The Castle has abandoned plans for any such future constructions and claims there will be no future flights. So far it is too early to tell. Surely there deserves to be a full public inquiry as soon as possible?

Reports from the surrounding areas are still sketchy as the signalling network was badly damaged and large parts of the Lowespa.s.s Road have been washed away. Comet has flown reconnaissance missions as far as Summerday. He reports the town walls saved it from the force of the break wave but with the surrounding country it is inundated, with thirty centimetres of water in the streets. Thousands of farmsteads and fortifications along the entire valley have been destroyed and fatalities are high. Few casualties are reported in Summerday owing to the successful evacuation efforts.

Rayne, fearing outbreaks of disease, has requested that the inhabitants of the region do not return yet. Only fyrd are permitted into the devastated area; priority is being given to hunting surviving larvae, most of which have been spread over a wide area. In the meantime the civilians are facing a bleak existence, cast on to the charity of others.

Of the dam itself, nothing remains apart from two low mud hillocks scarcely a man's height. The sluice gate was discovered in the ruins of a peel tower forty kilometres further down the valley.

Tomorrow, the Emperor will lead a ceremonial advance to the drained lake bed, land lost to the Empire for a century. There he will formally reclaim the ground as far as the river and annex it to Lowespa.s.s manor. Two hundred square kilometers will be reclaimed from the Insects. Most General Fyrd units will remain for two months to secure the area and rebuild defences. Only then will standing garrisons take over and the fyrd be disbanded. If the land can be kept, and the Insects' aversion to running water raises the hope it can be, it is the first successful advance in over three centuries.

Perhaps this, then, is Frost's ultimate triumph. How reasonable was her brave notion that the Castle could defeat the Insects? For the second time in a decade a plan has met with a b.l.o.o.d.y check in the mandibles of our enemies. Frost, in her ambitions and her actions, had overstretched herselfbut that is no more than the world expects its immortals to do.

Kestrel Altergate, Eske, June 13th

You are cordially invited to Micawater Palace for the Challenge of Cyan Peregrine to Lord Governor Lightning Micawater, which will be held in the palace grounds, on August 12th this Year of Our War two thousand and twenty-five.

The Challenge will be preceded by two days of events and feasting.

All other Challengers for the position of Lightning this quarter-year may submit their Challenges in advance so they may shoot in compet.i.tion with Lightning preceding the Challenge of Cyan Peregrine.

RSVP to Lightning at Micawater Palace

CHAPTER 25.

Two months later, I was standing on the roof of Lightning's palace, feasting my eyes on its fabulous vista. I slid down from its ridge to the bal.u.s.trade, knocking off a couple of tiles. The groundsman, far below me on the terrace, waved his fist; so I gave him a cheerful salute. The view was so amazing, and the summer sun so hot, that I wanted to see Lightning's majestic tournament from above.

I leant against the slope of the pediment, in the shadow of the gold ball on its point. The tiles beneath my feet were hand-made to look like feathers; the chimneys behind me were collected in refined plain pillars.

Everybody who was anybody was here, and some people who were n.o.body at all. Coaches were arriving continually, through the Lucerne Gate and down the Grand Walk to the front of the palace. The Walk was wide enough for three coaches abreast to drive between the double rows of pollarded elms. In the middle each coach reached a marble statue on a plinth of Lightning's mother with a winged stag. They trotted around it on either side and parked next to each other on the vast gravel semicircle in front of the portico.

I walked along the bal.u.s.trade, onto the end of the portico and peered over. I could just see Harrier on the front steps, welcoming in the latest batch of visitors. His age was showing; he had grey hair above his ears. He gave each guest a key on a ribbon and ushered them into the cool shadow of the exedra porch. They entered under the pediment, between its four fluted columns with drooping plume capitals, into the house.

The Austringer and Eyas Wings stretched out on both sides of me, perfectly symmetrical. I returned, along the top of the bal.u.s.trade, to the back of the palace. Pavilions covered the whole lawn down to the lake.

The celebrations started yesterday, with archery compet.i.tions in the main ring adjoining the blue and white striped awning of the long stand. Notable archers shot at novelty targets like a dove tied to the top of a pole, or a hazel wand upright in the ground. There had been promenades and pleasure boats on the lake. Lightning had laid on no contemporary entertainments like jousting; instead he had had chariots made and a track built on the other side of the lake. He had stepped into one of these bra.s.s-clad contraptions, taken the reins of a pair of coursers and showed us how to race them. His youngest brother had been a champion charioteer. Tern and I had watched the races, very tentative at first but people quickly got the hang of how to drive them.

Then last night Lightning had held a ball. We had found costumes laid out in our rooms. The women looked beautiful in their draped gowns, and laughter echoed along the corridors as the men tried to figure out their togas. We were surprised but we took it as good entertainment. Everything, from the ancient harp music to the sickly mead, orgeat and boar roasts served in archaic style, was a reconstruction of his memory of the original Games. Lightning was beside himself with joy. He was home at last!

Down on the lawns everyone was scattered around the enormous stand along one side of the archery ground, roped off from the rest of the gra.s.s and outlined by hay bales. The other side was open, towards the lake and bridge. Beside it stood a cloth-of-gold pavilion for the Challengers and, on the other side, servants carrying trays of chilled Stenasrai wine came and went from a refreshment tent.

The pavilions were an ancient round design, not triangular, and the lines of bunting surrounding the archery ring were the same as those topping the walls of an amphitheatre. The whole scene belonged in the pages of a picture book: Lightning was indeed reliving the founding of the Circle.

