I'm sure of it."

It took me a moment to realize what he meant. "The trigger?"

"I was to surrender my sword to my father-a symbol of my last night of youth.

I unsheathed it and laid it on my palms, and as I stood there looking on it, I couldn't help but think of how Dmitri ought to be here with me in these days.

Magical foolery is nothing compared to this punishment he has contrived.

Stubborn old villain."

"You don't think-"

"There is no bandit party could hinder my uncle. He's taken as many as twenty of them single-handed without breaking a sweat. And the warriors of his traveling cadre are only slightly less skilled. No. Dmitri, ever the likai, is teaching me a lesson."

"And you believe that the thought of him together with the touch of a sword sets off the enchantment?"

"The first night I was dancing in this d.a.m.ned Khelid magic trick, and I had taken off my sword. When we were done, I put it back on ..."

". . .and you thought of what you had planned to be doing."

"Exactly. The second time was when I was sleeping, of course, but the third, when the heged lords were swearing to support my father's choice of successor, I held their swords. Baron Demiska is Dmitri's old comrade. ..."

I sighed. "It sounds quite likely. And so tomorrow ..."

"I will touch no swords, and I'll do my best not to think of the despicable b.a.s.t.a.r.d."

"Stay cautious, my lord," I said. "If the Khelid get any hint that you've figured it out, they could alter the spell or attempt another."

"Tomorrow is my dakrah, Seyonne. I will be anointed Emperor-in-waiting.

Were they to make me a jackal, do not imagine I would yield." He was supremely confidant.

I was not. There were never any certainties when facing the rai-kirah, and I could not imagine the purposes of a Gai Kyallet. Had the Khelid made some bargain with the Lord of Demons, or had their greed and ambition only made them fodder for its unfathomable purposes? Nothing in all the lore I had studied gave me any answers. While Aleksander finished his nazrheel, I dredged up everything I knew that might give me some clue as to these happenings. And so I found myself thinking again of the Eddaic Prophecy, and its warning of a First and a Second Battle in the war to end the world.

Ezzarians had believed that the First Battle, the Derzhi conquest of Ezzaria, had been lost as the prophets foretold, but had taken solace in the prediction that the Second Battle would only take place when those same "conquerors from the north" had become one with the demons. If any of us survived, we would have plenty of time to recover, to prepare before all of the Derzhi could be possessed. But what if the conquerors from the north were not the Derzhi, but the Khelid, a race already one with the demons? I could not dismiss the thought of it. I no longer had faith in G.o.ds or prophecies, ' but the tale nagged at me as I helped the Prince to his feet, and checked outside the garden shed for prying eyes. There were other parts to the prophecy, too: stories of a warrior, a man with two souls who would step forward to take on the Lord of Demons and prevent the doom of the world ... and there I had to end my useless ramblings. I didn't know anyone with one undamaged soul, much less two.

I returned with Aleksander to his apartments. Though it was well into second watch, lights were blazing, and soldiers and householders were everywhere.

When the Prince was recognized beneath the mud and soggy finery, thirty shocked attendants tried to examine, undress, avenge and interrogate him all at once.

"Where have you been, my lord? The Emperor is most... most disturbed at your absence." Sovari, being an experienced commander, got the upper hand on the chaos. "He's got search parties scouring the palace and the town. When he heard you didn't show up for the feasting ..."

"Clear out! All of you, out of here," commanded the Prince, batting away the hands of solicitous servants, and pushing away cups of wine and nazrheel being shoved in his face. "Is it inconceivable that I have an hour to myself?

I'm sick of guests and ceremonies and feasting."

"An hour, Your Highness, but it's been six! You ran out of the ceremony, and no one knew where you'd gone." The warrior scanned the Prince's sodden disarray. "We thought you were ill. What's happened to you?"

"Nothing happened to me. I went walking in the rain. I wanted to clear my head before tomorrow. To be alone for a while. I slipped and fell and got muddy. That's all."

