Even in the advanced stages of decomposition there was no mistaking the iron will behind that look, nor the temper he'd vented on his youngest child at their one and only meeting.

He can't possibly know me. It's been years since he's laid eyes on me. He's been too long...dead.

Yet there was recognition in that one decaying eye that looked so desperately back at her. Imploring her to do what? End his suffering? Allow him one last swipe at the nightmare that had ended his rein and reduced his kingdom to rubble? She could only guess.

"My Liege."

Riordan turned at the sound of Nhaille's hoarse whisper to find him kneeling stiffly in the dirt before his King. She caught the grimace of pain as he straightened, noted his pallor even in the hot sun.

A million thoughts clamored for dominance in her mind. She had to get Nhaille to safety, she had to focus her attention on keeping the dead in line. The Sword's cool flame licked at the back of her mind, demanding the blood she'd so nearly given it. Her concentration leapt from one task to another, desperately attempting to juggle them all.

Nhaille shot her a puzzled crosswise glance. Plainly he expected her to get on with the terrible deed.

"End his suffering, Riordan." The words were torn from Nhaille's throat, strain evident in each syllable. He swayed on his feet, caught himself and managed to hold himself rigid.

"No, he--"

"You must! In Nuurah's Name, ease his pain."

"He doesn't want me to."

The expression on his face told her he suspected she'd taken leave of her senses. "He can't possibly know--"

"But he does. Look at him."

Nhaille looked incredulously from father to daughter. Plainly whatever she saw in her father's face escaped him. "This is a travesty!

Free him from this unspeakable existence."

But through the Amber came the quiet certainty that above all that wasn't what the King wanted.

"Kayr..." At the sound of his given name, Nhaille's eyes flickered toward the King, as if his liege might guess the secret of what transpired between the Captain and his ward. Riordan grasped his arm gently, wary of his injuries. "I can feel his thoughts through the Amber. Peace isn't what he wants. At least not yet."

"Riordan..." Compassion softened his face. Plainly, he thought her incapable of the task. "There isn't anything left of his mind to think, to desire anything with."

"But there is. In the depths of what's left of his mind he knows I command the Amber, that I've brought home the Sword of Zal- Azaar. He wants to keep fighting. He doesn't want me to have to conquer Hael alone."

For an instant, Nhaille looked as if he might actually lose his iron-clad composure. Then the armor around his thoughts was in place once again. "You aren't alone, Your Majesty."

How could he misunderstand what was so plain for her to see?

"He wants revenge, Nhaille. One last swipe at Hael. And I can give it to him."

"You can't possibly know what his wishes would have been."

"But I do." Deep inside, she did. It was what she would want. Through their kinship she understood that much. And yet, something else nagged at the back of her mind.

Riordan sent her awareness down the flicker of the Amber's path, out toward that single soldier in the army of the dead. Felt the certainty of her father's thoughts. Dulled by death, ravaged by the process of decay, nevertheless, something of his indomitable will remained. In his sluggish brain a spark of hope sprang to flame.

"End it, Riordan." His eyes implored her. "I can't bear to see him like this."

"He doesn't care. All he wants is his revenge. His last wish, Nhaille. Let him fight."

The Captain looked quickly from the dead King to his Queen.

"What more can a few days hurt?" Riordan asked.

Around her battle sounds rose to the forefront of her attention. They'd been too long at this. Father or not, she had battles to win.

In his name.

"And we need every soldier we have. Dead or alive."

"Riordan!"

"Above all, he wants me to triumph over Hael."

Time to end this discussion. The war would not wait.

"That is the one of his wishes we are both certain of," she pressed.

"But leaving him like this--" Nhaille looked back at his King.

"If Hael wins his death will have been for nothing."

Kanarekii soldiers crowded in around them, protecting their Queen. The ranks of Haelian soldiers thinned with each passing minute, as one by one they disentangled themselves from the fighting and made off after their fleeing commander. But Rau being absent did not mean he had vanished nor that he was beaten. One lapse of concentration, one moment when her mind wandered elsewhere, and the entire course of battle could change.

"Gods know what awaits us in Hael," Nhaille said finally in eerie sync with her thoughts.

Riordan nodded soberly. Gods knew, indeed. Her hand tightened on the Sword's crystal hilt. She flung her mind back into the Amber's inferno.

