Dirk looked back at the ruins where Kirsh's forces were gathered, preparing for the battle. Their campfires spread like pinpoints of danger in the red light.

"He'll kick my a.r.s.e, you know," Dirk warned. "Kirsh is a professional soldier. He spent his whole life preparing for this moment. And Rees is no slouch, either, when it comes to a fight."

"Then why fight them at all? Why not meet with Kirsh? Ask him to surrender?"

"I don't think the word surrender is in Kirsh's vocabulary."

"Maybe not," she conceded. "And I know Kirsh can be an idiot, but he must realize that the only end to this is the complete devastation of Senet. If you can't appeal to his reason, maybe you could appeal to his honor."

"Kirsh's honor is half the reason we're in this mess. Do you really think he'd agree to a meeting to discuss surrender?"

"You won't know unless you ask."

Dirk thought about it for a moment and then he nodded. "Maybe we can sort this out without any more bloodshed."

"I'm sure you will," she told him.

Dirk smiled. "I wish the rest of the world had your faith in me."

"Misha does. Tia's not particularly fond of you though, is she?"

"We were close once," he admitted carefully.

"How close?"

"That's none of your business."

"Oh," she said with a knowing little smile. "That close, eh?"

Dirk looked at her. "Does that bother you?"

"Should it?"

"You keep answering my questions with more questions."

"I must have picked up that irritating habit from you. Did you know Misha intends to marry her?""Yes."

"It's going to cause quite a stir, the Lion of Senet marrying the heretic's daughter. Still, Misha doesn't seem afraid to make unpopular decisions. He's withdrawn all the Senetians from Dhevyn, too."

"That was none of my doing. It was Tia who made him promise to do that as soon as he had it in his power." He sighed and looked down over the ruins again. "Sometimes I think I should have just left well enough alone."

"What to do you mean?"

"Misha was being poisoned by the Shadowdancers. Even if I hadn't lifted a finger that might have eventually been discovered. Antonov's faith would have been just as rattled to learn of it. The Shadowdancers might have been destroyed anyway. And I wouldn't be standing here trying to figure out how I'm suppose to win a battle against my own brother and a man I once counted as my best friend."

"You don't know that," she sad, trying to rea.s.sure him. "Besides, there's no point dwelling on what might have been."

"Not much point at all," he agreed.

His voice was filled with regret. Jacinta was certain he wasn't talking about bringing down the Shadowdancers, either.

"We should get back to the camp."

He shrugged. "There's no point hiding now, I suppose. If you found me, it won't take the others long."

"I was half expecting to find you down by the lake, actually. Skipping stones."

He smiled. It was the first genuine smile she'd seen from him in quite a while. "I thought about it."

"I wonder what the army would have thought about that, if they'd caught you at it?"

"I suspect it would have merely reinforced their opinion I'm a boy trying to do a job better left in the hands of a real man."

"You're man enough for this job, Dirk."

"Let's hope you still think that after the battle call is sounded," he said.

Chapter 84.

The army Dirk had gathered outside the ruins of Omaxin surprised Kirsh. He was alarmed by the size of it and stunned that Misha had reacted to his letter by sending an army to confront him. He'd gone to great pains to explain the oath he'd given their father. He was hurt and more than a little angry with Misha's unsympathetic response.

Didn't his brother understand the bind Kirsh was in? Didn't Misha realize he had no choice? That his oath, once given, was irrevocable?

It would have been much simpler if Dirk had come alone, not with Misha's army at his back. If only he could have convinced Dirk he must support Marqel; that he must forget any ambitions he might have for his half-sister and support the Shadowdancers and their High Priestess, because that was what Antonov wanted. It was his dying wish. And that was what Kirsh had sworn to Antonov he would do."How many men do you estimate they have?" he asked Rees. They had climbed to the top of a ruined building near the edge of the old city to view the forces sent against them. But it was hard to calculate how many were out there. Most of the army was concealed by the fold of the hills.

"Easily as many as we have," the Duke of Elcast estimated. "Two thousand or so. There could be a lot more. It's hard to tell with the way they've set up the camp."

"Misha's pulled some of the troops out of Dhevyn, then," Kirsh remarked, thinking that was the only way his brother could have raised an army so large in such a short time.

"He's pulled most of them out, I'd wager," Rees suggested. "To send this many men against you."

"Do you think they really intend to fight, or is Misha bluffing?"

"He's your brother, Kirsh. You can answer that question more easily than I."

There was little chance of it reaching a negotiated settlement, Kirsh thought. Misha wanted the Shadowdancers destroyed as much as Dirk did. And even if Dirk had been inclined to compromise, Misha was in no mood to be generous after what had been done to him.

"It's your brother in command down there, Rees. What do you think he'll do?"

Rees shrugged. "I've never been able to read Dirk well. Even when we were children. He was always so... different."

"You don't have to stay," Kirsh offered. "It's bad enough that I'm at odds with Misha. You don't have to take sides against your brother, too. If you want to leave..."

"My brother," Rees said, his voice heavy with bitterness. Kirsh looked at him curiously. "He was always her favorite, you know."

Kirsh didn't offer a reply. He supposed Rees was talking about Morna.

"I never really understood why," Rees continued, "until your father told me Dirk was Johan Thorn's b.a.s.t.a.r.d. It all made sense after that. Why she always doted on him. Why she was so protective of him.

