“I don’t want to be your captive,” she said. “But I would have you be mine, once you realize there is no hope for you in the coming struggle. I have already saved your life once and would do so again. At some point, you will accept this and come to me. When you do, I will be waiting.”
He stared at her in bemusement, and she reached up and gently pushed the sword blade away from her throat. “You don’t intend to use this, so why threaten me with it? I am standing before you because I want to. Because I want you to understand my cause and to understand me. We are alike, you and I. I respect you and I think you respect me, too. We fight for what we believe in, but we do so with as much honor as we can manage. We share a code of conduct and a mutual admiration for loyalty and courage. We are not so different as it might seem.”
“Different enough, when you keep advancing your plans for conquest. I would never do what you are doing!”
“Wouldn’t you?” She cocked an eyebrow and took a step toward him. She was standing so close, they were almost touching again. She felt the urge to reach out for him. “If your land was dying and your people with it, would you not do whatever it took to save them? Even if it meant fighting to secure a place for them in another inhabitable land?”
She could see the uncertainty in his eyes. “You cannot know until you are faced with the situation. One day, you might be.” She reached out and put her hands on his shoulders. It was a bold gesture, and she could see confusion mirrored in his expression. “You may continue to think us different, if you wish. But we are not, Dar Leah—and never will be. I don’t know how this conflict will end. I don’t know that either of us will survive it. But I do believe that, in ways neither of us yet understand, our fates are joined.”
She reached up from his shoulders to his face and brought it down to hers. On impulse, she kissed him on the lips—a slow brushing followed by a hard press. She felt him resist, but only for a moment.
“You owe me my freedom,” she said, releasing him and stepping back, “so I am taking it. I will not tell any of my people that I saw you. I will not reveal that you are here. Only you and I will know we shared this meeting.”
She stepped past him, and he turned to watch as she walked away. A handful of steps farther on, she looked back. “I will miss you, Blade of Paranor, but we will meet again. Another time, another place. And very soon, I think. Look for me.”
He shook his head, almost as if he couldn’t quite believe what he was allowing to happen. “We are even now, Ajin d’Amphere. If I catch you again, I will not be so quick to let you go.”
Her smile was dazzling. “Nor I you.”
And then, as if to taunt him, she vanished.
TWO
Kol’Dre lay in a crumpled heap just beyond the space where Paranor had stood not an hour earlier, oblivious to his surroundings. A heavy chunk of stone, broken free in the cataclysmic destruction of the Skaar advance force, had struck him on the head and left him in the path of the swiftly spreading green mist and the creature that it shrouded. He realized it was coming for him and knew he should bolt for safety. He could hear the screams intensifying behind him. He could see the wicked glow spreading through the hallways and into the rooms of the Keep, killing everyone it touched.
He remembered seeing some of his fellow Skaar turn back nevertheless, reacting instinctively to the shrieks and cries of their fellow soldiers, intending to help friends and comrades. But their efforts had been futile, and they had paid the price for their foolish bravery: Every last one of them was savaged by the horror that hunted them down. There was no standing against such monstrous magic, no device or weapon the Skaar possessed that could stop it. Courage for a reason was one thing, but blind, reckless bravery was another. Kol’Dre had his faults and occasional lack of good judgment, but throwing away his life had never been among them.
Yet his memories of what he had witnessed before the stone felled him remained hazy. He had no idea how he had gotten clear of the Keep, or even why he was still alive. Nor did it matter. Not so long as he slept, careless and unknowing.
But then, suddenly, he was awake, shocked back to consciousness by the memory of lying next to a young girl in her bed beneath coverings turning red with her blood. The knife was in his hand, and he kept stabbing her, over and over again. And all the while she watched him, smiling with trust and love, attaching no blame to him even though it was his hand that killed her.
Kassen, she whispered.
He sat up with a gasp. The sudden movement made his head spin, and he lowered it between his legs and retched. The dream fragmented and the night closed about him. He was outside in the cool air, beyond the walls of Paranor, sitting in a patch of grass with trees to his left and empty space to his right. He turned his head to view the latter, sensing something wrong with it, and then he remembered that this was where the Keep had been. It was gone now. He blinked in disbelief, closed his eyes tightly, and looked again.
Still gone. Everything was gone.
Figures surrounded him, voices speaking urgently to him in the Skaar tongue, asking how he was, if he had suffered any injuries besides the one to his head, if he could see properly. He shook his head automatically, brushing them off, not even sure exactly what they were talking about.
Then he became aware of the hammering pain that ratcheted through his skull, spearing downward through his neck to his shoulders in steady waves. He reached up to touch the source of the injury and found a compress tied in place. Something had struck him hard enough to open a wound that had bled down the side of his face and onto his shoulder. He could feel the stickiness of freshly crusted blood and smell its coppery scent. He glanced down and found his Druid robes stained red. But the rest of his body seemed intact.
“Help me up,” he ordered, and arms reached down to take hold of him and lift him to his feet.
