Chapter 8

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    IT WAS STRANGE,  DIANORA THOUGHT,  STILL MOVING THROUGH the crowded Audience Chamber as spring sunlight filtered down on Brandins court from the stained- glass windows above, how the so clear portents of youth were alchemized by time into the many-layered ambiguities of adult life.

    Sipping from her jeweled cup she sidered the alternative. That she had simply allowed things to bee nuanced and difficult. That the real truths were exactly the same as they had been on the day she arrived. That all she was doing was hiding: from what she had bee, and what she had not yet done.

    It was the tral question of her life and once more she pushed it away to the edges of her awareness. Not today. Not in any daytime. Those thoughts beloo nights alone in the saishan when only Scelto by her dht know how sleepless she was, or find the tracks of tears along her cheeks when he came to wake her in the m.

    Night thoughts, and this was bright day, in a very public place.

    So she walked over towards the man shed reized a her smile reach her eyes. Balang her chalice gracefully she sketched a full Ygrathen salute to the portly, soberly dressed persoh three heavy gold s about his neck.

    "Greetings," she murmured, straightening and moving nearer. "This is a surprise. It is rare ihat the so-busy Warden of the Three Harbors deigns to spare a moment from his so-demanding affairs to visit old friends.”

    Unfortunately Rhamanus was as hard to ruffle or discert as he had ever been. Dianora had been trying to get a rise out of him ever sihe night hed had her bundled like a brown heifer out of the street in front of The Queen and onto the river galley.

    Now he simply grinned, heavier with the years gone by and, latterly, his shore-bound duties, but unmistakably the man whht her here.

    One of the few men from Ygrath she genuinely liked.

    "Not so much flavor from you, girl," he mock-growled. "It is not for idle women who do nothing all day but put their hair up and down and up again for exercise to criticize those of us who have stern and arduous tasks that shorten hts and put grey in our hair.”

    Dianora laughed. Rhamanuss thick black curls—the envy of half the saishan—showed not a trace of grey. She let her gaze linger expressively on his dark locks.

    "Im a liar," Rhamanus ceded with untroubled equanimity, leaning forward so only she could hear.

    "Its been a dead-quiet winter. Not much to do at all. I could have e to visit but you know how much I hate these goings-on at court. My buttons pop when I bow.”

    Dianora laughed again and gave his arm a quick squeeze. Rhamanus had been kind to her on the ship, and courteous and friendly ever since, even when shed been merely another new body— if a slightly notorious one—in the saishan of the King. She knew he liked her and she also knew, from dEymon himself, that the former Tribute Ship captain was an effit and a fair administrator.

    She had helped him get the posting four years ago. It was a high honor for a seaman, supervising harbor rules and regulations at the three main ports of Chiara itself. It was also, to judge from Rhamanuss slightly threadbare clothing, a little too he seat of power for any real gains to be extracted.

    Thinking, she clicked her tongue against her upper teeth, a habit Brandin teased her about. He claimed it always signaled a request or a suggestion. He knew her very well, which frightened her at least as much as it did anything else.

    "This is the merest thought," she said now to Rhamanus quietly, "but would you have any i at

    all in living in north Asoli for a few years? Not that I want to get rid of you. Its a dreadful place, everyone knows that, but there are opportunities and Id as soon a det man reaped them as some of the greedy clutch that are h about here.”

    "The taxing office?" he asked, very softly.

    She nodded. His eyes widened slightly but, schooled to discretion, he gave no n of i or surprise.

    What he did do, an instant later, was glance quickly beyond her shoulder towards the throne. Dianora was already turning by then, an inexplicable sense, almost an antenna, having alerted her.

    So she was fag the Island Throne and the doorway behind it by the time the heralds staff rapped the floor twiot loudly, and Brandin came into the room. He was followed by the two priests, and the priestess of Adaon. Rhun shambled quickly over to stand near by, dressed identically to the King except for his cap.

    The truer measure of power, Brandin had once said to her, wouldnt be found in having twenty heralds deafen a room by proclaiming ones arrival. Any fool in funds for a day could rivet attention that way. The more testing course, the truer measure, was to enter unobtrusively and observe what happened.

    What happened was what always happehe Audience Chamber had been collectively poised as if on the edge of a cliff for the past ten minutes, waiting. Now, just as collectively, the court plummeted into obeisanot one person in the whole crowded room was still speaking by the time the heralds muted staff of office proclaimed the King. In the silehe two discreet raps on the marbled floor sounded like eg thunder.

    Brandin was in high good humor. Dianora could have told that from halfway across the room, even if she hadnt had a hint from Rhun already. Her heart was beating very fast. It always did whenever Brandiered a room where she was. Even after twelve years. Even still, ae everything. So many lines of her life led to or from this man or came together, hopelessly iwined, in him.

    He looked to dEymon first, as always, and received the others expressionless bow, sketched low in the Ygrathen fashion. Then, as always, he turned and smiled at Solores.

    Then at Dianora. Braced as she was, as she always tried to be, she still could not quite master what happeo her when the grey eyes found and held her own. His glance was like a touch, a gliding presence, fiery and glacial both—as Brandin was.

    And all this from a look across a very crowded room.

    Once, in bed, years before, she had dared to ask him a question that had long troubled her.

    "Is there sorcery involved when you love me here, or when we first meet in a public place?”

    She hadnt known what answer she wanted, or what to expect by way of rea. Shed thought he might be flattered by the implication, or at least amused. You could never be sure with Brandin though, his mind ran through too many different els and with too much subtlety. Which is why questions, especially revealing ones, were dangerous. This had been important to her though: if he said yes she was going to try to use that to kindle her killing anger again. The anger she seemed to have lost here irange world that was the Island.

    Her expression must have been very grave; he turned on his pillow, head propped on one hand tard her from beh level brows. He shook his head.

    "Not in any way you are thinking. Nothing that I trol or shape with my magic, other thater of children. I will not have any more heirs, you know that." She did know that; all his women did.

    He said, after a pause, carefully, "Why do you ask? What happens to you?”

    For a sed she thought shed heard uainty in his voice, but one could never be sure of such things with Brandin. "Too much," shed answered. "Too much happens." And shed been speaking, for that oime, the unshielded truth of a no longer i heart. There was an acute uanding in his

    clear eyes. Which frightened her. She moved herself—moved by all the layers of her o slide ainst his body again and then above and upon it that it might begin once more, the whole process. All of it: betrayal and memory mixed with yearning, as in the amber-colored wihe Triad were said to drink— too potent for mortals to taste.

    "Are you truly serious about that posting in Asoli?" Rhamanuss voice was soft. Brandin had not goo the thro was making a relaxed circuit of the room—more evidence of his benign mood. Rhun, with his lopsided smile, shambled in his wake.

    "I fess I had never even given it a thought," the former Tribute captain added.

    With an effort Dianora forced her thoughts ba. For a sed she had fotten her own query. Brandin did that to her. It was not a good thing, she thought. For many reasons it was not a good thing.

    She turned again to Rhamanus. "Im quite serious," she said. "But Im not sure if you would want the position—even if it were possible. You have more status where you are, and this is Chiara, after all. Asoli  offer you some ce at wealth, but I think you have an idea what would be involved. What matters to you, Rhamanus?”

    It was more bluntly put than courtesy would have deemed appropriate, especially with a friend.

    He blinked, and fingered one of his s of office.

    "Is that what it es down to?" he asked hesitantly. "Is that how you see it?  a man not perhaps be moved by the prospect of a new challenge, or even—at the risk of sounding foolish—by the desire to serve his King?”

    Her turn to blink.

    "You shame me," she said simply, after a moment. "Rhamanus, I swear you do." She stilled his quick protests with a hand on his sleeve. "Sometimes I wonder what is happening to me. All the intriguing that goes on here.”

    She heard footsteps approag and what she said  oken as much to the man behind as to the one in front of her. "Sometimes I wonder what this court is doing to me.”

    "Should I be w as well?" asked Brandin of Ygrath.

    Smiling, he joihem. He did not touch her. He very seldom touched the saishan women in publid this was an Ygratheion. They knew his rules. Their lives were shaped by his rules.

    "My lord," she said, turning and sketg her salutation. She kept her voice airily provocative. "Do you find me more ical than I was when this terrible man brought me here?”

    Brandins amused glance went from her to Rhamanus. It was not as if hed he reminder of which Tribute captain had brought him Dianora. She khat, and he knew she did. It art of their verbal dance. His intelligeretched her to her limits, and then ged what those limits were.

    She noticed, perhaps because the subject had e up with Rhamanus, that there was as much grey in his beard now as black.

    He nodded judiciously, simulating a deep  over the question. "I would have to say so, yes.

    You have grown ically manipulative in almost exactly the same proportion as the terrible man has grown fat.”

    "So much?" Dianora protested. "My lord, he is very fat!”

    Both men chuckled. Rhamanus patted his belly affeately.

    "This," he said, "is what happens when you feed a man cold salt meat for twenty years at sea and then expose him to the delights of the Kings city.”

    "Well then," said Brandin, "we may have to send you away somewhere until you are sleek as a seal again.”

    "My lord," said Rhamanus instantly, "I am yours to and in all things." His expression was sober and intense.

