

IMPERIATA AND OTHER STORIES

Trevelyan Cooper

Copyright 2013 Trevelyan Cooper

Smashwords Edition

Table of Contents

Imperiata

The Prince Of Fey

A Mote, Amidst a Tide of Darkness

#  Imperiata

The valley was dark with mud and insects and rain. If it had a name, those who fought there had forgotten it. The eternal empire had fallen, and a thousand petty tyrants jostled for position, and so nameless valleys filled with blood all across the world.

Men swore and struggled and slid in the mud and forgot why they stood there at all, and amidst them, still and watching, stood the demon-slave Ishta'eth, the last Lord Kereshin.

She smelled soot. All her life she had smelled soot. She smelled blood and sweat and fear. She smelled the stench of offal from spilled entrails, and the retching sweetness of the dead rotting away. She watched the rain, and watched men fight, and knew her plans were working.

These days only crows and oathless mercenaries did well. Ishta'eth had always despised those without masters, but that was what she had become. She sold herself to make war, and she did well. She was among the greatest generals there had ever been.

She stood in rain and tasted ash and felt like she been waiting there for all of time. Somewhere in the distance a peasant girl sobbed, her farm burned or man dead or honor violated by a hundred passing troops. It would be one or the other, but Ishta'eth did not especially care which.

A day passed, and very little changed.

A soldier approached her. A man of her borrowed army. He halted ten steps away and cleared his throat, because they had all learned to approach carefully. She had killed three by accident before that lesson was taken.

"My lady," he said. "Someone asks for you."

He was not courtly in his habits. He simply bore the words he was given, with no thought to which someone and why. She grew impatient with such carelessness, but did not correct him. In her heart she felt some pity. She always pitied the lost souls she fought beside. Regular troops sent into battle beside the Order Kereshin had usually angered the powerful. The Kereshin did not march from their barracks without finding glory, but that glory came at the price of others' limbs and blood and orphaned children. It was the way, and had always been, and for the emperor that was right and proper. But not here. Once such men had fought for something that mattered, but this man, and those with him, did not. When she thought on it, that troubled Ishta'eth, so she did not often think.

"You should go home," Ishta'eth said. "Otherwise you will die here in this mud."

The man looked startled. "My lady..."

"You gave your oath?"

"My family. Without my pay they would go hungry."

Ishta'eth nodded. Such complications often slipped her mind. She was more used to those who would sack a city for slighted honor, and maim whole nations over wounded pride. She forgot that some raised their hand for more humble reasons.

"Then stay," she said. "But you will die."

"I know."

"You should go."

"I cannot."

She tried to be kind. "Then take care."

"I will."

She nodded. "Someone asks for me?"

The man pointed.

"Did this person say who they were?"

"I did not think to ask."

"Or why they want me?"

The man shrugged.

"Tell him I will see him later," she said. They asked for her all day, complaining civilians and begging enemies and lords seeking her services for her next war. She had led the Order Kereshin for a thousand years and that was something the world remembered.

"He asked for you by name, my lady," the messenger said.

"They all do."

"He said he had once been a friend."

Ishta'eth turned and looked across at the distant figure and tried to make out detail against the smoke and dust.

"My thanks," she said to the soldier. "Go."

He went quickly. That never changed. Men such as him, men who lived in the knife-edge between life and death in pointless wars, had very good instincts. They knew what she was. She moved too carefully, and was too careless of slighting others' honor. She was so terribly still.

Ishta'eth tried to recall the last time she had stood in a room and not known she could kill everyone in it. Not since the empire fell, certainly, and probably long before that. It would need many, many soldiers, prepared by a tactician as good as herself who had established clear fields of fire. And it would need archers. She loathed archers. All Kereshin did, but they were needed to kill the likes of Ishta'eth. Here, in this valley, she had given the usual order that captured bowmen be blinded and dismembered, but she knew it was being ignored.

She waded through the mud, up to the waiting figure. She stood and looked and said, with little joy in her voice, "Yasen." A slight pause, to make him cautious, and then she added, "Old friend."

"You still call me that?"

Ishta'eth stood for a long time, letting him worry. "I do," she said. "You need ask?"

"These days, who knows?"

She nodded, for it was true.

Yasen was a spy, of sorts, from one of the older of the great houses. Not a soldier, but not a terrible man either, unlike many nobles. They had shared a bed for a while, when he was young.

Ishta'eth stood there and looked at him and wondered what he wanted.

Suddenly, she realized she had been among the mud and foot-soldiers too long. She had forgotten the ways of polite society. She stepped forward and held out her sword-hand and Yasen looked relieved. He tried to embrace her, and she stepped back, quickly. He had always tried, and she had always stepped back. It was dangerous game he liked to play.

He seemed pleased to see her, as far as she could tell. He smiled, and looked her up and down. He was older, now. His face creased and hair grey and he seemed to have felt pain. She didn't ask how he was, but she never had in the past. Noblemen such as him were young and ambitious, then old and cunning, then gone. It was how it had always been. When young, she liked their arrogance and passion and sometimes took them as lovers. When old, she liked their caution, their fear of death.

She tried to remember the ways of noblemen's talk, the matters one ought to discuss, even as the world burned about you.

"How is your family?" she said.

He shook his head, one brief shake, and she understood.

"I'm sorry," she said. "These are hard times."

He seemed surprised. She supposed that once she would not have bothered with the words.

"It's good to see you," he said. "Gods, Ishta'eth, what are you doing here?"

"In truth, I am not sure. War is a habit, I suppose."

"You are in command?"

"As much as ever. They ignore most of what I say, but I am in command."

It was an old ploy. Kereshin only ever led, they did not take direction, so if on the field a Kereshin had to command. Following a Kereshin into battle tended to make men die, though, so wiser soldiers learned to misplace messengers and misunderstand commands and do as they saw fit. Once Ishta'eth would have ordered whippings until her orders were obeyed, but now she cared little. The truth was that more of them died because they ignored her than if they had done as she asked. Obeyed, she could have won this battle of theirs drunk and blindfold and with only one ear to listen, but she cared little. It was their own lives they threw away.

"How goes the battle?" Yasen said.

Ishta'eth shrugged. "This day or the next or a week from now this little war will be over."

"But you are trying to make this happen."

"Not particularly."

He looked at her and seemed puzzled.

"It matters not," she said.

"Yet..."

"It does not. I am war, so here I stand." She sighed. "But it matters not."

He nodded.

"I believe right now I aim to take a hamlet. Over there somewhere. Or perhaps a hill. I forget. My petty tyrant fights another, and they impoverish themselves to hire me."

It had been this way since the empire fell and the incessant wars began. All fought all, in shifting alliances of self-interest. There were no fixed sides, no real factions, and the Lord Kereshin was a prize all needed in their purse.

Yasen understood. "Because they fear if they do not have you, the other will."

Ishta'eth smiled a little. It was true. They believed in her enough to be terrified their opponents would have her, but not enough to let her win their wars.

"And then they banish me to a remote corner of their campaign where I can do no harm," she said. "Because they fear that if they give me their best troops I will take offense at some slight and grind them against impregnable walls until they are exhausted."

"Would you?"

"Of course. I care not who wins."

"Why not give those paying you a victory? Can you not with these men?"

Ishta'eth was startled, and almost offended. He forgot so quickly. "Against the likes of these?" she said. "I could take victory alone."

He stood there and tried not to smile and Ishta'eth realized he had been teasing her. He had used to do that, to say the obvious, just so she would explain it to him and he could listen attentively, and let her explain further and further, until he burst out laughing. He liked his dangerous games, and once she had enjoyed that about him.

She looked around at rain and mud and death and suddenly could not be bothered. Instead she said, "And my secret? I take their pay, then hand their gold to their enemies and start the cycle again."

"Why?"

"Why not? They all die anyway, and their wars give me something to do."

And because the world should suffer without the empire, and war should be unending, so given the chance all would welcome the empire back. That too, but she did not speak those words out loud.

"It seems I am a kind of a blessing," she said. "For their men. As if my standing up here makes their commanders slightly more competent and death hurt a little less."

"Like the blessing of some ancient war god."

"Exactly like. Am I not?"

He seemed not to know how to answer that. They looked at one another.

Ishta'eth decided there had been enough politeness. "What brings you here?" she said.

"Rumors. Glorious rumors."

Ishta'eth waited.

"You have not heard?" Yasen said. He seemed excited.

"I hear nothing. I sit in my mud and watch little men die."

"The emperor had a son."

Ishta'eth went still. Yasen kept talking, and seemed not to notice the change in her. After a moment she realized he thought her stillness was skepticism and was trying to convince her. Enthusiastically, believing it himself, he said, "He did. I have heard this from one who was there."

"Tell me," Ishta'eth said, a little saddened, and barely listened to the answer. She heard words without really hearing. "A farm... Hidden all these years... A wonder."

Yasen stopped talking. Ishta'eth realized there had been a question.

Yasen was looking at her. "Join me," he said again. "We shall go look. Gods, Ishta'eth, a son. I came to you as soon as I heard."

"Where is this farm?" Ishta'eth said, but did not listen to the answer.

Quicker than his eye could see, quicker than any but her own could follow, she slid a knife from her belt and across Yasen's throat. He seemed surprised, seemed offended, seemed to find it terribly unfair, but he was dead before he could make a complaint.

She felt a little sad at killing a friend. She lowered Yasen to the ground and looked around.

"Horse," she called, and one was brought.

A soldier scurried over. One of the officers, one of the warlord's men, sent to watch her. She had no time for the commanders. "Where are you going?" he asked.

"Away," she said.

"If you leave," the man said, "This job will not be here when you return."

Ishta'eth rode away. The officer shouted after her, until she stopped her horse, and suddenly the curses stopped too. She did not turn. The silence told her everything. A coward, not worth her time. She rode on.

She had a long way to go.

She knew the farm. She knew the boy. She had taken him from the dying emperor's bedchamber as a child and hidden him there twenty years before. Then taken herself away, because the face of the Lord Kereshin was known the world over and nothing would attract attention to the hidden child more than her being at his side.

And now it had finally happened. The day had finally come.

She should feel joy. She should feel the honor to come. This was her time. She would restore the empire and take vengeance on its enemies. The revenge would be magnificent. Every city that had opposed her would be burned. Every noble family that had acted against the empire would be pulled down. Bloodlines as old as the emperor's would disappear from the world, bloodlines from the beginning of time. There would be killing like no Lord Kereshin had ever overseen before, and the world would always, always remember it. She had planned for this day, and now it was beginning, and all she felt was a little mournful, and she did not know why.

She put it from her mind. She had to protect the child now. He had been found, so her absence was no longer of any purpose. She must stand at his side and keep him from harm, and she must raise him up as emperor and teach him how to rule. She had hoped for a little more time, a little more learning and wisdom, but twenty years was probably sufficient.

No Lord Kereshin had ever had an opportunity like this. She would crush all who stood before her, destroy enemies old and new, and when she was done there would be peace for ten thousand years. Peace like she had never been permitted to make before, because emperors had always been raised to the court and gentler souls than she was. This time was different. This time she would create the emperor herself.

*

Ishta'eth rode into the village and began killing. These were mostly peasants, and little threat. She did not bother climbing from her horse, and used only a short-sword, not her true-sword. She only intended to create chaos, to kill enough of those who had seen the boy that none would think to ask what had become of him for a week or two. She felt a little regret, but did what needed be done. These fates had been set when she left the child here a generation ago.

Among the peasants were a few old soldiers, their rusting blades out once they realized they were under attack. One, towards the end, saw her coming. He looked at her and lowered his sword.

She was puzzled. "You will not defend yourself?" she said.

Slowly, he shook his head.

"You know what I am?"

"To say yes will not help me, will it?"

"Equally, to say no," Ishta'eth said. "I will know your lie."

"Then I know what you are. Does that seal my fate?"

"It does."

He threw his sword away.

Ishta'eth looked at him. She was always a little curious how they felt. This one seemed frustrated. Resigned, but bitter too, as if he had been trapped in a snare not of his making.

"You do not wish to try?" Ishta'eth asked.

"I was in the old army. I saw your people do their work. There is hardly any point."

"No," Ishta'eth said, polite, respectful. "I regret I cannot talk more, but I must be on my way."

"I understand."

"This will be quick," Ishta'eth said, and cleaved his throat in two.

She burned the town, now filled with blood and flies, and went out to the farm, riding in a meandering circle so as not to leave a straight arrow of death marking her path. She killed whoever she passed, killed those she found at the farm.

She knew the boy when she saw him. She could not help but know him. He glowed with the light of her people's oath, a burning like fire when she looked upon him that made the song of her vassalage thick in her ears. She stopped and listened. She had missed that sound, had heard it most of her life, but not for the last twenty years. It was like a heartbeat, hardly noticed until it was gone. The song calmed her, helped her think, and put in her in a better humor.

The boy seemed scared, and she could see why. Her clothing was clinging to her, thick with sheets of rich red blood. Her hair was matted. Her eyes must gleam white from a death-mask red face. She climbed from the horse, lowered her sword, and held out her hand.

*

Nici, the child who would be emperor, had grown up in a farming village on a fishing island at the far end of the world. It was a lucky village. When he was very young, in a cave near the farm there had lived a goddess who prowled the night and slew wrongdoers. They had peace when many others had not, and the islanders had seen the bodies of brigands and pirates and understood, and had not spoken of their goddess to outsiders. In time no more pirates had come, and one day the cave was empty, but by then it was not of consequence. There had been peace.

Now that peace was over.

Nici looked at the monster in the guise of a woman. It climbed from the horse, wearing the blood of his family and friends like a cloak. The blood ran down it in sheets and dripped about its feet. It reached towards him, and he screamed. The monster, the woman, seemed surprised.

"Come," she said. "Be calm. Everything is well."

Nici lunged at her, slapping at her ineffectively. He hit her face and she did not move, simply watched. He struck again, and she caught his wrists. He struggled for a moment, then gave up.

"Kill me then," he said.

"I am here to help."

He looked around at the dead. All those he had ever known. "Help me?"

"Of course. The only way to keep a secret is to be the only one who knows it."

"What secret...?" he began to say, then suddenly realized his mistake. "No," he said. "Don't tell me."

Beneath the death-mask of blood, she seemed almost pleased. "That was quick," she said.

"Do not tell me the secret."

"Do you know who I am?"

"The mountain witch of the cave?"

"That too. I am Ishta'eth, Lord Kereshin, and you are my emperor. I am your slave."

She let go of him, and knelt, and pressed her face to the dirt.

He stood there and had no idea what to do. He was terrified, expecting trickery, but nothing happened. She knelt, and waited, and he looked down at her bloody hair.

"I do not understand," he said.

So she stood, and told him. Of emperors and ancestors that stretched back seven thousand years. Of two-hundred and eighty-three before him. Of demon-slaves such as her, who could not but die for him. Of wars that would consume the world without his hand to stop their fury.

"Let me think," he said, and she nodded.

He went inside, and stayed there for three days. He sobbed for the dead, and feared for himself, and all the time Ishta'eth sat outside and waited. He offered her food, and she ate, but only to be polite, he thought. As if she did not really need it.

The dead rotted. On the third day, outside again, he looked at the body of his foster-mother, the woman who had raised him, and tried to strike Ishta'eth again. Fury in his heart, and hatred.

"Be calm," she said. "Cease."

"What are you, you monster?" he spat at her.

"The Lord Kereshin. The commander of the finest warriors in the world. The emperor's executioner and slave. Your executioner and slave."

"You are my slave?"

She nodded.

"Why did you kill all these people?"

"To protect you. To protect this secret."

He thought about that. About any who were left from the village. "If anyone else comes along," he said. "You will kill them too?"

She nodded.

"Then we should leave."

"You need a horse."

"The stable is there."

"Clean clothing? Food?"