"Walking alone ... Then, what of him?" Sovari nodded at me, puzzled, with the slightest flavor of suspicion. I, too, was coated with mud. I had tried to slip back through the candle room, but the way was blocked. "One man suited your company, it seems."

"Hardly company." Aleksander snorted. "He is a slave, not a man." He rubbed his hands together, warming them by his hearth. "G.o.ds' teeth, how is it I let you query me this way? If you didn't suit me so well, Sovari-"

"Of course, Your Highness," said the captain hastily. "I was only curious, as this slave seems to be everywhere these days. What message should I take to the Emperor?" "Tell him it was nothing."

Sovari laughed bleakly. "If you value me as you say, my lord, you would not send me to the Emperor with such a message. I fear for my head."

"Have Gottfried pa.s.s the message. He's always been the one to get me out of my sc.r.a.pes with Father. Been with him since the dawn of time. Should have been a dennissar, he knows how to tell unpleasant news so diplomatically,"

"A fine idea." Sovari wrinkled his nose as he helped Aleksander out of Durgan's wet cloak. "Are you sure you're all right, my lord?"

"I need to sleep. The slave will help me with all this. You get my father calmed down. Tell him I'll be ready at first hour of fourth watch as he has commanded me."

"Sleep well, then." When he got to the door, the young warrior turned and bowed deeply. "May this day see the dawning of your glory and a.s.sure the future glory of the Derzhi Empire."

Aleksander nodded quite regally, considering his grime-streaked face, his half-unraveled warrior's braid, and his bedraggled clothing. When Sovari was gone, I helped the Prince strip off his wet things, and I brought him warmed water to clean the mud from his face and hands. When he was done, he pulled a blue vial from a drawer in one of the immense wardrobes in his bedchamber and held it up to me in a toast. "To my guardian spirit," he said. "You did me great service tonight."

"I don't want to do it again," I said. "May you have an uneventful birthday."

He grinned and dived onto his bed. I would swear he was snoring before he reached it.

Two days gone.

Athos at last decided to reveal his glory on the day of the dakrah. Aleksander kept the windows of his apartments uncovered, and I was wakened by the brilliance of a cloudless morning. I had taken the liberty of sleeping by his hearth again. By the time I had put out all the lamps, cleaned his boots, and hidden the wet wool cloak so that no one could trace its owner, it hadn't seemed worth the time to trek back to the slave house. Durgan knew where I was. Besides all that, I was nervous. If the rai-kirah were determined to prevent Aleksander's anointing, then the enchantment they had laid on him was not enough. They were planning something else, and I had spent several wakeful hours trying to figure out what it was.

The whole matter made no sense. If Aleksander's beliefs were true-and I had no reason to doubt him-then nothing short of death would prevent his anointing. Whims, tantrums, and odd behavior were not unthinkable in royal circles. Even if some of the Derzhi were to see the Prince in the throes of the enchantment, what would they think? Nothing. The Derzhi did not believe in melydda. They would consider it illusion, a joke, Aleksander being foolish again, or some perverse sort of pleasure like that of men who took dogs to bed along with their women. It was odd, but nothing that could turn Ivan against his son.

I left the Prince's chambers before anyone else came that morning. Servants were bringing wood to stoke his fire as I slipped down the pa.s.sage, and three more were carrying heavy, steaming jugs of bathing water. Durgan was waiting for me in the slave house. His other charges were already dispatched to their day's duties. My guess was that those who worked in the kitchens had not slept all night.

"Has he told you where he wants you today? Are we to be in the same places as before?" asked Durgan.

"I suppose so," I said, making an attempt to clean myself at the slave-house cistern. "We never spoke of it." I didn't think it would make any difference.

Whatever happened would not be the same as before.

The sun glared in garish celebration when I stepped out of the slave house.

From the parapets, banners whipped wildly in the cold wind, the red and green stark against the ice-blue sky. The banners of the Empire and the Denischkar Heged. The lion and the falcon. Empire and family so closely bound. Ivan, Aleksander ... Dmitri.