    Brandiered that and his tone ged as well. "I know that," he murmured. "I would that I had more of you at court. At both of my courts. Portly or sleek, Rhamanus, I am not unmindful of you, whatever our Dianora may think.”

    Very high praise, a promise of sorts, and a dismissal for the moment. Bright-eyed, Rhamanus bowed formally and withdrew. Brandin walked a couple of paces away, Rhun shuffling along beside him.

    Dianora followed, as she was expected to. O of earshot of a the Fool, Brandin turo her. He was, she was sorry to see, suppressing a smile.

    "What did you do? Offer him north Asoli?”

    Dianora heaved a heartfelt sigh of frustration. This happened all the time. "Now that," she protested, "is unfair. You are using magic.”

    He let the smile e. She khat people were watg them. She knew what they would say amongst each other.

    "Hardly," Brandin murmured. "I wouldnt waste it or drain myself on something so transparent.”

    "Transparent!" she bridled.

    "Not you, my ical manipulator. But Rhamanus was too serious too quickly when I jested about posting him away. And the only position of significe currently available is north Asoli and so . . .”

    He let the senterail off. Laughter lingered in his eyes.

    "Would he be such a bad choice?" Dianora asked defiantly. It was genuinely discerting how easily Brandin could sound the depths of things. If she allowed herself to dwell on that she could bee frightened again.

    "What do you think?" he asked by way of reply.

    "I? Think?" She lifted her plucked eyebrows in exaggerated arches. "How should a mere object of the Kings occasional pleasure veo have an opinion on such matters?”

    "Now that," said Brandin nodding briskly, "is an intelligent observation. I shall have to sult Solores, instead.”

    "If you get an intelligent observation out of her," Dianora said tartly, "I shall hurl myself from the saishan baly into the sea.”

    "All the way across the harbor square? A long leap," said Brandin mildly.

    "So," she replied, "is an intelligent observation for Solores.”

    And at that he laughed aloud. The court was listening. Everyone heard. Everyone would draw their own clusions, but they would all be the same clusion in the end. Scelto, she reflected, was likely to receive discreet tributions from sources other than Neso of Ygrath before the day was out.

    "I saw something iing on the mountain this m," Brandin said, his amusement subsiding.

    "Something quite unusual.”

    This, she realized, was why hed wao speak to her alone. Hed been up on Sangarios that m; she was one of the few who knew about it. Brandihis venture quiet, in case he should fail. Shed been prepared to tease him about it.

    At the beginning of spring, just as the winds began to ge, before the last snows melted iando and Tregea and the southern reaches of what had been Tigana, came the three Ember Days that marked the turning of the year.

    No fires not already burning were lit anywhere in the Palm. The devout fasted for at least the first of the three days. The bells of the Triad temples were silent. Men stayed within their doors at night, especially after darkfall on the first day which was the Day of the Dead.

    There were Ember Days in autumn as well, halfway through the year, wheime of m came for Adaon slain on his mountain in Tregea, when the sun began to fade as Eanna mourned and Morian folded in upon herself in her Halls underground. But the spring days inspired a colder dread, especially in the tryside, because so much depended upon what would follow them. Winters passing, the season of sowing, and the hope of grain, of life, in the summers fullo e.

    In Chiara there was an added ritual, different from anything elsewhere in the Palm.

    On the Island the tale was told that Adaon and Eanna had first e together in love for three full days and nights on the summit of Sangarios. That in the surging climax of her desire ohird night Eanna of the Lights had created the stars of heaven and strewn them like shining lace through the dark.

    And the tale was told that nine months later—which is three times three—the Triad was pleted when Morian was born in the depths of winter in a cave on that same mountain.

    And with Morian had e both life ah into the world, and with life ah came mortal man to walk uhe newly ars, the two moons of the nights warding, and the sun of day.

    And for this reason had Chiara always asserted its preeminence among the nine provinces of the Palm, and for this reason as well did the Island name Morian as guardian of its destiny.

    Morian of Portals, who had sway over all thresholds. For everyone khat all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to e to an island was to e to another world. A truth known uhe stars and moons, if not always remembered by the light of day.

    Every three years then, at the beginning of each Year of Morian, on the first of the springtime Ember Days, the young men of Chiara would vie with each other in a dawn race up to the summit of San-garios, there to pluck a blood-dark sprig of sonrai, the intoxig berries of the mountain, uhe watchful eye of the priests of Morian who had kept vigil on the peak all night long among the waking spirits of the dead. The first man down the mountain was anointed Lord of Sangarios until the  such run in three years time.

    In the old days, the very old days, the Lord of Sangarios would have been hunted down and slain on his mountain by the women six months later on the first of the Ember Days of fall.

    Not anymore. Not for a long time. Now the young champion was likely to find himself in fierce demand as a lover by women seeking the blessing of his seed. A different sort of hunt, Dianora had said to Brandin once.

    He hadnt laughed. He didnt find the ritual amusing. In fact, six years ago the King of Ygrath had elected to run the course himself, the m before the actual race. He had do again three years past. No small achievement, really, for a man of his years, sidering how hard and how long the rurained for this. Dianora didnt know what to find more whimsical: the fact that Brandin would do this thing, in such secrecy, or the ebullient mase pride hed felt both times hed made it up to the summit of Sangarios and down again.

    In the Audience Chamber Dianora asked the question she was clearly expected to ask: "What did you see, then?”

    She did not know, for mortals seldom do know when they approach a threshold of the goddess, that the question would mark the turning of her days.

    "Something unusual," Brandied. "I had of course outstripped the guards running with me.”

    "Of course," she murmured, giving him a sidelong glance.

    He grinned. "I was alone oh part of the . The trees were still very thi either side, mountain ash, mostly, some sejoias.”

    "How iing," she said.

    This time he quelled her with a look. Dianora bit her lip and schooled her expression dutifully.

    "I looked over to my right," Brandin said, "and saw a large grey rock, almost like a platform at the

    edge of the trees. And sitting on the rock there was a creature. A woman, I would swear, and very nearly human.”

    "Very nearly?”

    She wasnt teasing anymore. Withiual archway of a portal of Morian we sometimes do know that a thing of importance is happening.

    "Thats what was unusual. She certainly wasirely human. Not with green hair and such pale skin. Skin so white I swear I saw blue veih, Dianora. And her eyes were unlike any Ive ever seen. I thought she was a trick of light—the sun filtering through trees. But she didnt move, or ge in any way, even when I stopped to look at her.”

    And now Dianora kly where she was.

    The a creatures of water and wood and cave went ba time as far as the Triad did almost, and from the description she knew what he had seen. She kher things as well and was suddenly afraid.

    "What did you do?" she asked, as casually as she could.

    "I wasnt sure what to do. I spoke; she didnt answer. So I took a step towards her and as soon as I did she leaped down from the rod backed away. She stopped among the trees. I held out my open palms, but she seemed to be startled by that, or offended, and a moment later she fled.”

    "Did you follow?”

    "I was about to, but by then one of the guards had caught up to me.”

    "Did he see her?" she asked. Too quickly.

    Brandin gave her a curious look. "I asked. He said no, though I think he would have answered that way, regardless. Why do you ask?”

    She shrugged. "It would have firmed she was real," she lied.

    Brandin shook his head. "She was real. This was no vision. In fact," he added, as if the thought had just occurred to him, "she reminded me of you.”

    "With . . . what was it? Green skin and blue hair?" she replied, letting her court instincts guide her now. Something large was happenihough. She labored to hide the turmoil she felt. "I thank you so much my gracious lord. I suppose if I talked to Scelto and Vencel we could achieve the skin color, and blue hair should be easy enough. If it excites you so dramatically . . .”

    He smiled but did not laugh. "Green hair, not blue," he said, almost absently. "And she did, Dianora,”

    he repeated, looking at her oddly. "She did remind me of you. I wonder why. Do you know anything about such creatures?”

    "I do not," she said. "Iando we have no tales of green-haired women in the mountains." She was lying. She was lying as well as she could, wide-eyed and direct. She could scarcely believe what she had just heard, what he had seen.

    Brandins good humor was still with him.

    "What mountain tales do you have iando?" he queried, smiling expetly.

    "Stories of hairy things that walk on legs like tree stumps a goats and virgins in the night.”

    His smile broadened. "Are there any?”

    "Goats, yes," she said with a straight face. "Fewer virgins. Hairy creatures with such specific appetites are not an iive to chastity. Are you sending out a party to search for this creature?" A question so important she held her breath awaiting his reply.

    "I think not," Brandin said. "I suspect such things are only seehey want to be.”

    Which, she knew for a fact, was absolutely true.

    "I havent told a you," he added uedly.

    There was no dissembling in the expression she felt e over her face at that. But over and above everything else there was something new inside her with these tidings. She badly o be aloo think. A vain hope. She wouldhat ce for a long time yet today; best to push his story as far back as she could, with all the other things she was alushing to the edges of her mind.

    &quot;Thank you, my lord,&quot; she murmured, awar<u></u>e that they had been talking privately for some time.

    Aware, as ever, of how that would be strued.

    &quot;In the meantime,&quot; Brandin suddenly said, in a quite different tone, &quot;you still have not yet asked me how I did on the run. Solores, I have to tell you, made it her first question.”

