ANNE COULDN'T FEEL the reins anymore. The breeze seemed to spin her around, and then the ground reached for her.
She still could see, but nothing she saw made much sense. Horses' legs were everywhere, and men were reaching for her, and then it was all just noise and color, and finally she was elsewhere, lying in a meadow by a mere. She lifted her hand and saw that there was no shadow. Her side hurt, and when she reached to feel it, there was a stick there. She pushed at it, and agony erupted along her ribs. Her hand felt wet and sticky, and when she looked at it, it was red.
"Shot," she managed. There had been a lot of arrows; she remembered that. And then the horses coming together, a shock like a giant ocean wave that threw everyone around her down until she drew, drew down from the sickle moon hanging pale as a cloud in the sky, and struck through them. She remembered seeing their eyes explode in gouts of steam, and the screams…
I did that?
"You did it," her arilac confirmed, rising up from the earth. "Even Genya Dare would have been impressed by that."
"Did we win?"
"You broke their charge and killed half of them before you got shot. Beyond that, I don't know."
"I am shot."
"Yes."
"Am I dying?"
"I don't know, but you shouldn't stay here in this condition. If he should come, you won't be able to fight him."
"I don't-" Black spots were dancing before her eyes.
"I'll help you," the arilac said, and smoothed her forehead with one burning hand.
A hoof thudded in the earth next to her head, and someone shouted her name. She tried to sit up and gasped.
"She's here!" a man shouted. "Saints know how. We were looking there-"
"She's shot." A face appeared above her.
"Hello, Cape Chavel," she said.
"You can hear me?"
"Yes."
"I have to get you up. Do you understand? I can't leave you here; we're in retreat. Unless you can-" He grimaced.
"I'm too weak," she replied.
"You'll ride with me. Your Craftsmen and the heavy horse have formed a rear guard. My horses are faster. We'll get you back to camp and to a leic."
Anne searched for a response, but she felt too tired.
It did hurt when he got her up in the saddle with him, and it hurt more every single time his horse took a stride. Although she tried not to, she cried, wanting nothing more than for the pain to end.
She woke flat on her back in a small, rumbling room that she eventually recognized as a wain. She remembered that Nerenai had given her something bitter to drink, and she had fallen asleep.
She felt at her side and found the arrow gone. So was her clothing. She was wrapped loosely in a blanket.
"There, mistress," she heard Nerenai say. "Lie still."
"What's happening?"
Before Nerenai could reply, Emily broke in. "It's very exciting. They say you made their eyes explode. Is it true?"
"I'd rather not talk about that," Anne murmured. "Can you find Artwair for me?"
"No, Majesty," the girl said. "He's out forming up the lines. You killed a lot of them, but there's plenty left. Like they knew we were coming."
"They did know we were coming."
"How?" the girl asked.
"I was outmagicked," Anne replied. Pray saints Alis and Neil find this Hellrune and know what to do about him. He's stronger than I.
A sudden thought occurred to her. "If we're fighting, why is the wain moving?"
"We're retreating," Emily replied. "But orderly, so we don't get slaughtered. Artwair's a smart general."
I led him into a trap, Anne thought. That will be hard to mend. Yes, she was queen, but she needed her generals to believe in her, especially Artwair.
"How many have we lost?"
"I don't know. They think around two thousand. They attacked our infantry where we were camped, too."
Two thousand? The number seemed unreal. Had she ever even met two thousand people in her life?
For three more days they fell back toward Poelscild. Losses on both sides were minimal. And then, a day's march from the northernmost dike, the Hansan army stopped following them.
The next day Anne wasn't sleeping in a wagon anymore but in a fine bed in Poelscild's keep.
The count had almost three thousand of her soldiers sleeping in the ground.
"They haven't gone far, Majesty," Artwair told her the next day.
"You look tired, Cousin."
He did. His face looked lined and ten years older than it had a month earlier.
"I'm well, Your Majesty."
"So where have they gone, then?"
"About a league north, in Andemuer. They're building a redoubt there. I expect they'll reinforce it and then come here."
Anne nodded. She'd made Nerenai and Emily sit her up. She couldn't stand, but she didn't want to face Artwair on her back. "And the fleet? Any word?"
"They anticipated us there, too," Artwair said. "Met Liery in open sea. Five ships were lost, and about that on the Hansan side. Sir Fail brought them back to Ter-na-Fath."
