Wolfhere looked truly startled. “Bloodheart,” he said. “Illusion. I understand now. I did not before. I wondered why I had seen nothing of Count Hildegard’s soldiers within the city, even the last survivors of that force. I wondered how the gate had been breached. For I saw it, too, Liath. I saw her banner, and her retainers, pursued by Eika. From the palisade at the mayor’s palace I saw them reach the bridge, and then I saw no more. And yet you say you saw through the illusion.”
“I did.”
“I cannot explain it, either to you or to myself. Attend me, Liath. Tell me what you see.” He lifted hands again and shut his eyes, then, after a moment, opened them, staring into the fire.
Yellow-orange flame licked the air. Liath stared hard at it. She envisioned in her minds’ eye a circle branded into the air—the Ring of fire, fourth step on the ladder of the mages. Through this she viewed the flame.
She saw nothing but the lick and spit of fire. And yet, had she not once seen salamanders, their blue eyes winking in the coals of the hearth? Had she not once seen butterflies called up by her father in the summer garden? Once, years ago, before her mother died, she had seen magic. Before her mother died. Then everything had changed.
Da was protecting me.
He had given his life to protect her. To hide her.
There are spirits burning in the air with wings of flame and eyes as brilliant as knives. At their backs a wall of fire roars up into black night, but there is nothing to fear. Pass through, and a new world lies beyond. In the distance a drum sounds like a heartbeat and the whistle of a flute, borne up on the wind like a bird, takes wing.
Wings, settling on the eaves. A sudden gust of snow through the smokehole. Bells, heard as if on the wind.
“Where is she?” said the voice of bells.
“Nowhere you can find her,” said Da.
The fire blazed higher, growing, engulfing the logs until it burned like a storm. And in the flames she saw battle, the steps of the cathedral, the Dragons in a last ragged line, so few of them now, the last, their horses and their comrades strewn like so much refuse along the course of their retreat. Dogs—those who were not raging in the thick of battle—fed voraciously. She shuddered, convulsed by nausea.
A last knot of city militia fought desperately by the mint and then finally were overwhelmed. Behind them, the palisade of the mayor’s palace and the timber roof of the great hall burned in sheets of flame, a terrible bright backdrop to the last killing field.
The Eika pounded at the Dragons, axes chopped down again and again on the teardrop shields, red serpents pressed against dragons, shoving them by sheer weight of numbers back and back up the steps to the doors.
There! Sanglant, limping and bloody, striking at either hand as he retreated step by step, the last man in the wedge, taking the brunt of the onslaught. At his right hand, the scarred-face woman, ragged Dragon’s banner draped around her shoulders, her spear working, jabbing, wrenching free; at his left, Sturm, blue eyes grim as he cut down first one Eika then, when that one fell, the next. Manfred stood half inside the cathedral doors, staring; seeing, as was his duty.
But one by one, Dragons fell, Gent burned, and the streets were deserted except for Eika, prowling and sniffing in doorways and looting. Except for the dead. Except for the feeding dogs.
A wagon had been brought into the square fronting the cathedral and from atop this, surrounded by his howling troops and by a pack of slavering dogs, Bloodheart surveyed the ruins and the last stand of the Dragons. He leaped down and hefted a spear in his huge hands, ran with it to the steps and took them two at a time. Behind him came his soldiers, their mouths open in shrieks and howls Liath could only see, not hear. Only the naked old Eika male remained behind in the wagon, but even he grinned, jewel-studded teeth winking in the reflected glare of flame.
Bloodheart’s charge hit the last Dragons like a hammer. So few, and already wounded and exhausted, half of them went down, crushed beneath the assault. Sturm vanished in a hail of ax blows. The scarred-face woman was torn away, the weight of huge dogs bearing her down. Dragons shouted their prince’s name, but they were all separated now, a few at the door, a few swarmed and surrounded and harried down to the base of the steps, and Sanglant in the center—the eye of the storm—striking on either side like a madman as he hacked his way toward Bloodheart.
The blow that took him came from behind.
Surrounded, flanked, engulfed. A screaming Eika had leaped into the gap that opened behind the prince. The creature swung. Sanglant jerked and then collapsed, that fast, like a rock let drop. His body landed hard, sprawling, at the feet of Bloodheart.
The Dragons were gone, vanished, as if they had never existed. Bloodheart stared down at the prince. He bent and wrenched the helmet from Sanglant’s head to reveal the lax face. He twisted a hand under the gold torque and yanked it off, his white claws cutting the prince’s face and neck. Blood seeped, slowed, stopped.
Bloodheart raised the gold torque up like a trophy, threw back his head, and howled with triumph.
Liath shuddered. She could not hear it, yet she could—as if borne miles on the wind, as if carried through the ranks of the refugees who fled through the tunnel, as if cutting straight to her heart.
But she could not look away.
Bloodheart lowered the torque but only because he had to beat back the dogs. He hit hard around himself, using both haft and head of his spear, and he growled and cursed at the dogs, driving them back from his prize: Sanglant. The dogs cowered finally and sat back on their haunches, eyes burning yellow with rage, tongues hanging out, muzzles rimed with saliva and blood. The biggest of them snarled, baring its fangs at the Eika chieftain, and he struck it hard on the head with his bare hand; his own claws—a bristling growth at his knuckles—sliced its cheek open. It whined and groveled before him. The others slewed their ugly heads round and stared hungrily at the prince’s body, but they didn’t move in. Yet.
Soon. Soon he would be theirs.
Liath leaned in toward the fire as if she could reach and drag the corpse to safety, spare it this desecration. The heat burned away her tears, but it could not burn away her pain. It could not change what she saw and so witnessed.
Bloodheart shook himself and whirled once, spinning as if he felt the breath of an enemy on his spine. His gaze lifted to the middle distance. Everything shifted; the fire flared before her. She blinked, and he was looking at her.
“Who are you?” Bloodheart demanded, gaze impossibly fixed on her through the fire. “You trouble me with your spying. Be gone!”
He spit. She flinched back and was staring at fire, roaring and crackling and consuming, burning, buildings of stone consumed by the dull red of heat and the white-blue searing of flame, smoke thick and oily in her nostrils. She heard the pound of horses galloping past, a haze of distant shouting, a faint horn caught on the wind. But these were no buildings she had ever seen before. These were not the buildings of Gent.