    Which carried them bailiar ground.

    &quot;Very well,&quot; she said, feigning indifference. &quot;Do tell me. Halfway? Three-quarters?”

    A glint of royal indignation nickered in the grey eyes. &quot;You are presumptuous sometimes,&quot; he said. &quot;I indulge you too much. I went, if you please, all the way to the summit and came down again this m with a cluster of sonrai berries. I will be extremely ied to see if any of tomorrows runners are up and down as quickly.”

    &quot;Well,&quot; she said quickly, unwisely, &quot;they wont have sorcery to help them.”

    &quot;Dianora, have done!”

    And that tone she reized and knew shed gooo far. As always at suents she had a dizzying sense of a pit gaping at her feet.

    She knew what Brandin needed from her; she khe reason he granted her lise to be eous and imperti. She had long uood why the wit and edge she brought to their exges were important to him. She was his terbalao Soloress soft, uioning, undemanding shelter. The two of them, in turn, balang dEymons ascetic exercise of politid gover.

    And all three of them in orbit around the star that Brandin was. The voluntarily exiled sun, removed from the heavens it knew, from the lands and seas and people, bound to this alien peninsula by loss and grief and revenge decreed.

    She knew all this. She khe King very well. Her life depended on that. She did not often stray across the lihat was always there, invisible but inviolate. When she did it was likely to be over something as apparently trivial as this. It was such a paradox for her how he could shrug off or laugh at or even invite her caustientary on court and y—a bridle like a boy with affronted pride if she teased about his ability to run up and down a mountain in a m.

    At such times he had only to say her name in a certain way and endless chasms opened before her in the delicately inlaid floor of the Audience Chamber.

    She tive here, more slave than courtesan, at the court of a Tyrant. She was also an impostor, living an ongoing lie while her try slowly died away from the memories of men. And she had sworn to kill this man, whose glance across a room was as wildfire on her skin or amber wine in her mortal blood.

    Chasms, everywhere she turned.

    And now this m he had seen a riselka. He, and very possibly a sean as well. Fighting back her fear she forced herself t casually, to arch her eyebrows above a face schooled to bland un.

    &quot;This amuses me,&quot; she said, reag for self-possession, knowing precisely what his need in her was, even now. Especially now. &quot;You profess to be pleased, even touched, by Soloress doubtlessly agitated query about your mountain run. The first thing she asked, you say. How she must have wondered whether or not you succeeded! A when I—knowing as surely as I know my own hat you

    were up on the summit this m—treat it lightly, as something small, never in doubt . . . why then the King grows angry. He bids me sternly to have done! But tell me, my lord, in all fairness, which of us, truly, has honored you more?”

    For a long time he was silent and she khat the court would be avidly marking the expression on his face. For the moment she cared nothing for them. Or even for her past, or his enter on the mountaihere was one specific chasm here that began and ended in the depths of the grey eyes that were now searg her own.

    When he spoke it was in a different voice again, but this tone she happeo know exceedingly well and, in spite of everything that had just been said, and in spite of where they were and atg them, she felt herself go weak suddenly. Her legs trembled, but not with fear now.

    &quot;I could take you,&quot; said Brandin, King of Ygrath, thickly, his face flushed, &quot;on the floor of this rht now before all of my gathered court.”

    Her throat was dry. She felt a nerve flutter beh the skin of her wrist. Her own color was high, she knew. She swallowed with some difficulty.

    &quot;Perhaps tonight would be wiser,&quot; she murmured, trying to keep her tone light but not really managing it, uo hide the swift response in her eyes—spark to spark like the o of a blaze. The jeweled khav chalice trembled in her hand. He saw that, and she saw that he did and that her response, as always, served as kindling for his own desire. She sipped at her drink, holding it with both hands, ging to self-trol.

    &quot;Better tonight, surely,&quot; she said again, overwhelmed as always by what was happening to her. She knew what he needed her to say though, now, at this moment, in this room of state thronged with his court and emissaries from home.

    She said it, looking him in the eyes, articulating carefully: &quot;After all my lord, at ye you should marshal your strength. You did run part a hill this m.”

    An instant later, for the sed time, the Chiaran court of Brandin of Ygrath saw their King throw back his handsome, bearded head and they heard him laugh aloud in delight. Not far away, Rhun the Fool cackled in simultaneous glee.

    &quot;Isolla of Ygrath!”

    This time there were trumpets and a drum, as well as the heralds staff resounding as it struck the floor by the double doors at the southern end of the Audience Chamber.

    Standing most of the way towards the throne, Dianora had time to observe the stately progress of the woman Brandin had called the fi musi in Ygrath. The assembled court of Chiara was lined several rows deep, flanking the approach to the King.

    &quot;A handsome woman still,&quot; murmured Neso of Ygrath, &quot;and shes fifty years old if shes a day.”

    Somehow he had mao end up o her in the front row.

    His unctuous tone irritated her, as always, but she tried not to let it show. Isolla was clad in the simplest possible robe of dark blue, belted at the waist with a slender gold . Her hair, brown with hints of grey, was cut unfashionably short—although the spring and summer fashion might ge after today, Dianora thought. The y always took its cue in these matters from Ygrath.

    Isolla walked fidently, not hurrying, down the aisle formed by the courtiers. Brandin was already smiling a wele. He was always immensely pleased when one or another of Ygraths artists made the long, often dangerous, sea voyage to his sed court.

    Several steps behind Isolla, and carrying her lute in its case as if it were an artifameasurable worth, Dianora saw—with genuine surprise—the poet a di Chiara, clad in his ubiquitous triple- layered cloak. There were murmurs from the assembly: she wasnt the only one caught off guard by this.

    Instinctively she threw a glance across the aisle to where Doarde stood with his wife and daughter.

    She was in time to see the spasm of hate ahat flickered across his face as his younger rival approached. An instant later the revealing expression was gone, replaced by a polished mask of sneering disdain at as vulgar l of himself to serve as porter for an Ygrathen.

    Still, Dianora sidered, this was an Ygrathen court. a, she guessed in a flash of intuition, had probably had one of his verses set to music. If Isolla was about to sing a song of his it would be a dazzling coup for the Chiara. More than suffit to explain why he would offer to further exalt Isolla—and Ygrathen artists—by serving as a bearer for her.

    The politics of art, Dianora decided, was at least as plex as that of provinces and nations.

    Isolla had stopped, as roper, about fifteen steps from the dais of the Island Throne, very close to where Dianora and Neso stood.

    ly she proceeded to perform the triple obeisance. Very graciously—a mark of high honor— Brandin rose to his feet to bid her wele. He was smiling. So was Rhun, behind him and to his left.

    For no reason she would ever afterwards be able to name or explain Dianora turned from monard musi back to the poet bearing the lute. a had stopped a further half a dozen paces behind Isolla and had k on the marble floor.

    What detracted from the grace of the tableau was the dilation of his eyes. Nilth leaves, Dianora cluded instantly. Hes drugged himself. She saw beads of perspiration on the poets brow. It was not warm in the Audience Chamber.

    &quot;You are most wele, Isolla,&quot; Brandin was saying with genuine pleasure. &quot;It has been far too long since we have seen you, or heard you play.”

    Dianora saw a make a small adjustment in the way he held the lute. She thought he reparing to open the case. It did not look like an ordinary lute though. In fact— Afterwards she was able to know ohing only with certainty: it had beeory of the riselka that made her so sharp to see. The story, and the fact that Brandin wasain if the sean—his guard—had seen her or not.

    One ma a fork ih. Two me a death.

    Either way, something was to happen. And now it did.

    All eyes but hers were on Brandin and Isolla. Only Dianora saw a slip the velvet cover off the lute. Only Dianora saw that it was not, in fact, a lute. And only she had heard Brandins tale of the riselka.

    &quot;Die, Isolla of Ygathl&quot; a screamed hoarsely; his eyes bulged as he hurled the velvet away and leveled the crossbow he carried.

    With the lightniion of a man half his years Brandin reflexively threw out his hand to cast a sorcerers shield around the threatened singer.

    Exactly as he was expected to, Dianora realized.

    &quot;Brandin, no!&quot; she screamed. &quot;Its you!”

    And seizing the gape-mouthed Neso of Ygrath by the near shoulder she propelled herself and him both into the aisle.

    The crossbow bolt, aimed meticulously to the left of Isolla on a line for Brandi, buried itself instead in the shoulder of a stupefied Neso. He shrieked in pain and shock.

    Her momentum drove Dianora stumbling to her knees beside Isolla. She looked up. And for the rest of her days never fot the look she met in the singers eyes.

    She turned away from it. The emotion, the hatred was too raw. She felt physically ill, trembling with aftershock. She forced herself to stand; she looked at Brandin. He hadnt even lowered his hand. There was still the shimmer of a protective barrier around Isolla.

    Who had never been in da all.

    The guards had a by now. Hed been dragged to his feet. Dianora had never seen anyone look so white. Even his eyes were white, from the drug. For a moment she thought he was going to faint, but then a threw his head back as far as he could in the iron grip of the Ygrathen soldiers. He opened his mouth, as if in agony.

    &quot;Chiara!&quot; he cried once, and then, &quot;Freedom for Chiara!&quot; before they silenced him, brutally.

