"You know how to use a sword pretty well."

"I may have neglected to mention that I studied with Mestro Espedio."

Cazio narrowed his eyes. "I met another student of his not long ago. Acredo. This is his sword."

"An acquaintance," Hespero said. "You killed him, I gather."

"No. An arrow did."

Hespero shrugged and came at him again, using the attack of the Cuckold's Walk Home. Cazio countered it, move for move for move. Acredo nearly had killed him with that attack when they had fought because Cazio hadn't known the final reply, but he knew the point would be at his throat when it was all over, so he finished with a high controsesso. controsesso.

Again he didn't find the blade, but Hespero's found him, slipping through the ribs of his right side. Cazio fell back, looking at the blood in utter disbelief. Hespero came grimly on.

You're going to be fine, Cazio thought. Cazio thought. He got lucky. He got lucky.

He parried the next attack barely and then desperately struck deep. His blade grazed Hespero's off-weapon hand and drew blood.

That was a nice surprise.

"You're a better swordsman than I thought," Cazio said. "But you aren't invulnerable anymore."

"If you treat that wound now, you might live," Hespero said.

"Oh, you're not getting away that easily," Cazio said.

"I don't have time for this," the fratrex said.

Cazio renewed his attack, a feint to the hand, a bind from perto perto to to uhtave. uhtave.

Hespero punched him in the jaw with his off-weapon hand. Cazio reeled back, trying desperately to get his guard up.

Austra launched herself at the fratrex, leaping on his back and wrapping her arms around his neck. Hespero reached back with his left hand and grabbed her by the hair, but she didn't let go until he slammed her into the wall.

By that time Cazio was on his feet, albeit unsteadily. He lurched toward Hespero.

"Saints, you really don't know when to quit," Hespero said.

Cazio didn't waste his limited breath answering; he stamped and started an attack in perto. perto. Hespero, a little impatiently, bound in Hespero, a little impatiently, bound in sesso sesso and riposted; Cazio ducked and lunged low but short. and riposted; Cazio ducked and lunged low but short.

Hespero started the Cuckold's Walk Home, and Cazio kept up with him, barely. The last feint came to his throat, and he desperately parried again, and again the blade wasn't there.

Neither was Cazio. As the final flank stroke came, he twisted his body out of the way and counterattacked rather than trying to parry. Acredo slid neatly through the churchman's solar plexus.

"Don't ever try the same thing on me twice," Cazio advised, yanking the blade out.

Hespero went down on one knee, then suddenly leaped forward. Cazio caught the blade and turned it in a bind, so close to missing it that the point dragged across his forehead. Hespero's low lunge exposed his back, and Cazio drove his sword down between his shoulder blades.

Then he slipped on his own blood and fell. As Austra rushed to him, he put his hand over his wound and closed his eyes.

[image]

Stephen cupped Anne's face in his hand and smiled ever more broadly.

"Are you ready, little queen?"

Anne felt as if her head were full of wasps, but she couldn't do anything but stare up at him with hatred.

But then she felt new strength enter her, strength of a sort she had never known before. It came boiling up in her not from the sedos but from the awful depths surrounding all, the chaos from which the world had been born.

My gift, o Queen, Qexqaneh said. Qexqaneh said.

Her lungs cleared. The weight vanished.

The law of death is mended, the Skaslos said. the Skaslos said.

Stephen staggered back. "No," he said.

"Oh, yes," Anne said. "Certainly yes."

Her right hand was the sickle of the dark moon, and her left was the hammer of old night, and with them she struck so that he fell in pieces and she hurled the pieces out into the abyss, and she stood and grew until the world was tiny beneath her.

Now, the Kept murmured. the Kept murmured. Now, my sweet, you only need kill me, and all is done. Now, my sweet, you only need kill me, and all is done.

Anne stretched her grin. "And how do I do that, Qexqaneh?"

You are the rivers. You are the Night Before the World. Take me into you and destroy me. Give me oblivion at long last. You have my power. Now take my soul.

"Fine," Anne said. "I'll do that, then."

Cazio felt Austra stumble. He tried to put all his weight back on his own feet, but they just wouldn't take it.

"Stop that," Austra said. "I can support you."

"Not up the hill, you can't," Cazio said.

"I have to get you to a leic," she replied.

"I think it would be better if you went and found one," he said.

"I don't want to leave you."

"Then just sit here with me," he said.

"That's stupid. You're bleeding."

"It's not so bad," he lied.

"I'm not a fool, Cazio," she muttered. "Why does everyone take me for a fool?"

As they crossed the threshold of the crypt, Austra went rigid and gasped. Cazio looked to see what the matter was. Stephen Darige lay facedown a few feet away, but that didn't seem to be what she was looking at.