"So we're in retreat everywhere," Anne said.
"Everywhere we've ventured."
"Everywhere I've sent us, you mean," Anne said.
"There's no blame to Your Majesty. It seemed like a good plan to me, too. But it wasn't the surprise they thought it would be. And things could have been worse. This Hellrune of theirs isn't perfect, either. He may have managed to trick you, but you fought out of his trap."
"Barely. But I agree that things could have gone worse. I may know little about war, but I know that armies in retreat often fall apart and are destroyed. This could have been a rout. Your leadership prevented that, Duke Artwair."
"I'm not the only one to credit. Lord Kenwulf kept our left flank, and young Cape Chavel our right. If we had ever been encircled, that would have been the end of it."
"I will commend them, too," she said. "What happens now?"
"I've sent for reinforcements, of course. Many of the landwaerden levies are already either here or reinforcing other forts along the edge of Newland."
"Then we're giving them Andemuer and the Maog Voast plain?" Anne asked.
"We're not giving it; they have it. Northwatch fell two days ago, so reinforcements can come along the Vitellian Way without resistance. Copenwis is open to their ports. No, Newland is better fortified than the northern border and always has been. Andemuer has gone back and forth between Hansa and Crotheny for exactly that reason. But they'll have a harder time breaking us here. And if they do, we'll retreat to the next canal and flood these poelen behind us, so they'll have to swim at us."
"You mention the danger of them coming down the Dew. Have you any reports from the east?"
"No report of attack yet, no, but I expect it."
"And the south?"
He nodded. "We've heard that at least three Church legifs are camped along the Teremene River. That news is a few days old, of course. They may have started fighting already."
Anne remembered Teremene.
"The river is in a gorge there," she said. "They'll have to cross at Teremene town or go north into Hornladh…" She trailed off.
"Majesty?"
She closed her eyes. Nothing; just another stupid thing I've done. Cazio, be as smart as I think you are.
"The Hellrune can't help those in the south. I'll see what my visions can tell me about what the Church is up to. Is there anything else?"
"Not that I know of, Majesty."
"Thank you, Duke. I'd better rest now."
She met her arilac on a heather-covered down overlooking an azure sea. The air was warm and wet and a little dirty-feeling.
The arilac seemed more human each time they met, although she still shone unnaturally at times.
"You were outmaneuvered," the woman said. "With the law of death broken, the Hellrune is stronger than even I suspected."
"You should have warned me," Anne replied.
The arilac raised a fiery eyebrow. "That would have been an insult to your intelligence. If you could see the results of what he saw, how could you not imagine it wasn't possible for him to do the same?"
"But when does it end?" Anne asked. "If I had seen the trap, couldn't he have seen me seeing it? And so on, into utter madness?"
"Yes and no. As you've learned, the future isn't a fixed thing if you can see it. But it has a path and momentum. When the Hellrune saw that your army would march the way it did, and you saw that he had seen that, you might have done a number of things. You might have decided not to go that way, or not march at all, or bring thousands more with you-or what you did: try to turn the trap against itself. The Hellrune would have been shown all these paths, but dimly, and one would have seemed infinitesimally brighter. In turn, his possible reactions-abandon the plan, send more men, and so forth-would be even more contingent, first because your choice was one of dozens, then because his was. That's why you didn't see the reversal of the trap: It was a wispy thing, unnoticeable. For him to see the outcome of his reversal I would call impossible, which is why you managed to escape. So to answer your question, your duel with the Hellrune went as many strokes as it could, and he won. When you are in full mastery of the power, you might see one step farther. Might."
"Then I must guess, you are saying, where Hansa is concerned."
"No, no," the arilac said. "He can't know you've seen something unless you react to it."
"Then what use to see it?"
"It can inform your strategy."
Anne rolled her eyes. "Yes, poorly. Suppose I predict an army coming down the Dew River, and Artwair diverts troops to stop them, and instead the army never marches east but comes here instead?"
"You will find you can rarely see more than a nineday or so when specifics are involved. Visions of the far future are usually vague as to when and how they will happen. The Hellrune's is limited in the same way, and he is not here, Anne. His shadow is still in Hansa. It takes a rider to bring information from him, a rider that may or may not arrive and will always be late. You're closer to where the war is being fought now. And now you know to be cautious."