    The ech for a long time. The room was large and the stillness was almost absolute. No one dared to move. Dianora had a sehat the court wasnt evehing. No one wahe slightest attention drawn to them.

    On the mosailaid floor Neso moaned again in fear and pain, breaking the tableau. Two soldiers ko tend to him. Dianora was still afraid she was going to be sick; she couldnt make her hands stop trembling. Isolla of Ygrath had not moved.

    She could not move, Dianora realized: Brandin was holding her in a mindlock like a flower pressed flat on a sheet. The soldiers lifted Neso and helped him from the room. Dianora stepped back herself, leaving Isolla alone before the King. Fifteen very proper paces away.

    &quot;a was a tool,&quot; Brandin said softly. &quot;Chiara has virtually nothing to do with this. Do not think that I am unaware of that, I  offer you nothing now but an easier death. You must tell me why you did this.&quot; His voice was rigidly measured, careful and unied. Dianora had never heard such a tone from him. She looked at Rhun: the Fool was weeping, tears streaking his distorted features.

    Brandin lowered his hand, freeing Isolla to move and speak.

    The blazing flash of hatred left her features. In its place was a defiant pride. Dianora wondered if she had actually thought the deception would work. If after the King had been slain she had really expected to walk freely from this room. And if not—if she had not expected to do so—what did that mean?

    Holding herself very straight, Isolla gave part of an answer. &quot;I am dying,&quot; she said to Brandin. &quot;The physis have given me less than a season before the growth inside reaches my brain. Already there are songs I o longer remember. Songs that have been mine for forty years.”

    &quot;I am sorry to hear it,&quot; said Brandin formally, his courtesy so perfect it seemed a violation of human nature. He said, &quot;All of us die, Isolla. Some very young. Not all of us plot the death of our King. You have more to tell me before I may grant you release from pain.”

    For the first time Isolla seemed to waver. She lowered her gaze from his eerily serene grey eyes. Only after a long moment did she say, &quot;You had to have known that there would be a price for what you did.”

    &quot;Exactly what is it that I did?”

    Her head came up. &quot;You exalted a dead child above the living one, and revenge above your wife.

    And more highly than your own land. Have you spared a thought, a fra of a thought, for any of them while you pursued your unnatural vengeance for Stevan?”

    Dianoras heart thudded painfully. It was a  spoken in Chiara. She saw Brandins lips tighten in a way she had seen only a handful of times. But when he spoke his voice was as rigidly trolled as before.

    &quot;I judged that I had sidered them fairly. Girald has governan Ygrath as he was always going to have. He even has my saishan, as a symbol of that. Dorotea I invited here several times a year for the first several years.”

    &quot;Invited here that she might wither and grow old while you kept yourself young. A thing no Sorcerer- King of Ygrath has ever done before, lest the gods punish the land for that impiety. But frath you never spared a thought, did you? And Girald? He is no King—his father is. That is your title, not his.

    What does the key to a saishan mean against that reality? He is even going to die before you, Brandin, unless you are slain. And what will happen then? It is unnatural! It is all unnatural, and there is a price to be paid.”

    &quot;There is always a price,&quot; he said softly. &quot;A price for everything. Even for living. I had not expected to pay it in my own family.&quot; There was a silence. &quot;Isolla, I must extend my years to do what I am here to do.”

    &quot;Then you pay for it,&quot; Isolla repeated, &quot;and Girald pays and Dorotea. And Ygrath.”

    And Tigana, Dianora thought, no lorembling, her own ache e back like a wound in her.

    Tigana pays too; in broken statues and fallen towers, in children slain and a name gone.

    She watched Brandins face. And Rhuns.

    &quot;I hear you,&quot; the King said at length to the singer. &quot;I have heard more than you have chosen to say. I need only ohing further. You must tell me which of them did this.&quot; It was said with visible regret.

    Rhuns ugly face was screwed up tightly, his hands gestured with a random helplessness.

    &quot;And why,&quot; said Isolla, drawing herself up and speaking with the frigid hauteur of one who had nothio lose, &quot;should you imagiheir purposes to be at odds in this? Why the one or the other, King of Ygrath?&quot; Her voice rang out, harsh as the message it bore.

    Slowly he he hurt was clear in him now; Dianora could see it in the way he stood and spoke, however much he trolled himself. She didnt eveo look at Rhun.

    &quot;Very well,&quot; Brandin said. &quot;And you, Isolla? What could they have offered to make you do this thing.

    you really hate me so much?”

    The womaated only for an instant. Then, as proudly, as defiantly as before, she said, &quot;I  love the Queen so much.”

    Brandin closed his eyes. &quot;How so?”

    &quot;In all the ways that you forsook when you chose exile here and love of the dead over the heart and the bed of your wife.”

    In any normal, any halfway normal time there would have been a rea to this from the court.

    There would have had to be. Dianora heard nothing though, only the sound of a great many people breathing carefully as Brandin opened his eyes again to look down upon the sihere was an unveiled triumph in the Ygrathen womans face.

    &quot;She was invited here,&quot; he repeated almost wistfully. &quot;I could have pelled her but I chose not to do so. She had made her feelings clear and I left the choice to her. I thought it was the kinder, fairer a. It would appear that my sin lies in not having ordered her to take ship for this peninsula.”

    So many different griefs and shapes of pain seemed to be warring for preemihin Dianora.

    Behind the King she could see dEymon; his face was a sickly grey. He met her eyes for only an instant then quickly looked away. Later she might think of ways to use this sudden asdancy over him but right now she felt only pity for the man. He would offer tn tonight, she knew. Offer, probably, to kill himself after the old fashion. Brandin would refuse, but after this nothing would be quite the same.

    Freat many reasons.

    Brandin said, &quot;I think you have told me what I had o know.”

    &quot;The Chiaran acted alone,&quot; Isolla volunteered uedly. She gestured at a, in the bone- crag grip of the soldiers behind her. &quot;He joined us when he visited Ygrath two years ago. Our purposes appeared to march together this far.”

    Brandin nodded. &quot;This far,&quot; he echoed quietly. &quot;I thought that might be the case. Thank you for firming it,&quot; he added gravely.

    There was a silence. &quot;You promised me an easy death,&quot; Isolla said, holding herself very straight.

    &quot;I did,&quot; Brandin said. &quot;I did promise you that.&quot; Dianora stopped breathing. The King looked at Isolla without expression for what seemed an unbearably long time.

    &quot;You  have no idea,&quot; he said at last, in a voice little above a whisper, &quot;hoy I was that you

    had e to make musie again.”

    Then he moved his right hand, ily the same casual gesture he would use to dismiss a servant or a petitioner.

    Isollas head exploded like an overripe fruit smashed with a hammer. Dark blood burst from her neck as her body collapsed like a sack. Dianora was standing too near; the blood of the slain attered thickly on her gown and face. She stumbled backwards. A hideous illusion of reptiliaures was coiling and twisting in the place where Isollas head had been mashed to a formless, oozing pulp.

    There was screaming everywhere and a frenzied pandemonium as the court backed away. One figure suddenly ran forward. Stumbling, almost falling in its haste, the figure jerked out a sword. Then awkwardly, with great clumsy two-handed slashes, Rhun the Fool began hag at the dead body of the singer.

    His face was weirdly distorted with rage and revulsion. Foam and mucus ran from his mouth and nose. With one savage butchers blow he severed an arm from the womans torso. Something dark and green and blind appeared to undulate from the stump of Isollas shoulder, leaving a trail of glistening black slime. Behind Dianora someone gagged with horror.

    &quot;Stevan!&quot; she heard Rhun cry brokenly. And amid nausea and chaos and terror, an overwhelming pity suddenly laid hard siege to her heart. She looked at the frantically lab Fool, clad exactly like the King, bearing a Kings sword. Spittle flew from his mouth.

    &quot;Music! Stevan! Music! Stevan!&quot; Rhun shouted obsessively, and with each slurred, ferocious articulation of the words his slender, jeweled court sword went up and down, glinting brilliantly ireaming light, hewing the dead body like meat. He lost his footing on the slippery floor ao his knees with the force of his own fury. A grey thing with eyes on waving stalks appeared to attach itself like a bloodleech to his knee.

    &quot;Music,&quot; Rhun said one last time, softly, with ued clarity. Then the sword slipped through his fingers a in a puddle of blood beside the mutilated corpse of the singer, his balding head slewed awkwardly down and to one side, his white-and-gold carments hopelessly soiled, weeping as though his heart was broken.

    Dianora turo Brandin. The King was motionless, standily as he had been throughout, his hands relaxed at his sides. He gazed at the appalling se in front of him with a frighteniat.

    &quot;There is always a price,&quot; he said quietly, almost to himself, through the incessant screaming and tumult that filled the Audience Chamber. Dianora took oant step towards him then, but he had already turned and, with dEymon quickly following, Brandihe room through the door behind the dais.

    With his departure the slithering, oleaginous creatures immediately disappeared, but not the mangled body of the singer or the pitiful, crumpled figure of the Fool. Dianora seemed to be alohem, everyone else had surged back towards the doors. Isollas blood felt hot where it had landed on her skin.

