This spur of the Ratn Parvat did not reach so high as the mountains at the center of the range; none of the summits stretched up higher than the treeline, and there were no year-round caps of snow. The vibrant green of the surrounding slopes only made the sandy pits, where the cultists of Ractia had opened their mines, all the more a jarring contrast.

  Keri looked down from above as if with the sight of some ancient god - quite literally. He doubted there was anything he could do with the combination of Savel and Bheuv that his ancestor B?lris, the V?dic Lord of Light, had not been equally capable of. He doubted he’d ever have been able to assemble the archmage spell on his own; he’d never been particularly gifted with magic.

  Fortunately, he’d had help from Liv and Sidonie.

  They’d chosen a clear day for the assault, after placing Alliance and Dakruiman troops to guard every approach to - and every escape from - the mines. With a cloudless sky, the light of the sun fell down upon the entire battlefield, carrying with it Keri’s perception. There was no movement of the enemy that he did not see, no feint or maneuver which was not revealed to him in the moment of its first execution.

  “Noghis is charging our left flank,” Keri announced, in passable Dakruiman. The wyrm-form of the son of Ractia had grown immense; Keri had heard stories from his wife and the veterans of Nightfall Peak that made it clear the monster had only been a half-grown boy at the time, dwarfed by Nighthawk Wind Dancer. Now, his form was fully as large as Wren’s, perhaps even a touch bigger.

  Tej Mishra, grown old and too frail to even wear his armor, reclined against a bed of pillows on a litter held up by eight strong ksatriya. The white-haired general was too weak to do his own fighting, but his tactical mind remained as sharp as ever. Just to one side of where Keri sat Sweetheart’s saddle, the Dakruiman beckoned over his aids.

  “Let the wyrm charge,” Mishra commanded. “Fall back before him, so that he is enveloped from every side. Then, cut off his escape. Surround him with a shield wall and pierce his scales with spears, hold him in place, and let the crossbowmen use him as a pincushion.”

  “That is unlikely to kill him,” Keri pointed out. “He’ll simply dissolve into blood, or if he’s given enough time, use his tether.” The shift of his perception from a focus on the entire battlefield, to this particular conversation, caused him to realize that while he held Sweetheart’s reins in his left hand, he’d been idly toying with the ribbons in the mare’s mane with the other - the braids a gift and a good luck charm from his daughter.

  “We don’t need to kill Noghis here,” Tej Mishra replied. “Just drive him away without significant loss. Once that’s done, we’ve denied them the mines, and our mage teams can try to determine just what they’ve been doing here.”

  Keri nodded, but there was a part of him that yearned to reach down from the sky and blast Ractia’s son away with a dozen spears of light, to scorch the wyrm’s body until nothing remained but a charred lump of flesh on the sandy ground. If there was anything he’d learned in forty years of fighting the cultists, it was that mercy only left you open to being stabbed in the back - like at the Seastone Tower.

  Still, he’d come east to cooperate with the ksatriya, not to make decisions for them. So instead of unleashing his magic, Keri simply watched while the Dakruiman warriors drew Noghis out into a vulnerable position, then boxed him in. If the son of Ractia had expected to use the superior strength of his wyrm form to throw the soldiers aside, he must have been taken by surprise: every one of those men and women was using Vere, the word of strength. They pinned Noghis to the ground with their spears, holding him down, so that their companions could draw blades and make an end of things.

  When a Dakruiman woman, who’d lost her helm, dark hair streaming out behind her in the wind, set the blade of her curved sword against Noghis’s neck, the monster had to admit defeat. He collapsed into a mass of blood, slick and clotting, which then soaked down into the sandy soil. A moment later, a shaft of light shot up from where he’d been brought to bay.

  “Pull back!” Keri shouted, knowing that his voice would carry farther than General Mishra’s. The order was echoed all along the lines, and before a count of two hundred, the ksatriya who’d defeated Noghis had all scrambled far enough away from the light that none of them were caught up in the monster’s tether.