Nici went inside without a word and collected what he needed. She followed, and changed her clothing too. She took that of Missa, his heart-sister, the daughter of his foster-family. Nici watched the witch undress and wipe her skin clean of dried blood and saw she was a woman after all, not a monster. Outwardly, at least.

He did not understand. He did not understand why she did what she did.

*

Ishta'eth was pleased with the child-emperor. He had tried to fight, which was enough. He had some courage, when many of his line had not. He seemed clever enough too, quick to understand. He had been raised by peasants, but they were freemen-peasants, and the house had contained books, and some hint of learning. He was thoughtful, for his age. Most important, he could adjust. That was what she needed now. She had torn his whole world apart, had slain everyone he had ever known, and he had adjusted, begun to cope and change. Now he was hers. He might not forgive the deaths, but he would come to see such killing as normal. It would be a long time before he was ready to hear it, but she was proud of him.

He was angry and curious both. One vying with the other. She was pleased by that too.

They rode in silence for a day, and then he began questioning her again.

"What now?" he said.

"We ride to the Palace at the Heart of the World, the only place you may be crowned. And crown you."

"How far is it?"

"Two and a half thousand leagues. Across the world."

"And will anyone try and stop us?"

"All will, I should think."

He looked at her. "Very well," he said, and she grinned at him and thought finally his line had made one worthy of it, and it had been eight hundred years since she'd actually liked one of his family.

*

They waited at a port until a fishing boat arrived, and Ishta'eth demanded passage to the mainland.

"Let them live," Nici said quietly, once they were aboard the boat.

"Perhaps."

"Let them live."

"My lord," Ishta'eth said, wryly. "Of course."

Nici looked at her suspiciously, but she allowed the fishermen to live. She told them not to speak of her, knowing they would, in time, but that it would probably be long enough that her plans would be underway before any spies heard.

They rode on. Another road. A crossroads and a turning.

"Where are we going now?" Nici said.

"To see your former lord."

"Is that wise?" he said, and she was pleased by that too.

The came to a village, then a town, and then a larger town beneath a fortress at the end of a inlet of the sea. No passers-by bothered them, although many looked as they passed.

"Have you been here before?" Ishta'eth said.

Nici shook his head.

As they approached the town, despite the warm day, she pulled on a large hooded cloak. They rode through the town gate without comment, rode up a main road towards the fortress on the hill above.

The gate there was more carefully guarded. A sentry stood in their way.

"I wish to speak with your lord," Ishta'eth said.

Nici would have been cuffed and sent on his way, but Ishta'eth spoke with the accent of the imperial heartland and sat on a horse and carried herself as if she were entitled to ask. The gate-guards called a sergeant who called a captain who agreed to take them to the lord. They went to a hall, where brutish men lounged in a group and watched them approach.

The captain pointed to one of the men.

"He is the lord?" Ishta'eth said.

The captain nodded.

Ishta'eth went to that one, and said, "Your emperor requires your oath and your aid."

"Five men have come and told us that in the last fifteen years."

He did not seem old enough, so he must also mean to his father.

"Now the emperor requires it."

"The emperor is gone."

Ishta'eth looked at him. "The emperor-in-waiting stands before you."

They all looked at Nici.

"You are a madwoman," the lord said after a while.

"I require your aid and have given my authority. The law requires you assist me."

"That law is gone."

"I require your aid. If you refuse me, it is treason."

They sat and looked at her.

"You know the punishment for treason?" she said.

The lord was thinking. "I know."

"Death," Ishta'eth said. "Death to the traitor, to kin, to those who stand with him, to his people and lands. Their names to be scoured and forgotten. Treason also to speak of them again."

"Our lands, our kin?" one of the lord's companions said, "You could not do all that. You have no army."

"Hush boy," Ishta'eth said. "Your betters speak."

"She has no army," the companion said again.

"I need none," Ishta'eth said. "I have made my request, now honor it or stand accused of treason."

The lord held up his hand. "Wait. I will hear you, do not call me traitor. I need proof though, you understand? I do not speak ill, many have come, even here, claiming to speak with the authority of this emperor or that."

For a time they talked quietly, and in the end it was clear. Ishta'eth was the Lord Kereshin, she knew of secrets and blood and horror. In the end they did as she wished.

And as easily as that, she had her first allies.

*

Ishta'eth and Nici withdrew to a room. Ishta'eth ordered that wing of the building cleared, the whole wing, and that she would be checking, and any she found would die. They would march in a few days, she said, when she was ready, and the lord and his men were coming.

She sat before a fire and slowly sharpened a dagger and Nici watched her and said, "Why are we here?"

"We need allies. We need an army. We need to start somewhere."

She sharpened the dagger, but she never sharpened the sword. He had heard stories of these things, of true-swords as strong as stone.

"May I see the sword?" he said.

She looked up. "You understand that if any other had asked..."

"But I am your emperor?"

"Indeed."

She picked up her belt and sheath, drew the sword. Nici looked. "I have heard of these."

"Indeed."

He looked for a moment, then nodded, done.

Ishta'eth put the sword away. Before she did, she cut the ball of her thumb, wiped it clean, sheathed it. "It cannot be drawn except to draw blood."

"You should have said."

"It is of no consequence. I practice every day with the same result."

*

The next day, as Nici walked the castle staring in awe at high ceilings and thick walls of stone, the talkative, foolish companion of the day before cornered him. "Who are you to come in here and claim to be the emperor?" the companion demanded, and pushed at Nici.

Ishta'eth appeared, and took the companion's hair, and pulled him to the floor. He shouted, angry, but seemed unable to stop her. She tugged, yanked him along the corridor. He stumbled, and fell, so she dragged him along the floor, ignoring his shrieks.

She pulled him into the hall, to the bare floor before his lord, and drove her short-dagger into the base of his neck. Then let him go, so he toppled forward, fingers and eyes still twitching, prone at his lord's feet, already dead.

The lord was still. His companions murmured, and some stood, but he waved them down. "Why?" he said.

"He laid a hand on the emperor."

"Emperor-in-waiting."

"It makes no difference."

The lord nodded.

Another companion stood, seeming distraught. "You killed him."

"Take solace that he is fortunate. Once I would have had him flayed, hung on a frame, kept alive for a day."

"Gyan," the lord said, "Sit down."

Ishta'eth stood still, waited. She still held her dagger. She looked at the lord.

"Leave him be," the lord said. "They were lovers. He is upset."

"It is the law."

"He does not understand," the lord said. "It has been a long time since we lived in that way."

"Did your father teach you the law?"

"My mother, but yes. Of course."

"Explain it," Ishta'eth said. "Now. Or all die here."

The lord looked at her for a while, then nodded. "Listen to me," the lord said. "All of you. He on the floor has committed treason by touching the emperor's person. The Kereshin judges a matter such as that, and her word alone is enough. We cannot question it. A traitor has no friends, or they are traitors too. So we cannot say his name, we cannot speak to others of what has happened here. If any disagree they die too. And Gyan, it is not just you. If you are punished, your kin and friends and lands will be also. One day. If she is busy now, she will send someone back for you in time to make your deed right. So stand down, all of you, for I will not have my family die for what this fool did."

Ishta'eth nodded. "Good. And a lesson too. I hear better than you can imagine. I move fast. Another hand is laid on the emperor and what happens will be worse."

She turned and left.

"It was only a game," Nici said quietly. "He was a bully, that is all. You did not have to kill him."

"Nothing concerning you is a game any more. He had to die to show others your claim is serious, that you are backed by the Kereshin, and that you will be treated as an emperor."

"I do not like it."

"Much worse will happen before we are done."

"Perhaps I do not wish that done in my name."

"It is not. Done in your name. It is done in the name of the empire, of the imperial line and throne. And what makes you think you have a choice?"

"I could resign. Give up my throne."

Ishta'eth shook her head. "The law has no provision for that. A regent of your line may depose you, if you are mad. But only one of your line, of legal age."

"My child?"

She nodded.

"I have no child."

"Indeed. So you cannot abdicate."

"So for twenty years the empire could be run by a madman?"

"It does no harm when it happens. I and those like me make sure no orders too harmful are carried out. Or that they are carried out in ways that do not matter."

"That must sometimes be difficult."

"Sometimes it is. But it does not happen often."

Nici nodded. "Please try not to slaughter any more for no reason for me. Please."

"As I said. It was not for you, and the reason was strong. We need to show the strength of your claim, and killing those who oppose you will show that."

*

Soon they marched, and there were those who tried to prevent it, and so their path was marked by death. The Lord Kereshin would be victorious, because the Lord Kereshin always was, but many died in proving this.

Early on, before their enemies could assemble armies to stop her, Ishta'eth fought her way through men in dozens and scores. It was wasted time, it was their enemies sending men to certain and unnecessary deaths, and even she grew sick of it. A mortal cannot fight a Kereshin. It made no difference if it was ten or a hundred, the Kereshin was quicker, and did not tire, and a hundred simply meant there were queues of men forming up to die. They were not permitted to use archers, because etiquette dictated you did not do that to an Imperial Lord, and all lords agreed on this, even rebels. Moreover, the lords all knew Ishta'eth could knock arrows out the air with her sword, and that things then became very unpleasant for those around the archers. She would remove the archers' hands, and their commanders', and those of all others nearby, and leave their stumps to rot until they died.

As Ishta'eth and Nici rode, they often came to bands of men guarding bridges or fortress-towers, who were ordered to block their passage on pain of death. Usually Ishta'eth went to speak to such men, to ask them to spare themselves.

"You know what I am?"

"We do, my lady," they always said.

"And still you shall try and stop me."

Some shook their heads then, and slunk away. Some said simply, "We shall, my lady."

"You are brave," she told those men.

"Or foolish," some said.

"Walk away," she would say, "Let there be no blood shed here today."

"I cannot."

"Then know I will harm you as little as I can."

And she did her best, but usually they would die.

In time the bands of men became armies, but by then Ishta'eth had found more allies, and had armies of her own. The numbers grew greater. They wound their way from keep to fortress and Ishta'eth spoke of ancient oaths and loyalties. Some understood, and listened. Some spat in her face and called her witch-queen and refused.

Some died, and had their homes burned, and others did not. But all those who lived through her asking marched with her in the end.

Nici began to understand that the rebels were not against the imperial throne as much as against Ishta'eth herself, against her pride and overbearing entitlement and control of the empire. Against her habit of doing things such as this. Nici was surprised by how many refused Ishta'eth. How many looked at her and chose the certain death of all they held dear over falling under her sway once more. He tried to suggest to Ishta'eth that a gentler hand might be advantageous, but she said coldly the law was the law and must be obeyed. So instead people died, and the smoke of a thousand towns and hamlets rose into the sky as they passed.

Nici did not argue. He still remembered his foster-family, and what she had done, and was overwhelmed by all this, unsure of his place and his judgment and her affection for him.

*

In a tent, near a lake, a thousand leagues from Nici's island home, they waited while the armies rested. There were trees around the lake, orchard groves, and ripe nuts were on the trees. Ishta'eth had someone bring her some, and began cracking nuts as she waited, using her bare hands, apparently for no other reason than to idly pass the time. Nici sat watching. She squeezed, and popped the shell open, and pulled out the nut, and set it in a bowl, and threw the rest aside, onto the floor. She never ate, just filled the bowl. She was fidgeting, Nici thought. As close as she came to it.

"May I have one of those?" he said.

Ishta'eth slid the bowl over. "Have them all."

"They are safe?"

She just looked at him.

"Are they?"

"Would I allow harm to come to you, my liege?"

He looked at her for a while. She was sparkling, almost. Gleeful. He was coming to know her moods. "You tease me?" he said.

"I do," she said solemnly.

"I can eat them?"

"Please," she said, and cracked another.

Trying not to be obvious, he picked up a nut, squeezed as hard as he was able, but failed to crack it open. Ishta'eth watched him, impassive, then passed him a dagger. Even with that, breaking the nut open was difficult, almost impossible.

She wiggled her hands at him. "I have been a warrior for a thousand years."

"I see."

They sat for a time, and Ishta'eth cracked nuts. "What are these whispers of Illicrym?" Nici said suddenly.

"Where did you hear that name?"

"Around. From the men. Should I have not?"

She shook her head. "It matters not. It was a city. A magnificent city, a place of learning and beauty and a library that contained every book that had ever been written in the world."

"I have not heard of it."

"You would not have." Ishta'eth was silent for a time. "It was a wonderful, beautiful, rebellious city."

"And?"

"And I slew its people and burnt it to the ground."

"Alone?"

"My army."

"Did many die?"

"Not one of mine. Scores of thousands of theirs."

"Oh."

"In part, it was what made all this. I punished the rebels exactly as the law required. I did what was right, but I was too harsh in the minds of some. Afterwards, all those who thought sedition, who plotted without real intent of acting, began to wonder if they would be next."

"And?"

"They banded together against me and the throne."

Nici nodded.

"And your father died, and we fled, and in time we came to here."

"I understand," he said, and did. He was understanding much more, of the politics and hatreds that ran the world.

A soldier came to the door, and coughed. Ishta'eth looked to the nuts, and said to Nici, "Have you had your fill?"

"Of course," Nici said, puzzled. Ishta'eth passed the bowl to the soldier, who muttered his thanks, and left.

"I don't understand," Nici said. "What is this?"

"I crack nuts for the men. They are not as strong, it is easier for me."

He looked at her.

"I cannot eat them," she said.

"I see."

"I cannot. I do not eat."

"I know."

"Well then."

*

Another month of marching. They passed through forests, and over a mountain range, and crossed rivers wide enough to have their own currents, and plains Nici could not see across. He saw trees shift from the cold-climate needle-leaves he knew to wider, lusher growth. For the first time he felt hot air all about, away from a fire, and warm water. In time, Ishta'eth said they were past halfway, were growing close. They crossed another set of mountains as the winter began, great grey piles of shingle and dust, and by then Nici was tired and weak and exhausted. The days ran together. He was sore from the saddle and tired from the length of the march, and increasingly isolated from the daily decisions Ishta'eth was making. They came to a river, a crossing, a valley full of soldiers, and Ishta'eth said it was the last river to cross, that it was open grassland from there to the Heart of the World, the imperial palace. "We are close now," she said. "These need not die. I will speak with them."

"There are ten thousand of them."

"Indeed. They could do much harm to our men, in those numbers."

"You cannot go down there alone."

She seemed amused. She touched his face, almost kindly. "Child, my emperor, what am I?"

Nici looked at her. "A slave, my slave, my demon slave, a Kereshin?"

"Indeed. And what are they?"

"Men."

"Men of flesh and blood and fear and tiredness and sloth. Tiredness as you feel, after a month's long march to bring us all here."

"You can fight them all?" he said. "You will be safe?"

She laughed.

"You tease me," he said.

"I do. And yes, I can fight them."

"Take our men."

"No. If I do, some shall die."

"And now you care for that?"

She laughed, nothing more.

"You cannot fight ten thousand men on your own," Nici said.

"Of course I can. But I shall not need to."

She called over a captain, and told him to have the army wait. "Come," she said to Nici, "Meet your subjects," and she led him down the hill and into the enemy camp.

Nici was scared, but it seemed that Ishta'eth was not. He reminded himself that Ishta'eth would not risk him if there was actual danger, so therefore there could not be. This must be a way to get him used to war, he decided.

Little happened as they rode down. The enemy soldiers simply stood there and watched.

Ishta'eth stopped in the centre of their camp, at the approach of the bridge they guarded. "You know what I am," Ishta'eth said to the nearest of their enemies. "Decide."

A few ran at her and died. Then a few more. Twenty, thirty ran at her and died. Nici began to understand. Only three or four could fight her at once, and she took care that her back was always clear. She was fast, much faster than they, she wove and ducked a lot, and killed with almost every blow. And they were afraid of her, terrified, and that slowed them down. Fifty died. Eighty died. Blood soaked her from head to toe. Blood flicked from her hair and hand and weapon tip as she spun around.