    People were tripping and pushing each other in their frantic haste to quit the room now that the King was gone. She saw the soldiers hustling a di Chiara away through a side door. Other soldiers came forward with a sheet to cover Isollas body. They had to move Rhun away to do it; he dido uand what was happening. He was still weeping, his face grotesquely screwed up like a hurt childs.

    Dianora moved a hand to wipe at her cheek and her fingers came away streaked with blood. The soldiers placed the sheet over the singers body. One of them gingerly picked up the arm Rhun had severed and pushed it uhe sheet as well. Dianora saw him do that. There seemed to be blood all over her face. On the very edge of losing all trol she looked around for help, any kind of help.

    &quot;e, my lady,&quot; said a desperately needed voice that was somehow by her side. &quot;e. Let me take you back to the saishan.”

    &quot;Oh, Scelto,&quot; she whispered. &quot;Please. Please do that, Scelto.”

    The news blazed through the dry tinder of the saishaing it afire with rumor and fear. An assassination attempt from Ygrath. With Chiaran participation.

    And it had very nearly succeeded.

    Scelto hustled Dianora down the corridor to her rooms and with a bristling protectiveness slammed the door on the nervous, fluttering crowd that g and hovered in the hallway like so many silk-clad moths. Murmuring tinuously he undressed and washed her, and then ed her carefully into her warmest robe. She was shivering untrollably, uo speak. He lit the fire and made her sit before it.

    In docile submission she drank the mahgoti tea he prepared as a sedative. Two cups of it, oer the other. Eventually the trembling stopped. She still found it difficult to speak. He made her stay in the chair before the fire. She didnt want to leave it anyway.

    Her brai battered, numb. She seemed to be utterly incapable of marshaling any uanding, of shaping ae respoo what had just happened.

    Ohought only kept driving the others aounding in her head like the hammer of a heralds staff on the floor. A thought so impossible, so disabling, that she tried, with all she could, through the blinding pulse of an onrushing headache, to block it out. She couldnt. The hammering crashed through, again and again: she had saved his life.

    Tigana had been a single pulsebeat away from ing bato the world. The pulsebeat of Brandin that the crossbow would have ended.

    Home was a dream shed had yesterday. A place where childreo play. Among towers he mountains, by a river, on curving sweeps of white olden sand beside a palace at the edge of the sea.

    Home was a longing, a desperate dream, a name in her dreams. And this afternoon she had dohe ohing she could possibly have doo bar that name from the world, to lock it into a dream. Until all the dreams, too, died.

    How was she to deal with that? How possibly cope with what it meant? She had e here to kill Brandin of Ygrath, to end his life that lost Tigana might live again. And instead . . .

    The shivering started once more. Fussing and murmuring, Scelto built up the fire and brought yet another bla for her knees a. When he saw the tears on her face he made a queer helpless sound of distress. Someone knocked loudly on her door sometime later and she heard Scelto driving them away with language she had never known him to use before.

    Gradually, very slowly, she began to pull herself together. From the color of the light that gently drifted down through the high windows she khat the afternoon would be waning towards dusk. She rubbed her cheeks and eyes with the backs of her hands. She sat up. She had to be ready when twilight came; twilight was when Brandio the saishan.

    She rose from her chair, pleased to find that her legs were steadier. Scelto rushed up, protesting, but when he saw her face he quickly checked himself. Without another word he led her through the inner doors and down that hallway to the baths. His ferocious glare silehe attendants there. She had a sehat he would have struck them if they had spoken; she had never heard of him doing a single violent aot since he had killed a man and lost his own manhood.

    She let them bathe her, let the sted oils soften her skin. There had been blood on it that afternoon.

    The waters swirled around her and then away. The attendants washed her hair. After, Scelto paihe nails of her fingers and toes. A soft shade, dusty rose. Far from the color of blood, far from anger rief.

    Later she would paint her lips the same shade. She doubted they would make love, though. She would hold him and be held. She went back to her room to wait for the summons.

    From the light she knew when evening had fallen. Everyone in the saishan always knew when evening fell. The day revolved towards and then away from the hour of darkness. She sent Scelto outside, to receive the word when it came.

    A short time after he came bad told her that Brandin had sent for Solores.

    Anger flamed wildly within her. It exploded like . . . like the head of Isolla of Ygrath in the Audience Chamber. Dianora could scarcely draw breath, so fierce was her sudden rage. Never in her life had she felt anything like this—this white hot caldron in her heart. After Tigana fell, after her brother was driven away, her hatred had been a shaped thing, trolled, eled, driven by purpose, a guarded flame that shed known would have to burn a long time.

    This was an inferno. A caldron boiling over inside her, prodigious, overmastering, sweeping all before it like a lava flow. Had Brandin been in her room at that moment she could have ripped his heart out with her nails ah—as the women tore Adaon on the mountainside. She saw Scelto take an involuntary backwards step away from her; she had never known him to fear her or anyone else before. It was not an observation that mattered now.

    What mattered, all that mattered, the only thing, was that she had saved the life of Brandin of Ygrath today, trampling into mud spattered blood the clear, unsullied memory of her home and the oath shed sworn in ing here so long ago. She had violated the essence of everything she once had been; violated herself more cruelly than had any man whod ever lain with her for a  in that upstairs room iando.

    And iurn? Iurn, Brandin had just sent for Solores di Corte, leavio spend tonight alone.

    Not, not a thing he should have done.

    It did not matter that even within the fiery heat of her own blazing Dianora could uand why he might have dohis thing. Uand how little need he would have tonight for wit or intelligence, for sparkle, for questions gestions. Or desire. His need would be for the soft, unthinking, reflexive gentlehat Save. That she herself apparently did not. The cradling worship, tenderness, the soothing voice. He would need shelter tonight. She could uand: it was what she oo, needed desperately, after what had happened.

    But she  from him.

    And so it came to be that, alone in her bed that night, sheltered by no one and by nothing, Dianora found herself naked and uo hide from what came when the fires e finally died.

    She lay unsleeping through the first and then through the sed chiming of the bells that marked off the triads of the dark hours, but before the third chiming that heralded the ing of grey dawn two things had happened within her.

    The first was the inexorable return of the sirand of memory shed always been careful to block out from among all the myriad griefs of the year Tigana was occupied. But she truly was uered and exposed in the dark of that Ember Night, drifting terribly far from whatever ms her soul had found.

    While Brandin, on the far wing of the palace sought what fort he could in Solores di Corte, Dianora lay as in an open spad alone, uo defley of the images that now came sweeping back from years ago. Images of love and pain and the loss of love in pain that were far too keen—too icy keen a wind in the heart—to be allowed at any normal time.

    But the finger of death had rested ?9９lib.on Brandin of Ygrath that day, and she alone had guided it away, steering the King past the darkest portal of Morian, and tonight was an Ember Night, a night of ghosts and shadows. It could not be anything like a normal time, and it was not. What came to Dianora, terribly, oer another in unceasing progression like waves of the dark sea, were her last memories of her brother before he went away.

    He had been too young to fight by the Deisa. No one under fifteen, Prince Valentin had proclaimed before riding sternly north to war. Alessan, the Princes you child, had been taken away south in hiding by Danoleon, the High Priest of Eanna, when word came that Brandin was ing down upon them.

    That was after Stevan had been slain. After the one victory. They had all known; the weary men who

    had fought and survived, and the women and the aged and the childre behind—that Brandins ing would mark the end of the world they had lived in and loved.

    They hadnt known then how literally true that was: what the Sorcerer-King of Ygrath could do and what he did. This they were to learn in the days and months that followed as a hard and brutal thing that grew like a tumor and theered in the souls of those who survived.

    The dead of Deisa are the lucky ones. So it was said, more and more often, in whispers and in pain in the year Tigana died, by those who ehe dying.

    Dianora and her brother were left with a mother whose mind had snapped like a b with the tidings of Sed Deisa. Even as the vanguard of the Ygratheered the city itself, occupying the streets and squares of Tigana, the noble houses and the delicately colored Palace by the Sea, she seemed to let slip her last awareness of the world to wander, mute ale, through a spaeither of her children could travel to with her.

    Sometimes she would smile and nod at invisible things as she sat amid the rubble of their courtyard that summer, with smashed marble all around her, and her daughters heart would ache like an old wound in the rains of winter.

    Dianora set herself to run the household as best she could, though three of the servants and apprentices had died with her father. Two others ran away not long after the Ygrathens came and the destru began. She couldnt even blame them. Only one of the women and the you of the appreayed with them.

    Her brother and the apprentice waited until the long wave of burnings and demolition had passed, then they sought work clearing away rubble or repairing walls as a limited rebuilding started under Ygrathen orders. Life began to return towards a normality. Or assed for normality in a city now called Lower Corte in a province of that name.

    In a world where the very word Tigana could not be heard by aher than themselves. Sooopped using it in public places. The pain was too great: the twisting feeling ihat came with the blank look of inprehension on the faces of the Ygrathens or the traders and bankers from Corte who had swarmed quickly down to seek rofit they could among the rubble and the slow rebuilding of a city. It was a hurt for which, truly, there was no name.