"Oh, no," Austra said. She suddenly felt very warm-no, hot, so hot he couldn't keep his arm across her shoulders. He stood away, teetered, and had to lean against the mausoleum wall to stay on his feet.

"No," Austra repeated. Her eyes suddenly incandesced, and yellow flame sprang from them.

"Austra!" he screamed.

She looked at him, and she wasn't Austra but a woman with fine, dark features and arching brows, then a Sefry with white hair. She was Anne, with flaming tresses. She was every woman Cazio had ever made love to, then every woman he had ever met. Her clothes had begun to smolder.

"What's happening?" Cazio screamed.

"She's doing it!" Austra said, her voice changing like her face. Then, more exultantly, "We're doing it!"

The ground suddenly was colored with strange light, and Cazio looked up and saw a sun descending toward them, a ball of writhing flame and shadow that made the oldest, most animal parts of him quiver and long to run and never stop running, to find a place where a thing like that couldn't be.

Instead he held on to the stone, panting, fighting the fear with all the life he had left in him.

"Austra," someone said quietly.

Stephen was standing a few kingsyards away. He didn't look good. For one thing, one of his eyes was missing.

"Austra," he said. "You're the only one who can stop her. Do you understand? He's tricked her. He'll die, yes, but he'll take the world with him. Anne will go mad; it's too much power. You feel it, don't you?"

"I feel it," Austra said. Her voice was that of a woman in the rising throes of pa.s.sion.

"Fight her," Stephen said. "You have claim to the power, too."

"Why should I fight it?" Austra asked. "It's wonderful. I'll have the whole world in my veins soon."

"Yes," Stephen said. "I know." He stepped closer. "I didn't know what he was, Austra. That was what I was missing. He's been waiting in his prison for two thousand years, planning this moment, building it, planting the seeds in all of us. He doesn't want to rule, he doesn't want to return his race to glory, he just wants to die and take everything with him. Can't you see it?"

"Why should I believe you?"

"Don't," he said. "Go see for yourself."

Flames began to dance on her garments. She looked at Cazio, and for a moment her face was that of the Austra he loved.

"Cazio?" she asked.

"I love you," he said. "Do what's right."

Then his legs went out from under him.

Aspar would have laughed if he could, but the joy was there in the leaves and blossoms for anyone to see. He healed the broken, ended the hopeless, and pulled in the poison, spreading and diffusing it, changing it into something new. He found the heart of the Sarnwood witch and took her in, too, took all of her children in, and reckoned at last she understood, because she stopped fighting him and lent him her strength.

Or perhaps it was that she saw what he saw, the deadly fire kindled in the west, the one thing that would stop life's rebirth and send everything to oblivion.

The real enemy.

He didn't need a summoning, not now, and so he moved his weight across the world, fearing it was already too late.

Anne felt the black blood of the Kept flowing into her veins and cried out with glee, knowing that no one since time began had wielded might like this: not the Skasloi, not Virgenya Dare, no one. She was saint, demon, dragon, tempest, the fire in the earth. There had never been a name for what she was becoming. The Kept coiled around her as the life leaked from him, and his every touch sent shudders through her body, pleasure and pain so pure that she couldn't tell them apart and wouldn't if she could. Through his eyes she saw a hundred thousand years of such sensation and more, and the antic.i.p.ation was its own luscious bliss.

More! she shouted. she shouted.

There is more, the dying demon replied. the dying demon replied. So much more. So much more.

Stephen tried to keep his focus, tried to stay in the world, but it was difficult with so much of him gone. Only the ancient, terrible obstinacy of Kauron had let him keep anything, but even that was fading, and soon Anne would notice her mess and clean it up.

It depended on this girl. He ached to take Austra in his arms and drain the life and power from her; she was a vein that tapped right into the thing Anne was becoming, and he-if he had the gift-could bleed Anne through her. She would never see it coming.

But he no longer had that gift. He was less than a skeleton of himself.

He watched as she knelt by Cazio, murmuring, as her clothing finally exploded in blue flame and she was forced to step back from her lover to avoid charring him.

"You can't heal him, if that's what you're trying to do," Stephen said. "You can't heal anything. Neither can she. Always a storm, never a gentle rain. Do you understand? But you are her weak spot."

Austra stared at him with her blistering eyes for a moment, and then the flames began to subside, then smoke, until she was wreathed in dark vapor and her eyes shone like green lamps. Then she lifted toward the terror that hung above them.

Anne felt an ebb in her strength and sought jealously for the source of it. Had she missed someone? Was Hespero still alive?

But no, it was just Austra, bearing a fraction of her strength.

If you die, the Kept said, the Kept said, she inherits all. she inherits all.

She doesn't have the power to kill me, Anne said. Anne said. And she wouldn't if she could. And she wouldn't if she could.

She can betray you more than anyone. You know that.

"Don't listen to him, Anne," Austra said.