In the distance, a bow. "Ishta'eth," Nici called, and she looked, and at the same time an officer did.

"Kill that man," the officer said, panic in his voice. "Now."

Two of his men ran off.

"I apologize, my lady," the officer shouted to Ishta'eth. "He did not fire."

She looked at him for a while, and his hands began to shake.

"My lord," Ishta'eth said. "I am my lord Kereshin. Not my lady."

The officer dropped his sword, stood there looking at her. "Please," he said. "Please, I have done you no harm."

"Join me."

"I cannot."

"Join me or die." She raised her voice. "All of you. Join me or die."

Some confusion, whispers. A sergeant, "We are yours, my lady."

"My lord," Ishta'eth said, and smiled, looking around, and it was a terrible thing to see.

She walked to the officer, and touched his face. Nici was beginning to be afraid of that touch, afraid for others, not himself.

"I spare your men," she said. "That is enough."

"Please," he said.

"Understand, you have failed the one you serve. Failed badly. I cannot have you in my ranks, behind me, waiting to fail again."

"I will not, lord, I swear. I will not fail again."

"No," Ishta'eth said, almost absently, and cut his throat. She moved fast enough no-one alive could see her blow coming. A blessing, Nici thought, as the officer might not have actually realized. The man blinked, and gurgled, and seemed surprised. He fell to his knees.

"It is not your failure that concerns me most," Ishta'eth said to him gently. "It is your dishonor. And this makes that right."

"Sergeant," she said, "Some water," and stood still while it was brought. They watched her, and she ignored them. She washed her face, her hands. "Are you ready to ride?" she said when she was done.

Frantic activity followed. Camp was broken. Tents torn down.

Riding ahead of the group, Nici said softly, "Did we do that so you could recruit them?"

"Of course."

Silence for a moment. She touched his hand. "You are learning. It is good."

They rode up the river banks and onto the plain.

"A month or two more," Ishta'eth said. "A lot of fighting still, but a month or two more and we shall be done."

*

Ishta'eth, walking through the camp one night, heard two off-duty guardsmen talking softly.

"They have no souls, you know, tis why they do not age or die."

"We none of us have souls, brother, but the emperor himself."

"Well, she less than others. I would not meet her in battle, I tell you that."

"No," the other conceded after a moment, "Nor I."

She stood in the shadows near a line of wagons, and listened, and smiled, then went on her silent way.

*

Ishta'eth went to Nici one night, when she thought he was ready. It was an old custom that she did, but she bade her time before she began, wary about his mood. He had not forgotten the deaths of his foster-family, but he had become more accustomed to bloodshed, and to her, and time had begun to set some distance. Kereshin had done this often enough for emperors in the past, because a Kereshin bed-companion was a loyal one, and brought the certainty of safety. This was like that, but not entirely as it had once been, for Ishta'eth had reasons of her own, this time. She had her way. Nici was nervous, and gentle, and afterwards he lay on the bed and watched her move around.

"They call you a demon," Nici said.

"They do."

"Why?"

"Because it is so."

"A demon. Born of hell?"

"Melodrama. All those stories of gods and heavens and hells, they are for children."

"There are no gods?"

"I do not know. I think none but those we make. And the emperor."

Nici thought. "No heaven and hell?" he said.

"Nought but those we make ourselves."

"Then how are you a demon?"

"We were made, not born. Forged of magic, tis all."

"Oh," Nici said, and began to understand.

*

The army marched on, and still more joined them. The army grew until it was a blight across the land, a moving sore that trampled crops and stripped an area five leagues wide of fuel and forage and stock. Nici understood that was necessary, that they had no supplies and must live from the land, but the careless harm they did those they passed, people like his foster family, troubled him.

He spoke to Ishta'eth, who told him, apparently surprised, that this was why they took the route they did, that they could not live from the land in a lord's domain without causing offence, but these were free peasants, owned by none, and therefore it was permitted.

"And the rape?" Nici said. There had been a lot of it going on as they passed. Nici had been pretending not to see.

Ishta'eth shrugged.

"Must they?"

"I will tell them to take care not to sire bastards, if you wish."

"That's all? Not to cease entirely?"

"Soldiers always rape peasant girls. It is the way of the world. The girls who don't want to be raped don't stand so near the roadway while an army marches by."

"I forbid it."

"Then you shall lose your throne. But as you will."

"I would lose my throne?"

"We cannot march with a surly army."

Nici thought. "And if I say I demand it anyway? That they stop?"

"I will not hear you. I do not hear the words of emperors who speak in madness."

"Of course not," Nici said, and looked away.

"You are angry."

"Not angry. Just... unsurprised." He looked around, and then stood up. "I wish to walk." He had adopted this affectation of nobles, to walk simply to walk, without going any particular place. Ishta'eth thought it was useful he was seen by their army, and encouraged it.

Nici stood, and Ishta'eth stood too.

"I wish to be alone," Nici said.

"Never again."

"I wish to be guarded by someone other than you."

"As I said. It cannot be."

"I wish you not to speak."

She nodded, and seemed unconcerned. "Of course."

And she followed a few paces away, and did not speak again until he spoke to her, more than an hour later.

*

Nici learned more of politics, enough to see how Ishta'eth infuriated their allies. She berated and bullied, and in the end, to get her way, often announced she would remember any who would not stand with her, and consider them foes, and usually then the room became silent.

"I am the law," she said often, even while Nici was there, at her side.

Once, someone had said, "The emperor is the law. Let him decide."

"The emperor is of the law," Ishta'eth said. "And bound by the law, but I am the law. I will decide."

That seemed to settle it for her. Nici watched quietly, and thought on that, and wondered. Ishta'eth always had her way, in the end, about every little thing. The roads to take, the fodder rations, and everything else. Nici wasn't sure it was the best way to manage their army.

"You are a terrible politician," he told her after one such meeting. "You should let them talk. It would allow them to keep their pride."

She looked pleased, as if Nici had learned well, but said, dismissively, "I am a soldier, not a politician."

"You are a soldier?" Nici said, surprised. He had been around many soldiers now, and understood their way. Obedient and steady and utterly unlike her. "I cannot imagine you ever following another's order."

Slowly, she grinned. "Over time I have become..."

"Worse?"

"More myself. But once I was a soldier as you mean."

"Did you actually stand when a superior walked into a room?"

"Of course," she said. "More myself." She turned over a map, to end the conversation. "Now, to this..."

*

They fought their way across the plain. They had full battles now, mighty engagements of horsemen and catapults and magic-throwers. Each took time. Millions died. All the world was here for this, to stand with them or stop them. Ishta'eth seemed not to care. She was calm, and confident, and took for granted she would win. She was a masterful general and an accomplished warrior and really, there was really no question that she would win, and bring her army to the imperial palace.

In a castle a half-month from their destination, Nici sat with Ishta'eth in the now-dead lord's private rooms.

At times, when Ishta'eth was thinking or bored, she dragged her true-sword along the floor, letting the tip scrape and rattle on flagstones.

"You should not do that," Nici said. "You will blunt the blade."

"There is nothing in this world can blunt that blade."

"Oh."

She turned and looked behind herself, at the floor. There were scratches in the stone, dozens, where she been walking. She seemed surprised.

"Perhaps you should not damage the floors," Nici said. "For the sake of the lord we one day install here."

"I should not," Ishta'eth said. "It is unwise. Was a time all trembled if I had cut the floor too much after a discussion. It is a habit of mine, well known. I should not reveal my thoughts so." She cut her thumb, neatly, and then put the sword away. She inclined her head slightly. "I thank you for the lesson, my emperor."

Nici looked at her. "You are mocking me."

She seemed surprised. "Of course not."

Silence for a time. "What must I do at the palace?" Nici said suddenly. It was close now. He had been dwelling on it. He expected a test, a challenge, something momentous and worth what would take place.

"Very little," Ishta'eth said. "Stand within. Claim your throne."

"That's all?"

"Stand within, claim your throne, and fail to be killed by me."

Nici grinned.

*

It took another month, and half a million lives, to cross the final fifty leagues, but in time it was done and they stood at the last hurdle.

"This is it," Ishta'eth said. "The last of them. In two days this shall be over."

They stood atop a hill, looking out across a valley. In the valley, beyond a river, was the imperial palace. Between it and them were two armies and what seemed like half the peoples of the world.

Both armies were preparing for dawn. Scouts were clashing, establishing lines, and fire was already being cast into the air. Men were dying out there, in the darkness, but from where Ishta'eth and Nici stood it was a quiet, still night.

"You're that sure of the outcome?" Nici said. "It's a large force against us. Larger than any yet."

"Of course I am sure," she said, almost irritably. "This is the last. We outnumber them. And we are better positioned."

"You planned it so?"

She nodded. "All the weeks, all the delays. The recent hurry. To bring us here, in this formation, at this precise time."

"You're certain?" Nici said, nervous.

"There will be blood today," Ishta'eth said. "A lot of blood. But I am certain of the outcome."

Nici looked at her. "It is that simple?"

"It is. We have me. They have but men."

Nici nodded. They stood there for a time and pinpricks of light winked out in the distance as more men died.

"There is one other thing," Ishta'eth said. "I am to have our child."

Nici was surprised. "How could that happen?"

He thought she smiled. "The usual way."

"You aren't human."

"Human enough."

"What will it be?"

"Half my kind. Half yours. What do you expect?"

"A warrior like you?"

"If she is trained."

"Immortal?"

Ishta'eth nodded.

"An immortal Kereshin demon-emperor," Nici said.

"Is it not a glorious thing?"

Nici looked at her and understood that she thought it was.

"How will people react?"

Ishta'eth shrugged. "It matters not. There is one other thing. When I give birth, I will die."

Nici didn't understand. "Why..."

"It is the way of it. For my kind, childbirth is fatal. There can only be a given number of us in the world. When one dies, another emerges. And when one is born as child, the mother dies."

"It is only half your kind," Nici said, for want of anything else.

"That is enough."

"You cannot," Nici said, a little desperately. "I need you."

"It is too late."

A magic-thrower spat blue fire, and Ishta'eth pointed. "Something large on our picket-line," Ishta'eth said. "They are scouting too."

Nici nodded.

"You must understand," Ishta'eth said. "For my people, this is all we have."

"What is all?"

"This. This world. It must be as it must."

"I do not understand."

"You are reborn. Or you are promised by gods that you will be. Here or there or somewhere."

"So some believe. You do not."

"The promise is there. My kind are not made that promise. This is all we have. This one long moment. Understand our daughter will be the same."

"And emperor."

"Indeed."

"I love you."

"Of course. That was my intent."

"When?" Nici said at last. "When will this happen?"

"A half year. Enough time for this. Enough time to make the world accept a demon-emperor."

"I cannot rule alone," he said, and Ishta'eth ignored him.

"I cannot," he said again.

"The time without an emperor was terrible," Ishta'eth said. "It cannot happen again."

Nici looked at her and realized why she did this. Not for power, because she already had that, but to keep the empire safe. She had been freed of custom by the empire's fall, and was able to make it over, to make it better.

He wondered how long she had planned this. How far back she had prepared for this moment.

He wondered if the empire had fallen as part of some plan of hers to make it better.

He was angry, and trapped, but knew it would all happen as she wished. In hours, this battle would be won, and in months the world would be made to accept Ishta'eth's imperial child, because that was how she wished it to be. In his heart, Nici did not doubt it either. Her child would rule, and she would die, and Nici could not stop it.

"Is it worth it?" Nici said. "How this will end for you."

"Of course," Ishta'eth said. "It is as it must be."

Nici had no idea what to say to that.

He stood and waited with her, and dawn light became grey, and he saw the palace for the first time, the home of his family since time began.

There was to be a battle today, and after that he would be god-made-man, and rule the world. And after that Ishta'eth would die, and he would miss her, and in time his child would rule after him, forever.

"I will be the last of my kind to rule," he said. "It is a strange thought."

"No stranger than a peasant boy becoming emperor."

"No," Nici said. "No, I suppose not."

A silence.

"I will miss you," Nici said. "Despite all you have done."

For a moment she took his hand.

Then a roar from below, a shiver of movement in the grey dawn light.

"Look," Ishta'eth said. "It begins."

She stood there, calm and unconcerned, and looked out upon the death she had made for millions, and smiled, Nici thought, at the perfect peace it was about to bring.

# # #

# The Prince of Fey

They met in the middle of the valley, as they had since time began. All around, tens of thousands lay dead and dying, their bodies heaped, their limbs entwined, their wings severed and scattered across the bloody grass. Prince Ribeag ignored the screams and groans, as he ignored his sister's crows. He was long used to it. He poked at something bloody on the ground, an ear perhaps, poked with his spear then flicked it away. He looked around. His armor, and that of his family and people, was brilliant white. A thousand paces away, walking nearer, the Tn'trith were the black of night, their helms and capes billowing in the breeze. The ground was red underfoot. It surprised Ribeag that the grass did not simply die from all the blood that was spilled in this place, year after year.

"Why is it always here?" he said.

His cousin, Bahn, looked at him. Bahn the fair, the golden, commander of the left wing. "Cousin?"

"Why here? Why do we always fight here? It's a terrible place for it. No value in the terrain."

"It is Caer Trador, the Field of Blood."

"And why, my royal cousin, is that so? Why must we fight here?"

Bahn shrugged. His wings flexed with his shoulders. His mount, a grey mouse, stirred beneath him. "May as well ask why Tr'nah and Tn'trith fight at all."

"Why do we fight at all?"

"Cousin..." Bahn sounded uncomfortable.

Ribeag held up his hand, "Never mind."

He looked around, at blood and death and scorched dirt where the sky-fire hurlers had tried and failed, explosively, as they always did.

"How many did we lose this day?" he asked.

"Our uncle G'nahe, our cousins Treyn and Torou, a few among the household."

Ribeag looked at a thousand dying men and a thousand dying women and wondered how his cousin could be such a fool. "And how many of those who do not matter gave their lives?"

Bahn shrugged, flexed again. He did that with an arrogant ease that had always annoyed Ribeag, who was of the less ancient, noble, and elegant – yet more powerful – branch of the family.

"Do not shrug, royal cousin," Ribeag said sharply. "Go and find out."

Bahn looked at him for a moment, surprised, nodded, and slapped his palm to his chest gravely, and rode across to the nearest group of officers.

Ribeag watched Bahn speak. The dark Tn'trith were closer now, their ravens with them, flocking, pecking and cawing at the dead. And some of the not-so-dead.

"You," Ribeag called to one of their heralds, waiting nearby. "Go tell your masters to dismiss their birds. Leave the dead in peace."

The herald looked at him, puzzled. Traditions wore heavily on all of them, Ribeag thought. It made even the thought of something new bemusing.

"Or shall I use your tongue as a quill and your wings as a parchment and tell them myself?" Ribeag said. "Go."

The herald mounted his rat and went.

"Make haste," Ribeag shouted, and watched the herald ride. To one of the guard, nearby, he said, "Find an archer and kill that man if his steed drops below a run between here and there."

"Sire," Bahn said at his side. "I have our casualties."

"Good."

Bahn sensed his mood and waited, and it amused Ribeag to remind Bahn of his place. One did not tell a Prince of the Tr'nah a piece of news he had not expressly asked to hear, for it implied he did not have his own ways of finding out.

"Do you ever find it odd," Ribeag said, "that I stand here and you stand there and for all that you resent me, it could never have been any other way?"

"It could have," Bahn said. "Once."

Bahn spoke softly, gently, and Ribeag almost decided to pretend not to hear. Then he said, "What was that?"

Bahn was brave. A fool, an arrogant clot, but brave. "I said that it could have been different once, sire."

Ribeag looked at him and smiled and saw the hate in Bahn's eyes. Ribeag wanted that hate. It was a fire that kept Bahn alive. So many of their kind became plump and satisfied and shriveled to husks in their beds.