    Dianora could remember, with jagged, sharp-edged clarity, the first time shed called her home Lower Corte. They all could, all the survivors: it was, for each of them, a moment embedded like a fish hook in the soul. The dead of Deisa, First or Sed, were the lucky ones, so the phrase went that year.

    She watched her brother e into a bitter maturity that first summer and fall, grieving for his vanished smile, laughter lost<dfn></dfn>, the childhood too soon gone, not knowing how deeply the same hard lessons and absences were etched in her own hollow, unlovely face. She was sixteen ie summer, he turned fifteen in the fall. She made a cake on his naming day, for the apprehe one old woman, her mother, her brother and herself. They had no guests; assembly of any kind was forbidden throughout that year. Her mother had smiled when Dianave her a slice of the dark cake—but Dia-nora had known the smile had nothing to do with any of them.

    Her brother had known it too. Preternaturally grave he had kissed his mother on the forehead and then his sister, and had go into the night. It was, of course, illegal to be abroad after nightfall, but somethi driving him out to walk the streets, past the random fires that still smoldered on almost every er. It was as if he was daring the Ygrathen patrols to catch him. To punish him for having been fourteen in the season of war.

    Two soldiers were knifed in the dark that fall. Twenty death-wheels were hoisted in swift response.

    Six women and five children were among those bound aloft to die. Dianora knew most of them; there werent so very many people left iy, they all knew each other. The screaming of the children, then their diminishing cries were things she needed shelter from in her nights forever after.

    No more soldiers were killed.

    Her brother tio go out at night. She would lie awake until she heard him e in. He always made a sound, deliberately, so she would hear him and be able to fall asleep. Somehow, he knew she would be awake, though she had never said a word.

    He would have been handsome, with his dark hair and deep brown eyes if he hadnt been so thin and if the eyes were not shadowed and ringed by sleeplessness and grief. There was not a great deal of food that first winter—most of the harvest had been burned, and the rest fiscated—but Dianora did the best she could to feed the five of them. About the look in his eyes there was nothing she could do. Everyone had that look that year. She could see it in her mirror.

    The following spring the Ygrathen soldiers discovered a new form of sport. It had probably beeable that they would, one of the evil growths that sprang from the deep-sown seeds of Brandins vengeance.

    Dianora remembered being at an upstairs window the day it began. She was watg her brother and the apprentio longer an apprentice, of course—walking through a sun-brightened early m across the square on their way to the site where they were lab. White clouds had been drifting by overhead, scudding with the wind. A small cluster of soldiers came from the opposite side and accosted the two boys. Her windoen to air the room and catch the freshness of the breeze; she heard it all.

    &quot;Help us!&quot; one of the soldiers bleated with a smirk she could see from her window. &quot;Were lost,&quot; he moaned, as the others quickly surrouhe boys. He drew sly chuckles from his fellows. One of them elbowed another in the ribs.

    &quot;Where are we?&quot; the soldier begged.

    Eyes carefully lowered, her brother he square and the streets leading from it.

    &quot;Thats no good!&quot; the soldier plained. &quot;What good are street o me? I dont even know what cursed town Im in!&quot; There was laughter; Dianora wi what she heard in it.

    &quot;Lower Corte,&quot; the appretered quickly, as her brother kept silent. They noticed the silehough.

    &quot;What town? You tell me,&quot; the spokesman said more sharply, prodding her brother in the shoulder.

    &quot;I just told you. Lower Corte,&quot; the appreervened loudly. One of the soldiers cuifed him on the side of the head. The boy staggered and almost fell; he refused to lift a hand to touch his head.

    Her pulse pounding with fright, Dianora saw her brother look up then. His dark hair gleamed in the m sunlight. She thought he was going to strike the soldier who had dealt that blow. She thought he was going to die. She stood up at her window, her hands ched on the ledge. There was a terrible silen the square below. The sun was very bright.

    &quot;Lower Corte,&quot; her brother said, as though he were choking on the words.

    Laughing raucously the soldiers let them go.

    For that m.

    The two boys became the favorite victims of that pany, which patrolled their district between the Palace by the Sea and the ter of towhe three temples stood. None of the temples of the Triad had been smashed, only the statuary that stood outside and withiwo had been her fathers work.

    A young, seductively graceful Morian, and a huge, primal figure of Eanna stretg forth her hands to make the stars.

    The boys began leaving the house earlier and earlier as spring wore on, taking roundabout routes in an attempt to avoid the soldiers. Most ms, though, they were still found. The Ygrathens were bored by then; the boys very efforts to elude them offered sport.

    Dianora used to go to that same upstairs window at the front of the house when they left by way of the square, as if by watg whatever happened, sharing it, she could somehow spread the pain among

    three, not two, and so ease it for them. The soldiers almost always accosted them just as they reached the square. She was watg on the day the game ged to something worse.

    It was afternoon that time. A half-day of work only, because of a Triad holiday—part of the aftermath to the springtime Ember Days. The Ygrathens, like the Barbadians to the east, had been scrupulous not to tamper with the Triad and their clergy. After their lunch the two boys went out to do an afternoons work.

    The soldiers surrouhem in the middle of the square. They never seemed to tire of their sport.

    But that afternoon, just as the leader began his familiar litany of being lost a group of four merts came trudging up the hill from the harbor and one of the soldiers had an inspiration born of sheerest malice.

    &quot;Stop!&quot; he rasped. The merts did, very abruptly. One obeyed Ygrathen ands in Lower Corte, wherever one might be from.

    &quot;e here,&quot; the soldier added. His fellows made way for the merts to stand in front of the boys.

    A premonition of something evil touched Dianora in that moment like a cold finger on her spine.

    The four traders reported that they were from Asoli. It was obvious from their clothing.

    &quot;Good,&quot; the soldier said. &quot;I know hoing you lot are. Now listen to me. These brats are going to heir city and their provio you. If you  tell me what they say, on my honor and in the name of Brandin, King of Ygrath, Ill give the first man who says the name bae twenty gold ygras.”

    It was a fortune. Even from where she sat, high up and sed behind her window, Dianora could see the Asoli traders react. That was before she closed her eyes. She knew what was ing and how it was going to hurt. She wanted her father alive in that moment with a longing so acute she almost wept.

    Her brother was dowhough, among soldiers who hated them. She forced back her tears and opened her eyes. She watched.

    &quot;You,&quot; said the soldier to the apprehey always started with him—&quot;your province had another name oell them what it was.”

    She saw the boy—Naddo was his name—go white with fear er, or both. The four merts, oblivious to that irrelevance, leaned forward, straining with anticipation. Dianora saw Naddo look at her brother fuidance, or perhaps for dispensation.

    The soldier saw the glance. &quot;None of that!&quot; he shen he drew his sword. &quot;For your life, say the name.&quot; Naddo, very clearly, said, &quot;Tigana.”

    And of course not one of the merts could say back the word he spoke. Not for twenty golden ygras or twenty times so many. Dianora could read the bafflement, the balked greed in their eyes, and the fear that fronting sorcery always brought.

    The soldiers laughed and jostled each other. One of them had a shrill cackle like a rooster. They turo her brother.

    &quot;No,&quot; he said flatly before they could even and him. &quot;You have had your sport. They ot hear the name. We all know it— what is left to prove?”

    He was fifteen, and much too thin, and his dark-brown hair was too long over his eyes. It had been over a month since shed cut it for him; shed been meaning to do so all week. One of her hands was squeezing the window-ledge so tightly that all the blood had rushed away; it was white as ice. She would have cut it off to ge what was happening. She noticed other faces at other windows along the street and across the square. Some people had stopped down below as well, seeing the large clustering of men, sensing the sudden tension that had taken shape.

    Which was bad, because with an audiehe soldiers would now have to clearly establish their authority. What had been a game when done in private was something else now. Dianora wao turn away. She wanted her father back from the Deisa, she wanted Prince Valentin bad alive, her mother

    back from whatever try she wahrough.

    She watched. To share it. To bear witness and remember, knowing evehat such things were going to matter, if anything mattered in the days and years to e.

    The soldier with the drawn blade placed the tip of it very carefully against her brothers breast. The afternoon sunlight glinted from it. It was a w blade, a soldiers sword. There came a small sound from the people gathered around the edges of the square.

    Her brother said, a little desperately, &quot;They ot hold the name. You know they ot. You have destroyed us. Is it necessary to go on causing pain? Is it necessary?”

    He is only fifteen, Dianora prayed, gripping the ledge like death, her hand a claw. He was too young to fight. He was not allowed. Five him this. Please.

    The four Asolini traders, as one man, stepped quickly out e. One of the soldiers—the oh the high laugh—shifted unfortably, as if regretting what this had e to. But there was a crowd gathered. The boy had had his fair ce. There was really no choiow.

    The sword pushed delicately forward a short way and then withdrew. Through a torn blue tunic a welling of blood appeared and hung a moment, bright in the springtime light, as if yearning towards the blade, before it broke and slid downwards, staining the blue.

    &quot;The name,&quot; said the soldier quietly. There was y in his voiow. He rofessional, and he reparing himself to kill, Dianora realized.

    A witness, a memory, she saw her younger brother spread his feet then, as if to anchor himself in the ground of the square. She saw his hands to fists at his sides. She saw his head go back, lifting towards the sky.

    And then she heard his cry.