In an instant my own clouds were lifted, and I saw the danger as clearly as I could see the snowy pinnacle of Mount Nerod glaring white in the sunlight.

"Master Durgan," I called, running back into the slave house. He was poking wood into his brazier and setting a pot of water on to boil. I crouched down close to him and spoke softly. "Do you trust me? If I was to tell you that I have a dreadful suspicion about this day, would you do as I ask without asking any questions?"

"It is for your fight against the darkness?"

"Yes."

"And it would not endanger the Prince?"

"If I'm right, it might be the only thing to save him."

"I've seen enough to trust you."

"You must have a horse ready, somewhere...." I closed my eyes trying to think quickly.

"Behind the washhouse there's a grove of alders. Thick. A man could hide there ... or a horse." He was getting the idea.

"Yes," I said. "Supplies ... food for several days... and clothes, something plain ... for someone tall...." I looked at him questioningly. For a slave to speak of such things, things that screamed escape, was a death sentence. He could strip my bones bare of flesh for saying the words, or throw me into his dungeon and never take me out.

"It will be done as you say, Ezzarian. But if you dare ..."

"I'll not betray you, Durgan. Maybe I'm wrong...."

I ran for the palace and arrived in the pa.s.sage outside Aleksander's door just as he emerged. He looked the part of an Emperor. He wore white--a stiff, close-fitting satin tunic and breeches, embroidered with white silk thread and pearls. Gold threads were plaited into his braid, and a thin gold circlet set with a single emerald banded his brow. A long pearl-encrusted cloak fell from his shoulders, and atop it all was the diamond neck piece. It was made of tight-woven gold mesh that banded his long neck and extended the breadth of his shoulders and a handspan down his chest. It was set with diamonds, hundreds of them artfully arranged, an array so brilliant it could have taken the flame of a single candle and lit up the darkest midnight of a thousand cities. The Prince's lean face was solemn and his bearing regal. If his spirit matched his appearance, the Derzhi could want no finer a prince.

It was too late to warn him of my suspicions. Fifty Derzhi warriors walked beside and behind him, and he swept past without ever knowing I was there.

For want of a better plan, I retreated to the map room, but I did not get out my pens and ink. It was impossible to settle, and within ten minutes I abandoned my post and sped down the pa.s.sageway. I ran past the ghostly servants and slaves who had emerged from the shadows to be about their interminable cleaning and hauling. Down, down the grand staircase, not stopping to answer the staring indignation of those shocked at a slave setting foot in a forbidden place.

The drone of the mellanghar and the blare of trumpets drew me on, but the crowds bulging out of the Hall of the Lion Throne were too thick to allow a view. Even when the wave of genuflection pa.s.sed by my position, it was impossible to see.

I ran across the dome-ceilinged atrium to the inner end of the Hall, the end where Ivan would be enthroned awaiting his son. Behind the dais, where stood the Lion Throne, was a storage room, in which were kept the tall ladders for changing the candles in the highest sconces. The storage room was an oddity, a tall narrow niche created when a new wing was added to the palace behind the Hall of the Lion Throne. At one time there had been tall windows of stained gla.s.s at the end of the Hall above the Emperor's throne, but since no sunlight reached them any longer, they had been replaced by bronze grillwork inlaid with a sunburst of silver.

I placed the ladder and climbed up. Through thick clouds of candle smoke and incense, I could see out over the throngs of jeweled Derzhi and their guests.

Lesser n.o.bles stood, crowded under the broad colonnades on either side of the Hall of the Lion Throne, while higher-ranking guests were seated in the vast expanse between the colonnades. Every lamp burned sweet-scented oils; every candle flamed. The music soared and echoed from the dome of gold and blue mosaic above the throne, drawing the spirit upward to float in the pure s.p.a.ces of the groined arches.