A series of tall flagpoles flew long, dark blue banners with the Micawater mascle. My Wheel flag and Rayne's red oriflamme pennant were there too. We were acting as witnesses for the Challenge. At least two Eszai witness every Challenge; mortals are never used as witnesses because Eszai are less likely to be corrupted. We have a vested interest in keeping the Challenges fair and we would fiercely resist any less than the best being admitted as to do so would tarnish our own status.

I looked out into the distance. The avenue ran straight on the other side of the lake, between beech plantations to the crest of a low hill. A folly stood there, a scaled-down replica of the entire palace, placed exactly opposite it at the end of the vista. It was so ingeniously decreased in size that it skewed the perspectivemaking the avenue look longer than it was. Everyone who saw the folly for the first time believed it was a palace exactly the same size at a great distance. I knew it housed only a single ballroom, but its trick of the eye was so exact I imagined that I could see a tiny Jant leaning on the pediment looking back at me. I shuddered.

Lemon trees and spear-like cypress grew on the brow of the hill clear against the sky around the folly and, beyond it, livestock grazed on smooth-turfed gra.s.s like a carpet. I could just see the beginnings of the hills rising up to Donaise in the distance. Tiny, spidery vine frames climbed them, and their lower slopes were lines of immaculately planted grey-green olive groves and coffee plantations.

I suppose the landscaped garden isn't really designed to be seen from the roof. The guests on the terrace will have the best of it, or those strolling along the avenue, from which smaller pathways led and opened up new vistas. The perspective presented statues that seemed far off, suddenly near at hand. Gaps in the woodland revealed winter gardens, espaliers, great pillars, all meticulously landscaped for kilometres around.

Beyond the beech wood two smaller avenues crossed the main one in an asterisk, and of course Lightning had had time to watch over the trees as they grew and matured, so now centuries later, they were looking their best.

I stood on tiptoe and looked down the length of the Austringer Wing; over the roof of the Austringer building at the end. I could just see a dark green pattern of tall hedgerowsthe labyrinth. It was enormous; lemon hedge on one side of the path and box on the other, so if you got lost you could smell your way around it to the great trellis and pergola in the centre. They are covered in vines drooping fat cl.u.s.ters of purple grapes. The tendrils hang down like a screen of falling water, and it is wonderful to push through them to the hideaway inside, where you can sit among statues in its shade.

Past the maze grew the long, unkempt gra.s.s of the 'wilderness'nothing of the sort but a well-designed meadow where Lightning held garden parties. I'd rather have kept it natural than have it look so through artifice and expenditure. Beyond that rose the belvedere, once copied by the Rachiswaters in their circular style. I wondered why it was that the richer people became, the more sequacious?

At the end of the Eyas Wing, in the other direction, a slope went down to 'the farm' by the river, a few kilometres distant but the clutch of aslant roofs looked more like a small town. Most of the estate workers lived there, tending beehives, kitchen and herb gardens, a phasianery for peac.o.c.ks and pheasants, a rabbit warren, brick kilns and a dovecot. Lightning calls the estate office 'The New House', although it is four hundred years old. The Alula Road pa.s.ses through to Micawater town itself, which was disguised behind another well-placed copse. Lots of townsfolk were here, watching the festivities and loving it. They were the sort of Awian citizens who hold street parties on their lord's birthday.

People were converging on the archery stands. From up here, parasols over women's shoulders looked like little circles. I noticed a knot of people heading from the refreshment tent and in their midst I recognised Eleonora's confident stride. Beside her was my little, dark-haired, vivacious Tern. The Challenge is about to start. I had better go join them.

I stepped off the bal.u.s.trade and tilted out in a long, slow glide. I swept over the terrace onto which the palace's doors opened; then the water gardens below them, a round central spring framed symmetrically by four limpid pools.

The ground dropped away and steps led down to a parterre, with the sky-blue roses of Awia in flower beds bordered by low hedges. More box hedges looked like embroidery, clipped into lacy flowing designs, scrolls and plumes against the rich, loamy earth. From that level stone hounds guarded a bal.u.s.traded double staircase descending to the avenue. People walking on the paths between the flower beds looked up as my shadow sped over them.

I focused on Tern and Eleonora and the courtiers surrounding them, who were settling on the lowest seat of the stands nearest the archery ground, reserved for the Queen's use and covered with samite silk. I came in above the rounded end of the awning and veered wide to the arena's gra.s.s, flared wings and touched down. My landing drew a little tentative applause from the crowd.

I hopped over the ropes and Tern came forward to meet me. 'My love,' I said over her shoulder as we hugged. 'My dear, dear love.'

'Isn't this exciting?' Tern exclaimed. 'What a magnificent day!'

Eleonora nodded contentedly. 'It's a Lakeland summer all right. Three fine days and a thunderstorm. It's like clockwork.'

'Well, the sooner we get this over with and on to the party the better.' She pa.s.sed me a gla.s.s of sparkling wine. 'I pestered Lightning to give us some real Stenasrai. "You must have had Stenasrai in six twenty," I told him. "It's better than that ridiculous mead." It's a wonder anyone in the seventh century had any teeth.'

I was enjoying the party but I still had a lot to do. Since the slaughter of the battle there had been more people hiding from the draft. There was a groundswell of sentiment against the war and criticism of the Emperor, which the Emperor was ignoring until it gradually subsided.

Eleonora had covered herself with glory and was full of pride. We hadn't regained so much land since the Miroir battles of the last Tanager dynasty. No wonder the Rachiswaters had been so keen to match them by making advances in Lowespa.s.s, but Eleonora had taken more than any of them. Our shared knowledge of how awful the battle had been brought us together in this warm sunlight, whereas Tern, who could never understand, just kept talking. 'I worried about you when the Circle broke,' she said. 'Although worry is quite an inadequate word for what I felt.'