Bahn could not raise a hand against Ribeag, could not even indirectly plot, once his oath was given. That was an endless frustration to him. Since nothing angered Bahn more than Ribeag's obliviousness to his hatred, Ribeag took some care to make his obliviousness clear. And his contempt for the old ways and old customs that Bahn lived by and which Ribeag alone could alter at will.

"Why is it we fight on our feet when we have perfectly good wings?" Ribeag said. "I wonder if I ought to change that. We ride butterflies and sparrows to joyous celebrations, and rats and mice to war. Why is that?"

"It is how it has always been done."

"And perhaps it is time that changed. We have wings, after all."

"And so do the dark Tn'trith."

"But they are fat and lazy and no doubt fail to exercise. Or so my advisors tell me."

"Of course."

"So no doubt our men could out-fly them should they wish."

"No doubt."

"What think you, cousin? Should I make this change? I have the Tn'trith princeling almost here, I could tell him of my decision right now."

"That would be unwise, sire."

Ribeag looked up. That was a careful insult. A Tr'nah prince was never unwise. He may be uninformed by underlings, or knowledgeable in a manner that was unclear to those beneath him, but he was never unwise. And Bahn knew it too.

"I should have you beheaded," Ribeag said. "Or dewinged."

"If my prince wishes it."

Ribeag stood there, thinking, and after a moment Bahn drew a slow breath. That was enough.

"There are times when I wish it," Ribeag said. "So I wonder why I do not?"

"What would a battle be, sire, without our wit afterwards?"

"Yes," Ribeag said. "That must be it."

He looked at Bahn and smiled, and let Bahn know he would keep his wings another day. Bahn nodded and bowed, but stayed close. He must stay close. He was still waiting to deliver the report of casualties he had been sent to collect like a common errand boy. It was unthinkable to speak without permission, but it was equally impossible to walk away without having fulfilled his task.

Ribeag waited, amused to make Bahn suffer.

He looked out toward the Tn'trith. The herald he had sent had reached their main body. He was dismounting a dozen paces from his masters in order to crawl forward, prostate. A nearby guardsman nodded. An archer, further off, began to draw his bow. Ribeag remembered his order. The herald had dropped below a run before he accomplished his errand.

It was this kind of literalism that held all of then back. Not that Ribeag didn't encourage it, at times requiring obedience to the letter on a whim.

"Leave him," Ribeag said to the archer, and watched the herald lie, face down, in the blood and dead, until the Tn'trith general chose to notice him. He noticed quickly, by Tn'trith standards. He must assume the message carried weight. In a few minutes the ravens croaked and flapped into the air and went back towards the Tn'trith camp.

"Tell me of the dead, cousin," Ribeag said.

"Fourscore thousand of ours dead, an even hundred of theirs. Twice that injured among either side." Bahn hesitated, and Ribeag knew what was coming. Traditionalists such as Bahn, the new, young traditionalists, always hesitated before they spoke of such things. It was an affectation, a horror they had only decided to feel a year or two ago that had become the fashion. "And ten thousand of ours who will never fly again."

"At least they live," Ribeag said.

"After a manner. And sire," Bahn looked past Ribeag. "Your sister comes."

Ribeag swore.

The women of his family were warriors before queens, and always had been, but Aluese was the worst any could remember. She eschewed the glinting, shimmering, moonlight armor he and Bahn and all the others wore. She had no need of it. She had a living armor, her companions. A hundred would die before she suffered a scratch. She wandered the battlefield in her robes, her skin glinting, her hair flowing free like starlit milk, her limbs and wings a glorious array of death. She was covered in blood, from head to wingtip to toe. Not just splattered pink, as Ribeag and Bahn and most around them were, the pink of carelessly cutting a man's throat in battle. Aluese was dripping crimson red. It dried in her hair and set thick between her breasts, it stained her lips and her hands and splashed up her legs to the knee. The gossamer of her wings dripped, was so clotted she would have been unable to fly, should she wish to, but like Bahn she disdained such things.

She walked forward and bowed elaborately, then kissed Ribeag's mouth, kissed and writhed and moaned. Her passion was already aroused. In an hour or two the survivors of her set would begin an orgy that would last until the next dawn. Her clothes were torn and the blood on her body hot and Ribeag had lain with her enough to know how very, very good she was. But those were the old ways, and they no longer did things like that so obviously in front of the commoners. The new gods disapproved, apparently.

Ribeag accepted her kiss, though. It was expedient. Her companions watched, approving. She kissed and writhed and smeared Tn'trith blood on Ribeag, then licked it from his face and laughed and said, "So, brother, again we are alive."

"We are."

"And our blood are not."

"For that I thank you."

"I do it for you, my brother prince, to spare you the effort of raising your royal arm against your dark enemies."

"And for that I thank you also." Ribeag said, "However..." And he looked towards the approaching Tn'trith.

She laughed. Her companions laughed. She attracted others like herself, the reckless bloody few who seemed to deplore life. Every battle day she lost four-fifths of her circle, most slain without purpose by a stray arrow or unheeded blow. And those who survived were lean and ferocious and dangerous, among the most lethal troops the Tr'nah had to field. Even Ribeag feared them a little, and Bahn and the Tn'trith most certainly did.

"Their blood is richer than our own, brother dear. Did you know that?"

"You have told me this before," Ribeag said. "Now is not the time to discuss it."

"They cannot hear me."

"They hear as well as we do."

"Exactly my point. I cannot hear them."

Her companions laughed. They were drinking already, Ribeag noticed. Some were drunk. On surviving, and on mead. Some were beginning to fondle others. One of the women, one Ribeag recognized from other days – she had a scar down her cheek and was missing the tip of one wing – smiled his way, had one of her hands on herself and the other on a youth next to her. He looked down, found another piece of someone on the ground, prodded that now. A finger. He hadn't seen it earlier, and wondered if it had dropped from Aluese somehow. There was nowhere in her clothing it could have fallen from, but it might have stuck to her skin. That had been known to happen.

"Do you know how I know I cannot hear them, royal brother?" Aluese asked.

"I imagine you will tell me."

"Because if I could, then seeing me here, they would whisper and squeak how unhappy they were."

"Indeed," Ribeag said. "I imagine they will do so very soon. I imagine they are planning it even now."

Aluese smiled at that. There were times when there was almost affection between them.

"I don't suppose you would consider standing somewhere else?" Ribeag said.

"I stand where I wish. It is my field as much as yours, brother. I won it also."

"Yes," Ribeag said. "It is."

"My kingdom, too."

"Indeed."

She looked at him and licked the blood from her lips. "Would you care to exercise your rights over me, brother? I feel a certain tingling of the blood."

"Not now, thank you, sister."

"It was the way in olden days."

"They are called old for a reason."

"And yet you and cousin Bahn and all else around are admiring my attire."

"Yes," Ribeag said. "Of that, dear sister. You should wear armor."

"Twas done this way in the olden days."

"And now we have armor," Ribeag said, and prodded the stray finger on the ground a little more. "So perhaps it should be used."

"I prefer to be free."

"Indeed then. Never mind."

"But you had to ask."

"I did."

Aluese looked around. Looked at the Tn'trith, closer, but still a ways away.

"Do you know," she said, in the voice she used at parties, to reveal something both odd and thrilling. "That in this world they find us fetching and adorable."

"We are smaller than they."

"But still. They tell stories of us to their children."

"So I am told."

"Their children. I would not speak of Tn'trith to my own children, had I any. That's disgusting."

"It is fortunate the matter has yet to arise."

"Pixies, they call us. Fairies."

"Sometimes gods and angels."

She laughed, made a span with her fingers, close together. "But only when they think we are large. When they see us very, very close."

Ribeag nodded, becoming bored. It did not matter. The people of this world could not see the battlefield, or know of its works. Ribeag looked around. The field of blood had been built up over the centuries. Figures loomed, like giants, nearby, lumbering about their works. These people had lost their magic centuries ago. Had given it up. Now they were enslaved and did not know Tn'trith and Tr'nah fought among their feet for their world, or that Ribeag had saved them from the slavery of the Tn'trith, once again.

"Sometimes we capture one and eat his dreams and then he becomes mad," Aluese said.

Ribeag nodded, distracted. The subject was distasteful, but her companions did, and Ribeag was powerless to prevent it. "Indeed," he said.

Aluese was becoming bored. She looked at Bahn, and smiled, which meant he was about to suffer. "Cousin Bahn," she said. "Have you counted for my brother? The dead commoners?"

Bahn stirred, stretched his wings, glanced at Ribeag and awaited his nod before answering. "Indeed I have, cousin."

"Like a clerk. Like a counting creature. Something grey."

"As you say, cousin."

There was an edge to his voice that made her companions stir. Some looked over, and stepped a little closer. They had killed before, like a pack, upon perceiving an insult to her. Killed noblemen as well as others. Especially now, after battle, when lusts were high and Ribeag, or whoever he chose to attend the family honor, would be unlikely to hunt down the culprits.

"How many did we lose today, cousin? And how many did they?"

Bahn looked at Ribeag, and smiled, and took his little jab at brother as well as sister. "I forget, cousin. Twas merely commoners, after all."

Aluese looked back at her companions to make her jest. "And not even a very good counting creature, after all."

They laughed.

"No wonder your father was fed to the Tn'trith," Aluese said. "And mine became emperor."

Ribeag looked up, interested again. These two prodded often, and he had never quite decided if their jibes hid hatred or real affection. Not that the latter would help Bahn if her companions chose to protect her, and not that she would probably care. Ribeag was a little curious to see how Bahn responded. The Tn'trith were still walking. They would be a while yet. There was time to be amused.

Bahn was deciding how to react. He was a political enough creature to decide, not to simply be angry. He needed to take some care. He was away from his own men, all but a captain or two. He ought to be safe, among Ribeag's royal guard – and would be safe, in the sense his murder would be punished instantly – but there were occasions when Aluese's companions forgot details such as that.

Ribeag considered a lesson. To Aluese as much as her friends, and to Bahn, and the Tn'trith too, watching as they walked closer. All needed to remember who Ribeag was, and why he was here, and what those ancients sworn of his office could do.

Bahn decided, and smiled tightly. "As you say, royal cousin."

"Whatever is wrong, cousin," Aluese said. She went over to him, stood close, breathing on his cheek as she had to Ribeag. Her companions walked with her.

Bahn watched, and flexed his wings, a little agitated.

Aluese noticed, and smiled. "You seem nervous," she said. "Are you..."

"Stop," Ribeag said suddenly. "Stop now."

Aluese's words were about to become an accusation of cowardice, and such an accusation could start a civil war.

Everyone looked to Ribeag. Some stopped. A few did not. One black-haired youth kept moving. He smiled at Ribeag, an offence for which his eyes would be put out if he remained alive in a few moments more. Ribeag understood why. The black-haired youth smiled because with hair like that he would have been called a half-bred Tn'trith bastard all his life and asked if his mother was a whore. It was a shame, that for that he would die, but all had to die for something.

Ribeag had meant Aluese to stop, and as soon as he had spoken he realized it had the sound of an instruction to all not to move. And as all now had taken stillness as Ribeag's intent, that was what his command must be. Those who were obeying, they made it so.

Most were obeying. A few, especially the black-haired youth, were not.

"Captain," Ribeag said. "Kill them all. Except the one who is missing the tip of her wing. Spare her."

Aluese's companions looked up, some looked horrified, and some, especially the black-haired youth, looked happy. Ribeag was still watching that one, and saw joy on his face. As if he really thought he could fight the royal houseguard and live.

"Brother," Aluese said. "Please." But by then all but one of her companions were dead.

Those who had never seen the houseguard fight forgot what it was they were. In battle, when they fought, they were not, strictly speaking, alive. They were given orders, which they carried out, and matters of time and substance and impossibility were immaterial. Shadows flitted among Aluese's companions, and flesh was rent, and a few more dozens were added to the dead on the field.

The girl with the missing wingtip was dragged to Ribeag by her hair. Aluese called her name, but Ribeag did not catch it.

"Strip her," Ribeag said. "Flog her. She may keep her eyes and wings and tongue."

"Brother," Aluese said, sounding petulant, "She is a noblewoman."

"Your men may have her," Ribeag said. "All of them, and when they are done you may return her to my sister."

It would be unpleasant, even for one accustomed to Aluese's orgies. Ribeag suspected many of the guard would not have her, would find others in the army to do their raping for them. The guard's reputation for cruelty was useful, and needed to be known to the world, even if the guard had a certain distaste for earning it. Ribeag did not care, the girl would be would be returned to her sister broken and used, and it would seem to have happened.

"Brother," Aluese said.

"Bahn is my flag captain, sister, and my cousin. Play games with him and you will be punished."

Bahn stirred, but saw Ribeag's mood and wisely held his tongue.

"Well done," Ribeag told him coldly. "Had you used it, you would have lost it."

Bahn should not think he had been favored here in some way.

"Brother," Aluese said. "Please. Flog her if you must, but not the rest. She is special to me."

"And you must learn to be civil when matters of the realm are afoot." He glanced pointedly at the Tn'trith, now close, watching.

"Then have your monsters punish me."

Ribeag glanced at her and decided she was almost serious. He laughed, but decided a further lesson was needed if she did not fear for what she had offered. "Captain, wait. When you are done chain the girl before my tent. My court shall look upon your efforts. My sister may claim her back from me there."

They dragged the girl with the missing wingtip away. She tried to look defiant, but really just looked scared and young and sick with worry at what was to be done to her.

Ribeag stood there for a time, looking up at the sky, until the Tn'trith general cleared his throat. Ribeag could have taken offence, since the Tn'trith was a general and not a prince, but he was tired of war for the day. He pretended not to hear. Ribeag saw these Tn'trith so often they were almost friends. They drank together after the battles. He decided he was ready, and greeted them, spoke to them by name, and was aware of both Bahn's and his sister's disapproval as he did. They began the necessary ceremonies to end a battle without acknowledging that anyone had won or lost.

*

The girl with the missing wingtip was brought to Ribeag halfway through the banquet. The crowd watched, a little quieter. Some were sympathetic, perhaps, as she was carried into the throng and chained before Ribeag. She was cut and bruised and battered. Some of that may have been the battle, but not all. She had fought his guards. There was fresh blood on her mouth and wrists and ankles, where she had tugged at her chains.

That was done with now. Her defiance was gone. She looked at the floor, watched her own feet, and was passive. For now at least, she was no longer a warrior. Aluese stood and rushed over, brought watered mead to wash the girl's cuts and tore a strip from her gown to bathe the wounds. The girl looked at her, and bit her lip, and started to slowly sob and Ribeag wondered what was between the two of them.

"Sister," he called, "This is undignified."

Aluese ignored him.

"Sister."

She spat, and the room went still. Ribeag knew why. They hoped to see a princess of the royal blood raped before them. Ribeag was tempted, had been tempted before, but it would be a disaster. The attempt would cause a slaughter. Fools would rush to defend her, and rush to join in, and once news of it was out, it would doubtless cause a war. Aluese was still a princess, and a lord in her own right with equal standing to Ribeag, and her people would not stand to see her treated so.

"Sister," Ribeag said again, his voice hard, and reluctantly, very slowly, Aluese stood and came over.

"You need but ask," Ribeag said. "To have her back."

Aluese did not answer.

"Well?" Ribeag said, expecting his sister to walk away.

She did not. She was considering it. That was interesting in itself. Aluese cared for nothing and no-one in the world except herself. She encouraged mortal men to worship her as a goddess, and led her companions to their deaths without a concern, protected by her rank. She cared for no-one, but she considered this, considered the little humiliation Ribeag demanded, and then slowly nodded.

"Very well," she said. "May I have her please, royal brother?"

