Chapter 39

Bernard rode into the command center a few yards ahead of Amara and stopped to look slowly around him. Amara rode up beside her husband, and said nothing.

"Technically," he said, "the old place is still Isanaholt. Elder Frederic hasn't taken his oath yet."

Amara smiled at him. "I still think of it as Bernardholt."

Her husband shook his head. "I wasn't ever really comfortable with that name. Me-holt. Sounded ridiculous."

The steadholt around them was laid out like virtually every other steadholt in the Realm - with a large hall at its center, surrounded by an enormous barn and a number of workshops, homes, and other outbuildings. Unlike most of the Realm, which until recently had enjoyed a much less dangerous climate, every building was made of solid stone, proof against the frequent furystorms that plagued the Valley. It was also surrounded by a defensive wall - not a fortress wall, by any means, and it didn't feature battlements, but it was thick, solid granite and showed no signs of weathering or decay.

Now, the hall, the workshops, and even the barn were all changed. The holders and their stock had long since been evacuated, just as had the seven smaller, newer steadholts that had been founded to the west of them, in what was (or shortly would be) vord-occupied territory. It was instead filled with armed and often armored men and women, legionares, Citizens, and volunteers. There were perhaps forty or fifty Marat in and about the steadholt as well. A gargant bellowed from the vast barn, where several of the wounded beasts had been quartered out of the weather, to be tended by their Marat handlers and by a trio of old farmhands from the Valley with a gift for husbandry.

Multiple broad staircases were new additions, and ran from the ground up to the steadholt's walls. From there, a number of stone walkways led from the steadholt to the wall proper, a crenellated Legion-standard defensive structure twenty feet high.

Already, legionares were pouring up onto the wall, readying the second line of defense. Their march to the wall had been a difficult one. The cohorts stationed nearest the causeway had been able to move rapidly down the Valley, outstripping the pace of their pursuers, who moved in a slow, enormous block that was being steadily compressed by the terrain. Those poor souls who had been on the northern or southern lengths of the wall had been forced to march overland the hard way, without any sort of furycraft to help them, until they had reached the causeway as well. Then they had raced ahead of the pursuing enemy, and they were slogging back out to their positions again. It couldn't have been an easy task for them, to make such a march after spending half of a furious hour in hand-to-hand combat.

But they were Legion. All in a day's work.

"Giraldi," Bernard said as he dismounted. "How much longer before our men are all in position?"

The old centurion saluted. "Within the next few moments, sir."

Bernard nodded. "Everything is prepared?"

"Yes, sir. Except..."

"What?" Bernard asked.

"The civilians, sir," Giraldi said, his voice softening. "A lot of them are too old or too young to make use of the causeway. There are a lot of sick and wounded. A lot of confusion. Crows, my lord, there's just a lot of people. We haven't been able to get them out of this section of the Valley and behind the last wall yet."

Amara spat a curse and got off her horse, passing the reins to the same valet who had come to take Bernard's. "How long before they're clear?"

"If it happens before midnight, it'll be a miracle."

"It's going to be one long afternoon and evening." Bernard spat. "That tears it. We can't go with the plan if we've got to hold the walls that long." He looked out to the west as if picturing the oncoming foe. "I need to talk to Doroga. Love, please inform the Princeps and ask if he has any suggestions."

From the north, a bright green signal arrow burned as it rose, then fell slowly through the air. A moment later, more of them fell, both in the north and to the south.

"They're here," Amara breathed.

Bernard grunted. "Get moving. Giraldi, sound assembly, let's make sure we're ready to deal with these things. Send runners to the firing lines and spread the word - load the mules."

Giraldi's fist rapped his armor, and he marched away, bawling orders in a voice that could be heard for a mile.

Bernard and Amara touched hands briefly, then each of them turned to their tasks.

Amara hurried to the command post in the great hall. Its doors were heavily guarded, albeit by an entirely different group of men. One of the men challenged her, and she answered him somewhat curtly. The vord's takers were deadly in their fashion, but they could not make the bodies they occupied emit intelligible speech. Amara was high enough in the councils of Aleran command that the challenge was essentially a formality, to ensure she hadn't been taken.

She entered the hall, a very large structure with a fireplace at each end of sufficient size to place an entire cow on a spit over the fire within it. At the far end of the hall, the fireplace had been blocked off by suspended cloths. Another pair of guards stood outside the makeshift chamber. Amara marched over, and said, "I have information for the Princeps. It can't wait."

