She had started on a path that might, if she were not careful, lead to Maximilian's death...but was that death not assured anyway, if he took Ishbel back to his bed?
Ravenna brought her emotions under control. She had said to the generals what they had wanted to hear, in words they would understand.
"It doesn't need to be this way, Maxel," she murmured, "if only you would listen to me."
"Ravenna?"
Ravenna jerked about.
Her mother was approaching, her face creased with anxiety. "Ravenna? Where have you been? I have been looking everywhere for you this past hour."
"Just wandering, Mother."
Venetia stood a moment looking at her daughter. "I felt the touch of a marsh witch's power, Ravenna.
What were you doing?"
"Nothing," Ravenna said, too sharply, and pushed past her mother.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
The Sky Peaks Pass
Axis SunSoar climbed to the top of the rocky hill, pausing there to take a breath. He had once more assumed the all-black clothing of the BattleAxe, lacking only the twin axe emblem on the chest of his tunic jacket.
Outwardly very calm and confident, Axis was in fact extremely nervous. If matters got out of hand here, there was not a thing he could do to protect Maximilian.
He rested one foot on a rock, relaxing his body, and looked about.
To the south, a great bank of low, gray snow cloud was rolling in.
The Lealfast. Axis had no idea how Maximilian was going to manage their introduction, and was still highly concerned that the sudden apparition of the ghostly Lealfast descending from the sky might provoke the Isembaardian soldiers into panicked action.
He looked down at the throng of men about him.
The Isembaardian army surrounded the hill, stretching back many hundreds of paces on all sides. The sea of faces moved gently, constantly, as men shifted on their feet, bent close to a neighbor to murmur a few words, and turned this way and that to gauge the emotions and reactions of those about them.
They were on edge. Unsure.
But at least they were here, and they were prepared to listen.
Axis wondered what Maximilian would say to them.
He looked to the front ranks of the mass. Here in the inner circle, perhaps four or five paces down the hill, stood anyone who had any seniority at all.
StarDrifter and Salome, very watchful and tense.
BroadWing EvenBeat, the senior of the Icarii below StarDrifter and Salome, as well as several other of the Icarii who had traveled with Georgdi and Malat, were nearby. They would meet their long-lost cousins today, if all went well.
Axis hoped that StarDrifter would behave himself.
Georgdi and Malat sat a little further about the circle. They were looking much better than when Axis had first met them a few days earlier. Rest and food had banished the grayness and gauntness from their faces, but they looked as uneasy as Axis felt--surrounded as they were by so many armed men.
Like StarDrifter, they had a few of their closest retainers standing just behind them.
A little further on stood Ishbel. She looked impossibly lovely, clothed now in a rose-colored heavy silken gown (Where does she get such gowns? Axis wondered. Madarin?), her fair hair coiled in an intricate knot over one shoulder. Amid all these tense-faced men, amid all the uncertainty and nerves, Ishbel was an oasis of serenity and surety.
Axis wondered how she did it.
There was something else about her. Axis remembered how she had been after she'd healed Madarin--every inch the archpriestess, a little haughty, very sure of herself, ready to face down the entire world if need be. She had that air about her again this day.
Axis almost smiled as he imagined her single-handedly gutting every soldier who might step forward to challenge Maximilian.
She saw the glint of humor in his eyes, and her own mouth curled upward. They shared amusement a moment, then Axis inclined his head, glanced at the soldier Madarin, standing guard behind Ishbel's chair, then allowed his eyes to roam further.
Venetia stood just along from Ishbel, and two or three paces from her stood Ravenna.
Axis studied Ravenna a moment. He did not trust her now, not at all.
Why had she been listening to his conversation with Maximilian? What would she do with the information?
She looked calm enough, and completely unthreatening, but still...
Of everyone who was someone within this gathering, the only notable absentee was Isaiah. Axis knew he was here somewhere, and that Maximilian would require him later. But for the moment the stage was Axis', and then Maximilian's.
