his hopes gone but one, the mindless child, the unloved, the least of all.
Nahil, silent too, had followed his own thoughts, and they had led him down dark paths. His voice changed from mocking cruelty to true anger. “You gave our father no such time to see his own death, did you? You killed him in his sleep!”
“Not so! Not so! They told you lies!” Horror and despair made Ranes stupid. His mind stumbled like a cripple. He knew that he must speak quickly, before his brother lost interest in his agony. If there were any men that were loyal to him, he must give them time to come to his rescue. He searched for words that would serve him, but before he could find any, his brother’s liegeman, traitorous Kallan who had opened the gates, spoke.
“Lord, you would harm your soul by slaying the least one. She is maimed from birth, and is no danger. She can never inherit.”
“Maimed? She seems whole.”
“In mind, not in body. She is simple and does not speak.”
“Brother, is this true?”
A flash of hope leaped into Ranes’s eyes. “Yes, yes, she is a mindless one.”
“Why then did you name her heir? A useless thing?” He saw the hope in his brother’s eyes, and smiled. “Ninth heir serves a fisherman best to pull the nets,” he said, and laughed. “No use to a king, but it spared you the shame of owning a flawed one. With so many strong sons, you never thought you would be left with a half-grown girl as your only get, did you?” He looked at his brother in contempt. “Well, are you mute, too?”
Ranes did not answer. Nahil strode across to where Andiene was tied, and forced her chin up, to look into her eyes.
She came back from the twilight world, the mazy paths filled with strange voices and wild dreams, to stare at him, a face so like her father’s, like her own, a face she could remember for a thousand years.
Nahil saw the hate in her eyes, and hard and unbelieving as he was, for a moment he recognized it, his fate, his death. Then he stepped back, fighting away the knowledge, and spoke in a more careless and loud voice than he had used before. “Mute, maybe, but not mindless. I’ll not have a knife put in my back some evening. Kill her.”
Kallan hesitated. “What harm is there … ” he began, though he knew he could not argue with his sworn lord. That hesitation gave Andiene time to act. Knowledge and power had come to her.
She saw two-score soldiers in that courtyard, and one who commanded them. They had cast off the white Festival robes that had disguised them, and wore mail and leather, black with blood like butcher’s clothes. Minds attuned to slaughter and drunk with blood are simpler, easier to control. That made her task less hard. But still, to seek out the guiding thread of each mind in all that group was no easy job. She gathered them and held them lightly, so lightly that they scarcely realized they were being held prisoner, till they tried to act of their own will, and could not.
Then Andiene spoke softly, in the old language which none had spoken for more than a thousand years except in rituals, the naming of the king. “Ven ame.” Words, like wizards, grow in power as they age. She spoke as to a servant. “Nahil, come to me.”
He came in anger and terror, his mind struggling but held powerless by her will. The others, too dazed to understand, stood motionless. “Set me free,” she said.
That was the most dangerous moment, when he drew the bronze dagger from his belt. He was so close to her, and barely under control, his mind fighting for freedom, driven by all his dread of sorcery. Little rivers of sweat ran down from his forehead. His lips twitched like one who has the palsy. But he was docile enough as he cut the ropes that bound her. As she took the dagger from him, his fingers tightened for one moment on the hilt before they released it.
“Res,” she said. “Stay there.” Outside the courtyard, the bells rang again, great discordant waves of sound.
Andiene stepped carefully as she walked toward her father, for the ground seemed to sway with the rhythm of the bells. On either side of her lay destruction: Siope, who had given her a doll when she was small; Akerr, who had slapped