"Of course," Ribeag said. "Take her." And watched as Aluese had the girl unshackled, and carried away.

He was curious, and deeply puzzled, and almost troubled by this new side to his sister. Inconsistency in Aluese was a worrying turn. It could lead anywhere.

Ribeag noticed the Tn'trith general watching, equally puzzled himself. Ribeag wondered what the general made of this, whether the dark court would see a weakness in Ribeag, and there would be another battle sooner than Ribeag expected. Probably, he decided. The dark court had their habits too, and misunderstanding Ribeag was one of them. The old ways, the peace they had between them through the field of blood, was useful, but there were times when it was trying.

"I shall retire," Ribeag said, and stood up. The court scurried and the nobles stood and the greatest of the Tr'nah leapt to Ribeag's whim. He considered companionship, taking a few of the greater nobles' wives or husbands with him, but he refrained. He was not in the mood, was never in the mood, and he worried that rumors would begin if he was forever demanding his royal privileges and never actually using them.

*

Ribeag did not think of his sister and her dishonored companion for several weeks. He saw them once, out the window of the Acorn Palace, in a garden, Aluese leading the torn-winged girl towards a bench near a fountain in the sun. Ribeag paused and watched and reminded himself he had wondered how close they really were and had not made an effort to find out. That was a mistake, and not the kind he usually made, dealing as it did with information. It was really something he ought to know. He watched and considered, and then a clerk brought news of more Tn'trith misdeeds and the matter slipped his mind.

A few days after that, returning from a hunt, he saw them again. The hunt had gone wrong. It was not the great moonlit hunt, but a small daytime one, for crickets. A mortal's cat had seen the Tr'nah and been about to pounce, and the household guard had slain it only just in time. Then a mortal child had began to wail that the fairies had killed its pet, for some mortal children retained the sight, even though their elders did not, and on this occasion, rather than slapping the child and naming it a liar, the parents had looked around, and there was a very dead cat to make the child's words a convincing half-truth. The Tr'nah party had made an undignified retreat, and had not found a cricket, and Ribeag, although not overly dismayed, had been wondering to himself if the power of a small mortal child could be harnessed and directed toward the Tn'trith. He had been quiet as they returned to the Oak Gate, considering how, and Aluese had been standing waiting as they dismounted.

"What is it, sister?" Ribeag snapped, handing his mouse's reins to a page. "I am not in the mood."

"It is Dilee."

He looked at her and truly did not know. "Who is Dilee?"

"The woman you had raped and nearly murdered."

"I have thousands raped and entirely murdered, sister. You will have to be specific."

She looked at him, cold and furious.

"Tens of thousands," Ribeag said. "Even though I gather I ought, I truly do not know."

"My companion. From the day of the battle."

Ribeag stood there.

"The most recent battle. The one you had flogged."

"Oh. What of her?"

"I will not forgive you, that is all."

"Of course not." Ribeag was becoming impatient. "Well then, farewell."

Aluese nodded and made her bow. "Farewell, royal brother."

"Indeed," Ribeag said, and watched her go. He really ought to find out more, he decided. He was known as the prince of secrets and information and cleverness, and it was unforgivable this eluded him under his own nose.

But a clerk brought a message that the Sunrise Emperor wished to see both him and the generals of the Tn'trith, and although the Sunrise Emperor was the sort of formality Ribeag wished they could do without, the doing without was not possible, so he made his preparations and put on his formal attire and gathered his guard again and departed. And predictably, the Emperor wished to settle some matter of policy dispute, which would have no doubt eventually led to another battle and another hundred thousand dead, but which Ribeag had not even begun to plan for, so he was outmaneuvered on that matter also. He thought it was the same general who had fought that day at the battle, but many of the dark ones were outwardly the same – and inwardly too, for that matter – so he could not be sure. He wondered if it was some play to make use of his perceived distraction, and decided it probably was.

Not a battle, at least, so he supposed that was a favorable outcome.

*

Ribeag sat in a chair, in his bedchamber, watching the wives of two minor noblemen pleasure one another, and a female Tn'trith slave, with their mouths. It was perverted, most Tr'nah would not approve, but he liked the contrast of light skin and dark on one another. The noblewomen were happy – their perversion was their prince's bidding, not their own and without the slave girl they would pleasure one another anyway – and the slave girl seemed happy enough too.

He liked these little tableaus, mostly because he liked ordering the women not to speak of what occurred and thus driving their husbands into furies of repressed jealous curiosity. It entertained him, but he was bored.

"I grow bored," he announced to the room, but none of the three women seemed to hear.

He sipped his wine. It was precious, harvested from rare grapes somewhere he forgot and aged in ways he cared little about, and it was dull, lifeless. He threw the goblet against the wall, so it bounced and rang, just to see what the women would do. As it happened, they ignored him.

"Call my cousin Bahn," he shouted, to no-one particular, and after a while there was a knock at the door.

"Come," Ribeag shouted.

"My prince," Bahn said, entering, and then saw the bed. "Oh."

"You have something to say, cousin?"

"Nothing, my prince.

"Please, cousin, tell me of your mind. It may relieve my boredom."

"Does Lord Gataan know where his wife is? And... Lord Dee?"

"Of course they know," Ribeag snapped. "I sent the summons to their houses."

"Ah. My prince..."

"Ask."

"How many women of the court have you used in this way?"

"Hundreds." Ribeag shrugged, becoming bored again. Why talk of corruption when you can force any to do your darkest will. "Most of them."

"And the noblemen...?"

"In their shame, none speak of it to the others, so few realize how widespread my entertaining is. It amuses me to learn when they will let their feelings of being unmanned overcome their common sense and rise against me."

"We cannot rise against you, my prince. It is certain death."

"Of course it is, you fool, but it would amuse me if they tried."

"Indeed, my prince."

"You should marry, cousin. Then I could have your wife join me too."

"It would be, ah, an honor, my prince."

"Indeed. I am bored."

"Perhaps a hunt?"

"Not a hunt."

"More wine? These," he glanced at the bed, "To do something different?"

"Not that. Wine bores me. They bore me. Battle bores me. The hunt bores me to a breathtaking degree."

Bahn remained silent.

"I am corrupt, cousin. I am stained."

"Indeed, sire."

"I have run out of things to sample."

"I have heard tell of this complaint, sire."

"I have done everything imaginable just to see if it amused me."

"And did it, sire?"

"No. Eventually, no."

"The burden of rule, sire."

"I should have you gutted, Bahn. I would be curious to see if you squealed."

"I would think not, sire."

"I think not too, which I why I haven't done it. I cannot imagine anything more dull than having you tortured and you, throughout, grinning at me with that inane grin."

"My prince would honor me with his presence."

Ribeag overturned a table. Bahn didn't flinch, although the slave girl did and the two noblewomen looked over. Ribeag waved at them, said, "Continue."

There was silence for a moment.

"I thought I might go out into the world."

"Which world?"

"The world, cousin. The mortal world."

Bahn considered. "That seems... unwise."

"But yet, I think I shall..."

One of the noblewomen began to climax. Her shrieks were loud. They both fell silent while she did, and watched. Her noises ceased, her wings became still, and she went back to her work with a willing mouth.

"The emperor...?" Bahn said, as if they had not been interrupted.

"I shall have someone tell it after I am gone."

"The kingdom."

"Yes, I wished to speak to you of that. Would you care to wed my sister?"

"My prince?"

"Oh don't act the fool, Bahn. It has occurred to you. Marry her, become regent, begone with me and my whims and trying ways. At least for a time."

"Sire, I do not think your sister would wed me. And it is not something you can force her into, after all."

"Indeed." Any other woman he could, not one of equal rank to his own. "We could reason with her."

"I do not think..."

"But try we shall." Ribeag raised his voice again. "Fetch my sister."

"Sire...?"

Ribeag waved him to silence, and they both watched the women writhe.

Aluese arrived, swept into the room, saw the women and stopped and smiled. "My brother," she said. "How thoughtful. For me?"

Ribeag decided to assume she was jesting.

"Would you marry Bahn if I asked it?'

Aluese considered that for a while. She had Ribeag's mind, but usually chose not to use it. She thought, and then said, "Why?"

"Because I asked it."

"But why?"

"To make him regent."

"I can be regent, should you wish."

"You are mad. Handing you the throne would cause a civil war."

"As would, no doubt, deposing me."

"Indeed."

"No," Aluese said. "I think not. He may woo me if he wishes, but I think not. Shall I join your women in your bed?"

Ribeag shook his head and waved her away.

Bahn watched her go. "A concession, my prince. More than I had thought."

"Indeed."

Aluese's consent that Bahn court her put things on the slightest part of a formal footing. It meant Bahn committed neither treason nor impropriety with his advances.

"May I suggest, my prince, that if you are bored we attempt to defeat the dark ones. Rather than flee into the world."

"I could," Ribeag said. "But then life would be even more dull."

"But you could do it. If you wished."

"Indeed."

"They say you have the cleverest mind in a thousand years."

"So clever, cousin, that idle flattery will not coerce me into winning this pitiful war for you."

Bahn shrugged.

Ribeag sighed. "I could defeat them, cousin. I worked out how long ago. But where is the interest in it, now that I know how it will go in my imagination?"

"How, sire... Just for curiosity?"

"Don't be a fool cousin. I tell you, and then you will do it."

"I am curious, is all. I wish to learn."

Ribeag snorted.

"I swear not."

"Or tell someone who has not sworn, so they may."

"I will speak of it to no-one."

"Or write it down," Ribeag said.

Bahn fell silent, and appeared to be thinking. More of the nobility were stupid. Bahn had perhaps half Aluese's cunning.

"If you wish to try, cousin," Ribeag said. "All you need to do is engage with the magic women. Have them create a spell that strikes the dark ones whenever a particular condition is met, say someone says a particular phrase, then have some someones say it. Over and over."

"But... how?"

"That is the clever bit, cousin. You work it out. What a magnificent courting gift for my dear sister. The final defeat of our age-old enemies."

"It seems dishonorable, though. Winning through trickery and magic."

"Indeed. And yet, I am still bored."

"You could...."

Ribeag threw a goblet at him, and Bahn fell silent.

"Do you not understand, you fool?" Ribeag said. "I can know what will happen before it does. Simply by thinking about it, by thinking it through. Any time I think about it. And apparently I am the only one who can. The only way I can remain interested is to avoiding thinking, and then all these schemes and plots these pitiful fools concoct surprise me. Momentarily."

Bahn seemed unsure what to say. In the end he said, "I am sorry, my prince."

"Indeed." Ribeag said. "My boredom is not your concern. Go woo my sister, and tell me how it goes."

Bahn left.

"Use your imaginations, my ladies." Ribeag said. "I wish to view something far more perverse."

They considered, then began fetching appendages and straps and arranging the slave girl to be taken twice at once.

"Better," Ribeag said, and began to take an interest. Then one of them began flogging the slave girl while she had her, and the other cut the slave's throat, and Ribeag was bored again. He summoned the guards and said. "Flog these two and return them to their husbands."

The two noblewomen began to shriek.

"For their lack of imagination," he added, for their sakes.

"And somebody clean the bed. I do not wish to sleep in Tn'trith blood."

*

In desperation, Ribeag decided to go on a quest. He had no idea what to quest for, but as a child, like all children, he had heard tales of returning lost swords to their owners and mighty deeds. He went down to the treasury and rummaged around, finding rings, and spears, and swords. He held one up, and said to a clerk, "What does this do?"

The clerk was hesitant, understandably so. The prince acting strangely, in the mood he was in, was dangerous to those nearby. "Cuts, sire?"

"Is it magical?"

"Not as far as I know, sire."

"What do we have that is?"

They offered rings, cups, a cloth that made things disappear. He put a ring in his palm, and bounced it.

"Is this powerful?"

They called an old man, the senior clerk. "Very, sire."

"What would happen if I threw it in a volcano?"

"Why would you do that, sire?"

Ribeag looked at him for a moment, and the old clerk swallowed. Ribeag decided sages were useful and should be kept around. "To see what would happen."

"I imagine it would melt, sire."

"Oh. That's rather dull."

"I suppose it might explode, too, sire."

"Ah, now that is more interesting. How big an explosion?"

"Well... rather larger than the mountain, I would imagine, sire."

"That sounds more like it," Ribeag said and slipped the ring into his pocket. He went and called for Bahn.

"I think I will kill a dragon," Ribeag said.

"What for, sire?"

"Why not? Because it's there."

"What did the beast do?"

"What has anyone done?"

"A point, sire. But a dragon?"

"They're a nuisance, are they not? Cause fires and so on. And it's what one does, is it not? Slaughtering dragons."

"Still... I ought to go tell the heralds. We need to tell the dark ones we will be moving the army, but not against them."

Ribeag waved that away. "Don't bother. I won't take the army. Just me."

"Alone, sire?"

"And my household, of course."

"Indeed, sire."

"Find me a dragon."

"Sire."

It took two days to locate the dragon, and another to round up enough magicians to transport the court there. Ribeag went and looked and saw the beast all strutting and roaring fire. It noticed him, breathed in his direction, but caused him no ill. It was evening, so he decided to wait until morning so the court might have a better view. The dragon prowled their perimeter all night and caused some of the mounts a little bother.

In the morning Ribeag went and looked at it again, then decided it had best be done.

"Captain," he called. "See to that thing for me, would you."

Shadows flitted. The dragon was eviscerated, fell on its side, and croaked a little smoke.

The court clapped politely.

"That was rather dull," Ribeag said. "All right, pack up and let us go home. Bahn, that was rather dull. Why did you not warn me it was not worth the trouble?"

"I believe one usually does the deed in person, sire." Bahn said.

"One does, cousin, but be very careful what the next words out your mouth are, or you may find yourself without a face to smile from."

"Well done, sire, it was a noble deed."

"Thank you, cousin, I rather thought so. How are things with my royal sister?"

"I will let you know when there is something to tell, sire."

"Very good then."

*

Ribeag decided all there was for it was to go out into the world of mortals. He was longing to leave, but certain matters got in the way. He decided to push Bahn along.

He summoned his sister and demanded to know why she would not marry Bahn.

"Because I will not," Aluese said, petulant and bored herself.

"Captain," he said, "Bring me my sister's companion, the one we had flogged, with the damaged wing."

Aluese looked at him, seemed a little sad.

"Let us see how much you care for this woman, sister."

"I care for her, brother."

"Good."

The led the girl with the damaged wing in. She was scared, was looking around nervously. She saw Aluese and her gaze settled there. Ribeag thought that was interesting.

"Chain her, flog her," Ribeag said to the room. "You know what to do."

"Brother, please. Will not you reconsider?"

"Will not you?"

Aluese looked away, at her companion. She did not answer. The girl was chained to a torch sconce, and beaten. She flinched when the rope struck, was silent otherwise.

"Why do you make her suffer?" Ribeag said.

"You are cruel, brother."

"What is she to you?"

"She is my friend, brother. That is all."

"Only that?"

"Only that. Friendship may be something you do not understand."

"I imagine not. You have no care if she is raped again?"

"I care a lot, but not for the reason you think."

"Marry Bahn or I will have it done."

"After what you did to her last time she will never lie with a man again in peace. Is that not enough?"

"Her mind is troubled?"

"Her body is broken. Your guards are not kind."

"No, I suppose not. And still you call her friend."

"I do."

"She is deformed."

"If you care about things such as that, she already was. She is a warrior."

"She was."

"She is. And what you do... Scars on her back and breaking in her womb are nothing new."

"I suppose not." Ribeag walked closer, and peered at the girl. She did seem to have a lattice of old scars, beneath the blood of the new.

"Marry Bahn."

"I will not."

"This girl will suffer."

Aluese stood there for a while, thinking. Ribeag had never seen her as thoughtful as she was where this girl was concerned. "If you wish me to," Aluese said. "Then answer my question."

"Which question?"

