Ishbel Brunelle Persimius sank to her knees in the snow, watching Maximilian Persimius, the Lord of Elcho Falling, walk away from her into the night.
I’m so sorry, he said to her, over his shoulder. So sorry.
He vanished into the darkness, Ravenna at his side.
Very slowly Ishbel leaned over, her hands clutching into the snow, until her forehead touched the ground’s icy surface. She stayed like that for four or five heartbeats, then her right fist beat once against the snow, then again, and she swore, very softly but very fiercely.
Ishbel straightened, sitting back on her heels, staring into the night.
She was furious. She had been kneeling in the snow, forehead to ground, for only a short space of time, but in that time she had journeyed from the absolute despair of Maximilian’s rejection to a depth of rage that she’d never experienced previously.
Ishbel was not angry at Maximilian, nor even at Ravenna, but at herself. She could not believe that she, Archpriestess of the Coil, wife of the Lord of Elcho Falling, lover of the Tyrant of Isembaard, and a Persimius in her own right, had allowed herself to be outmaneuvered so easily. She could not believe that she, Ishbel, had allowed herself to be beaten into the snow, and so humiliated.
Even Maximilian’s former lover, StarWeb, had not managed so easily what Ravenna had just accomplished with a few powerful words.
I carry his child, Ishbel. His heir. Maximilian Persimius will cleave to me now.
While Ishbel’s current anger was directed at herself rather than at Ravenna, Ravenna had managed to earn herself Ishbel’s enduring enmity—not merely for what Ravenna had said and done, but for the satisfaction with which she had delivered her triumph.
Ravenna’s time would come.
Ishbel rose and brushed snow from her skirt and face with irritated, staccato movements. “Am I such a naive girl to be rendered so easily the fool?” she muttered. “I cannot believe I allowed Ravenna such an easy victory!”
Fool no longer, she thought, as she strode in the opposite direction from that which Maximilian and Ravenna had taken.
Ravenna need expect no goodwill from me in the future, and no more easy victories.
As she walked, her back straight, a hard glint in her eyes, Ishbel whispered into the night. “Madarin! Madarin! Madarin!”
Madarin was the soldier Ishbel had healed of a twisted bowel on the way down from the FarReach Mountains to Aqhat when Axis was escorting her to be Isaiah’s new wife. She had no reason to believe that Madarin was still with that half of the enormous army which Isaiah had now brought as far as the Sky Peaks Pass, but somehow she knew he was here.
“Madarin,” she whispered, every inch the priestess intent on her purpose. “Come, I have need of you.”
Ten minutes later, as Ishbel stood shrouded by a line of dozing horses at the edge of the huge camp, a man emerged out of the night.
Kanubai stood in the Infinity Chamber in the center of DarkGlass Mountain and exulted. Far to the north the Lord of Elcho Falling vacillated, weak and indecisive, while here Kanubai stood fully fleshed and powerful, and with an army of gray wraiths at his command.
Moreover, here Kanubai stood, fully fleshed from the flesh of the daughter of the Lord of Elcho Falling himself and that would ensure Kanubai’s success.
There was nothing the Lord of Elcho Falling could do against him.
Kanubai smiled.
There were a dozen or so Skraelings within the chamber, all crouched in various postures of servility and awe before their lord. They were loathsome creatures, but they would do.
Kanubai stretched his arms out and roared, knowing that roar would reverberate in the ears of the Lord of Elcho Falling and terrify him.
As he did so, one of his hands glanced against the blackened ruins of the once-beautiful golden glass of the Infinity Chamber.
And as his hand glanced against the ruined glass, so DarkGlass Mountain took him. More to the point, it absorbed him.
The pyramid had been waiting a very long time for just this moment.
Ravenna glanced at Maximilian, walking by her side. His face was set into a rigid, featureless expression which Ravenna knew meant he hid deep emotion.
She slid her arm through his, pulling their bodies together as they walked toward the tent they shared with Venetia, Ravenna’s mother.
“I know it hurts,” she said, “but it was the right thing to do.”
Maximilian did not reply.
“Ishbel isn’t the right—”
“Leave it be, Ravenna, I beg you.”
Ravenna fell silent, torn between wanting to make certain that Maximilian understood the tragedy that Ishbel could make of his life, and knowing that pushing the issue could just as easily alienate him from herself.