It was like trying to control chess pieces scattered haphazardly across the board. Each move left a searing trail of fire in her mind.

And all the while the Sword's cool fury burned like ice, aching to be appeased, urging her to throw common sense and strategy to the wind.

She sent the full force of her will sailing down the invisible wires of the Amber's web, urging the dead to put the sum of their strength into one last burst, one last consolidated strike against what was left of the forces of Hael.

They were winning. Haelian soldiers now staffed the dead army. Could the irony be blacker? Riordan wondered. I've come to the last of my options and past. When all is said and done, will the history books paint me any less sinister than Doan-Rau?

# Filthy and tired beyond belief, Rau scrambled back to Hael like a rat. Only revenge kept him putting one foot in front of the other.

Enduring the pointed glares of his countrymen, he contemplated his father's wrath to come.

He'd botched matters beyond redemption. His only hope lay in the Amber's Master Stone. Crawling back to Hael defeated would be intolerably hard to stomach. But in the end he would triumph. Failure was not an option he cared to contemplate. And once he was victorious, then he would deal with Kanarek's Queen.

Vividly, he imagined the jagged stake of amber slicing through the jelly-like material of her eye. Embedded in her brain, its magic would quash her will once and for all. She'd be his.

For eternity.

His slave. To do with as he pleased.

The thought brought a tight smile to Rau's lips.

He'd make her pay. For his broken dreams. For making him look like a fool. For the ruin of a plan that should have gone smoothly, would have, if not for Riordan-Khun-Caryn.

Like a prized piece of art, he'd display her in his suite, perhaps even in the garden in the summertime.

In a tiny portion of her mind, she'd know what had been done to her. That was the sweetest part of it. She'd know, during the long months it took her mummified body to decay past the point of usefulness, she'd be aware of all he did to her. And forced her to do.

Driving a sword through Kayr-Alden-Nhaille would be her first order. She loved him. Even hidden beneath the cold exterior with which they conducted themselves, he could tell. The knowledge, if one cared to look for it, was in every glance.

After the murder of her lover, who knew. Uses for Kanarek's late Queen were endless.

Oh yes, he'd make her pay. The knowledge kept him going. That, and the thought of laying hands at last to the Amber's Master Stone, feeling its hungry fires once again in his brain.

Riordan-Khun-Caryn would lead her army to him. Rau sprawled beside a stream. Cold, black water splashed against his face, reviving him. All was not lost. Did Kanarek's Queen really think she could beat him with the Master Stone under his command?

She'd march them all right into Hael. Right into his hands: the cadavers, and the Kanarekii army. Knowing Riordan she'd march them straight into Hael and right up the steps of the palace. Into his control.

With the hungry roar of the Amber hot in his blood, he'd turn the tide of battle in his favor. Seizing the dead once again for his own, he'd add the figures of Kayr-Alden-Nhaille and the legendary Riordan-Khun-Caryn to his army.

An example to anything else that lay in his path, anything else he fancied to claim for his own. A last demonstration to his father, who steadfastly refused him the throne.

Yes indeed he thought, taking another long drink of cold water, then rising. There were uses for Kanarek's Queen and her oh-so- loyal Captain.

# A new voice sounded in his mind. Compared to the other which had lodged like a knife in his brain, this new voice offered a more gentle persuasion. No less insistent, however. Command after command poured into his mind.

VENGEANCE! This new order was sweetened with promise, turning his thoughts toward justice. It pledged that their suffering would not be forgotten. It offered an end to their torment. Bevan trusted this new authority.

The other mind that had touched his was chaotic, fragmented like broken glass. This one was vibrant, strong. Young, he thought.

For a moment he remembered the feel of the young, limber body that had been his. Pain rushed in behind that memory, but the notion fled his mind, replaced by that compelling voice.A Haelian soldier reared before him. A sword whistled past his ear, slicing into his shoulder. The impact knocked Bevan sideways. Memory insisted there should be pain. Instead there was only that cloudy nothingness. Dull surprise shook him from the nebula of his scattered thoughts.

FIGHT!

Bevan raised his axe and swung. The blow sliced through the Haelian's helmet, lodging deep into his brain. He fell, letting go of the sword still embedded in Bevan's shoulder. His hand clutched Bevan's arm. Bevan looked down, peering out of one eye, now nearly blind. The shadowy shape fell away from him. Slowly, the hand loosened, trailing down his legs before the Haelian crumpled to the ground. With a flat grunt, Bevan stooped and yanked his axe from the dead soldier's head.