"As I asked when you first spoke of this. Why?"

"Ah. I am bored. Ruling displeases me. I seek a change."

"Make me regent."

"If I make you regent, our world becomes a bloodbath."

"Perhaps. But not through my will."

"No, but still it does. You will force me to do this, sister?"

She said nothing.

Ribeag peered at the girl. Her arms were above her head, her wings pinned back by their angle. Her back and legs were heavy with blood, rich and red against pale skin. The gossamer of her wings was clotted with splashes, as Aluese's had been on the day of the battle. She was breathing hard, but nothing more, no tears, no sobs, no whimpers. She was a warrior, he supposed, still, and accustomed to a little pain. She met his eye, looked back at him now. She seemed defiant, rather than afraid. He supposed pain was merely pain, after all, once those you feared inflicted it upon you.

"You are strong," he said to her.

"I am, sire," she whispered.

"And wise to answer."

Behind him, Aluese moved. She took a step or two. To draw closer, to hear what was said, Ribeag assumed.

"If my sister takes another step, restrain her."

The captain flitted closer, hissed in Ribeag's ear, "We cannot, she is of the blood royal also and we must protect her too."

"That's right," Ribeag shrugged. "Very well. Let her do as she wills."

Aluese heard. She was smiling to herself, thinking she had won something. Ribeag knew that without looking.

He looked at the chained girl, looked at her, thinking, until Aluese grew nervous again.

"You do not mind the beating," Ribeag whispered, "But what of the other? If I give you back to my men to do as they will again, and this time I tell them not to be so gentle."

Suddenly the girl's defiance was gone. She shook her head and bit her lip. Bit it again, since it was already bloody, presumably from biting down to stifle her cries as she was beaten.

"Indeed," Ribeag said. "Rape her until she begs you to stop. And begs, mind you, not just asks. Rape her. Dewing her. Put out her eyes. In that order."

The girl made a strangled sob.

"Brother..." Aluese said, her voice shaken. "I beg you."

Ribeag was surprised by that. Aluese's tone was angry, did not match the words, and yet the words had been spoken. "Wait," he said, turned and looked at Aluese. "You beg me?"

"I beg you to reconsider. Do not force my hand over this."

"I am not forcing your hand."

"You do not realize it, but you are. I will make war on you over this."

"You will make war?" Ribeag smiled a little, and looked around. Captain, is that a sufficient threat...?" There was no response, no harm befell Aluese, so Ribeag supposed not. "Make war, sister?"

"I will."

"You will challenge me for the throne. That I would freely give if only you marry Bahn?"

"A regency is not the crown. And I am not challenging you for that. I know how others see me, I know many would ally with the dark ones to overthrow me."

"Not to mention that raising a hand against me would see you dead."

"I would not raise a hand against you, you fool. That is why your pets will not harm me. They know that, even if you do not."

"Oh. Indeed. But still, a war...."

"Yes."

"Over this girl."

"Over my friend. Who I let you do terrible things to once, and will not again."

"This one is that important to you?"

"She is my friend."

"Your group do this kind of thing to each other all the time."

"We choose to. Some choose not."

"Oh," Ribeag said, actually surprised. He had been surprised more here, by this, than he had been in a year otherwise. "I had not realized," he said.

"There is a lot you assume, and a lot you do not realize, from high on your throne."

"What does that mean? I am hardly ever on my throne."

"I would harm you, but I want not your crown."

"What would this war be, if not for the crown?"

"I would fight you to a standstill, to make everything else but the war between us impossible."

"Everything."

"Your amusements, especially."

"I believe you would," Ribeag said, finally entertained. Her mind was there, when she chose to use it. Perhaps she could rule well.

"Eventually," Aluese said, "The emperor, and the other races, they would grow sick of our squabbling and force you to stop."

"Indeed," Ribeag said, pleased. "That may well be true."

"Or they may depose you."

"Or that. And you would really do this thing over this girl?"

"I would."

"Thousands will die. Hundreds of thousands. Our wars are always worse than those against the Tn'trith."

"You do not understand, brother. You wander the battlefields all maudlin and morose pining for the lives of people you never knew. I care nothing for strangers."

"Even strangers who put their lives in your hands, to command."

"Not if they are strangers, no."

"You know what a war between us would be? All of our people, everyone. Not like the Tn'trith where half stay home."

"Brother, listen to me. I will tear this palace down in ruins and lay our forests to the sword. I will slaughter a hundred thousand children. I will kill and burn everything you ever loved. And I will do to any who remain loyal to you what you did to my beloved friend. And I will do it without a thought because I care for nothing but her."

"You really do not care?"

"Not for palaces and forests, and not for people I have never met."

"But you care for this girl."

"I do."

"So tens of thousands would die for her?"

"If you force them to."

"Perhaps I should have her killed, and spare us both the difficulty."

Aluese smiled, and Ribeag was surprised to see it was her cruel smile. The one that scared the nobles and the Tn'trith, the one she wore for politics and war. She meant what she said, Ribeag decided. Aluese went to the door, and opened it. A group of her companions waited there, those who always followed her around. "Summon my people," she called. "Summon all of them here, as quickly as you may. Tell them my brother threatens to do to me what he did to my beloved friend."

She closed the door.

Ribeag was a little taken aback that Aluese would dare. "You know what you just did?" he said.

"I showed you I am serious."

"This will inflame things somewhat. Your faction are hardly known for their... sanity."

"They are wild, bloodthirsty madmen who care for archaic notions of honor more than breath and food and comfort."

"Exactly. And they think you are about to be dishonored."

"Indeed."

"Are they likely to actually stop and check what is happening, or just rush in, assuming?"

"They are unlikely to think."

"They will all die."

"I know."

Ribeag sighed. "If they tear this palace down, you are to have a new one built."

"Of course, brother. It would be my privilege."

Ribeag sighed again. Boredom was returning. "All right, I will not kill your girl. Does that satisfy you?"

"For now."

"There are other things I could do."

"Many would lead to war."

"Have her maimed..."

"War."

"Have her raped every day."

"War."

"Give her to the Tn'trith, although I suppose that would be much the same thing as the others."

"War."

Ribeag sighed a third time. "I could set her free."

"That you could."

"Give you my word never to harm her again."

"I know what your word is worth, brother, but I would accept that for now."

"You would accept that, and have her guarded."

"Indeed."

"Summon Bahn," Ribeag said to the room. He gave orders to no-one in particular, and knew from a swirl of cloth or quiet footstep that it was being done.

"We have come to this, over this, sister. And all because you will not accept my plans for regency."

"I will not marry Bahn to suit your convenience."

Ribeag considered that. "But you will for other reasons?"

"Perhaps."

Bahn entered, looking worried. "Sire, there is a crowd..."

"My sister's friends.'

"So I understand."

"Bahn, I have found you a wife."

"Brother..."

"Not you, sister. Bahn, this woman, the one chained to the wall."

"Brother," Aluese said sharply.

"I am within my rights," Ribeag said. "Any Tr'nah may order any of their underlings to marry except those of equal or higher rank. I am of the blood royal, and there is only one other of equal rank. But it is not her I wish to marry."

"Brother, this will mean war."

"You know, I do not think it will. I think it may mean your mob will tear the palace apart, and I don't like Bahn's chances of getting out of here, but it will not mean more than that. Me having your companions dishonored, that is a rallying call, something your mob will fall behind. This is simply arranging a marriage, a legal dispute. It is rather dry. And she is only a minor noblewoman. A small family. I do not think any will care."

Aluese said nothing.

"Bahn will find a wife today, in this room. You may chose who he is given."

"Sire..." Bahn said.

"Bahn, be silent. I like you well enough, and I prefer you as a regent, but I do not like you so much you may take liberties."

Ribeag stared at Aluese, entertained again as she thought. He truly did not know what she would do, and the not knowing pleased him.

"Why do you care this much, brother?"

"I keep saying it and no-one believes me. My life is dry. The pleasure has run empty. I wish to go into the world, and see it, and the only way I can leave without causing a civil war is to find you a husband whose regency will offend no-one. Bahn is a pompous fool, and fights well enough, and will appeal to all factions. And he is honorable and lawful enough he will give me back my throne if I ask for it."

"Probably."

"I shall take the risk."

"But if I am to be his wife, I will have time to work on him, make him change his ways."

"I shall warn him against that."

Aluese sighed. "Could you set her free while I think?"

"No."

"Stop trying to force me before I am ready, brother."

"I am trying to force you before your mob arrive."

"Wait."

"No."

Aluese considered.

"Bahn," Ribeag said. "Go and greet your wife."

"Very well," Aluese said. "I will marry him. Set her free."

"Captain," Ribeag said, "A priest, if you please."

"Now?" Aluese said, surprised.

"You think I would give you an opportunity to go back on your word?"

Aluese smiled.

"I would, if I were you. Visit a distant fortress. Send clerks to argue law, to say agreed yes, but not when. Add conditions that become impossible. Gather an army so I cannot compel you. That is what I would do."

"Set her free."

"When you are wed. Otherwise, she is raped and maimed and hung to die on the palace walls."

"Bring a priest," Aluese said. "And husband, this changes nothing between us. Touch me against my will, speak a word that implies you forget your place, and that my blood outranks yours, and I will have you slain under the Turan tyr'rahn, for an offence against the future honor of my unborn children."

"We still have those laws?" Ribeag said. "I should abolish them."

"We have all the laws, you fool," Aluese said, sharply. "You can abolish none. It is not in your power. It is how I do all I do and are never censured."

"Oh," Ribeag said, and was surprised for the second time in a day. "I had wondered about that."

Perhaps he should stay after all.

"You understand, husband?" Aluese said.

Bahn looked at Ribeag, then said, "I do."

"Then we shall wed. Welcome husband, now I am yours and you are mine."

"And pity help you both," Ribeag muttered.

As it happened, it was done that simply. The priest arrived and the ceremony was done and then the girl was set free. Aluese addressed her mob outside the door, helped Ribeag's people chase them out the palace, and then spent her wedding night nursing her friend, bathing the welts on her back, while her husband sat in a chair and waited. As Ribeag heard the account afterwards, Aluese told him he need not stay, and he said that if he must do this he would pretend as best he could, and even if she were indisposed or otherwise engaged, he would spent the night with his new wife. Ribeag found such traditionalism refreshing. They might actually make a wonderful couple, he decided.

And Ribeag, finally content, took a ring and a sword and the best steed in the stables and announced to the few who still listened that he would be gone a year or ten and not to seek him. Few heard, but that hardly mattered. The houseguard followed the law, and that was enough. When Ribeag returned, if Ribeag returned, he could be king again, and could displace his chosen regents, or their heirs.

*

# A Mote, Amidst a Tide of Darkness

Gaius Iulius Caesar's death at the hands of a mob is a terrible thing to see. He is kicked and stabbed and beaten to death. He weeps. He pleads for his life. Towards the end he has a seizure, and dies with spittle on his cheeks, shaking and jerking, scattering thick red drops across the cool marble floor.

Gaius had once been a friend. We had fought together in Gaul. A few days ago, asking for help, he called me brother. I knew what was planned, and I had my part in his death, and I will always regret what we did that day.

After Gaius, I have had enough of Rome. I am old. I have lived these years well. I have some influence, and help Octavian seize his throne, but there seems little point. I know how it ends for this family. I have already marched with the legions that the boy Caligula will one day befriend along the Rhine, and I will hear of Nero's last night from those who see it with their own eyes. Rome is little more than a great effort wasted. A year after Octavian takes power, I find a cliff, and step from it, and leave them to their decline. They were but a moment in the span of the world, I suppose, but it was sad. I was fond of them.

I step from the cliff and fall and die and find myself somewhere new. Naked, cold, and alone. My gut is empty, as it always is, as if I have not eaten for a day. I have a raging thirst, and I am tired, as if desperately lacking sleep. Death for me is never death. I simply go somewhere else, somewhen else, to another life. I do not know why, and I do not know how, this is simply how it is.

I look around. I am in an alley, in a noisy town, with stench all around. There is dirt beneath me, cobbles where the alley opens into the street. There are buildings of brick and stone. This could be anywhere in the world, after cities are thought of. I listen. There is a distant hammering, metal on metal, and the clatter of hooves on stone. I breathe in, and among the stench of open sewers and rotting rubbish, the smoke in the air is acrid wood-smoke, not dusty coal. I do all this without thinking. I am somewhere before industrialization changed the world. I usually am. There are more times and places before than after. I read when I can, when I am in a place with libraries, and know a little of the stages of architecture and fashions and other useful things. I can sometimes work out where I have arrived by those details.

Not this time. Everything is functional and uniform, and there are no people around.

I stand. I always awake clumsily sprawled, as if having fallen in a drunken stupor. I look at my hands, at my chest, see slightly-tanned skin, darker on arms than on torso. It tells me little. A place where people are outside, and sometimes bare-chested when working.

I do not know the mechanisms of how this works. I remember nothing of the change. One moment I am dying, and then I am in the next place. There is no memory of death. I use a cliff when I can, because a cliff is a good way to die, for me. One moment I am floating downward, and the next I awake somewhere new, and there is nothing unpleasant in between.

As well as hungry, I always arrive somewhere out of sight, although not necessarily private. A room with a closed door. An alley. A clump of trees. I always look like the nearby people, and my face changes with my skin and build, every time. An average seeming, undistinguished face by whatever the local standard is. Always a man, which may mean something or may not. Always aged in my mid-twenties, unblemished by scar or callus, but with feet hardened enough to walk. I assume that is planned, by whoever makes this happen. I have teeth, but no hair. It begins to grow as soon as I appear. My belly aches, but not more than simply going hungry for a day would cause, as if I am created, but the contents of my gut are not. I am unmemorable, average in most ways for the place that I am. Besides the hunger, the worst thing is that for a few days I am a little taller or shorter or stockier than I think myself to be, and I occasionally bump into lintels or catch on branches. I soon adjust, for these are all cosmetic changes, outward only. My mind remains as it is, my own, my memories intact. I must learn the languages of new places, but once learned, the words stay. Equally the ways of war and trades. I have mastered many odd skills, and practiced many trades, and what I know grows each time I live, and seems not to fill up my head.

I am old. Inwardly, behind those ever-remade faces, I am old. I cannot recall how long I have been doing this. As much because I lose the points of reference of other lives, I think, than because of tampering. I have wondered if it is a kind of reincarnation, a possession of an existing person, but I think it is not. There could not be that many fit young men wandering about in isolated places, and I have never had someone walk up to me and greet me as a long-lost acquaintance. The only people who recognize me are those I have met since I arrive. I think in some way I am made anew each time, or reshaped to fit. That some testing occurs, some measuring of people nearby, and some examination of the local environment to find a suitably discreet place to appear. I am always very local. When I have stayed long enough to understand these things, I am clearly a man of a particular city or valley or shire. I do not know what that means either.

I also do not know why I am here. I think it has something to do with my companion, but I do not know.

*

My companion. Sooner or later I meet her. I look forward to it and dread it equally. She is like me, except that her face never changes, and she appears to know who I am. We meet, and sometimes talk, and usually one of us kills the other. We do not live in the same sequence of arrivals. She knows things of me I do not know myself, and equally the other way around. I used to think she simply knew more, but then I caught up, and events occurred she had spoken of, and I realize we are simply adrift on separate journeys, connecting by chance.

But connect we do, as if we are locked together. I do not know how.

In a way she is my only friend. I live out whole lives, I marry and love and make lifelong friends, but I do so in a way that is somehow false. The people I know are not like me, and do not know all I have to tell. She is the only one like me I have ever come across. My only constant. She always appears, and one of us dies, and it seems once we have lived in one place and time we can never go back. In Rome I had her slain and was left in peace for a lifetime. In other times and places, she is first and I am gone and she, presumably, is untroubled. I know not what she does when she is alone, but I, I do nothing. There seems no point to this other than being, and do not know why.