A wave of dizziness and fresh pain nearly felled him a second time, but he managed to keep his feet, waiting for it to pass. He glanced again at the vast open space where Paranor had stood, just to be sure. “What happened to it?” he asked the men about him.
There were only five. Several of them shrugged. One said, “It just disappeared. Right after we got you through the gates of the outer wall and out here. Gone. Just like that.”
Kol’Dre stared at him. “Is this all of us that’s left? All that got out?”
The men nodded, stone-faced. Only one even bothered to look at him.
“Ajin?” he asked quickly, remembering he had left her there. “The princess?”
“Gone,” one said.
“Gone? What do you mean, gone? She can’t be gone! Did you look for her? Did you search?”
“Penetrator, it was all we could do to make it this far. Bringing you out took everything we had left. Most of us are injured—some badly. If she were here, she could find us easily enough.” He shook his head. “She’s dead.”
Kol’Dre went numb and cold. He turned his head to hide his tears, looking over to where the fortress had been. He refused to believe it. Ajin was not gone! She couldn’t be! He wiped at his face with his sleeve. Ajin d’Amphere was invincible. She could not be killed. Others among them, yes. They were Skaar and warriors. Death came frequently and never wandered far from where they stood, always hiding in the shadows, always waiting to leap out.
But never for Ajin. Ajin was different.
Yet he understood that these feelings were unique to him. To others she was flesh and blood like all Skaar, and she could be killed as easily. He saw her differently because he was in love with her. And he wanted her to be alive because he couldn’t imagine a life without her.
Ajin.
His body shook involuntarily, and he stalked away to be alone with his grief. The others knew enough to let him be.
He stood apart in the darkness until the tears and the sobbing stopped and he was himself again. But the loss of Aj
in d’Amphere was about more than just his personal suffering. She was the heart and soul of their invasion efforts, of everything they had given up to find a new land for their endangered people. She was the light that guided them and gave them their hope. To have come so far and accomplished so much, only to lose the one member of the advance force they could not afford to lose, was inconceivable.
He found himself thinking back over the weeks and months and years that had led to this moment. He had spent two long years living in this foreign land before standing on the shores of the Tiderace to greet the Skaar fleet as it landed at the far-northern edge of the Charnal Mountains. He had spent two long years preparing the way for this invasion. He had traveled widely and mapped the Four Lands thoroughly. He had recorded any relevant observations on the characteristics of its Races, the locations and designs of its cities and towns, the workings and proclivities of its governments. He had determined its strengths and weaknesses. He had cultivated various pliable government officials who would prove useful later. And all the while, he considered where the Skaar should strike first, where next, what sorts of obstacles presented the greatest dangers—which peoples would fight hardest and be most difficult to overcome and which would be most likely to see the futility of fighting and simply concede the battle before it was joined.
Kol’Dre had done this many times before in the countries of Eurodia, the continent that lay closest to the island home of the Skaar. His official designation was Penetrator—a scout, spy, assassin, and whatever else he needed to be, but mostly just a planner of ways to break down any form of resistance. Ajin d’Amphere relied on him as on no other to provide her with crucial information and advice on her potential conquests. She had always trusted in the validity and thoroughness of his assessments, and he had never disappointed her.
In return, she had paid him special attention—a reward for his services. She had given him access to her as she did to few others. He found her attentions and reliance on him flattering. And he found her, on a personal level, utterly irresistible.
Yet resist her he must if he valued his head. Everything was strictly business between Ajin and her Penetrator, in spite of his desire for something more.
Kol’Dre and those few he had chosen to serve him as guards and aides had come to the Four Lands in traditional sailing vessels shortly after the Skaar had determined it was necessary to find a new land to call home. They had crossed the vast blue expanse of the Tiderace in the old way, unaware of the existence of airships. Necessity was the mother of risk-taking, so you did what you had to, no matter the danger. What might lie on the far side of the ocean was unknown, but the Skaar believed that other countries must exist beyond those waters, and that other peoples must have survived the Great Wars that had destroyed the Old World.
It had been a revelation to find the extent of the opportunities this new land afforded. Kol’Dre was quick to recognize that this was where the Skaar were meant to be. Stealing the secrets of the airships was easy enough, and within a year the Skaar had built their fleet of aquaswifts and set about crossing the Tiderace not by navigating upon its waters as Kol and his crew had done, but by flying over them. As Penetrator, he had advised Ajin and the king to send only an advance force to begin with, to test the strength of those they sought to overcome. He had further concluded that the size of the country they were invading would prove a disadvantage to a larger force. A smaller, swifter, more mobile army would have better success and might just be strong enough to gain a foothold that would allow the larger army to cross and begin the greater task of carving out sufficient space for the bulk of their people to begin a new life.
His advice had been heeded, and the army Ajin had brought to the Four Lands had advanced to the fringes of the barren country belonging to the Corrax Trolls—a tribe that he found to be particularly barbaric and warlike, and not much liked by the other tribes. He knew the Corrax would attempt to drive them out, but the Skaar always chose a strong adversary at the start to set a persuasive example. So the Corrax would attack, thinking them weak and foolish to intrude—thinking victory over such a soft-skinned people would come easily and swiftly.