His steps slowed, and Ravenna felt his body tense.
She panicked. “Maxel, it is done now. You can’t go back.”
Maximilian finally stopped, forcing Ravenna to halt as well. “I shouldn’t have turned my back on her like that. Ever since her childhood, Ishbel has dreamed that eventually the Lord of Elcho Falling would destroy her life, and now—”
“Maxel, she is the one who will destroy your life.”
Maximilian sighed, the reaction Ravenna dreaded the most. “I was too harsh, Ravenna. Too cruel. Ishbel didn’t deserve what I just said to her.”
Ravenna grabbed at one of his hands, bringing it to her breast. “She is weak, Maxel. Through that weakness she will destroy you. Ishbel will midwife nothing but sorrow into this land.”
Maximilian regarded her, then leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “I know you mean only goodness, Ravenna, but I need to speak with Ishbel. I should not have walked away from her in that manner and I need to make sure she is all right.”
“She will seduce you!”
He laughed, genuinely amused. “Not even Ishbel would think of that in this great chill! I treated her most badly, Ravenna. Let me go, I pray you, so that I may speak a little more gently to her. I will not linger, and I promise to you that I shall not allow myself to be seduced.”
He started to pull back from Ravenna, but she clasped both her hands about his, tightening her grip. “There is something I should show you, Maxel.”
“Not now, Ravenna.”
“No. Now! Maxel, I know you think my aversion to Ishbel either a product of womanly jealousy or of blind bigotry—but it comes from a knowledge I have yet to share with you.”
“Ravenna—”
“Let me share it now, Maxel.”
He was still leaning away from her, but not so strongly now.
“Let me show you, Maxel,” she whispered, and the snow about them vanished.
Maximilian pulled his hand from Ravenna’s, but it was too late. The snowy ground about the army encampment disappeared and he found himself standing with Ravenna on a gravel path that wound through a misty marshland. Water festered in dank, black muddy pools to either side of the path, and thick mist drifted through stands of gray-green trees almost denuded of leaves, its tendrils becoming momentarily hooked on the trees’ skeletal branches before twisting free and floating onwards.
It was very warm and Maximilian loosened his cloak.
“This is the Land of Dreams,” Ravenna said. “My land.”
“Why are we here?” Maximilian said. He was annoyed with Ravenna, but more so with himself. He wished, quite desperately, that he had not behaved so ungraciously toward Ishbel.
And he needed to find some solitude, so that he might wonder if he’d made the right decision…or not.
“I want to show you something,” Ravenna said.
“Ravenna, I need to get back.”
“No,” she said, “you need to see this.”
She waved a hand to her right, and the mists cleared.
Maximilian saw a roadway, winding its serpentine way toward a distant mountain, gleaming with gold at its top, set among the clouds.
Elcho Falling.
Bodies of men and horses littered the roadway. Icarii lay among the dead, and Emerald Guardsmen, and Maximilian could see Georgdi lying atop a heap of Outlanders to one side.
Look, whispered Ravenna.
An army now moved along the road toward Elcho Falling, pushing aside the bodies of the fallen as it went. The army consisted of creatures distorted into gruesome form, their eyes wide and starting—lost and hopeless. At their head strode a man of darkness.
This is what Ishbel shall generate, Ravenna said.
No, Maximilian said.
The army marched its way to the doors of Elcho Falling, and Maximilian and Ravenna saw, as if they stood only feet away, the man of darkness reach forth and pound his fist on the gates.
They will not open for him, said Maximilian.
They shall, said Ravenna.
The gates shrieked, and opened, and Maximilian saw Ishbel crawl forth on her hands and knees, weeping.
The man of darkness reached down to her and lifted her left hand, and Maximilian saw the Queen’s ring gleaming on Ishbel’s fourth finger.
“You have delivered to me Elcho Falling,” said the man of darkness to Ishbel, “and have sent its Lord into death. You have done well.”
“If you slide that ring onto her finger,” said Ravenna, “you marry darkness to Elcho Falling and ensure your own death. Ishbel is your doom, Maximilian Persimius.”
Maximilian could not speak. He continued to stare into the mist where the vision had appeared a moment ago.
