The Infinity Gate: Darkglass Mountain: Book Three - By Sara Douglass Page 0,7

heights.

“You are amazing,” she whispered.

Ishbel had taken Inardle back to the main command chamber. There, while Inardle had sat on a stool, casting occasional glances toward the windows and wondering if she dared make a dash for them, Ishbel had produced a clean gown from one of the antechambers and had re-clothed herself.

Then she sat down opposite Inardle.

“What is happening?” she asked Inardle.

Inardle took a deep breath, now studying her hands fidgeting in her lap.

“The Lealfast are attacking,” she said.

“This was always planned?” Ishbel said.

“Yes,” Inardle whispered.

“In concert with the One? You have always been in league with the One?”

Inardle’s head came up at that. “No. Not I, nor the Lealfast, not always. They . . . we . . . Ishbel, I did not want to betray Maximilian, or Axis. I did nothing to —”

“You did nothing to warn us.”

Inardle dropped her eyes once more.

“Inardle, I do not believe that you actively worked to betray Maxel, or else you would now be spattered with his murdered blood. But your silence itself is a form of betrayal.”

Inardle said nothing, still looking down.

“Are you prepared to help us now?” Ishbel said.

“Yes,” Inardle said.

“Betray your fellows, your blood, to help us?”

Inardle hesitated for a heartbeat. “Yes.”

“I wonder,” Ishbel said, “if either Maxel or Axis will believe that, now.”

“Was Ravenna part of your machinations against me?” Maximilian said, coming to a halt just behind and to one side of the servant. “Was she your creature? If so, then you miscalculated, my friend. It appears that Elcho Falling has decided it needs to be more cautious of any who claim my blood.”

“Is he a traitor, my lord?” the creature said, turning his head a little toward Maximilian, but not moving his eyes from the One.

“Does he wear my murdered blood over his flesh?” Maximilian said in a low tone. “Is not Elcho Falling filled with my murderers?”

The One took another half pace forward, his entire form quivering with power. He raised his hands, preparing to strike, but both Elcho Falling’s servant and Maximilian ignored him.

“Should we —” the creature said.

“Reject them,” Maximilian said, one hand now resting on the servant’s shoulder as he stared at the One.

StarHeaven cried out, and even the guardsmen stumbled in surprise, their movements finally crashing into discord.

As one, the Lealfast appeared to have been grasped in a gigantic fist and hurled against the stone walls of the chamber.

There, instead of striking the stone, they vanished, and a heartbeat later StarHeaven heard someone by a window cry out that the Lealfast had reappeared far distant in the sky.

In the stairwell, just below the ground floor of Elcho Falling, Maximilian watched as the One suddenly vanished.

“Where has he gone?” Maximilian murmured.

“A very, very long way away,” Elcho Falling replied.

In the very deepest subterranean chamber of Elcho Falling, the Dark Spire that Eleanon had placed there a day or so previously continued to throb with power.

The One was gone, but it was not perturbed. There was another close who could direct the spire and tell it what it needed to accomplish.

Chapter 5

Elcho Falling and the Twisted Tower

“What happened?” Axis shouldered his way past the first few guardsmen in the chamber where the Strike Force had been attacked. His jaw tightened as he looked beyond the Lealfast bodies in the centre of the room to the Icarii bodies piled up at the margins of the room.

“I am not sure, StarMan,” one of the Emerald Guard said. “We were fighting the Lealfast, then . . . ”

“Some power forced the Lealfast out,” Egalion said, now pushing his way through to Axis, “but not before we whittled their numbers down satisfactorily. They are outside, now, I believe.”

Axis managed to work his way to one of the windows. Egalion followed, muttering orders to the guardsmen that most of them should depart the chamber.

“Gods,” Axis muttered as he stared out the window. The Lealfast, some eleven thousand of them, were now riding the winds beyond Elcho Falling. Every so often one or two made a foray closer to the citadel, but some fifty paces out it appeared as if they hit a barrier beyond which they could not fly.

“Elcho Falling has raised its defences,” Egalion said.

“And yet the One is inside,” said Axis. “Maximilian had gone to deal with him . . . Egalion, I have no idea what is going on. And —”

Axis broke off, muttering a curse.

“What is it?” Egalion said.

“Insharah!” Axis said, suddenly remembering that the Isembaardian army was camped on the shores of