The taller of the two guards inclined his head. "One moment, lady." He vanished into the chamber, and Amara heard voices. Then he emerged and held the flap open for her.

Amara slipped inside to be greeted by a wave of uncomfortable warmth. The fire in the huge fireplace was taller than she. A bed stood nearby the fire, and Attis lay in it, his face even more pale and drawn than before. He turned his head listlessly toward her, coughed, and said, "Come in, Countess."

She approached and saluted him. "Your Highness. We have a problem."

He tilted his head.

"The evacuation is moving too slowly. We still have a horde of civilians west of Garrison's walls. Our people estimate that it may take until midnight to get them all through."

"Hngh," Attis grunted.

"Furthermore," she said, "the vord somehow managed to divert a river onto the coal plain. The fire held them back for less than an hour. They've been sighted approaching this wall. Signal arrows are rising at all points."

"It never rains." Attis sighed. He closed his eyes. "Very well. Your recommendation, Countess?"

"Keep to the plan, but slow it down," she said. "Use the mules to grind away at them rather than trying to do it for the shock value. Hold the wall until the civilians are safe, then disengage."

"Disengage in the dark?" he asked. "Have you any idea how dangerous a feat that is? The slightest error could turn it into a complete rout."

"Ask Doroga and his clan to hold them off for a time and cover the retreat," she responded. "Those gargants of theirs are natural-born vord-killers, and they're fast enough to stay ahead of the enemy on the way back down to Garrison."

Attis thought about it for a moment, then nodded slowly. "That's likely the best we're going to get, under the circumstances. Make it happen, Countess, on my authority if need be."

"Yes, Your Highness."

He nodded wearily and closed his sunken eyes.

Amara frowned at him and glanced around the room. "Your Highness? Where is Sir Ehren?"

Attis's cheekbones seemed to become even starker. "He died on the wall this morning, while stemming a vord breakthrough."

Amara felt her belly twist. She had liked the young man and respected his skills and intelligence. She could hardly bear to think of him lying cold and dead on the stones of that wall. "Oh, great furies," she breathed.

"Did you know, Countess," Attis said, "whose idea it was for me to present myself as a target back at Riva? Alone and vulnerable to draw out Invidia or the Queen?" His exhausted smile still had a leonine quality to it. "Of course, he didn't phrase it like that."

"Was it?" Amara said quietly.

"Yes. Put forward so diffidently I had to think for a moment to recall that it hadn't been my idea." He coughed again, though it had no energy to it. "No one will ever be able to know for certain, of course," he said. "But I think the little man assassinated me. Barely a fury to his name and..." He coughed and laughed as he did it, both sounds dry with exhaustion. "Perhaps that was why he insisted on watching what would happen this morning, when he sent Antillus and the others out to be a bellows for the fire. Because he knew that his suggestion had such power." He waved a hand down at his own shattered body. "Perhaps because he felt guilty to see the results of his actions."

"Or perhaps instead of being a manipulator and assassin, he was simply a loyal servant of the Realm," Amara said.

A wry, bitter smile tugged at his lips. "The two are not necessarily mutually exclusive, Countess."

"He shouldn't have been there. He was never trained as a soldier."

"In a war like this, Countess," Attis said very softly, "there are no civilians. Only survivors. Good people die, even though they don't deserve it. Or perhaps we all deserve it. Or perhaps no one does. It doesn't matter. War is no more a respecter of persons than is death." He was quiet for a moment, then said, "He was more than I have been. He was a good man."

Amara bowed her head and blinked sudden tears away. "Yes. He was."

He lifted a weak hand and waved it at her. "Go. You have much to do."

The vord arrived perhaps a quarter of an hour after Amara emerged from the steadholt's hall. Trumpets sounded. Legionares stood ready as engineers finished closing the gates that had been crafted into the walls, until the walls presented a single face of solid granite, its front smoothed to a gleaming finish. She stood beside Bernard upon a tower ten feet higher than the wall. Defensive towers had been spaced every hundred yards down the length of the wall, here a little less than three miles long.

A courier put down upon the tower, briefly kicking up a small gale of wind, and saluted. "Count Calderon, sir."

Bernard didn't take his eyes from the field ahead of him. "Report."

The young man stood there, blinking uncertainly.

Amara sighed and beckoned him. He took a few tentative steps closer.

"There," Amara said, once he was past the windcrafting she was maintaining to keep Bernard's orders from being monitored by enemy crafters. "Can you hear now?"

