Tricksters Queen (48 page)

Aly looked up. Overhead circled the chestnut stallion with Dove in a saddle on his back. Outside the walls, she heard a deep-throated roar as men and women cheered the girl's appearance. With Dove looking on, they plowed ahead without letup, battling their way toward the Gate of Victory.

"Uh-oh," said Trick.

Aly, her eyes on Dove, said, "What oh?"

"Soldiers on horses ride up from city," Trick replied. "Secret sees them. Soldiers and archers. And archers climb to walls near the Gate of the Sun."

Aly cursed. The nobles who had taken refuge with Ima-jane in the Gray Palace must have left men in the guest barracks. If they were so healthy, they couldn't have eaten the food Vereyu's people had poisoned. Perhaps they'd brought their own rations? She'd find out later, if there was a later.

"Tell Nawat of the archers on the walls," she ordered Trick. "Tell Fesgao that an attack comes up behind Ulasim. Nobody else, understand? Just those two."

A squad of soldiers wearing the crest of a luarin noble house came toward her at the trot. As they swerved around Aly, she reached into her sash for a small packet of sleep dust. Suddenly a soldier screamed and went down, a crow-fletched arrow in his eye. Other arrows flew from a clump of trees, followed by the archers: Nawat's people, bows set aside and swords taken up.

"Stop!" Aly yelled. Everyone, the soldiers and Nawat's warriors, turned to stare at her. "Wouldn't it be nice to be able to trust the person on the throne?" she asked their enemies. "To not have to live wondering each day as you wake if your family is safe, or if your master is rotting by the harbor?"

Nawat's people waited.

"Do you really want to die for the Rittevons?" Aly asked more quietly.

Three soldiers raised weapons and fell, shot by Nawat's suspicious archers. The rest hesitated. Then one of them, a sergeant by the bright red bands on his breastplate, set down his sword and dagger. When he straightened, one of his own men tried to attack him. Two other luarin soldiers grabbed the attacker and wrestled him to the ground. He lay there, killed quietly by one of his fellows. They in turn dropped their weapons. Others followed suit.

A woman with crow feathers in her hair shrugged and took a coil of thin rope from her belt. "Our brother said if they surrendered, bind them and move on," she said. She looked at the surrendering soldiers and grinned, teeth flashing in her lean face. "If I meet you again in battle, I won't be so nice," she warned them.

Aly moved on. "Trick?"

"Crows drive archers from the wall and knock some off," Trick replied. "Some crows are shot dead. Fesgao fights soldiers who attack Ulasim from behind. Nomru leads his people forward against Rubinyan's. Mages fight each other. Ochobu is saying many bad words to them."

On and on it came, a flood of information. Aly finally had to stop helping her people, Nawat's, and Vereyu's clean out pockets of resistance in the greater palace. She hid in a corner of the Robing Pavilion and sorted out who needed to know what piece of information. Trick pooled in her lap, allowing images to form inside it. Now Aly could see what the darkings saw when she asked Trick to focus on each of them.

Dove and Secret gave Aly a view of the entire battle that raged all around the Luarin Wall. They pointed out breaks in the lines of enemy soldiers where Nomru, Fesgao, Ochobu, and Ulasim could swamp them, and when an attack came at them from the sides or the rear.

Dove told Aly that fifty of Nawat’s people had cleared and opened the Gate of Carts and the Grain Gate, allowing the Fonfala and Temaida fighters to stream into the palace. Secret showed her Nawat and another band of his people, picking more defenders from the walls of the Gray Palace with arrows. Quartz, riding around Nawat's throat, showed Aly the front of the Gray Palace. The gates were shut and barred. It was finally serving the purpose for which it was built, a last stronghold for the luarin Crown.

Ochobu's darking reported that the old woman was ill, tottering as she pulled up all the strength she had in one last spell. Her heart burst as she flung it out, taking five luarin mages to the Peaceful Realms with her. Aly cringed as Ochobu's darking fell to the ground with her, seeing it all as the darking did. Keening its grief, the creature moved promptly to Ysul, who took command of the Chain. There was little he
could
command, as Trick and Aly could see. His cohorts were locked in their own battles. Ysul used his power briefly to direct them to new targets as they each finished wrestling one enemy mage to powerlessness or death. When the mages were occupied again, Ysul looked for a project of his own. Trick and Aly looked with him.