  “I have expected an erstwhile hero to try to follow him,” Mishra said, and then coughed. The dust of the mines had been stirred up by the battle, and lay like a cloud all across the area. The old man’s face turned red before he caught his breath, and for a moment Keri worried that he’d need to call for a healer.

  “If I thought we could get them back after, and learn where she is, I’d have ordered it myself,” Keri admitted. “But we’d need to send soldiers with tethers of their own, and pray to the Trinity that she doesn’t have a way to stop them; that they can learn enough to help us find her on a map; and that they all survive.”

  “Sounds like a good way to lose half a dozen of our best warriors,” Mishra grunted, and Keri was forced to agree.

  “Our men have disarmed the last of the cultists,” Keri said, once he was certain. “Let’s see what they’re willing to tell us.” He flicked Sweetheart’s reins, and with General Mishra’s eight litter bearers alongside, they descended the green slopes down to the pitted earth of the mines.

  ?

  They knew him, of course.

  Keri hadn’t ever intended to be despised by so many people, back when he’d first started hunting the cult all those years ago. He could still remember that fisherman’s wife, dragged before the council at Mountain Home, who’d only wanted a child. It was such an innocent thing to want - and for so many of the Eld, who longed for it desperately, it must seem unfair that Keri had been blessed with both a son and a daughter, in such a short time. He could understand why someone might grow jealous, resentful, and bitter.

  But Ractia’s cult never stopped at granting a child.

  It was the first compromise asked: to turn away from the Trinity, to make a sacrifice - usually such a small thing, the blood of a rabbit or a chicken, the sort of animal you’d cook for dinner afterward, anyway. He’d heard the story dozens of times over. Then, once you were in, they had you. Pass along information - just whatever you happen to hear. After all, you aren’t hurting anyone - you aren’t wielding the sword yourself.

  Until the day came that you were, and you didn’t know how you’d gotten there.

  Now, two dozen kneeling men and women, their faces covered in rust-colored dust, both Lucanian and Dakruiman, had found where all of those seemingly innocent paths ended up. They were bruised and battered, scraped from where they’d fallen, bleeding from wounds that hadn’t ended their lives, but denied them the ability to fight any further.

  “Saphires,” Commander Kashvi proclaimed, holding up a rock so that Keri and Tej Mishra could see it. It was a dull thing, unpolished, with only traces of midnight deep blue peeking out from a sort of outer shell of gray rock.

  Kashvi herself was, Keri was surprised to find, the woman who’d gone for Noghis’s neck. She looked so young that he wondered whether she’d even been born yet when the Day of Blood had happened.

  General Mishra accepted the stone, weighing it in his hand and examining it. “What does the Lady of Blood want with sapphires?" he demanded, looking over the kneeling prisoners. Behind each one stood a Dakruiman warrior with one hand on the hilt of their sword, and the other on the prisoner’s shoulder. If any of the cultists made the slightest movement toward the general, their throats would be cut without hesitation.

  “You're cursed for bringing the Scourge of the North to our lands, ksatriya,” one of the Dakruiman prisoners spat. “Every drop of blood he spills is on your hands. Have you no mercy for your own people?”

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  Keri felt the eyes of every Easterner in earshot settle on him. They didn’t see the Prince Consort, the father, the husband or the son: to them, he was only the man who’d slaughtered his way through cell after cell of the cult. Fine, then: if they feared him, he would at least use it. Perhaps that would get him home to Bald Peak more quickly, so that he could see his family again.

  “If you know me, then you know I’ll burn every last one of you,” Keri declared, playing the part of the villain. “It’s not a quick death, but no less than you deserve as heretics. In fact, I see no reason not to begin immediately - I can’t imagine any of you know anything worth sparing your lives. Begin gathering dry wood and put up the stakes,” he declared, waving to the soldiers gathered around.

  Tej Mishra, for his part, understood instantly. “I beg you, my countrymen, give me some means of saving your lives,” the old man pleaded. “Tell me anything, no matter how small, some reason I can give to the Pyre Queen so that I can justify not killing you.”