"Oh," said the courier, flushing. "Yes, ma'am."

"Report," said Bernard in exactly the same tone as before.

The young man looked mildly panicked. "Captain Miles's compliments, sir, and there's a sizeable enemy force moving to the north, sir, to circle around the end of the wall!"

"Hngh," Bernard said. "Thank you."

The young man's eyes widened. "Um? Sir? Captain Miles is afraid that the enemy will turn our flank. There's nearly a quarter mile of open ground at the end of the wall before it reaches the flank of the mountain."

"And that's a problem?"

"Sir!" the courier protested. "The wall isn't finished, sir!"

Bernard bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. The leading wave of the vord was now dressing its ranks and preparing to charge. "The wall is exactly what it's supposed to be, son."

"But sir!"

Bernard paused to give the young man a hard look.

The courier wilted visibly.

Bernard nodded. "Return to Captain Miles, give him my compliments, and inform him that he is to stand fast. An allied contingent has been placed to support him should he need it." He paused and looked at the young man. "Dismissed."

The courier swallowed, saluted, then dived off the side of the tower. He managed to call up a windstream just before he hit the ground, then raced away to the north.

Amara looked at Bernard, and said, "Couldn't you have told him more?"

"The fewer who know, the better." He rested his hands on a merlon and nodded calmly as the vord began to move forward in unison. "Giraldi. Signal the mules to stand ready. Section leaders will give the command to begin."

Giraldi's voice bellowed down the wall as the ground began to rumble with the vord's charge. The order was picked up and relayed down the line.

Bernard lifted his hand over his head and watched the oncoming enemy. Once again, as the vord closed to within a few yards, they let out a vast shriek that shook the walls, and once again, their cries clashed with those of the legionares upon the battlements. Bernard stood watching the nearest legionares intently as they lifted their javelins, and when the first of them threw, he snapped his arm forward, and screamed, "Loose!"

The mules went to work.

Each of the contraptions was built around a boxlike frame. Wooden support struts rose above it, to support a long wooden arm with a shallow bowl at its end. Amara wasn't familiar with the details of the devices, but each arm was drawn back by a crew of two men, who used raw strength and very minor woodcrafting to pull the arm all the way to a horizontal position. A pin, placed in the device, locked the arm back - and when it was removed, the arm snapped forward with startlingly energetic violence. When it did, it carried so much power with it that the entire framework jumped up off the ground at one end, like a cantankerous mule kicking out with its hind legs.

When Bernard dropped his arm, a hundred mules placed in ranks behind the walls kicked up off the ground, sending the contents of their bowls, dozens and dozens of small glass spheres, soaring up over the walls. They leapt up into the air and spread out into a glittering cloud that caught the light of the lowering sun, throwing back sparkles of scarlet, orange, and gold.

Then the fire-spheres struck the earth and burst into globes of hungry fire, hundreds of them all at once, spread out over a wide swath of land.

"Bloody crows!" screamed a nearby legionare.

The fire seemed to ripple out in a long ribbon as each group of mules unleashed its projectiles. Each mule's deadly payload devoured scores and scores of the enemy in clouds of sullen flame, spread out over an area fifty yards across. Indeed, if anything, the mules had been spaced too near one another - there were ample areas of overlap, where the spheres from multiple mules detonated in the same area. Thousands of vord died in the flames, and thousands more were scorched and disabled, wailing and running in circles, mad with pain, lashing out at anything that moved.

Amara stared in purest shock as she realized that she had just watched the world change, radically and forever.

That overwhelming hammerblow upon the vord had not been delivered by an exalted High Lord. No group of Citizens or Knights Aeris had unleashed their wrath upon the vord. Crows, it wasn't even the result of standard Legion battlecrafting. The engines had been shaped here, in the workshops of the holders of the Calderon Valley. Most of the people on their crews were simple holders - nearly half of them were children, young men too young to have served their term in the Legions. The spheres, intended only for a single use, rather than the long-term function of the food-cooling coldstones, had been manufactured in the Valley as well, each of them representing perhaps an hour's effort by someone gifted with a modest affinity for firecrafting - and much more quickly by someone with a more substantial gift.