Behind Rubinyan and his troops loomed the Gate of Victory, shut tight, locked with heavy timbers, written over with spells of protection. Ysul's darking told Aly that he was "up to something." While it could feel magic course through the raka mage, that was a sensation it couldn't pass along to Trick or Aly. Instead the two looked around, prepared to warn Ysul if someone was about to attack him. No one was. As if they sensed the power Ysul summoned, the people who battled near him left him alone at the center of a rare open space. Once Ysul sent his magic out into the ground, hidden like most raka magic, Aly could See it course through the earth. It passed under the fighting men of both sides. The luarin mages didn't even notice it, hidden as Ysul's spell was. His magic streamed up into the Gate of Victory. Aly held her breath. Suddenly the dense, bespelled wood of the gate burst into white devouring flames.

Lace broke in, showing its views of the battle. Ulasim, wielding a longsword, had cut his way through the last of Rubinyan's protectors. Aly and Trick watched as Rubinyan closed with Ulasim, hacking at him from horseback. Lace dropped from Ulasim's neck to batten onto the cinch strap on Rubinyan's saddle. For some moments all Aly could see were Ulasim's straining legs. Then the saddle slid. Down tumbled Rubinyan, twisting to fall on his back. In lunged Ulasim, his blade passing through an opening in Rubinyans armor to cut deep. Rubinyan, grimacing, rolled and thrust his sword through Ulasim. For a moment the two men stared at one another.

Then Ulasim looked up. Dove swooped in on her kudarung, venturing close to the enemy's archers in her need to save him.

"Look!" Ulasim bellowed, pointing up to her. His voice rang over the clash of weapons and the shrieks of warriors and Stormwings. "Look at her! There! See our future? See how we can be great?"

He swayed and fell as his darking keened. Beneath him lay Rubinyan, already dead.

Aly didn't realize tears streamed down her face as she told Fesgao's darking what had befallen their general. Fesgao didn't hesitate. He plowed through the warriors, crying for them to follow him, in the queen’s name. As the raka, howling, surged forward, the Gate of Victory collapsed, burned to cinders by Ysul. Behind it, the Raka Gate, too, burned.

Ysul dropped to his knees. When the Raka Gate fell to ashes, he lay down. Two rebels ran to pick him up. His darking told Aly that Ysul was alive, but worn out. The creature went to the next mage to take command of the Chain.

From Dove's position Aly saw that the fighting had slowed in many places close to where Ulasim now lay. Seeing that Rubinyan was dead, a dozen or more luarin warriors raised their hands in surrender. The other Crown troops, mauled by the attacking Fesgao and his fighters, had borne enough. They turned and ran through the destroyed gates. Nawat's warriors and the Fonfala and Temaida troops met them there. Caught between Fesgao's rebels and the forces that had taken the palace grounds, the luarin soldiers fought or surrendered, as they preferred. The more soldiers farther back who saw them put up their hands, the more surrendered.

Aly wiped her eyes, gathered up Trick, and began the weary trudge from the pavilion to Rittevon's Lance. They weren't finished yet. Chenaol caught up to her. The cook and her weapons were smeared with blood. Silently they joined the rest of their people, watching as the last of the Crown's forces inside the walls gave up. Soon Nawat, sweat-soaked and disheveled, came to stand with them. The Fonfala and Temaida warriors stripped the weapons from those soldiers who had surrendered and herded them against the wall to be held under guard.

At last Fesgao strode through the gate, Nomru behind him. They joined Aly, Chenaol, and Nawat, looking with dull eyes at the ruin that surrounded them. None of them was unmarked. Even Aly had picked up a handful of cuts, though she couldn't remember when. Fesgao looked them over and nodded, as if they'd just met in the marketplace. As soon as those mages of the Chain still able to work caught up, he turned and led the way to the wall that surrounded the Gray Palace. Nomru, Aly, Chenaol, Nawat, and the rebel warriors followed him, weapons in their hands.

High above Stormwings shrieked in ecstasy. Seeing the bulk of the soldiers were surrendering, they began to swoop down, to plunder the dead. Nawat raised his voice in a raucous crow bawl, a sound that told other crows a hawk had come to steal from them. Cawing in one thunderous voice, hundreds of crows rose into the sky above the palace and turned, heading for the Stormwings.

Aly looked at Nawat. "I could not bear for Stormwings to touch the old woman," Nawat admitted, his eyes bright with unshed tears. "Or Ulasim."

Aly touched his cheek, her own lips quivering. "If she thought you cried over her, Ochobu would just throw magic at you again."

"That is why I waited until the death god had her to do it," replied Nawat.

