but one filled with fear. For none had heard the Witch-queen addressed so before, and all feared her fury at such an affront.
The crowd shuffled back. As they moved, a low moan rippled through them.
And then Ebona came. Aranloth’s challenge could not be denied. At first her coming was little more than a faraway rumor. There was a tremor in the earth as though of great powers stirring. Lights flashed in windows. Glass cracked and then shattered.
At length, the great doors of the palace blasted open in a furious ruin of splintered timber.
Ebona stood in the wreckage. Not as a ruler of Esgallien, but as Queen of the World. A breeze fanned her unbound hair. It blazed golden as the sun. Her white dress dazzled. And her eyes, eyes that shimmered one moment green and the next blue, gazed at them with the keenness of flashing swords.
She cast a contemptuous glance at Aranloth and the Raithlin, but when her gaze rested on Conhain it showed a flicker of doubt.
With a shake of her head she turned back to Aranloth and laughed as a mother does at a child attempting some deed, and though failing at it, refusing to give up.
“You think to defeat me, old man? I am Ebona, and I am become a god. No power can resist me. No nation shall not fall under my sway. If all the lòhrens who ever lived raised a hand against me now, still could I brush them aside. If I wish a land to rule, I shall take it for my own. If I seek slaves to serve me, then even the proud Halathrin shall bow at my feet and ask my will. But to you, old man, I will not give the choice of servitude. Once you caused me pain. I remember it still. But I am stronger now. Strong. Strong as the bones of the world! And I shall pay you back, like for like, a thousand fold.”
Ebona lifted her pale arms. The earth trembled. Water gushed from the ground. Great rents appeared, and from the fissures rose the noise of stone grinding on stone.
“Will you contend with me, old man? Or will you bow before me and beg for mercy?”
She bent her gaze upon him. He stood, leaning on his staff, and he seemed the old man that she named him. Nothing so frail could stand in the face of her onslaught, and it appeared that he would drop to his knees. A moment he trembled. A moment Lanrik held his breath. The silver diadem on his brow gleamed. His hands held tight the staff, and then he straightened. He raised his bowed head and lifted the staff before him.
“You are not a god,” he said calmly. “Nor are your plans ripe. And when they do ripen, if that should come to pass, you will find the fruit of your labor is rotten. Madness will devour you, if it has not already.”
He looked at her from his old eyes, and there was sadness in them. But not fear.
“Pull back from the brink,” he said, “and live. Continue, and you will die.”
The Witch-queen stared at him, and then she laughed softly.
“Threats? Threats from the great and wise Aranloth? But you cannot threaten me. You are as nothing, and these others are less than nothing. And the ghost of Conhain is lesser still. I killed him once, and I enjoyed the deed. What is left is nothing more than the glimmer of light from the life that I snuffed out long ago. I could send him to the great dark, there to wail in eternity with the twitch of my finger.”
Lanrik noted that for all her words she did no such thing. Nor did she attack any of the others. She was stalling, buying time for a hidden purpose.
“Why do you wait, Ebona?” he said. “Have you summoned guards from all over the city to slaughter the innocent behind us? Would you feed and grow on their death as you have on others before them?”
Ebona’s gaze pinned him as though by the weight of a suddenly felled tree. He could not breathe. It seemed that his heart stilled. He reached for the hilt of his sword, but his hand fumbled.
“You!” Ebona said, “You could have been a great king. Better than the dross of Esgallien that I have suffered to sit beside me this last little while.” She paused, and when she continued, her voice was softer. “Perhaps you still