Whatever happened, if Alera survived its latest foe, it could not return to what it had been before. Not when the holders had wielded the power of Citizens. Alera's laws protected freemen to some degree, but they were clearly made to protect the interests of Citizens first and foremost. More than once, Aleran Counts and Lords and even High Lords had faced rebellions from angry freemen - rebellions that were inevitably put down by the superior furycraft of the Citizenry. That was a constant, an immutable fact of Aleran history. The Citizenry ruled precisely because they had access to greater power than any freeman, or any group of freemen.

But that all changed the instant the holders of the Calderon Valley dealt the enemy a blow worthy of the assembled High Lords themselves.

And, less than a minute later, they did it again.

The vord warriors came hurtling forward, shrieking their brassy cries and hammering at the base of the wall. Their scythes slashed down onto the smoothed granite, but unlike the stone of the first wall, this wall's material resisted their assault tenaciously. Legionares upon the walls took ruthless advantage of the enemy's inability to scale it to meet them. Great cauldrons of boiling oil, water, or scalding-hot sand were poured down onto the mantis warriors. Where such containers were not available, the legionares resulted to a more primitive and reliable measure: They simply dropped large rocks onto the enemy.

After the first three massive volleys, the mules began lighter work. Their loads were smaller, and they threw less often. It was the only way they could make the limited supply of fire-spheres last. The resulting attacks were smaller, if no less devastating to the vord hit by them.

It took several minutes for the vord to rush over the havoc the mules had caused in the field before the wall. At first, they arrived in scattered, irregular bunches, easily focused on and destroyed by the wall's defenders. It didn't last. Though an ongoing slaughter was being wreaked upon the vord by Octavian's mules, the vord's strength of numbers seemed undiminished. Soon, they were pressing against the wall again, and if they could not easily create footholds in the wall, their own dead began to pile up into ramps that grew closer and closer to the ramparts.

Bernard watched another flight of fire-spheres go sailing over the wall and nodded his approval. "Great furies, if it didn't work," he said. He shot his wife a quick, fierce grin. "Tavi said they would work when he sent me the plans."

"When was that, again?" Amara asked.

Bernard scratched at his chin, then leaned his forearms on a merlon, casually crossed, like a man gossiping over a stone fence. The pose was intentional, Amara knew. The men around him were looking at him for indications of his state of mind every so often, and he showed them a mask of calm, almost casual confidence. "Three, four months after the Elinarch, I reckon. But I didn't look at them again until he wrote about his idea to use the fire-spheres as ammunition for the mules. So I had Giraldi build one and test it and..." He spread his hands demonstratively.

"I know you said they'd be effective, but..." Amara shook her head. "I had no idea."

"I know," Bernard said.

"This... this is going to change everything."

"Hope so," he said fervently. "Means there's something left standing to change."

Amara looked steadily at him for a moment while his eyes shifted back to the battlefield. He knew. She could see it in his face. He knew what the mules represented. Not in and of themselves, of course, but as a symbol for the collective strength of the freemen of Alera - strength that could now be given deadly expression, if need be, now that someone had shown them the way.

The battle raged. Gargants fitted with huge baskets shambled up and down the walls, carrying more stones to the legionares. Legionares with spears began to fend off the vord as they came within reach of the longer weapons. Occasionally, a Knight Ignus would melt a corpse-ramp into a bubbling pool of slagged, stinking chitin, or a Knight Terra would simply cause it to sink into the soft earth. But they were holding. By the great furies, they were holding.

Another flight of fire-spheres went whispering overhead to bring down raging fire on the heads of the mantis warriors, when there was a sudden tremor in the ground, and a distant sound, a roar that rose up like some great beast voicing a warning.

Amara turned her face to the north and looked at the enormous, bleak grey mountain that loomed there, like some unimaginably huge bastion positioned to hold the Legions' flanks. As she watched, she saw clouds of dust billowing forth from the mountain. An entire face of the mountain's slope had apparently given way, causing a rockslide so enormous that it beggared the imagination.

The roll of the land kept her from seeing any details, but it wasn't hard to imagine what had happened. The vord had circled around the end of the second wall, probably hoping to come at the Legions from the rear, or even to proceed toward the civilians back near Garrison. Instead, they had discovered what anyone who lived in the Calderon Valley knew from the time they were old enough to understand speech - that the mountain's name was Garados, and that it did not tolerate visitors.

Amara had known the murderous fury was dangerous, but when she imagined what that meant, she hadn't gotten the right scope of its overwhelming, malevolent power. Clearly, it would seem that Garados was the next best thing to a great fury itself, if not a full-blown superpower in its own right.