Part of me wishes to test this, to simply walk from one place to another where I know myself to have been at a certain time. The opportunity has not arisen, yet. I have always been out of reach, or unclear as to where I was. The world is a large and empty place, and in the distant past it is full of tiny villages and people with an imperfect knowledge of the world around them.

Whenever I see my companion, I slay her. I kill her as quickly as I can, because she knows what I am and knows to expect it from me, and will kill me if I do not. I know not who started this. Perhaps we both did, an earlier her murdering a later I, then my revenge striking her in advance, before her deed was actually done. Perhaps it is nonsensical, and we should both stop, but there is anger between us, and memories of past injustices. Her mood changes strangely, too, as if there are lives we share were I have wronged her, and lives when we are companionably close, and to her these lives occur in a different order to my own. At times she speaks as if we were once lovers, or perhaps great friends, but I do not remember this, and think, over time – her time – she has stopped speaking of this, because it causes her distress. It is difficult to tell when our lives are out of pattern, and I face her wrath now for an act I will not commit for a century.

Despite this, I am fond of her. Companionship is a precious thing, and loneliness a terrible one, and when we are the only two like us in the world, we share a bond, despite making war on one another. And war we do, sometimes in actuality. Once she led a thousand men to burn the village where I dwelled. In other lives, we fight on horse, or march in rival armies, or fire cannon between ships.

*

In my alley, I look around. I need food, drink, clothing and sleep. I need to learn which language is used hereabouts and learn it if need be, and to grow my hair and beard, if it is the custom where I am. I may already speak the language. More often than not I do, one that makes me understood, at least. There are a surprisingly few that are very widely understood. Some care is needed, though. A man who looks twenty but talks like your grandfather is memorable, and peculiar.

I go to the end of the alley, and crouch behind rubbish. I am cold and shivering and naked. I peer out. The street is quiet. The buildings have facades the same as their sides. No-one is about. It is the middle of the day, the sun is directly above, warming my chill skin. Perhaps this is a place where one sleeps in the middle of the day.

I wait and watch. I can see no landmarks. No castle on a hill or cathedral spires rising above the rooftops. This city is older, which is sometimes good. In some, the pattern of streets can remain unchanged for a thousand years, and I can find my way about. Not this one, I think. It does not seem familiar. I am still hungry and weak, but now warm. I must decide if it is better here to beg my clothes, or steal. It is often easier to steal, but in most places and times the punishment for petty theft is sudden and brutal for a man with no name or family. The decision rests on how likely I am to be caught, for often it is better to beg, to claim to be victim of a robbery myself, stripped by the thieves. People tend to assume a naked hungry man in an alley is speaking the truth, and any oddity is assumed the result of a blow to the head.

There is a broken barrel a little way into the alley. Its top, lying flat, has collected a little water. It seems safe enough to drink. I do, then wait again.

I believe my body is an artifice of some kind. I am a little stronger and faster than others, but not by any great measure. As if I am the best that I can be in a hundred tiny ways, all of which combine, but not magnificently better in any. I can eat what others sometimes cannot, and I have not often fallen ill during the countless plagues I have lived through. I am clever. Not to boast, but I have a knack for languages and for remembering faces and I am good with my hands, clever at making machines I have seen elsewhere. I know I have spread ideas such as windmills and stirrups far more widely than perhaps I should have, but it is done.

It is not a bad way to exist. I have more time than most people do, and I am curious to meet others, and see how they are, and move on once we are done. Whatever it is controls me, it is unhurried. I am never rushed along. Sometimes I end up pleasant places and when I do, I linger as I wish. Once, an island in a sunny place where people fished all day. I could not tell when, but it seemed a long time ago, and there was nothing there that could not be manufactured from the materials of beach and sea and forest. I stayed there a long time, but there was a plague, and many friends died, and I remembered again what I was and moved on. Sometimes I wonder whether they mourned me, or whether they blamed me for their misfortune.

I wait in my dank alleyway, growing increasingly hungry and weak. I hope the midday stillness will end soon, but am wary of walking about when no-one else does. I am still in the alley, waiting, when my companion appears.

I hear a footfall, but am distracted by my hunger. It sounds like small foot, a woman or child, and I am not overly concerned.

I ought to have been.

She walks into the alley, looking directly at my corner. She rarely appears so soon, more commonly she is somewhere in the world, and we take months or years to find one another.

"You," I say, utterly surprised to see her here.

"Wait," she says.

But I am feeling threatened, am unsure what to make of her appearance so soon after my own. I react too quickly, leap to my feet and lunge towards her, snatch her neck with what strength I have and twist. I am weak. Inattentive. As I kill her she slips a dagger from somewhere about her person, unnoticed, and twists it into my side.

She is dead, but now so am I, although it takes me some time to go. I sit beside her body at the mouth of the alley and wait, resigned, until the oily oozing of my lifeblood becomes a seep, then a trickle. I am dead. This does not look like a place with much medicine, and a gut wound will be fatal. I wonder about hurrying matters along, but do not bother. It is happening on its own. The wound does not hurt overly much, and has helped me forget my hunger. Dying hungry does not make me any more hungry in the next life. I do not know why that is.

I become drowsy, and cold, and fall asleep. It is not sleep. I know dying well enough by now.

I arrive a new place, another alleyway on the outskirts of another city. Or for all I know a different part of the same one. The buildings are similar, the climate also. Woodsmoke still, but also an acrid chemical tang. It could be a different age, or simply that a tannery is nearby.

I stumble to the end of the alleyway, and look out into a cobbled plaza. As I watch, my companion appears again, this time not alone. A half-dozen men follow her, all wearing baggy sleeves and trousers, with brightly colored, floppy hats. All have swords and pikes as well, and they spread out and search for me, poking into the alley mouths and beneath some stunted trees. My companion seems to know where I am, she calls and points, and they surround me.

Even tired and weak and hungry I am dangerous. They try to prevent me killing her, but are no match for me. I have marched with many, many armies and fought in many wars. I take a dagger from one, and slip through their circle, and stab my companion in her chest. As I do, pikes piece my back and I feel the sharp pain of the stabbing, and then I die, and then I am gone.

The next place seems an early age, a time of bronze and flint. I see many of these, for there are more years of human history lived in such a way than in cities and factories later. This may be early Britain, for there are moors and heather, a nearby sea, and a bitter cold wind from the north. I am unsure, it could be many places. My companion does not appear, and there is a war with a neighboring tribe, eventually won. It is an interlude, pleasant enough, but not one to linger in. They have a hard, toil-filled life of hewing and digging and weeding. They worry about flood and crop-failure and enemy attack, and almost any disease can come and steal their lives. After a time, as there are cliffs nearby, I step off one and move on.

I used to wonder if I have a set number of chances, and if one of these leaps will be my last. I no longer worry. I have died innumerable times, with no lasting harm, and I will not know when is my last in any case. There is little point worrying.

In this life, I find my companion again, a few months after I arrive, awaiting me in a desert. This time, before I can attack her, she says, "Don't be a fool, let me talk a moment."

We stand in a dry eroded gully, strewn with rocks, marked by the scouring of long-gone floods. We are alone. I can hear the bleating of sheep in the distance.

I bend and pick up a sharp-edged rock, and hurl it at her. It strikes her face hard enough that she falls to her knees and blood wells through broken skin. I pick up another rock, and walk towards her.

"Wait," she says.

I smash the rock into the side of her head, and try to crush her skull. She is harder to kill than a normal woman. I know this from past experience. Her bones are thicker, harder to crush. She is stronger, too. I batter her face, trying to stave it in. She bleeds from her nose and ears. The skin of her face is bloody mush. She still speaks through torn lips.

"Wait," she says. "I beg you."

I hit her again and again. Whatever she's trying to tell me isn't worth the danger of hearing. Not when she has hunted me like this, for as long as I can remember.

In time she is still.

I leave her there, and live my life. Sometimes I wonder what it is she wanted to say.

*

In another place, in another time, she finds me again, almost as soon as I arrive. I have the impression of mud bricks and white sunlight and the noise of a crowd nearby. Then she comes around a corner holding a bow, and says, "Listen to me."

I take a step towards her.

"Don't," she says.

"Stop following me," I say.

"I am sorry," she says. "I must."

I take another step.

"Stop," she says. "I will not let you get close enough to harm me."

I believe her, but take a step, hoping she will misjudge the distance between us.

"At least listen while you do that," she says. "I am trying to tell you something important. I have been trying to tell you for centuries."

I am a little curious at that, and stop. It is a trick. It has to be a trick.

"So talk," I say, and leap forward.

She shoots me twice, because she is a warrior and not a fool. Both arrows hit something vital, my chest becomes tight and full. There is silence in my ears. My heart has stopped.

She looked regretful as she shot me, but she did it anyway. It is what I had expected.

I live long enough on the ground to see her come over, and kneel, and touch my face and say, "You stubborn fool, why will you not listen?"

Whatever else she says is lost. I move to my next life.

*

She puts more thought into the next trap. I am somewhere medieval, there are men who speak Greek, with linked-metal amour and long hair. She has a group of them, and they all have lances and bows. I am in a wide open grassland. In the far distance are trees and what might be farmland. Here there is nothing, an open plain, nowhere to run.

It worries me that now, apparently, she can determine where I am to arrive and wait for me there. It worries me more that perhaps she brought me to this place, in some way.

Her horsemen spread out and watch me. One rides a little forward, and carefully aims his bow. I watch. I am hungry, and tired and weak. There is very little I can do.

The horseman shoots me in the leg.

It hurts. I fall, and roll to the side, but nothing more happens. I sit up and they still do not attack. It seems they wish only to slow me down.

I look at the wound, and decide to leave it alone. The arrow shaft is through the meat of my thigh. It hurts, but will probably not kill me. I look at the horseman and wonder what he thinks. If he just saw a man fall from the sky, or rise from the ground, or whatever it is we do when we appear. I wonder if he thinks he is in the presence of holiness or witchcraft, or simply that it is a mistake of his eyes.

My companion comes forward a little. Far enough we can talk easily, still too far for me to run to attack with an arrow in my leg. She holds a bow across her lap, an arrow ready, in a comfortable, worrying way.

"Will you listen yet?" she calls.

"All right," I say, resigned, "Go on."

"Use neither Greek, Turkish, nor Arabic," she says. "There is no need for these men to know of what we speak."

I cannot recall which language I spoke in, but she is using English. I do too.

She reaches back, takes a cloth bag from the back of her saddle, and throws it halfway to me.

"Get it, then back to where you are."

I look at her a moment.

"Food," she says. "A blanket."

I hobble over, retrieve the bag, and hobble back. A roll of flatbread, a hunk of yellow-white cheese, water in a leather skin, a striped woolen blanket. The wind is cold. I pull the blanket around myself and eat.

I wonder at this too. She seems to know my weaknesses, to have prepared. I wonder if she shares the problem of hunger, or if she simply knows of mine.

I chew slowly. The sun is halfway up the sky. She seems in no hurry, and simply watches.

In time, I drink the water, and then say, "Thank you."

She nods.

"Now you have me," I say. "Talk. What do you want?"

"We are at war," she says.

"I am not. You simply attack me at all turns."

"Because we are at war."

"I do not remember."

"I know you do not, so accept my words. We are at war, and until now there were but two sides. Your side and mine, yes?"

I nod.

"Now," she says, "Now there are three. At least three."

"The third?"

"The Dragon. The Beast. The Eater of Worlds. The End of All."

I look at her and want to laugh. I have lived a lot of my life among people who would tremble on hearing such a thing, but surely she, knowing what I am, does not expect me to be one.

"A dragon," I say.

"Indeed."

"Who eats worlds."

She nods.

"Forgive me if I do not believe you," I say.

"You have an imperfect memory," she says. "Think on that."

I hesitate and do.

"You are not sure who I am," she says. "Or what goes on. Why not consider the notion I speak the truth?"

"A dragon who eats the world?"

"I swear it is true."

I think on the efforts she has taken to keep me here. I am undecided, but willing to listen. "Go on," I say.

"If we do not stop this happening," she says, "We face an eternity in an empty world of ashes and dust, devoid of life. Arriving over and over, each time slowly freezing and weakening and dying of thirst or hunger, and then it happening again. Over and over again."

"If I believe you," I say.

"Please do."

I think, and rub my leg. I try to move the arrow-shaft so it aches a little less.

"I am sorry for that," she says. "The arrow. It had to be done. To make you stay still and listen."

I nod.

"You remember nothing," she says. "Do you?

"I remember a lot. What do you expect me to remember?"

"Me. Us."

"I know you. I remember some things. I sometimes have the thought that we were lovers for a time."

"For centuries, yes."

"Oh."

"You don't remember?"

"No."

She seems a little sad. "Once we were the greatest lovers in history. In all of creation. We were prepared to defy heaven and hell to be together."

"What happened?"

"We defied heaven and hell. And they were displeased."

I look at her and wonder.

"We were punished," she says. "I may tell you one day."

"Tell me now."

"Your masters do not wish you to know."

"Why?"

"Why not? I have no idea, but since you do not know, I assume they wish it that way, and right now I am attempting a rapprochement and will respect their wishes."

"I understand none of this," I say.

She looks at me for a while, and then grins. "Ignorance comes with working for the wrong side, I imagine."

"Wrong side?"

She looks at me, as if truly puzzled, "Hell," she says. "Of course."

"Hell?"

"Evil. Darkness. Those opposed to rightness. That is your side. Mine is goodness and right. Since you are of hell, and your masters too, it is no wonder they use you as a thing, and tamper with you as they wish."

I look at her and know not what to say.

"That is all I meant," she says. "Be not concerned."

I nod, still thinking.

"You do not believe me?"

"It is a little to take in."

"That you are on the wrong side? Or that the world will end?"

"That any of this is true. That it is hell, it seems, and not men of the future, who guide me."

"Of course it isn't men in the future," she says. "Idiot. What men could build what we need to do what we do?"

I am beginning to find her manner irritating. "I do not know what that is, so how would I know?"

"Notwithstanding that moving from point to point within this universe would require the application of infinite energy at several places in the equations, what would be the point? You cannot manipulate time from within a time-based universe, that ought to be obvious."

"I know nothing of that."

"Oh," she says, and considers. "Of course. I had not realized."

"As I said, I remember nothing."

She thinks for a moment. "You cannot turn a glove for one hand into a glove for the other by spinning it around on a table. It spins a full circle and is still a left-handed glove. Do you understand?"

"Not at all."

"To wear a left-hand glove on your right hand, you must lift it up and over. You must move it through the air, not simply spin it around in place. You understand?"

I shake my head.

"Never mind," she says. "None of this really matters. It is magic. Accept that."

I nod, willing. I am reborn. However it is done, it appears to work. That is enough.

"Are you like me?" I say. I have wanted to ask her that for lifetimes.

"Two types of wagon. Same result, different ways to make it."

"How?"

She shrugs. "Without the words you need..."

I accept that. "Very well. Was that all you had to say? To tell me of this dragon?"

"There is a war. We have squabbled among ourselves. Now a greater enemy emerges and we must unite."

"It occurs to me," I say, considering. "That evil comes cloaked in lies. That if I was of that side of evil I too would claim to be good."

"Good-ish." She says. "Evil-ish. It is never so clear, so cut and dried."

"Are you allowed to say that?"

"Of course." She seems smug. "It is not mine who are tyrants."

I look at her and have no idea of what to say.

She sighs. "I had forgot your nature is to believe our myths, not to see through to the truth of it. I had a terrible time explaining this all to you the first time. What you have been told is a lie. There is no plan, no certainty. We are as blind as all about us."

"I haven't been told..."

"You have been to a church, have you not? A temple? Listened to a wise elder? They all tell the same story. All of them are wrong. Much as we all would like to believe, their kind and ours, there is no order, no design. Just confusion and disarray until the world ends."