The tall, broad-shouldered Emperor, wearing robes of dark blue and a diamond and emerald-studded crown that would bend a lesser man, sat enthroned between rampant lions of gold three times the height of a man. His white braid was long and bound with bands of rubies, and his face, lean and intelligent and proud, was the image of his son forty years in the future.

Aleksander had prostrated himself on the white carpeted dais between the throne and the steps.

Ivan raised his hand to silence the music. "Arise, Aleksander, Prince of the Derzhi." His deep voice carried with such resonance and such magnificence that no person in that vast audience could fail to hear it, and no person who heard it could fail to understand that the speaker was the most powerful man in the world.

With a grace that was an uneasy reminder of a shengar, the Prince moved into position beside his father, and the ceremony began.

I did not watch the elaborate pageantry: the Derzhi men whirling to rhythmic drumbeats, the choruses of children costumed in dangling gold spangles, the whining pipers, or the white-robed priests with shaven heads, whose chanting echoed from the vaulted ceilings.

Instead I searched the sea of faces for the others who were not interested in Derzhi ceremony. There, on the left, in the front row of the most privileged guests, were those were allowed to sit in the Emperor's presence. Though I could not see their cold blue gaze from my high perch, I could recognize the two of them by their smooth, white-blond hair. Trumpets blared a fanfare and Aleksander knelt before his father again, his pearl-studded cloak stretched out behind him by fifteen young page boys. A boy in a stiff, gold-encrusted suit approached the Emperor, carrying a small jeweled cup. Foreboding hung as thick as the smoke, though I could not judge from what direction the challenge would come. But come it did.

As the crash of sudden thunder signals the storm is upon you before you're ready, so the voice rang out across the reverent silence in the Hall.

"Murderer!"

The Emperor's finger stopped on its way to the jeweled cup. As one, the thousand observers caught their breath in astonishment and twisted their necks to see the madman who dared interrupt the most solemn ritual in Derzhi life. I, too, raked the crowd for the one who cried out, noting that only two of all that number failed to do the same. The two fair heads on the front row did not turn, but stayed fixed, their attention on the Emperor and the Prince. Aleksander leaped to his feet and whipped his head about to see, causing several of the children who held his cloak to stumble and fall.

"Treachery!" The cry, the sound of the word oddly malformed, hung in the air like the incense. "Glorious Majesty, what viper do you name to follow in your footsteps? Into what b.l.o.o.d.y hand do you place the seal of the Empire? To what craven coward do you entrust your realm?"

As a tightly stretched fabric splits when a tear opens the way, the crowd parted down the middle to reveal a hooded figure in gray. The smoke coiled about Aleksander, dulling the glitter of his diamonds as the robed stranger walked forward and stood in the aisle just below the steps.

"Who dares speak treachery upon this sacred morning?" demanded the Emperor, his long, straight nose flaring in fury. "Show yourself." Red-liveried soldiers ran to the robed man, but stayed their hands at the Emperor's gesture.

The hooded stranger lifted his arm and pointed a finger at Aleksander. "I stand witness to this villain Prince's crimes, and I bring evidence of a deed so heinous that you will denounce him yourself, Majesty."

"Show yourself before you die, fool," said the Emperor.

"As you command, sire." The man dropped his hood, and those nearby gasped, shuddered, and turned away. Murmurs and whisperings rippled outward as do the waves when a whale breaches the surface of the ocean. I shuddered, too, and pressed my hot forehead against the cool bronze of the grillwork. The man had only half a face. What skin remained on the left side was scarred and shrunken, pulling the eye half-closed. The left side of his mouth was gone, exposing his teeth in a death's-head grin. On what remained of his left cheek were the shriveled purple and red marks of a falcon and a lion. Vanye.

Aleksander did not flinch, but leaned toward his father and spoke quietly.

"You are the criminal who destroyed your Prince's property," said the Emperor. "You should properly be dead or in chains, and your children and your wife turned out to starve. Think you to tempt me into p.r.o.nouncing the judgment my son so mercifully withheld?"