"Unbelievable," she murmured.

"Bloody mountain has been a worry and an almighty trial to me for most of twenty-five years," Bernard growled. "About time the thing started pulling its weight."

A few minutes later, a new cry abruptly went up from the vord, a long slow wail that rose and fell in a steady cycle every few seconds. Amara tensed and leaned forward onto the merlon beside her husband, watching the enemy intently.

The vord rushed about, swirling in ranks past and through one another, falling into some sort of unthinkable, alien order and...

And withdrew.

"They're running!" screamed a legionare.

The men on the wall went berserk with defiance and triumph, screaming imprecations after the retreating vord and raising their weapons into the failing light of the sun. While they did, the vord continued to fall back, and within a few moments, they had all vanished back in the direction from which they had come. A minute later, the only movement on the open field consisted of the still-twitching limbs of slain vord and the black wings of crows swooping down to feast upon the fallen.

"Giraldi," Bernard said. "Sound stand down. Get a rotation going to get the men food, water, and rest."

"Yes, sir," Giraldi said. He saluted and went about his duties.

"That goes for the rest of you, too, people," Bernard said to his command staff on the roof of the tower. "Get something in your bellies and find a spot to get a nap."

Amara waited until they had all departed to say, "You did it."

Bernard grunted and shook his head. "All we did was make them take us seriously. Before today, the vord had never had much in the way of tactics. They just threw more warriors at every problem." He rubbed at one eye with his forefinger. "Today they tried to turn our flank. Tomorrow..." He shrugged. "They pulled back because someone over there is busy thinking of a way to bring us down. The next time we see them, they'll have something nasty prepared."

Amara shivered. He took a step closer and put his arm around her. The movement was awkward in his lorica, but Bernard managed.

"The important thing," he said, "is that we're still here. Once we fall back to Garrison, we should be able to hold out for weeks, if need be. We've successfully bought time."

"For what?" Amara asked.

"For the boy to get here," Bernard said.

"What good will that do us?" she asked. "No one's sighted the Queen yet."

Bernard shook his head. "He's got something tricky in mind. Count on it."

Amara nodded. "I hope so," she said. "Love, you should have some food and rest, too."

"Aye. In just a moment." His fingers absently stroked her hand. "Pretty sunset, isn't it?"

"Beautiful," she replied. She leaned her head on his shoulder.

The sun was nearly gone, its ruddy light glaring into their eyes. Shadows spread long across the Valley's floor.

And off in the distance, the shrieks of angry vord whispered from the Valley's walls.

Chapter 40

"Let me deal with this," Invidia snarled. "Give me our earthcrafters and the behemoths, and that wall won't last five minutes."

"No," said the Queen. She paced back and forth beside the pool of water, staring down at it. Her tattered old gown rustled and whispered. "No, not yet," she said.

"You saw the losses they inflicted."

The Queen shrugged a shoulder, the motion elegant, at odds with the stained finery she wore. "Losses are to be expected. Especially here, at the last. They revealed hidden capabilities without destroying us, which we will overcome in our next encounter. That is a victory." She looked up at Invidia sharply. "However, I do not understand why you did not warn me about the great fury in the mountain."

"Because I didn't know about it," Invidia replied, her voice tight. "Obviously."

"You said you had been here before."

"To pick up Isana in a wind coach," Invidia said. "Not to plan an invasion."

The vord Queen stared at Invidia for a moment, as though she hadn't quite understood the difference. Then she nodded slowly. "It must be another disparate Aleran experience."

Invidia folded her arms. "Obviously. It wasn't a part of the context."

The Queen tilted her head. "But you intended to conquer Alera."

"I intended to take it whole," she said, "by co-opting its system of gover nance. The use of military force was never a preferred course of action. Certainly, there was little probability that I would ever have a need to attack this remote little valley. With the exception of providing a convenient and predictable place for the Marat to attack, it's been of no historical importance whatsoever."

At that, Isana looked up from where she sat, near the imprisoned Araris's feet, and smiled.

Invidia's presence became suffused with sudden rage, only slowly gathered back under control. The burned woman turned to the Queen, and said, "Every moment we spend here with our forces doing nothing brings complications."

"They are not 'our' forces, Invidia," the Queen said. "They are mine. And you still think like an Aleran. My troops will not desert in the face of starvation. They will not cast their allegiance with another. They will not hesitate to obey nor refuse to attack an enemy at my command. Do not fear."