Axis stood straight, taking a deep breath.
His was the task of introducing Maximilian formally to this army.
Ishbel tensed as Axis prepared to speak, feeling very nervous about what Maximilian might want her to do later, and looked around at the great gathering of soldiers.
They were all watchful. Most were silent, but here and there Ishbel could see men lean close, muttering.
Their eyes were flat and unsympathetic.
Ishbel could understand their concerns and their disinclination to give Maximilian anything but the most cursory of respect.
Did they know, she wondered, that three of the generals had absconded? Yes, they likely did.
Then Axis lifted his head and spoke, and, like everyone else gathered here, she had eyes for no one else.
"My friends," Axis said in an easy voice which nonetheless carried a great distance, "do you know who I
am?"
Silence, and Ishbel looked about, concerned.
Axis looked completely relaxed, and not at all disconcerted by the lack of response.
"Who am I?" he repeated, his voice as calm and as even as previously.
"You are Axis," came a voice, and Ishbel looked its way, recognizing one of the soldiers who had ridden with Axis when he'd rescued her from Ba'al'uz's men.
Then, from a man that Ishbel did not recognize, another response.
"You are a legend."
Axis laughed, soft and easy. "Aye, I am a legend. A man, a battle leader, a general. An Enchanter, a god, a ghost. I have ridden with the stars and walked the halls of the Underworld."
He smiled, just a little, just enough to charm every man and woman who saw it, and Ishbel thought that had he smiled at her like that when he'd asked her to be his lover, she would not have refused.
"I am the Skraelings' nemesis," he said, and at that his face hardened and his eyes glittered.
There was a marked response among the ranks. Tens of thousands of men shifted, and their regard became keener, their interest sharper.
"I know where the Skraelings are now," Axis said, turning in slow circles so he could gaze upon each section of the army in turn. "They are in Isembaard, where are so many of your families. Soon," he said, his tone now very strong, implacable, "we shall have to do something about that."
Now there was a cheer, then another, and then ten thousand more, and Axis had to hold up a hand to silence the army.
"I am a great battle leader," he said. "A legend. But do you know why I am here, this day?"
Silence, watching.
"I have come back from death, struggled back from the Otherworld, to introduce to you a legend both ancient and new. A legend to whom even I bow my head."
"I had not thought Axis so great the flatterer," muttered a dry voice just behind Ishbel, and she turned her head very slightly.
Maximilian stood there. So great had Ishbel's attention--as everyone else's--been on Axis that she had not heard him approach.
"Are you ready, Ishbel?" he murmured, and she inclined her head.
He gave her a small smile, and then Ishbel turned back to Axis.
"I have come here," Axis went on, "to introduce to you this legend. This place, this day, this moment, witnesses the rebirth of the greatest legend this world has ever seen.
"My friends, I commend to you my Lord of Elcho F
alling."
Axis turned about in one last full circle atop the hill, catching every eye in the mass below him, then he stepped down, passing Maximilian, who now stepped up to take his place.
Good luck, Maxel. I have done all I can for you.
Axis moved to stand beside Ishbel, and she exchanged a small smile with him.
Axis wondered if his face looked as strained as hers. He looked up. The skies were gray now, and clouds still billowed to the south. There was a step behind him, and Axis turned his head to see BroadWing, one of the Icarii who had aided Maximilian to cross the FarReach Mountains, and who had then fought with Malat and Georgdi as the Skraelings seethed through the Central Kingdoms.
BroadWing looked to the gathering clouds. "The ghosts arrive," he muttered.
The Lealfast. Gods, Axis hoped so, and then fresh nerves set his stomach roiling.
Maximilian stood as easily as had Axis, likewise turning in slow circles so he could meet the eye of each rank in turn.
"You may know something of me," Maximilian began, his own voice carrying as well as had Axis'. "A
king of a small eastern kingdom called Escator, a king of an amiable people, and who had little else to do save supervise the weekly bean market.