    He gave them what they demanded of him, he obeyed the and, but not sullenly or diffidently, and not in shame. Rooted in the land of his fathers, standing before the home of his family he looked towards the sun a a name burst forth from his soul.

    &quot;Tigana!&quot; he cried that all should hear. All of them, everyone in the square. And again, louder yet: &quot;Tigana!&quot; And then a third, a last time, at the very summit of his voice, with pride, with love, with a lasting, unredeemed defiance of the heart.

    &quot;TIGANA!”

    Through the square that cry rang, along the streets, up to the windows where people watched, over the roofs of houses runniward to the sea or eastward to the temples, and far beyond all of these—a sound, a name, a hurled sorrow in the brightness of the air.

    And though the four merts could not g to the hough the soldiers could not hold it, the women at the windows and the children with them and the men riveted stoill in street and square could hear it clearly, and clutch it to themselves, and they could gather and remember the pride at the base of that spiraling cry.

    And that much, looking around, the soldiers could see plainly and uand. It was written in the faces gathered around them. He had done only what they themselves had ordered him to do, but the game had been turned i, it had turned out wrong in some way they could but dimly prehend.

    They beat him of course.

    With their fists a and with the flats of their cared-for blades. Naddo too—for being there and so a part of it. The crowd did not disperse though, which would have been the usual thing when a beating took place. They watched in a silennatural for so many people. The only sound was that of the blows falling, for her boy cried out and the soldiers did not speak.

    When it was over they scattered the crowd with oaths and imprecations. Crowds were illegal, even though they themselves had caused this oo form. In a few moments everyone was gohere were

    only faces behind half-drawn curtains at upstairs windows looking down on a square empty save for two boys lying itling dust, bloht on their clothing in the clear light. There had been birds singing all around and all through what had happened. Dianora could remember.

    She forced herself to remain where she was. Not to run down to them. To let them do this alone, as was their right. And at length she saw her brother rise with the slow, meditated movements of a very old man. She saw him speak to Naddo and then carefully help him to his feet. And then, as she had known would happen, she saw him, begrimed and bleeding and hobbling very badly, lead Naddo east without a backwards looks, towards the site where they were assigo work that day.

    She watched them go. Her eyes were dry. Only whewo of them turhe er at the far end of the square and sone from sight did she leave her window. Only then did she loosen her white- clawed hold on the wood of the window-ledge. And only then, invisible to everyoh her curtains drawn, did she allow her tears to fall: in love, and for his hurts, and terrible pride.

    When they came home that night she and the servant-womaed water and drew baths for them and afterwards they dealt with the wounds and the blad purpling bruises as best they could.

    Later, over dinner, Naddo told them he was leaving. That same night, he said. It was too much, he said, awkwardly twisting in his seat, speaking to Dianora, for her brother had turned his face away at Naddos first annou.

    There was no life to be made here, Naddo said with passionate urgency through a torn and swollen mouth. Not with the viciousness of the soldiers and the even more vicious taxes. If a young man, a young man such as himself, was to have any hope of doing something with his life, Naddo said, he had to get away. Desperately his eyes besought her uanding. He kept glang nervously over to where her brother had now fully turned his ba both of them.

    Where will you go, Dianora had asked him.

    Asoli, hed told her. It was a hard, wet land, unbearably hot and humid in summer, everyone khat. But there was room there for new blood. The Asolini made people wele, hed heard, more so than in the Barbadian lands to the east. He would never ever go to Corte or Chiara. People from Tigana did not go there, he said. Her brother made a small sound at that but did not turn; Naddo glanced over at him again and swallowed, his Adams apple bobbing in his throat.

    Three other young men had made plans, he said to Dianora. Plans to slip out from the city tonight and make their way north. Hed known about it for some time, he said. He hadnt been sure. He hadnt known what to do. What had happehis m had made up his mind for him.

    Eanna light your path, Dianora had said, meaning it. He had been a good apprentid then a brave and loyal friend. People were leaving all the time. The province of Lower Corte was a bad pla a very bad time. Naddos left eye was pletely swollen shut. He might easily have been killed that afternoon.

    Later, when hed packed his few belongings and was ready to leave, she gave him some silver from her fathers hidden store. She kissed him in farewell. Hed begun weeping then. He ended himself to her mother and opehe front door. Ohreshold hed turned back again, still g.

    &quot;Goodbye,&quot; hed said, in anguish, to the figure staring stonily into the fire on the front-room hearth.

    Seeing the look on Naddos face Dianora silently willed her brother to turn around. He did not.

    Deliberately he k and laid an on the fire.

    Naddo stared at him a moment loheuro look at Dianora, failed to achieve a tremulous, tearful smile, and slipped out into the dark and away.

    Much later, when the fire had been allowed to die, her brother went out as well. Dianora sat and watched the embers slowly fade, then she looked in on her mother ao bed. When she lay down it seemed to her that a weight ressing upon her body, far heavier than the quilted forter.

    She was awake when he came in. She always was. She heard him step loudly on the landing as was his habit, to let her know he was safely home, but she didhe  sound, which should have been

    the opening and closing of his bedroom door.

    It was very late. She lay still for another moment, surrounded and mastered by all the griefs of the day. Then, moving heavily, as if drugged or in a waking dream, she rose and lit a dle. She went to her door and ope.

    He was standing in the hallway outside. And by the flickering of the light she bore she saw the river of tears that  without surcease down his bruised, distorted face. Her hands began to shake.

    She could not speak.

    &quot;Why didnt I say goodbye to him?&quot; she heard him say in a strangled voice. &quot;Why didnt you make me say goodbye to him?&quot; She had never heard so much hurt in him. Not even when word had e that their father had died by the river.

    Her heart ag, Dianora put the dle down on a ledge that once had held a portrait bust of her mother by her father. She crossed the narrow distand took her brother in her arms, abs the hard rag of his sobs. He had never cried before. Or never so that she could see. She guided him into her room and lay down beside him on her bed, holding him close. They wept together, thus, for a very long time. She could not have said how long.

    Her windoen. She could hear the breeze sigh through the young leaves outside. A bird sang, and another answered it from across the lahe world lace of dreaming or of sorrow, one or both of those. One or both. In the sanctuary of night she slowly pulled his tunic over his head, careful of his wounds, and then she slipped free of her own robe. Her heart was beating like the heart of a captured forest creature. She could feel the race of his pulse when her fiouched his throat. Both of the moons had set. The wind was in all the leaves outside. And so.

    And so in all that darkness, dark over and about and close-gathered around them, the full dark of moonless night and the darkness of their days, the two of them sought a pitiful illicit shelter in each other from the ruin of their world.

    &quot;What are we doing?&quot; her brother whispered once.

    And then, a space of time later when pulsebeats had slowed again, leaving them ging to each other iermath of a headlong, terrifying need, he had said, one hale in her hair, &quot;What have we done?”

    And all these long years later, alone in the saishan on the Island as this most hidden memory came back, Dianora could remember her reply.

    &quot;Oh, Baerd,&quot; shed said. &quot;What has been doo us?”

    It lasted from that first night through the whole of spring and into the summer. The sin of the gods, it was named, what they did. For Adaon and Eanna were said to have been brother and sister at the beginning of time, and Morian was their child.

    Dianora didnt feel like a goddess, and her mirror offered no illusions: only a too thin face with enormous, staring eyes. She knew only that her happierrified her, and ed her with guilt, and that her love for Baerd was the whole of her world. And what frightened her almost as much was seeing the same depth of love, the same astonished passion in him. Her heart misgave her stantly, even as they reached for their fugitive joy: tht this forbidden flame in a land where any kind htness was lost or not allowed.

    He came to her every night. The woma downstairs; their mother slept—and woke—in her own world. In the dark of Dianoras room they escaped into each other, reag through loss and the knowledge  in search of innoce.

    He was still driven to go out some nights to walk the empty streets. Not as often as before, for which she gave thanks and sought a kind of justification for herself. A number of youn<samp></samp>g men had been caught after curfew and killed on the wheels that spring. If what she was doi him alive she would face whatever judgment lay in wait for her in Morians Halls.

    She couldnt keep him every night though. Sometimes a need she could not share or truly uand would drive him forth. He tried to explain. How the city was different uhe two moons or one of them or the stars. How sht and shadow let him see it as Tigana again. How he could walk silently down towards the sea and e upon the darkened palace, and how the rubble and ruin of it could somehow be rebuilt in his mind in darkowards what it had been before.

    He had a need for that, he said. He never baited the soldiers and promised her he never would. He didnt even want to see them, he said. They crashed into the illusions he wanted. He just o be abroad inside his memory of the city that had gone. Sometimes, Baerd told her, he would slip through gaps he knew in the harbor walls and walk along the beach listening to the sea.

    By day he labored, a thin boy at a strong mans job, helping to rebuild what they were permitted to rebuild. Rich merts from Corte—their a enemies—had been allowed to settle iy, to buy up the smashed buildings and residential palaces very inexpensively, and to set about rest them for their own purposes.

    Baerd would e home at the end of a day sometimes with gashes and fresh bruises, and ohe mark of a whip across his shoulders. She khat if one pany of soldiers had eheir sport with him there were others to pick it up. It was only happening here, shed heard. Everywhere else the soldiers restraihemselves and the King of Ygrath was g with care, to solidate his provinces against Barbadior.