"I am not afraid," Invidia said, her voice coldly precise.

"Of course you are," Isana said calmly. "You're both terrified."

Invidia's cold eyes and the Queen's alien ones both swiveled to come to rest on her. Isana thought that such eyes looked like weapons, somehow, and dangerous ones at that. She further thought that by all rights, she should be frightened herself. But given the past days, she found herself having difficulty giving fear much credit. In her first days in captivity, perhaps fear would have moved her more strongly. Now... no. She was really rather more concerned with the fact that she'd not bathed in days than that her life might come to an end. Terror had worn into worry, and worry was an old companion to any mother.

Isana nodded to the Queen in mock deference, and said, "You've been dealt a harsh blow by the first Aleran force actually prepared to resist you. They didn't have it all their way, of course, because you are unwholesomely powerful. But even so, the valley stands, and thousands of your warriors are no more. And they are ready to continue fighting. The fight seems hopeless to you, and yet they stand and fight and die - which makes you think that perhaps the fight is not hopeless. Yet you cannot see how that would be. You fear that you have overlooked some detail, some fact, some number that might change all of your careful equations - and that terrifies you."

Isana turned to Invidia, and said, "And you. I almost feel sorry for you, Invidia. At least you had your beauty. And now even that is gone. The only haven left for you, your best hope, is to rule a kingdom of the childless, the aging, the dying. Even if you take your crown, Invidia, you know that you will never be admired, never be envied, never be a mother - and never be loved. Those who endure this war to live under you will fear you. Hate you. Kill you, I should imagine, if they can. And, in the end, there won't even be anyone left to remember your name as a curse. Your future, no matter what happens, is a long and terrible torment. The brightest end you can hope for is a swift and painless death." She shook her head. "I... do feel sorry for you, dear. I have good reason to hate you, yet you've served yourself a fate worse than any I would ever have imagined, much less wished upon you. Of course you're afraid."

She folded her hands in her lap, and said, calmly, "And both of you are now worried that I have realized so much about you both. About who you are. About what moves you. You're both wondering what else I know. And how else I might use it against you. And why I have revealed what I know here, and now. And you, lonely Queen, wonder if you have made a mistake in bringing me here. You wonder what Octavian inherited from his father - and what came from me."

Silence filled the hive. Neither of the two half women to whom she spoke moved.

"Do you think?" Isana asked in a conversational tone, "that it might be possible to have hot tea with our dinner tonight? I've always found a good cup of tea to be most..." She smiled at them. "Reassuring."

The Queen stared at her for a time. Then she whirled to face Invidia, and said, "You may not have the remaining crafters," she hissed. Then, the hem of her tattered gown snapping, the vord Queen stalked from the hive.

Invidia looked after the Queen, then turned to Isana. "Are you mad? Do you know what she could do to you?" Her eyes flickered with disquieting light. "Or what I could do to you?"

"I needed her to leave," Isana said calmly. "Do you wish to be rid of her, Invidia?"

The burned woman gestured in burning frustration at the creature clamped to her. "It cannot be."

"What if I told you that it could?" Isana asked, speaking in a calm, almost-toneless voice. "What if I told you that the vord possess the means to cure you of any poison, to restore the loss of any organ - even to restore your beauty? And that I know its name and can make a fair guess at where it might be?"

Invidia's head rocked back at Isana's words. Then she breathed, "You're lying."

Isana offered the woman her hand calmly. "I'm not. Come see."

The other woman took a step back from Isana, as though the offered hand contained pure poison.

Isana smiled. "I know," she said calmly. "You could be free of them, Invidia. I think it is very possible. Even against the Queen's will."

Invidia lifted her chin. Her eyes burned, and her scarred face twisted into what looked like physical pain. Terrible hope pulsed from her, and though she tried to hide it, Isana had been too near her, through too much, for too long. There was no more hiding it from her finely tuned senses. Though it sickened her to do it, Isana faced her calmly and waited for the pressure of that hope to drive the other woman to speak.

"You," Invidia rasped, "are lying."

Isana shook her head slowly, never looking away from the other woman's eyes. "Should you wish to change your future," she said calmly, "I am here."

Invidia turned and stormed from the hive. Isana heard a roaring windstream bear her away - leaving her in the hive alone. Except, of course, for perhaps a hundred wax spiders, most of them motionless but not asleep. If she moved toward the exit, they would swarm her.

Isana smoothed her skirts again and sat calmly.

Waiting.