"Our kind."

She sighs. "Angels. Demons. The Fey. Sylphs and nymphs and dryads and demigods. Call us what you will."

"We're not human?"

"Of course we're human. Somewhere and somewhen. It is easier to use their words than make up some of our own, that is all."

"All right," I say. "Even if I accept all this, what are we to do?"

"Meet me in Eden," she says. "That is all, I swear. We will all talk."

"Where?" I start to say, but she has already drawn back the bow and launched an arrow. Carelessly, without careful aim. It strikes me in the eye, I assume, for I see the point straight on, looming large, then know nothing more.

I am to meet her in Eden, but unfortunately I have no idea what she is talking about.

*

Now I am near fields in a forest. It may be ancient Britain, but an era I do not know. There are rulers and priests and trade along roads, but the words are wrong for those I learned when I was last here.

I drink from a brook and find some fruit and walk to a hamlet of farmers just able to support themselves. I stumble up to them, with my hands modestly in front of myself and they take me in. I work, and they feed me. I learn enough of their language to tell a story of merchant travels and being robbed, and that seems to be accepted.

In time I marry a local woman. There are no children. There never are.

My companion never appears. I live out my life, and drown in a river, and go on to another life. In this life I am impressed into the Assyrian army, and it is almost like coming home. I have been an Assyrian before. I survive the wars, most of twenty years, but die, carelessly, of an inattentive axe blow when cutting firewood and a consequent infected leg wound. Still my companion does not find me.

The next life is somewhere in the vastness of central Eurasia. I am often here, and it often turns out well. These people are surprisingly accepting of naked hungry men who appear from nowhere, lacking both name and clan, and who speak no sensible language. So long as that stranger can prove himself in war, they are happy. For a time, I live in a mountainous place of snow and gravel and windswept cold, a place that values honor and pride and war-making, where they use tools made of bronze. I cannot work out where or when it is, and they have no name for themselves or their country. Their gods are like those of the Greeks and Persians, but seem much older. I am not sure how ancient.

I die in battle in the end. I often do. I am reborn.

Finally my companion finds me, but it is not her. Not the her I wish to see. This her looks at me, and takes up a spear, and drives it into my chest. For this her we must not yet have talked.

Another life in which I do not see her, among horses on a warm grassy plain. I fall, still a young man, and move on, and at last she finds me again, in a village that uses Greek coins but a different language and that is, as best I can guess, somewhere north of the Black Sea.

She rides up, with a shield and a spear, and watches me carefully for a time. When I do not attack her, she calls, "Have we spoken yet?"

"Many times."

"Of grave matters, not many lifetimes ago."

"We have."

She seems to relax a little. "I take it then," she says. "That you do not know where Eden is?"

"No."

"You cannot feel it?"

I shrug.

"That is a problem."

"Can't you tell me?"

"I don't know either. I just..."

"Feel it?"

"Exactly."

"Can you take me with you?"

"I can try, but... It's complicated. And since you have to die to travel..."

I do not understand, but I shrug.

"Go as close as you can and I will find you," she says, and then stops. "Can you control where you go?"

I shrug again. I have never thought to try.

"A place? A time? Even roughly?"

"I do not think so."

"Think forward," she says. "Go forward as far as you can. I am growing close to you. I will find you."

Then she hefts her spear and throws it into my chest.

I am momentarily startled, and angry too, but she rides over and looks at me and says, "Forward, my beloved companion. Remember to go forward."

Whatever she hoped would happen, it does not. I arrive in another wind-blown steppe and spend a lifetime there before I move on. Then I am among Polynesian explorers in the Pacific, and then are two lives in a row as a subsistence farmer, mostly spent starving.

Eventually she finds me. She approaches cautiously, and it seems we each know the other approximately as we expect.

"You truly cannot find Eden?" she says.

"I do not know where it is."

She sighs. "Come," she says, and takes my hand. "We will do this the difficult way."

She tries to show me. She tries to take me there. We cut our throats as we hold hands, lying side by side, both thinking of a single place together. It does not work. She does not stay with me when I am reborn.

We try several times. I never find her waiting. Once there is another her, an earlier her, looking horrified and startled, who throws hot oil in my face when I speak to her as a friend. I suspect I have done the same to her, thinking back. In my own past, I recall occasions when she was overly friendly, and I attacked her anyway.

I am ready to give up, but she keeps appearing, and insisting. I spend months or years in a place, waiting, and then she comes and I let her try. It becomes tiring.

While I wait, I begin to notice scuttling shadows in the corners of my eyes. Because I am tired, and still suspicious, I do not think to mention the shadows to my companion at first. They are perhaps the size of large dogs, and stay in the corner of my eye, a dim blur. When I move, they follow, and when I rest or sleep, they sit where they were, motionless. At first it is only occasional glimpses, but soon I am seeing them in every lifetime. They do nothing, are simply there. I cannot even be sure they are watching me, rather than just nearby. I do not like it, though. It is different, and I suspect relates in some way of all my recent dying, as before this she, my companion, has been the only constant from one lifetime to the next.

I watch the shadows, but when nothing happens, I become accustomed to them, and mostly disregard them. Soon they are always around, every minute, and I do not especially notice their increase until I stop and think on it particularly.

I think the shadows are only in my eyes, but when my companion finds me, she sees them too.

"Gods," she says, "Oh gods, they have found you. Run."

The shadows move. She moves. They run her down and devour her. They seem to eat some part of her that is not flesh, to suck a lightness from her into themselves. They leave her body unmarked, but dead, and drift back over to me.

I am not sure how clever they are, or how much they understand of what I do. Cautious, I go over to her body, and look around, and feign puzzlement. After that I never look directly at the shadows, or acknowledge they are there.

That might have saved me. The shadows go back to their watching, but now I am afraid.

I have seen nothing like this before. Whatever it is she and I are, these can harm us gravely. I must feel as other men do when death is near, when death is something to fear, not a means of making a journey.

My companion comes again, this time on a horse, and races past. "Follow me," she shouts, and the shadows are after her. They can catch her running, but not on a horse. It draws away, seems a little faster.

One of the shadows stays with me, watching. That troubles me. It implies thought and cunning. I resume my pretend bemusement.

My companion turns in a long slow circle and rushes past again, shouting, "Stay here, do not die." And, "They cannot hear."

She disappears into the distance, the horse tiring, I assume. In a while the shadows drift back to me.

She comes back the next day, shouting, "Fire is their bane. Free yourself of them. I will return in a month."

She is gone.

A few days later I block my house door and find my shadows cannot follow me inside. I had thought them ghosts, for no particular reason. It has not occurred to me that they are as substantial as I am. Substantial, and about as strong as their size would suggest, and also lacking hands. They cannot work latches, or open a heavy wooden door.

They stay closer now, as if wary of another closed door. At night, they follow me into my house, and mill around until I sleep. I think they watch me more closely now. It feels like that, and I certainly watch them.

Another day I climb a tree and wait up there for half a day, out of sight of the ground. The shadows never appear up the top with me, but are waiting on the ground when I climb down. I take from this that they cannot climb, and also that my antics are a little mysterious, as if what I do is not entirely comprehensible to them. That is useful to know.

The morning that is a month from my companion's last visit, I rise at dawn, and check the shadows are still around the bed. Instead of opening the front door, I block it from the inside and climb up and out the chimney hole. It is tight, but I manage. I cover the hole with a tile, then burn the house. A neighbor sees the smoke and comes to make sure I am unharmed, and I thank him and say a pot spilled on the hearth and ashes were knocked about. My neighbor is deeply sympathetic.

I bid him go, and sit on a log and wait. Eventually my beloved companion arrives.

She looks at my charred house and says, "Clever."

"Thank you. What are those things?"

She shrugs. "Servants of the enemy."

"Not you?"

"The other enemy. The real enemy. The end of all. Not our little skirmish between friends."

"Friends?"

"We are. We have much in common."

I sit and look at her and wait.

"It is important," she says. "You and I must ally. Be as we once were."

"I do not remember."

"I know, so believe me. You and I were once close."

"I may," I say. "Tell me."

"Your kind and mine," she says. "It is not going well. There is a lot of distrust. But if we cannot do this, and stand together, all is lost."

"What happened?"

"We made overtures. My people. We tried to make peace for this. But there is too much suspicion, too much distrust."

"So you are acting on your own?"

"I am acting informally. Hoping you and I can set an example. And we still need to take you to Eden."

"How?"

"I need to tell you where it is."

"You know?"

"I do now."

"Why not tell me lifetimes ago?"

"I said I do now. I did not then. Because we did not want people like you finding it."

"So tell me."

"First convince me you are sincere," she says.

*

We walk through the grass and talk. She carries a knife with a blade as long as her hand and whips it around, chopping at seed heads, so it hisses like the breeze in the grass. A habit, I think, not meant to intimidate.

"There was a plan for the world," my companion says. "I know not if this is true, but they speak of a child-that-is-god. That a thousand years after god came to earth it was supposed to end. Or perhaps two. That another child was to be born. I think it is a metaphor, but it seems to be what is spoken of."

This sounds familiar, until I notice what she said. "Was supposed?"

"The mother drowned. A flooded river, I think. While she was with child. So obviously, the child never came, and since these things take a time to organize, the world was spared."

"The mother drowned."

"The mother drowned."

"And that set aside the end of the world?"

"For a time."

"But... No-one thought to take precautions? To make sure this important thing actually happened?"

"It is always this way. To you and I, to we out here, these are the greatest plans imaginable, of momentous consequence. In truth, among our masters, very few care. None of this matters, little attention is paid, and things such as this happen."

"I see."

"And because of these mistakes, dragons awake out of turn."

I look at her. "Oh."

"Indeed."

I decide I believe her, that she seems to speak the truth. "Will you will tell me where this Eden is?"

"When I trust you."

"And what must I do to make you trust me?"

She chops at the grasses and seed-heads fly. "Love me as you once did."

"I have never..."

"You once did. They took your memory of it."

"Who?"

"Your side. Mine do not do that kind of thing."

"Which side is which?"

She seems confused.

"We speak of sides," I say. "But which side is which? I truly do not know."

"Neither, I suppose. Not as you mean it. Your side and mine, we are factions. We feel strongly about a disagreement of policy."

I look at her.

"It does not matter what, but it is policy, that's all. Yours are sanctimonious, and always claim to act for right. Mine are more honest, and admit the possibility of mistakes. Other than this, we all wish the same purpose. This matters to you?"

"You want my word. That I shall keep the secret of your Eden if you take me there?"

She thinks, then nods. "I suppose your word would do."

"Then it matters."

She thinks again. "There is an old, old story. That when the first two souls lived upon this earth, your master and mine came to them. Your master claimed to be god himself, and commanded those people to do as he wished. No choice, no discussion, he simply pretended to have created them and gave his orders. Mine came as a snake and spoke the truth."

"I know the story," I say. "I remember it differently. That the snake was the deceiver."

"No, it wasn't."

She is so calm, so sure of herself, that it gives me pause.

"Think. He who walked in that garden, who claimed to be god, he lied. He said that eating the forbidden fruit would mean certain death. It did not. My master told them that eating would make them like god, which it did."

"It did not. They perished."

"Immortality is the least important of the attributes of god. Look at yourself. Eating gave them minds. It gave them will, and made them more than manufactured playthings. Before, they were as children. Less than children. They ate, and were fully human."

"The consequences were severe."

"Your master's doing, not mine's. It was he who drove them into the world before they were ready."

I still have trouble following all this. "You say your master is the right one, but he is the serpent."

"It is an old, confused story," she says. "I only pointed out your master was the liar, not mine."

I think for a while. "This garden... is it the same one?"

"The garden where our masters spoke to humans?"

I nod.

"That isn't Eden. It was in Eden, and east of Eden, but yes, that garden is still there, I believe."

"And is both in Eden and east of it?"

"Indeed."

"How?"

"A mystical hidden valley, you fool. What do you think?"

I look at her and shrug, wishing not to remind her again that I do not know.

"Sometimes you see so much and think so little," she says, apparently close to anger. "How many times have you lived among these steppes and hills and you have never wondered why?" She looks around. "This. Here. Central Eurasia. Humanity was born in Africa, but everything else that has ever mattered has happened here, in these mountains and steppes. Half your lives you live here, and you never wonder why?"

"It has been settled a long time, I supposed."

She shakes her head.

"All this time, and I have never found a hidden magical wonderland," I say.

"Yes," she says, as if I am a fool again. "Because it is still hidden."

I think. I try to remember the story of Eden. "Can someone not just follow one of the rivers to find it?"

"Of course. But that a thousand miles separate them, and Eden does not exist in the actual world as mortals see it. Other than that, of course."

I look at her for a time.

"I said both in and east of," she says.

"And we cannot? Follow a river."

"We may. Perhaps. Should we wish to. But I already know where it is."

"You trust me?"

"I trust you. If you give me your word."

I think of the lives I have lived among people who would take a promise as that, an oath that bound to the grave and beyond. I thought of how I lived among people, but was always different, and she was the only constant I had.

"I will keep it," I say.

"Do you speak as a man like all these you have lived among? Or as the creature of your masters you now know you are?"

"The first. I will keep your secret. Even if I die forever. Even if my masters take me home and restore my mind."

She nods, and seems satisfied.

"That is enough?"

"That is."

"So. Let us go to Eden."

She looks around. At the sun, some mountains blue and low in the distance. She starts to walk. "This way," she says.

I am surprised. "We walk?"

"Of course. We cannot travel together. Not our way. So we walk."

"And you know where to go."

"As I say, I can feel where it is." She points. "That way."

"How far?"

She shrugs.

"Tell me. We may need supplies."

"I do not know. Only that it is that way."

"It may take months."

"It may take years. But that is not really of importance to our kind, is it?"

I think, and say yes, and fetch a bow and what food I have. We start to walk.

It takes us lifetimes. A freezing winter storm a month into our journey kills us both. I hold her in my arms in a freezing hide shelter and watch her bluing lips take their last breath. I die a little later. She finds me again and says she thinks we are closer this time, and a few days later we are both slain in our sleep, unknowing. That is always a surprise, to wake up suddenly in a different time, as if still dreaming. When we rejoin one another, we decide we were most likely assassinated by agents of our enemy, and after this we take more care. She finds me again, but so do the shadows, and this time there are no chimneys to climb up. The shadows devour us both, and our journey starts over. I find her, and she kills me, oblivious to our pact. Then she finds me, and we are chased up a tree by the shadows, and in the end both became impatient and let ourselves drop, rather than die up there of hunger. Once I am among a warrior band and have horses to my name, and we move faster. Once I am a prince among a people who live in the forests of the Baltic Sea, and command my men to guard us. We walk, and take more care, and travel further.

We fail often, but each time, as we walk, we become more used to what we have to do. What to be cautious of, and what precautions to take. She finds me again each time, over and over, because I still cannot find her, even when she wishes me to. This seems to surprise her, but she cannot explain why, and just says it was something she believed that turns out was wrong.

In time, we succeed. One life, one day, it is a year later and we are still walking west. We see the shadows, and lose them by setting a grass fire. We see them again, and light another, and then see them no more. They may be biding their time, but they no longer worry me. We know the trick of it, now. We hunt as we ride, so make only a few miles a week, but we trade our meat for grains and other food, and once for steel weapons better than those we have. I think it is a little after the year 1200, for armies are loose in the world and cities are falling, and men speak of devil horsemen from the east, and I wonder if this is something of our enemies, but decide not. I have marched with the Mongol hordes before, and recall their ways, and could think of no unusual influence among their leaders.

In time we will find Eden. Perhaps not in this lifetime, but we are making a good way, and we will in the end. For such as us, all is possible with enough time. We will find Eden, and put an end to this war, and then I will ask, of those who I had thought masters, why they did what they did to me and my memories of she who I once loved.

# # #