  Around them, the priests of the Trinity had gathered, their foreheads painted with bright splashes of color, each one stirring a sharp memory of Vivek Sharma. Keri could feel their Authorities blanket the prisoners, enfolding each man and woman in the power of the word of perception - the word of truth. He could have done the same, but the ksatriya would have more faith in the word of their own people than in his.

  “They only wanted the sapphires,” one cultist called out. “If we found a ruby, or some other gem, those all went into separate wagons, to be sold. But the sapphires were never sold.”

  Mishra waved his hand, so that his bearers carried his litter closer to the man who’d spoken aloud. “What did they do with the sapphires, then, if they did not sell them?”

  “Don’t say!” a woman of southern Lucanian coloring shouted. “Don’t -” The ksatriya behind her drew his sword and set the blade against the woman’s neck, and she grew still and silent, the only motion of her body the faint trembling of fear.

  “Tell me,” Mishra pleaded. “That you might know the mercy of the Trinity.”

  “Lord Noghis took them all,” a younger man cried, from down the line, and everyone turned to face him. “The Holy Son of Blood. He took them to the goddess, for her great machines.”

  “Truth,” one of the priests declared.

  “Where?” Keri demanded. “Where is she hiding?”

  “I have your word you’ll spare my life?” one of the Dakruiman women asked, her resolve clearly breaking. “I have a son, back in my village. Just let me go home to my family, and I’ll tell you.”

  “You have my promise, on my faith in the Trinity,” Tej Mishra declared. “Arvatis, Tamiris and Sitia strike me down if I lie.”

  “Truth,” another priest pronounced.

  The captured woman nodded. “She’s in the Gardens of -”

  It happened so quickly that Keri couldn’t even process it until the blood had begun dripping down his face in hot, stinking beads. Some knot of contingent magic had come undone at the woman’s words, so violently that her skull had exploded like a melon smashed with a club. Pieces of skull and brain were scattered across all the surrounding warriors, priests, and cultists. Keri saw a single tooth, somehow lodged in Sweetheart’s mane.

  The cultists screamed, eyes wide, and then each of their heads began to explode, one after the other, like kernels of corn popping in hot oil on a market day. By the time they were done, every one of the ksatriya who’d been holding the prisoners had scrambled backward in disgust. Two of the younger soldiers were on their knees, vomiting onto the sandy ground.

  Mishra sighed, removed a cloth from somewhere in his robes, and wiped his face. “What a waste,” the old man said, wearily. “All of this, for only half a name.”

  “Half a name is more than we had before,” Keri said. He tried to convince himself that it was worth travelling so far from Bald Peak.

  “Here. Give this to Livara,” Tej Mishra said, offering Keri the sapphire he’d been holding. “I doubt there is anything special about it, yet, unworked and unpolished as it is, but one never knows. I’ll see to it the others are held for three months, in case they are needed; after that, we’ll see them.”

  “That’s more than reasonable.” Keri took the rock in his hand, and tucked it into one of his saddle bags. “If you’re willing, I’ll bring the news and the stone to her right away, and leave our alliance soldiers to march back to Akela Kila with your ksatriyas.”

  “I’ll handle that,” Mishra agreed. “Expect them by waystone in three weeks or so.”

  “Thank you.” Keri reached into his saddle bags and removed a set of golden rings and bracelet that his wife had won, so many years before, on a beach north of Freeport. He pulled the mana out of the white mana stones set into it, until he was full. “Be well until we see you next, Tej Mishra. Nesēmus.”

  Light began to build around him, and the Dakruiman soldiers all backed away. The priests clustered around General Mishra, whose bearers carried him off half a dozen spaces. Keri raised a hand to the old man, and then the world around him was scoured away by light.

  ?

  The hot, sandy afternoon of the Dakruiman mountains was replaced by the morning sun of the Aspen River Valley. Atop the stone walls which surrounded the waystone, guards pointed crossbows down at Keri. He saw their faces grow pale, their eyes wide, and wondered just how gruesome he looked.