“Ishbel will murder you and ruin this land,” Ravenna said. “I know you love her, but she will bring you and Elcho Falling and this entire land nothing but sorrow.”
“Enough!” Maximilian said. “For pity’s sakes, Ravenna, don’t you know when you have won? Don’t you know when best to stop?”
Kanubai felt his hand slide into the glass and instantly knew what was happening.
All at once, the Lord of Elcho Falling seemed the very least of his problems.
The pyramid sucked him deep into its blackness where, for what seemed to Kanubai like an infinity of time, he and it did great battle.
Then, suddenly, the pyramid tired of its play, and it destroyed Kanubai, taking of the ancient creature only what it wanted.
Flesh. Breath.
“It is enough,” Maximilian said, finally pulling his hand from Ravenna’s grasp. He stepped back, his booted heel crunching into the snow.
“Don’t go to her,” Ravenna said. “Don’t.”
“I—” Maximilian said, then he stopped, one hand half raised to his face as if his head ached.
“Maxel?” Ravenna said, putting a hand on his arm.
Maximilian said nothing, staring into the black night, snow catching at his dark hair. Kanubai! he thought. What has happened?
Ravenna didn’t know what to do. She felt helpless in the face of his fatal fascination for Ishbel. What else could she say to Maximilian, what else could she show him, to bring him to his senses?
“Ravenna,” he said, “I must go. There’s something I—”
She grabbed his arm. “Don’t go to her, Maxel!”
He tore himself loose, almost stumbling with the violence of his movement. “Just leave it be, Ravenna! Just for one hour, I beg you!”
Before Ravenna could say anything, he was gone, half jogging into the night.
The score or so of Skraelings who had watched Kanubai get sucked into the glass now cowered in a corner of the Infinity Chamber, terrified. Before them they could see Kanubai’s form in the glass, twisting this way and that, being stretched first in one direction, then in another.
From time to time the glass walls bulged outward as Kanubai fought for his freedom, then they would snap back into rigidity as the Lord of Chaos weakened.
“What should we do?” whispered one of the Skraelings, its hand clutching at the shoulder of its nearest companion.
“Watch and wait,” the other Skraeling replied. It grinned suddenly, its long pointed teeth glistening within the ambient light of the Infinity Chamber, its silvery orbed eyes bright with calculation.
“And then?” said the first Skraeling.
“Whatever necessity dictates,” replied the second.
Some time passed—the Skraelings could not calculate how much—when suddenly the last vestige of Kanubai’s form vanished.
The Infinity Chamber fell into stillness.
“What should we do?” hissed another of the Skraelings.
“Wait,” whispered the pragmatist. “Wait.”
And so they waited and, eventually, something stepped forth from the glass.
It was the height and shape of a man, and with the head of a man, which was slightly less intimidating than the jackal head which Kanubai had assumed. In other respects, however, the creature was entirely un-manlike. Its flesh was not made of tissue and blood, but appeared to be formed of a pliable, and utterly beautiful, blue-green glass. Deep within the creature’s chest a golden pyramid slowly rotated.
Its head was also glasslike, the creature’s eyes great wells of darkness.
The Skraelings abased themselves upon the floor of the Infinity Chamber.
“Who are you, great lord?” asked the bravest among them.
“I am the One,” the creature said. “I am perfection incarnate, for I am indivisible. I am Infinity, in its purest form.”
“Then we are your servants,” said the Skraelings, who, while understanding almost nothing of what the One had just said, were nothing if not realists.
As Maximilian strode into the night, and the Skraelings abased themselves before the One, Lister stood with three of the Lealfast atop a peak in the FarReach Mountains, looking southward toward Isembaard. Snow and icy wind coiled slowly about them, but none of the four paid the cold any mind.
At first sight seeming to be Icarii, with the same elegant human form and huge spreading wings, the Lealfast were at second glance something else. Their forms were not completely solid, but made up of shifting shades of gray and white and silver, and small drifts of frost clung to their features.
“Something bad has happened,” Lister murmured, peering into the night as if he could physically see south to DarkGlass Mountain. “Kanubai has gone!”
Slightly to one side and behind him, the three Lealfast—Eleanon, Bingaleal, and Inardle—exchanged a quick glance.
What they felt could not be said before Lister.
Something perfect had just occurred.