    In Lower Corte they were special, though. They had killed his son.

    She would see those marks on Baerd and she had not the heart to ask him to deny himself his lost city at night when the need rose in him. Even though she lived a huerrors and died half a hundred deaths every time the front door closed behind him after dark—until she heard it open again and heard his loved, familiar footstep oairs, and then the landing, and then he came into her room to take and hold her in his arms.

    It went on into summer and then it ended. It all ended, as her knowi had forewarned her from that first time in darkness, listening to the birds singing and the wind irees outside.

    He came home no later than he usually did from walking abroad one night when blue Ilarion had been riding aloh<bdo></bdh a high lacework of clouds. It had been a beautiful night. She had sat up late by her window watg the moonlight falling on the rooftops. Shed been in bed when he came home though, and her heart had quied with the familiar intermingling of relief and guilt and need. He had e into her room.

    He didnt e to bed. Instead, he sank into the chair shed sat in by the window. With a queer, numb feeling of dread she had struck tinder and lit her dle. She sat up and looked at him. His face was very white, she could see that even by dlelight. She said nothing. She waited.

    &quot;I was on the beach,&quot; Baerd said quietly. &quot;I saw a riselka there.”

    She had always known it would end. That it had to end.

    She asked the instinctive question. &quot;Did anyone else see her?”

    He shook his head.

    They looked at each other in silence. She was amazed at how calm she was, how steady her hands were upon the forter. And in that sileruth came home to her, one she had probably known for a long time. &quot;You have only been staying for me, in any case,&quot; she said. A statement. No reproa it. He had seen a riselka.

    He closed his eyes. &quot;You knew?”

    &quot;Yes,&quot; she lied.

    &quot;Im sorry,&quot; he said, looking at her. But she khat this would be easier for him if she were able to hide how new ahly cold this actually was for her. A gift; perhaps the last gift she would give him.

    &quot;Dont be sorry,&quot; she murmured, her hands lying still, where he could see them. &quot;Truly, I uand.&quot; Truly, she did, though her heart was a wouhing, a bird with one wing only, fluttering in small circles to the ground.

    &quot;The riselka—&quot; he began. And halted. It was an enormous, frightening thing, she knew.

    &quot;She makes it clear,&quot; he went on early. &quot;The fork of the prophecy. That I have to go away.&quot; She saw the love for her in his eyes. She willed herself to be strong enough. Strong enough to help him go away from her. Oh, my brother, she was thinking. And will you leave me now?

    She said, &quot;I know she makes it clear, Baerd. I know you have to leave. It will be marked on the lines of your palm.&quot; She swallowed. This was harder than she could ever have imagined. She said, &quot;Where will you go?&quot; My love, she added, but not aloud, only inside, in her heart.

    &quot;Ive thought about that,&quot; he said. He sat up straighter now. She could see him taking strength from her calm. She g to that with everything she had.

    &quot;Im going to look for the Prince.&quot; he said.

    &quot;What, Alessan? We dont even know if hes alive,&quot; she said in spite of herself.

    &quot;Theres word he is,&quot; Baerd said. &quot;That his mother is in hiding with the priests of Eanna, and that the Prince has bee away. If there is any hope, any dream for us, fana, it will lie with Alessan.”

    &quot;Hes fifteen years old,&quot; she said. Could not stop herself from saying. And so are you, she thought.

    Baerd, where did our childhood go?

    By dlelight his dark eyes were not those of a boy. &quot;I dont think age matters,&quot; he said. &quot;This is not going to be a quick or an easy thing, if it  ever be do all. He will be older than fifteehe time es.”

    &quot;So will you,&quot; she said.

    &quot;And so will you,&quot; Baerd echoed. &quot;Oh, Dia, what will you do?&quot; No one else but her father ever called her that. Stupidly it was the hat nearly broke her trol.

    She shook her head. &quot;I dont know,&quot; she said holy. &quot;Look after mother. Marry. There is money for a while yet if Im careful.&quot; She saw his stri look and moved to quell it. &quot;You are not to worry about it, Baerd. Listen to me: you have just seen a riselka! Will you fight your fate to clear rubble in this city for the rest of your days? No one has easy choices anymore, and mine will not be as hard as most. I may,&quot; she had added, tilting her head defiantly, &quot;try to think of some way to chase the same dream as you.”

    It astonished her, looking back, that she had actually said this on that very night. As if she herself had seen the riselka and her own path had been made clear, even as Baerds forked away from her.

    Lonely and cold in the saishan she was not half so cold or alone as she had been that night. He had not lingered once shed given her dispensation. She had risen and dressed and helped him pack a very few things. He had flatly refused any of the silver. She assembled a small satchel of food for his first sunrise on the long road alo the doorway, in the darkness of the summer night, they had held each other close, ging without words. her wept, as if both khe time for tears had passed.

    &quot;If the goddesses love us, and the god,&quot; Baerd said, &quot;we will surely meet again. I will think of you ead every day of my life. I love you, Dianora.”

    &quot;And I you,&quot; shed said to him. &quot;I think you know how much. Eanna light your path and bring you home.&quot; That was all shed said. All she could think to say.

    After hed gone she had sat in the front room ed in an old shawl of her mazing sightlessly at the ashes of last nights fire until the sun came up: By then the hard kernel of her own plan had been formed.

    The plan that had brought her here, all these years after, to this other lonely bed on an Ember Night of ghosts when she should not have had to be alone. Aloh all her memories, with the reawakening they

    carried, and the awareness of what she had allowed to happen to her here on the Island. Here in Brandins court. Here with Brandin.

    And so it was that two things came to Dianora that Ember Night in the saishan.

    The memories of her brother had been the first, sweeping over her in waves, image after image until they ended with the ashes of that dead fire.

    The sed, following inexorably, born of that same long-ago year, born of memory, of guilt, of the whirlwind hurts that came with lying here alone and so terribly exposed on this night of all nights ... the sed thing, spun forth from all these interwoven things, was, finally, the shaping of a resolution. A decision, after so many years. A course of a she now knew she was going to take. Had to take, whatever might follow.

    She lay there, chilled, hopelessly awake, and she was aware that the cold she felt came far more from within than without. Somewhere in the palace, she khe torturers would be attending to a di Chiara who had tried to kill a Tyrant and free his home. Who had done so knowing he would die and how he would die.

    Even now they would be with him, administering their precise measures of pain. With a professional pride in their skill they would be breaking his fingers one by one, his wrists and his arms. His toes and ankles and legs. They would be doing it carefully, even tenderly, solicitously guarding the beat of his heart, so that after they had broken his back—which was always the last—they could strap him alive on a wheel and take him out to the harbor square to die in the sight of his people.

    She would never have dreamt a had such ce or so much passion in his heart. She had derided him as a poseur, a wearer of three-layered cloaks, a minor, trivial artist angling for assion at court.

    Not anymore. Yesterday afternoon had pelled a nee to her image of him. Now that he had done what he had done, now that his body had been given to the torturers and then the wheel there was a question that could no more be buried than could her memories of Baerd. Not tonight. Not uered as she was and so awake.

    What, the thought came knifing home like a winter wind in the soul, did as act make her?

    What did it make of that long-ago quest a sixteen-year-old girl had so proudly set herself the night her brother went away? The night hed seen a riselka under moonlight by the sea and gone in search of his Prince.

    She khe answers. Of course she did. She khe hat beloo her. The names she had earned here on the Island. They burned like sour wine in a wound. And burning inside, even as she shivered, Dianora strove one more time to school her heart to begin the deathly hard, never yet successful, journey back to her own dominion from that room on the far wing of the palace where lay the King of Ygrath.

    That night was different though. Something had ged that night, because of what had happened, because of the finality, the absoluteness of what she herself had done in the Audience Chamber.

    Aowledging that, trying to deal with it, Dianora began to sense, as if from a very great distance, her hearts slow, painful retreat from the fires of love. A returning, and then a turning back, to the memory of other fires at home. Fields burning, a city burning, a palace set aflame.

    No fort there of course. No fort anywhere at all. Only an absolute reminder of who she was and why she was here.

    And lying very still in darkness on an Ember Night when try doors and windows were all closed against the dead and the magi the fields, Dianora told over softly to herself the whole of the old foretelling verse: One man sees a riselka

    his life forks there.

    Two men see a riselka one of them shall die.

    Three men see a riselka one is blessed, one forks, one shall die.

    One woman sees a riselka her path es clear to her.

    Two women see a riselka one of them shall bear a child.

    Three women see a riselka one is blessed, one is clear, one shall bear a child.

    In the m, she said to herself amid cold and fire and all the myriad fusions of the heart. In the m it will begin as it should have begun and ended long ago.

    The Triad knew how bitter, how impossible all choices had seemed to her. How faint and elusive had been her dream within these walls of making it all e right for all of them. But of oruth she was now, finally, certain: she had needed something to be made clear along the twisting paths to betrayal that seemed to have bee her life—and from Brandins own lips she had learned how that clear path might be offered her.

    In the m she would begin.

    Until then she could lie here, agly awake and alone, as on anht at home so many years ago, and she could remember.

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