And the inevitable Skaar victory would be a valuable lesson to any who might think the same way.
As expected, the Corrax had massed in force within a week’s time, coming directly for the Skaar. And the Skaar had formed their lines, pointed their weapons toward the Corrax, and waited.
The Corrax were eager to comply. But the battle they got was not the one they were expecting. Instead, it was a massacre.
The traditional Corrax attack relied on brute force and a reckless disregard for personal safety to overwhelm and crush its opponents. It was a strategy that had always worked for them before. Strike hard. Give no ground. Show no mercy. It should have worked here, had they been facing anyone other than the Skaar. The Corrax had hammered into the invaders’ lines with all the fury and bloodlust that had destroyed so many other armies, fully expecting that this battle would end in the same way.
But the Skaar had simply waited for them to come, standing perfectly still in their precise but loosely formed ranks. Those in the front carried spears—eight-foot poles with hafts of pale ash, smooth iron-tipped heads affixed to one end and handgrips carved into the wood near the other. Those in the rear ranks bore short swords—blades of hammered steel with the surface dulled so that no light reflected, balanced and easily maneuverable in combat.
When the Corrax were within fifteen feet, previously designated ranks of Skaar soldiers utilized that part of their genetic makeup that allowed for it and, one by one, began to disappear. A curious shimmer rippled all along their lines, and it was suddenly unclear to the Corrax what was happening. And then, in another instant, whole ranks were not there at all. Only half of those who had been clearly visible moments before now remained, and their bodies were shimmering, too. There was a ghostliness about them, as if they were formed not of flesh and blood but of smoke and mirrors.
Although the Trolls could not see what was happening, those Skaar soldiers who had disappeared had shifted their lines left and right to come at their attackers from the flanks in a pincer movement. The Corrax experienced a few quick moments of confusion as they surged to the attack, closing on the Skaar who remained visible, and then they were being slaughtered. Real sword blades and spear points were skewering and slashing the Corrax from both sides in places where no one seemed to be, and there was nothing the Trolls could do to protect themselves. They tried to fight back, but they couldn’t find their opponents. All they could see before them were empty images; the Skaar were gone, their bodies become no more than air.
The Corrax had fought on, anyway, almost to the last Troll, because this was all they knew how to do. But it had been hopeless, and they had died still not knowing what had happened. Even those who sought mercy, falling to their knees in abject surrender, had been slaughtered. Only those who had remained in their village were spared—the old, the infirm, and the young—allowed to live so they could carry word to other tribes, in other places, about what had happened. Once it was known what the Skaar could do, the other Troll tribes would be more willing to listen to reason. The Skaar army could then bypass these tribes and move down into the Borderlands and the more valuable prizes that lay to the south, east, and west.
The Skaar had left the bodies of the dead on the field of battle to rot, refusing them burial or even the flames of a pyre to send them to whatever afterlife they believed in. Their kin and friends were not allowed to claim them. They would be ghosts abroad in the land, their spirits left to wander endlessly, their history lost with their passing. This was the fate that awaited all those who chose to stand against the Skaar. This was power beyond anything those who inhabited the Four Lands had witnessed before, and they needed to respect how formidable the Skaar were.
Kol’Dre had known the impact this massacre would have. After all, he had
helped develop this approach. His was a long and storied legacy. He was known throughout the countries of Eurodia, and coming to the Four Lands had given him the chance to further build his reputation, to test himself against men and women who were ignorant of his existence. He had relished the opportunity, coveted the challenge. In the conquering of the Four Lands, he would gain new respect and perhaps elevate himself further in Ajin’s eyes.
Yet he understood the odds against fulfilling those ambitions. Any personal involvement with the princess had always been enormously complicated. A dozen years her senior and of common blood, he was not an ideal match by any measure. In fact, there was no reason for the king even to consider him as a son-in-law. None of this was helped by the fact that Ajin did not see him as he saw her. But he also understood you never got anything in this life by deciding you couldn’t have it. So he had continued to dream, determined he would find a way.
Now the dreaming was over. Now she was dead, and there could never be a way.
It was exactly as this dark realization left him bereft that he heard gasps of surprise from a few of those who had hauled him from the Keep to safety. And when Kol’Dre turned around to look, Ajin d’Amphere was walking toward him.
* * *
—
That Ajin had had been able to escape from Dar Leah was something of a surprise. Certainly, she had done everything she could to persuade him it was the right thing to do, but it was still almost impossible for her to believe. It told her something about him that left her breathless with need. Here was a man, a warrior without peer, who was secure enough in his own skin to let a woman dictate his fate. One who placed respect and the settlement of personal debts above fears that it would cost him something down the line.
Few men she had known would have been able to do this. But for the Blade of Paranor, it had been no problem at all.