"But I came to my throne strangely, and from a strange place--and I go from the throne of Escator strangely, and to an even stranger place. Perhaps you know something of my early manhood--trapped in a gloam mine for seventeen years, and with no memories of my early life beyond the hanging wall, because to remember would have been to go mad."
He stopped, as if thinking, and Axis frowned slightly. He had to do something more than this... "Ah,"
Maximilian said, "but what are words? Any man could stand before you and spend half his life describing who he was in words without any of them truly showing you what he was. You need to know me before you can trust me, or before you can choose to lend to me your lives. Ishbel, if you please."
Ishbel drew a deep breath and walked toward Maximilian.
He took her hand briefly as she reached him.
Thank you, Axis saw him mouth, then Maximilian let go of Ishbel's hand and addressed the massed soldiers once more.
"Allow me to present to you Ishbel Brunelle Persimius, Archpriestess of the Coil, my former wife, and a woman more powerful than perhaps you can imagine."
Axis looked at Ravenna at that.
Her face was a rigid mask of impassivity, but Axis could see that the tendons of her neck were tight, and he thought she must be angry. She would hate it that Maximilian had called Ishbel to him, and not her.
Axis looked back to Maximilian, who had unbuttoned his jacket and tossed it across a nearby rock, and was now rolling up the sleeve of his left arm.
Axis frowned. What in the stars' name was he doing?
Maximilian held Ishbel's gaze, then he raised his bared arm, and turned in a slow circle so that all could see it.
"I have scars all over my body from my years in the Veins," Maximilian said. "Scars caused by the vengeful swords of guards, and scars caused by the collapse of the uncaring rock face. This one here,"
he tapped his arm just above the elbow, where ran a livid, twisted scar, "I will ask the Lady Ishbel to uncoil for you, so that you may see and understand from whence I came." He hesitated, then spoke again. "Whatever happens next, my friends, do not fear. It will pass."
Now he held out his arm to Ishbel.
She hesitated, then stepped close and wrapped both hands lightly around his arm over the scar.
She bowed her head, Maximilian doing likewise so that their foreheads almost touched.
For a minute...silence, then...
Axis found himself existing in nothing but blackness. He had no name, and he had no identity, save that of his number: Lot No. 859. If he had ever had a name, he did not know it.
There was nothing in his existence save the rhythmic raising of the pick above his shoulder and burying it in the rock face before him, over and over. Five swings over his left shoulder and five over his right before swinging back to his left shoulder.
There was nothing but the black tarry gloam collecting around his naked feet, nothing save the grunts of the anonymous man chained to his left ankle, and those of the seven other anonymous men in the chained gang.
Raise the pick, swing it, bury it. Breathe. Raise the pick, swing it, bury it. Breathe.
Keep doing that, day after day, week after week, year after year.
"This was my life." Maximilian's quiet voice intruded, and Axis managed to pull himself out of the vision sufficiently to understand that it was only vision, and not reality.
"This," said Maximilian, "was my entire world--for seventeen years."
This was the entire sum of existence, nothing else. Occasionally when someone in the line of chained men died, and another was brought to fill his place, the new man would babble about sun and wind and children and happiness beyond the hanging wall--the rock face that hung over their heads.
But Lot No. 859 knew there was nothing beyond the hanging wall, just a greater blackness, extending into infinity. Sometimes he thought he dreamed of something--an echoing memory, a glimpse of a rolling green sea, the scent of something called apple blossom--but Lot No. 859 knew these were figments of his imagination. Lies created by hopelessness to torment him.
He raised the pick, swung it, buried it in the rock face, feeling pain ripple throughout his body, but ignoring it because pain was such a constant companion that it had ceased to have any meaning.
Every so often men came, and demanded they stop, and gave them food and water, and told them to sleep.
Lot No. 859 did not ever sleep, or, at least, if he did, then he did not know the difference between dream and waking.