At last they stood before the granite walls of the Gray Palace. Aly looked at their heights and blinked. There was no guard in view. For a moment Fesgao waited, unsure of what happened now.

"Trick?" Aly asked. "What do the palace darkings say?"

"Surprise," Trick replied. Extending a tentacle, it pointed to the top of the wall.

"We need to make a ram," Fesgao said wearily. Nomru nodded. Aly stepped up to them and put a hand on each man's arm. When they looked at her, their eyes reddened from the dust, she pointed to the wall. Taybur Sibigat stood there at parade rest, hands clasped behind his back. He looked down at them and nodded, his face expressionless.

Slowly the gate to the Gray Palace swung open. Soldiers in the black clothes and mail of the King's Guard, all of whom looked the worse for heavy fighting, lined the flagstone road that led to the residence with dead men all around them. It was four of the Guard who had opened the gate.

"Those troops still loyal to the Rittevons are locked up. So too are those noble families and servants who remained loyal," Taybur called, his voice and face as emotionless as if he read a marketing list. "I surrender the Gray Palace to your war chief. Queen Imajane is being held."

"Does he lie?" Fesgao asked Aly without taking his eyes from Taybur.

"No, sir," Aly replied. "He tells the truth."

A long shadow fell over them. Everyone looked up, then backed away to clear a space as Dove's mount slowly descended. At last the kudarung stallion stood on solid ground, its sides streaked with sweat. Fesgao strode over to help Dove from the saddle.

At the corner of her eye Aly registered a wave of motion. She looked around. First those of raka blood went to their knees. Slowly the luarin troops, even stubborn Duke Nomru, followed suit. Aly knelt slowly. At last only Nawat and those who looked as if they had recently been crows stayed on their feet.

Dove saw them and grinned, her small face lighting up. "Cousins," she said with a nod.

The rattle of chain mail drew Aly's gaze to the men of the King's Guard on the flagstone road. They, too, knelt and bowed their heads. Taybur, who had descended from the walkway overhead, knelt at the center of the open gate.

Dove looked at him. "Imajane?" she asked, her voice steady.

"In her rooms," Taybur replied. "Your Majesty."

Aly glimpsed a flutter of pink high on the side of the residence, on a balcony that overlooked its small garden. "There's a balcony outside her chambers," she said, refusing to look at that spot with her close-in Sight, amazed her voice did not quaver at what the deposed queen was about to do.

"I know," replied Taybur as the bit of pink plummeted from the balcony rail.

"At least we don't have to pay to house and try her," Jimarn murmured from somewhere behind Aly.

Fesgao pointed at the sky. The white veil that showed the Goddess's battles with Kyprioth and his allies was shrinking. The long, swordlike rays that framed the sun, Mithros's sign, were shrinking, too. The brilliant sparkles that had shown the Trickster's growing power flew together to form a single multicolored globe, with a handful of brilliant stars scattered around it: the lesser tricksters, Aly thought. The Goddess's veil and Mithros's rays did not vanish.

There's still work to do, Aly thought. We haven't won, not completely.

In the weeks that followed, Aly learned the truth of something both her parents said: cleaning up always seemed to take much longer than the fighting. She would have told them it only seemed that way because everyone was tired, except that she was too weary to write a letter home.

The Islanders buried their dead quietly, with services held for a week in the temples of the Black God. Dove insisted that Ulasim have a grave beside the steps to the Throne Hall, covered over in malachite and bronze, with a white marble marker stating his name, dates of birth and death, and the simple epitaph THE STRONG ONE. Ochobu was buried on the far side of the steps from her son, her grave covered in lapis and bronze. Her epitaph read THE WISE ONE. In time, Fesgao would join them as the warrior of the old prophecy. Aly knew where she fit in, but she wasn't sure that she wanted a marker on her grave that read THE CUNNING ONE. It seemed to her most fitting that no one know where she was buried at all.

Ulasim and Ochobu were not their only losses. Vereyu was alive but would limp all her days; Imajane had slashed the tendons behind her knee when Vereyu went to take her prisoner, and the healers had not reached her in time to completely mend the damage. Of Aly's pack, seven had been killed in the fighting: Lokak, Hiraos, and Ukali among the men, and Guchol, Eyun, Kioka, and Junai among the women. Aly mourned them bitterly where no one could see her. Junai had watched her back all that summer at Tanair. The others had been her pack. Only Nawat understood how cruel it was to lose them, just as she understood his grief for sixteen of his flock-mates, as he called the humans and transformed crows he had led.