Even after he left, she still wouldn't tolerate a bad word said about him. She poisoned Faralan with her att.i.tude, too. Or maybe it was Dirk. I don't know. I found them together, you know. The day before Dirk left Elcast. They were talking about me. At least, I think they were. The truth is, I don't know what he said to her-Faralan would never tell me-but she was different after that. It's wrong for a woman to keep secrets from her husband, don't you think? Anyway, whatever he said to her, Faralan was almost as bad as Morna after that. Disagreeable. Snide. Always making comments about the Landfall Festival being barbaric. Questioning her beliefs. Doubting things... G.o.ddess, she even helped Dirk get away the night Morna was..." Rees's voice trailed off unhappily. "Dirk has a talent for ruining other people's lives."

Rees's rambling soliloquy surprised Kirsh. He had thought himself to be the only one suffering because of Dirk. It never occurred to him Rees might harbor such bitterness. Or that he would have such good cause.

"Why do you suppose Misha sent Dirk to lead the army?"

"Because he's the Lord of the Suns. That makes it a religious war now, not a civil war."

"It's brother against brother, Rees. That's a civil war in my book."

"What do the prophecies say?"

"They say we'll win."

"Against a force so large? I wonder what the G.o.ddess knows that she's not telling us?"

"Don't you believe the High Priestess?""I admit to being a tad doubtful at the outset," Rees admitted. "But when she told us about the Thorn girl... well, how could she have known about that if the G.o.ddess hadn't told her?"

"Perhaps if you speak to Dirk?"

"I doubt it would make a difference," Rees warned. "Besides, what would I say to him, Kirsh? I'm taking your side because my brother is the false redeemer? I don't think that tactic would work too well."

Kirsh shrugged. "Still, we have one more advantage. Dirk doesn't know the first thing about fighting a battle."

"But the men advising him will know," Rees warned. "And Dirk is smart enough to heed good advice when he hears it. I'd not count on his inexperience to aid us."

"Why do you think he asked for a meeting?"

"He probably doesn't want to fight. Dirk hasn't the heart for it. Knowing my brother, he'd rather talk his way out of it. He's good at that."

Very good at it, Kirsh agreed silently, thinking of how often Dirk's quick tongue saved him in the past. "Do you think there's a chance he'll back down?"

Rees shook his head. "He's probably trying to give you a chance to back down."

"I won't," Kirsh said.

"Then let's meet with the Lord of the Suns, your highness, and find out if he's bluffing."

When Kirsh returned to the camp, Marqel was nowhere to be seen, but Rudi Kalenkov was waiting for him. He'd been trying to get Kirsh alone ever since Antonov's funeral, but Kirsh was in no mood to be bothered with him. He had too many other things to deal with to bother listening to the Shadowdancer's complaints about the interruption a battle might cause to their work.

"Your highness! I must speak to you," the Shadowdancer said, clutching Kirsh's bridle as they rode back in to the camp.

"Not now, Rudi, I'm busy." Kirsh dismounted, jerked the bridle from the Shadowdancer's grasp and handed the reins of his mount to Sergey, who led both horses away toward the corrals.

"But I really must speak with you, sire."

"I don't have the time," he snapped. "In case you haven't noticed, we're about to go to war."

"This is very important, your highness."

"We have a different definition of important, Rudi."

He turned his back on the Shadowdancer and strode toward his tent.

"It's about the prophecies, sire," Rudi called after him.

Kirsh stopped and looked back at him. "What about them."

"Come to the cavern with me. I have something to show you."

Kirsh had spent very little time in the cavern since he'd been in Omaxin. The huge hall oppressed him and the golden eye in the center of the floor seemed to follow him wherever he went. Their footsteps echoed through the chamber as Rudi led him across the torchlit hall to a section of wall where several other Shadowdancers were working, a.s.siduously copying down every sign and sigil on the walls."This is where the High Priestess claims she read the prophecy regarding the false redeemer," Rudi told him, pointing to a panel that looked no different to Kirsh than any other part of the wall.

"So?"

"Well, it doesn't make sense."

"That's why she's the High Priestess and you're not," Kirsh pointed out frostily. "Only Marqel can read the G.o.ddess's writings."

"That's not what I mean, sire." Rudi took a sheet of parchment from one of his workers and held it up for Kirsh to see. "You see, we have the translation the High Priestess provided. And now we know where she read it from, we should be able to use her translation to aid us in working out the rest of it."

"I see," Kirsh agreed, a little doubtfully. He really had no idea what Rudi was driving at.

"Certain words reoccur frequently in any written language," Rudi explained in a rather lecturing tone.

"Even simple words like and or the can be enough to provide us with the key to translation. Just as we always write those words the same way, the symbols for those words in another language should be consistent. We should see them repeated over and over. And there are many symbols that are repeated on these walls, which implies this writing forms a language which has its own, not unfamiliar, rules of structure and grammar, if only we could understand them."

"Then what's the problem?"

"They're not there, your highness. The words of the prophecies as told to us by the High Priestess cannot be reconciled with the writing she claims to have translated it from."

Kirsh glared at him in the flickering torchlight. "Are you suggesting the High Priestess is wrong?"

"I'm suggesting you might want to allow for the possibility she is mistaken," Rudi said carefully.

"Particularly before you embark upon a battle against a significantly larger force than our own, with only the words of the High Priestess's prophecy to a.s.sure you of victory."

Kirsh began to feel as if the whole world was against him. First Misha sent an army against him and now Marqel's own Shadowdancers were beginning to doubt her. "What you are suggesting is heresy, my lord."

"Only if I'm wrong, sire," Rudi retorted.

"Have you told anybody else of your theory?"

"No, your highness. I thought you should be first to know."