"One night," Maximilian's voice intruded again, "the guards thought they needed some amusement."
"Jack and I," said one of the guards, "can't decide whether or not you feel pain. You never complain.
You never moan. I've seen you standing with blood running thick down your body and never a single whimper. Why is that then, eh? Do you have some magical ability to withstand agony?"
Lot No. 859 did not answer.
The guard grabbed at him, shaking him a little. "Why is that?"
Lot No. 859 did not answer. It was of no interest to him. If they did not require him to wield the pick at the moment, then he would just stand here, and breathe.
Just...breathe.
The guard cursed, angry that the prisoner ignored him, and grabbed something from one of the other guards. It was a piece of wire, and the guard wound it tight about Lot No. 859's left arm just above his elbow.
"D'you feel this, then?" the guard said, and twisted the wire with a knife, tightening it.
Lot No. 859 felt it. The wire cut into his flesh, slicing through skin and muscle. It did hurt, it agonized, but the pain did not disturb Lot No. 859. He set it to one side. It was of no matter.
All that mattered was that he raise the pick, swing it, bury it in the rock face. Breathe. Rest. Then raise the pick once again.
"The guard screamed at me," said Maximilian. "He tightened that wire until it cut down to the very bone.
But I did nothing. Nothing mattered to me then, save that I continue to breathe.
"That--the constant tightening of the wire--was my life, my entire existence, for seventeen years."
Axis blinked, and suddenly he was standing once more in the hollow. All about him men were blinking, coming back to their senses.
Ishbel and Maximilian still stood close in the center of the hollow, then Ishbel slowly pulled her hands away from Maximilian's arm, gave him a long look, and stepped back a pace.
"That was his life, his entire life," she said, echoing Maximilian's own words. "For seventeen years. You have seen and you have felt what he endured. Could you have survived that? Could you have emerged sane at the other end of it? Maximilian Persimius is not Isaiah the Tyrant. He is not a battle leader."
She
waved a hand briefly toward Axis. "You have Axis SunSoar for that.
"What you have in Maximilian," Ishbel continued, once more looking about at the crowd of soldiers, "is a man to whom you can entrust your hearts and souls, and not fear that he will destroy them. Maximilian is endurance, and he is understanding. If you find yourself lost amid blackness, my friends, then he is the man to lead you forth from it."
Axis had his mouth slightly open at the end of Ishbel's speech. By the stars, if that was something she could do for a man when she professed not to love him, then what could she do when she admitted love?
There was a gentle snow falling about them now, and Axis suddenly realized its presence. He glanced up at the sky: it was leaden gray, low-hung with clouds. Here and there...no, in myriad places, individual snowflakes did not fall, but hovered within the air.
The Lealfast fighters.
Axis shivered.
Ishbel had returned to her place in the front ranks of the soldiers, and Maximilian was once again left alone in the center of the hollow.
"That is my past," he said to the crowd, then smiled suddenly. "Thank the gods!"
Axis grinned, as did most people he could see. Maximilian had certainly managed to create some empathy.
"This," Maximilian said, raising a hand into the sky, "is my future."
Axis, as everyone else, looked up and gasped in wonder.
The snowflakes--both those snowflakes that were Lealfast fighters, as well as every normal snowflake, which Axis assumed the Lealfast were somehow controlling--were arranging themselves in the sky in patterns. They changed every heartbeat or so, swirling into new and even more fantastical arrangements of coils and whirls that twisted far into the sky until they vanished into the clouds.
Axis stared, his initial wonderment being replaced now by an urgent sense that he should understand something about what he was seeing...something about the patterns...something so important about the patterns...
"This," said Maximilian, "is where I am going and what I will become. This is Elcho Falling."
Once more the snowflakes rearranged themselves, but now instead of forming abstract patterns, they formed the outline of a citadel, an incredible fortress of twisted spires and great peaks that reared far into the sky.