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Chapter Thirteen


Bright star! would I were as steadfast as thou art!

John Keats
“Bright Star”


Wyvern Boulevard was alive again, decked for celebration. Deliverance had come to Veganá.

For months the city of Midmount, capital of the country, had been somber in its captivity. Today a parade of triumph marched down the boulevard, through myriad flower petals drifting down from its balconies. People crowded twenty deep at either side, screamed, laughed, wept, hugged one another, waved pennants and hailed the captains or lords they recognized, scanning the ranks hopefully for the face of a loved one. Panegyric songs filled the air, many of them to Lord Blacktarget, propagated by his own advance guard. Occhlon banners could be seen, trampled and burned, in the gutters.

Weeks of sharp clashes had dislodged the Southwastelanders from resolute positions just south of the Glyffan border. The returning army of Veganá and the Sisters of the Line, fueled by shattering wins to the north, had sent the desert men reeling in one onset after another. Their numbers had swollen with militiawomen from liberated regions of Glyffa, and Veganán men freed from the southern yoke. These had been the most aggressive fighters, out for redress.

The Southwastelanders had been thrown out of central Veganá. Crows had circled, blotting the sky, awaiting a rare feast. Shrewd gray wolves skulking in the hills had licked their white chops, knowing their time would come. The Occhlon had lost nearly fifteen thousand men since the cream of their army had marched north to screen Yardiff Bey’s stealthy mission to Ladentree.

Lord Blacktarget led the parade to a halt before the temple of the Bright Lady, lifting his hand to the cheers. He raised Blazetongue aloft, and Woodsinger held Cynosure. Veganáns were not far from a happy brand of hysteria.

After the general came the Trustee, who’d actually directed the campaign, with Andre deCourteney and Angorman, both risen as commanders in their own right The crowd pressed in against their honor guard as they dismounted.

The temple reared above them, largest in the Crescent Lands; late-afternoon sun splashed from its gilded domes. Atop the front steps stood its archdeacon. When they came up, he kowtowed. “All praise for this day. I will take charge of the babe; she goes to the keeping of the temple virgins.”

Woodsinger didn’t move. “It is not yet the time for that,” the Trustee said.

Lord Blacktarget became incensed. “Come, madam, your prerogatives do not run to this.”

Patiently, she explained, “There is more to her home-coming than that. Prophesies must be observed, a Rite performed.”

Their uneasy alliance was close to fracture. He’d never liked taking a secondary post to hers, and no longer needed to. But the archdeacon said, “If the Trustee refers to the child’s Vigil, that would be commensurate with custom. Cynosure is, after all, the last of the Blood Royal.”

Blacktarget yielded one last time. At the foot of the steps, a Glyffan captain let herself breathe; the call to arms hadn’t been far from her lips. Her Liege had been specific; nothing was to keep the child from her Vigil. Woodsinger gave the child over to the archdeacon.

Andre, Angorman and the Trustee accompanied the old churchman inside. Lord Blacktarget insisted on coming too. Climbing from stairway to stairway, on stone worn away by ages of footfalls, they made a winding ascent to the little chapel where only royalty of Veganá held ceremony. Its walls and roof were all of glass roundels, like distorted gray lenses, that created an eerie half-world as the sun set.

The new monarch must, by tradition, stand a night-watch. For the first time in generations it could be done, as it was supposed to be, with the ancestral sword. Usually, the Vigil was kept in solitude; tonight was the most singular exception in Veganá’s history.

The chapel’s altar was a waist-high cube of jasper. Inset at its center was the emblem of Cynosure’s house, a wyvern picked out in gold on a black field. A short rod supported the crescent moon of the Bright Lady over it. The archdeacon set the baby down between the sparkling claws of the inlaid wyvern, then went away, having discharged his duty.

The others knelt or took seats on low divans. Andre removed the rod and in its aperture he stood Blazetongue. The child made no sound, attuned to the moment. “That is a liberty to take,” commented Blacktarget, “with a sword not your own.”

“Yet he has, by rights, some ties with it,” the Trustee observed, “for it was forged by his grandsire, my father, for a King far back in Cynosure’s line.” The general was incredulous. “Yes, Lord Blacktarget, our magic is there, and far mightier enchantment besides, though Andre never knew any of that until I told him. Blazetongue is a vessel of the Bright Lady’s energies, and complies with her still. Did you think it came into my hands at random? There is transcendent purpose to it all.”

“What do you hope for, from it?” Lord Blacktarget snapped.

“The keeping of a promise given long ago. The Celestial Mistress brings many threads together tonight.”

They were closeted with their own thoughts. Andre fretted about Gil MacDonald, and wondered, too, how things boded for Springbuck, for Reacher, Katya and Van Duyn. He said a prayer for Gabrielle.

The stars appeared, warped and rearranged by the roundels. The crescent moon rose, magnified in the roundels, hanging over Cynosure and Blazetongue. The Trustee watched it carefully. Angorman chanted softly to himself, Lord Blacktarget halted his devotions. Andre simply waited.

Blazetongue came to life in this appointed moment; it had no ruinous flames to spew, but rather a blue aurora that made them shield their eyes, and a high-pitched humming, music of the spheres. All of them knew their deity had come.

Angorman was about to raise his voice in praise. The Trustee shushed him and stepped to the altar.

Her arms lifted imploringly. “We are assailed, hard-put even as we were long ago. One great portent must we have, to lift hopes, and set hands against the Masters. We look to your promised Omen.”

The humming grew louder, Blazetongue’s aura more brilliant. The baby didn’t seem to mind at all. Monarch of Veganá, she’d been born for this, an hour implicit in Blazetongue’s forging. Among the crowds keeping their own nightwatch in the streets below, a shout went up. They’d marked the glass-walled chapel’s radiance.

The Sending subsided. Andre took his hand from his eyes. Cynosure was quiet, and Blazetongue dark. Angorman cried, “See!”

In the sky hung an awesome Sign, a comet stretched down through the firmament like a sword, the fiery head for its pommel, its tail aimed directly down where Shardishku-Salamá’ wove its spells. It outshone the moon, planets and stars, making night more like day.

They rushed out onto the balcony. Angorman and Blacktarget offered up thanks to the sky; Andre and his mother hung back. “What visitation is that?” voices called from the streets. Others answered, “The Trailingsword! It is as in days of long ago!”

“You see?” inquired the Trustee. “The old stories survive. Everywhere, there will be those who know the tale. Seven times seven days after the first Trailingsword appeared, our decisive battle was fought, where its tail pointed us.”

“Did Bey know this would happen?” Andre asked.

“Suspected it, I should think. Still, he ignored it in his plotting to get the thing he sought at Ladentree; that disquiets me. Now the sword has rendered the second of the two great services for which it was created, and they are complete, though Blazetongue may render a final aid in its unmaking.”

“I will remember,” he promised. She was sharing what knowledge she could with him because all lives would soon be in danger again.

“Your prowess has increased, Andre,” she remarked, “but that is a mixed gift. It says more arduous burdens shall be laid upon you.”

“I welcome that. I owe Salamá no less than does Gil MacDonald. This Omen suits me well.”

Across the Crescent Lands, men and women peered at the sky. The Trailingsword gleamed, and timeless tales came to mind, of the Great Blow and the last defense that was made there where it bid its supporters to rally. At every latitude it appeared the same, urging them toward Salamá. Seven times seven days was the measure of its time. There would be those who would ignore it, and those who would oppose it. But for many, it was a morsel of hope in desperately hungry days.



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