Anne nodded. "Very well. But first I must see what the Church is up to on our southern border and what danger I've put Cazio and Austra in." She straightened her spine.
"I'm not afraid of you," she told the arilac.
"I never said you were."
"Oh, I was," she admitted. "But no longer. From now on I expect you to tell me everything I need to know. Do you understand? I don't want to be hit from behind again."
"Very well, Anne."
"Call me 'Majesty.'"
"When you are my queen, I shall. But that time is not come. And I'm not afraid of you, either."
She watched the titanic stones of the citadel crack and felt herself like fingers wedged there, tearing at it. The doors were like burning brands, but she pulled, and everything in her seemed next to snapping. In an instant she brimmed with the most profound happiness she had ever known as everything slowed to almost stopping, and the magicked metal rang as it tore, and the power of chaos collapsed before her. She felt the slow burning fire of ten thousand lives bent against her-creatures so much of the master's that even now, when their liberation was at hand, they still fought to remain slaves.
But now they cringed as the citadel lay open and the powers that kept her at bay disintegrated.
She had known the power before, but never like this. Gone were her reservations, gone her fears. She was pure and simple, an arrow already loosed from its string, a storm striking a port, unstoppable, not in need of stopping.
Every weakness purged.
She laughed, and they died, either quenched by her will or gutted by her warriors, her beautiful, lovely warriors. And everything they were and might have been flowed from them and came back, and she knew she finally sat the sedos throne…
"It was worse this time, wasn't it?" Emily asked.
Anne held back from throttling the girl over the inanity of the question, but only barely. Instead she took deep breaths and more of the Sefry tea.
"Is there anything I can do, Majesty?"
Yes, jump out the window, Anne thought.
"Hush, Emily," she said instead. "I'm not myself."
But maybe she was exactly herself. They had wanted her to take on the responsibility? Fine, she had. Now that she was queen, she would be queen, the queen they all deserved.
Emily backed away and didn't say anything.
A bell later Anne no longer felt as if a bed of ants had invaded her head.
"It's getting so easy," she told Nerenai. "I think of what I want to see, and I see it, or something to do with it. But then, the dreams. The clearer my visions come, the worse my Black Marys are. Is that the way it's supposed to be?"
"I think it must just be the price," the Sefry said. "You've separated the visions from the dreams, but they flow from the same source."
"I have to be able to tell them apart."
"True, for now. But when you are strong enough, you won't have to keep them apart. It will all be one."
Anne remembered standing before the gates as they shattered, the liberation of it, the joy.
"I hope so," she sighed. "Send Emily back in, will you? I want to apologize to her."
"She's just outside," Nerenai said. "With her brother. He's come to see you."
"All right," Anne said. "I'll see him."
The earl stepped through a moment later, Emily tugging at his hand. He was in a new-looking deep red doublet and black hose.
"Good of you to come, Cape Chavel," she said.
"Majesty," he said, bowing.
"Emily, my apologies for earlier. "
"It's nothing, Majesty," Emily said. "It's your dreams, I know. I'm just here to serve you."
Anne nodded. "Cape Chavel, I don't think I've thanked you for saving my life."
"I'm glad you haven't," he replied. "It would only embarrass me. Especially as it was your saint gifts that got most of us out of there alive."
"Well, you'll have to be embarrassed. Thank you."
He actually blushed. He was a funny fellow, a bit like Sir Neil but a bit like Cazio as well.
Cazio. She had seen him free, with z'Acatto, but Dunmrogh fallen. And Hespero-but that part had been unclear. In fact, any vision concerning the praifec was unclear.
"How are you feeling?" the earl asked.
"Better. The leic will let me walk in a day or two. Nothing too badly hurt inside, I suppose."
"I'm relieved," the young man said. "Very relieved, in fact. I've seen such wounds before, and they are usually, ah, worse."
That gave her a bit of a pause. It had been rather bad, hadn't it? The shaft had been half in her. She had seen bodies cut open before. How could it have missed all of that? She should have died, shouldn't she?
She remembered the knight who wouldn't die, the one Cazio had been able to stop only by hacking the body into individual pieces. She remembered the other one in the wood near Dunmrogh.
And her uncle Robert, whose blood was no longer quick but who walked and did his evil anyway.
Oh, saints, she thought. What have I become?