  “It’s the prince regent!” one of the officers shouted. “Lower your weapons!”

  Once there were no longer any crossbow bolts pointed at his chest, Keri swung down out of Sweetheart’s saddle, and passed her reins off to one of the soldiers who came running to assist him.

  “She needs to be thoroughly washed and brushed out,” he told the man. “Unbraid her mane and tail as well - don’t leave any inch of her unexamined.” Keri caught sight of the ribbons his daughter had so carefully woven into the mare’s hair: each of them was now stained in blood and gore, ruined.

  “Of course, your highness,” the man assured him. “You can trust her with us. Heading up to the palace? Do you need a fresh horse?”

  Keri almost said no, but he was entirely empty of mana, and had never learned Aluth, in any event. Without Liv to lift them both up in the air to the peak, he was going to have to walk to the mine-gate, and then take the enchanted lift up the central shaft at the core of the mountain. “A fresh horse would be appreciated,” he confirmed. “And send a bird up. Let them know I need time to get clean. I don’t want my daughter to see me like this.”

  The guard saluted, and within a few moments, Keri was in the saddle of a gelding that hadn’t been sprayed with enough blood to fill a butcher’s shop. They’d found him a rag, as well, with which Keri had wiped his face and his armor. It didn’t get him clean, precisely - more left smears of half-dried gore - but perhaps he wouldn’t draw quite so many eyes. They provided him an escort, as well, and though Keri didn’t think it was really necessary, he’d hear about it from Liv and Kaija if he didn’t accept.

  They left one of them men outside the mine-gate, to take charge of the horses, while the other three went along and shadowed Keri until he reached the central shaft. There, once he’d stepped out onto a mana disc of shining blue, they saluted and left him. This deep in Bald Peak’s defenses, there would be no enemies - not unless the outer gates and walls had fallen to a siege.

  The disc brought him up to the summit of Bald Peak, and from there Keri made his way into the keep. The bird he’d commanded must have arrived, for his daughter did not come racing up to him the moment he stepped inside. His son was waiting, however.

  Rei was taller every time Keri saw him, and after weeks in Lendh ka Dakruim, the effect was striking. He was lanky in the way that a boy just at the transition to manhood could be, and Keri knew that every time Rei’s voice cracked or broke, he felt intense embarrassment.

  “Welcome back,” Rei said, with a grin. “I’d embrace you, but -” he waved a hand at Keri’s armor.

  “Ractia’s spellwork,” Keri told him. “She arranged it so that the cultists died the moment they started to tell us anything worthwhile. Here, take a look at this while we walk to the baths.” He handed over the sapphire, and the two of them set off through the corridors of the palace, side by side. “Where’s your sister?”

  “At her grammar lessons,” Rei murmured. “You should have just long enough to get cleaned up before they let her go - at least, if you hurry. Sapphire?”

  Keri nodded. “Now, if only we knew what she was using them for. We’ll let Liv and Sidonie have a look at it, and see what they say.”

  Rei tucked the stone under his arm. “It’s good to have you home. We’ve all missed you.”

  “I missed you, as well,” Keri said. He tried to force the image of the cultists, their heads shattering and spraying blood outward, to the back of his mind. He never wanted either of his children to see anything like that. He’d spend the rest of his days drenched in blood if he had to, to spare them that horror.

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  Dramatis Personae

  Inkeris "Keri" ka Ilmari k?n B?lris - Originally of the Unconquered House of B?lris, now Prince Consort of the Alliance. Husband of Liv, father to Rei and the princess. Bad Cop. Holding back. [22 Rings of Mana.]

  Kashvi - One of General Mishra's commanders. Ksatriya jati. Prone to heroics. [17 Rings of Mana]

  Rei ka Inkeris k?n B?lris - Son of Keri and Rika. Suffering through puberty. [14 Rings of Mana]

  Tej Mishra - Senapati, or General, in command of Akela Kila. Ksatriya jati. Good Cop. While his body is failing him, his mind remains as dangerous as ever. [18 Rings of Mana]