More shapes crowded in beside him. Through dim eyes he recognized Kanarekii armor. The ghostly shapes stooped over the fallen Haelian. Bevan lowered his sword and waited, knowing from some deep recess in his mind, these were allies, not foes.

Kanarekii, his brain offered the flicker of a thought. Like me.

Kanarekii defending themselves against the evil that had turned him into this shambling, dead thing. Kanarekii trying to right a terrible wrong.

He watched numbly as the soldiers bent over the dead Haelian. One hefted a mallet. Turning his head, the soldier drove the point of an Amber stake into the Haelian's brain.

Each strike of the mallet reverberated in Bevan's brain. Over and over the mallet fell. He staggered, reeling away from the horror his body remembered, even if his mind refused.

And then it was over. Kanarekii soldiers moved on to see to the next Haelian victim. Bevan watched helplessly as his former Haelian foe rose to take his place in battle beside him.

More Haelian soldiers stood beside him as allies than in the battle against them. It meant something, something that ought to be significant.

Kanarek was winning. His desperate bid for vengeance hadn't been in vain. For the first time in this wretched existence, Bevan had hope.

The mind that touched his before had been self-absorbed, lost in its own shattered thoughts. But this entity was single-minded, persistent.

KEEP FIGHTING! it ordered. WE WILL WIN, it promised. AND THEN YOU CAN REST.

Bevan marched forward, the Haelian's lost sword still lodged in the rotting flesh between his neck and shoulder.

Beside him dead soldiers in Haelian and Kholer armor marched together into battle against the last of Rau's army.

# The bite of antiseptic tore a hiss from Nhaille's lips. Everything ached to the depths of his bones. He felt as if the entire Haelian army had ridden over him.

Weak from the loss of blood, he longed to surrender to the potent liquor Penden offered as a painkiller and go to sleep. But he couldn't risk muddying his brain in case Riordan needed him.

"That's going to need stitching," Penden said with an appraising whistle. Cleaned of blood the wound didn't look any less gruesome. A jagged tear cut through the muscles of his shoulder, which was already stiffening beyond use.

I'm getting too old for this.Damn, he thought. Damn the cold and the damp ground. Damn the war that came too long after his youth. Damn the wound that would likely cost him the use of his right sword arm. Damn it all, he couldn't die just yet.

Somehow he had to find a way to stay in the saddle a few more days.

Peering over his shoulder, Riordan winced at the sight of his mangled arm. Penden rummaged in his pack for a needle and sutures.

Riordan pressed the wineskin closer.

Nhaille shook his head. "We have not the time. We should already be on the march to Hael."

"And kill us all from exhaustion? The men are weary, and so am I. We fought hard today. We're deserving of a couple of hours rest to patch our wounds."

She was bandaged herself, her armor hanging open so as not to chafe the wound. Though lines of strain creased the corners of her eyes and tightened her mouth to a grim line, injury hadn't slowed her down much. She'd sat through Penden's ministrations, jaw set, teeth clenched tight together. Not a sound from her, even as the needle pierced her flesh. Even after the effort of wielding both the Amber and the Sword, she was still milling among the ranks, offering words of praise and encouragement, worrying after Strayhorn who'd bolted when she was thrown from the saddle.

Riordan, he noted, hadn't drunk from Penden's wineskin, either.

He'd known this day would come. He'd trained her for duty, prepared her as best as he could to command an army. He'd tried to prepare himself for the day when she would be his commander. Now that day had arrived, he was reluctant to relinquish the post.

It didn't help that the Queen was fussing over him as if she was his nursemaid instead.

And he was but an aging soldier, a man twice her age who had no business doing what he'd done with his liege. Dark thoughts led him to the realization that it could never work. Assuming they survived the war, Riordan would ride home victorious, to rebuild Kanarek and reign as its Queen. He would be nothing but a crippled war hero.

Nhaille looked back at Riordan and was shocked to find her smiling.

"Look!"

He sighted down the line of her arm, wondering what could possible amuse her. Hills dyed crimson in the setting sun were dotted with moving black specks.

"It would seem Hael doesn't care for our company."

Haelian soldiers, racing back toward Hael and the sanctuary of the Master Stone.