"Indeed not, sire. I came only to accuse him of murder in your presence."

Those watching nearly trampled on each other to distance themselves from Vanye.

"I have affirmed the Prince's judgment in this matter, Lord Sierge was executed properly as a traitor and a spy. There is no dispute here. Guards!"

"No, Majesty, it is not my brother-in-law's foul murder 1 am here to denounce, but that of one you may think more worthy than a son of the House of Mezzrah. The Lord Mar- shal of the Derzhi, Dmitri zha Denischkar, lies dead, and it is no one but this foul Prince who has done it."

"Liar!" yelled Aleksander, reaching for his sword.

"No!" I whispered. "Aleksander, don't touch it."

He could not have heard my whispered entreaty above the explosion of horror and astonishment that filled the Hall of the Lion Throne, but his hand paused above the hilt and did not move.

"Silence!" roared the Emperor. "The man or woman who speaks without my leave is dead this instant." Only the hissing of torches and the soft whimper of a terrified child intruded on the heavy silence. The tall monarch pointed an accusing finger at Vanye. "Bring me this man ... this dead man." His words resonated with earth-trembling fury. The guards threw Vanye across the steps at the Emperor's feet. Aleksander stepped forward, but Ivan's left hand flew out to stay him. With his right hand the Emperor drew his sword and held its edge at Vanye's throat. "Now, say it again."

"I've brought evidence, sire, and a witness," said the young man, snarling in defiance and hatred. With his sleeve he wiped the spittle leaking from his gaping scar. "This is not my contrivance. When I happened upon this story, I only begged to be the one to deliver the message. Call for my servants who wait at your door, and you'll see that the son of Mezzrah speaks truth. And call for Lord Dmitri's own captain Fredek, and you'll hear the tale that will expose your son's rotted soul."

"Fredek?" In the moment Ivan spoke the Derzhi warrior's name in surprise and curiosity instead of rage, I knew Aleksander was lost. If I could have reached out and plucked the Prince from that a.s.sembly, I would have done it.

But instead I had to watch the demon plot play out.

Four soldiers wearing the orange and white of the House of Mezzrah marched forth slowly, carrying a litter draped in white. They set it at the foot of the steps before the Emperor, and withdrew. Ivan signaled to one of his own men who lifted the drapery and revealed the face beneath. Cheeks sunken. Lips black. Beard matted with blood. But unmistakably Dmitri.

The Prince sank into the red velvet chair beside the throne, staring at the exposed body of his uncle. He said, loud enough for all to hear, "Athos have mercy, what have I done?"

I never imagined so great a crowd could hold so profound a silence.

A st.u.r.dy, grizzled man wearing warrior's gear had followed the litter up the aisle, slowly and wearily, leaning on a cane. He eased down onto one knee before the Emperor. "Majesty," he said. "Would your righteous sword might pierce my heart before I speak these ill tidings. My master, Lord Dmitri, lies dead at the hand of bandits, fallen in the Jybbar Pa.s.s some fifteen days ago."

"How is it that you, my brother's right hand, sworn to live and die with him, can walk and speak while he lies dead?" said Ivan, his words of iron ringing from the stone walls.

Fredek spoke slowly and deliberately, the dread surety of his words hammering the ancient stone like battering rams. "Alas, sire, I suffered a wretched flux in Avenkhar, and the Marshal commanded me to stay behind so as not to slow the party. He was set on returning to Capharna with the Prince's new sword in time for the opening of the dakrah. The Prince had commanded him to come by way of the Jybbar to have it so. Gaspar stayed with me, and some two days after the Marshal's departure, we set out, planning to ride day and night until we caught up with them. But when we reached the Jybbar summit, where a man can see east and west to the horizons of the Empire, we found the Marshal and his four companions dead.

Horses, purses, and weapons were all gone . .. cloaks and boots gone. Sire, they had been cut, bound, and left in the snow to bleed or freeze to death or be devoured by wolves, whichever came first."