Arai wanted to confront Lord Pierce on his own, but Lillandra insisted on accompanying him. "I have a few things I'd like to say to him as well," she said.

  Arai reluctantly allowed it, and Wick, the young soldier, proceeded to lead them to Lord Pierce's rooms, deep within the torchlit depths of Fort Drakness.

  "He has good days and bad days," Wick warned, when they reached the door to his bedchamber. "The last few days have been very bad. Our Selestrian does not expect him to make it through the week."

  "What's wrong with him?"

  "He was struck by an arrow when the Steelmen attacked Fort Drakness. It seemed to be nothing at first, but the wound festered, and the healing potions we gave him failed to cure him. He did eventually recover, but he was never the same afterward. Frankly, we've been expecting him to die for the last year or so; it's amazing he's still alive."

  Arai pushed open the door. The room beyond was quite large, and quite luxurious; a large fire was crackling away in the hearth, and the floor was covered in polar bear rugs. In the far corner of the room sat a four-poster bed, with silk curtains, and within the bed, propped up against a set of pillows, was the Lord Protector himself: Jiles Pierce. He was sleeping fitfully, snoring and snorting as though he was having trouble breathing.

  The mere sight of Lord Pierce was enough to anger him. To calm himself, he closed his eyes and took a deep breath. The room, he noticed, smelled like lilacs and lineaments.

  Now steadier, he approached Lord Pierce's bedside. He thought he was going to have to wake him up, but the man finally woke himself up with his own ragged breathing, his eyes snapping open.

  Arai frowned down at the man. The Lord Pierce he remembered had been a strong, fit man in his fifties, a good rider and an able swordsman, with black hair and a stern countenance. This man looked twenty years older -- his hair had turned white, his face had turned craggy, and his eyes had clouded over. It took him a moment to realize that Arai and Lillandra were standing next to him, and then it took him another moment to find his voice. "Who...who are you?" he croaked, nearly choking on his own words.

  "Arai," he said softly. "The son of Hetsu."

  "Arai?" The Lord Protector sat up a little straighter. "Ah, yes. The rebel. Come to kill me, have you? I'm afraid you're a little late. As you can see, the gods have already done most of your work for you." But then his eyes drifted to Lillandra, and widened in astonishment. "My queen?"

  "Not anymore." She regarded him as one might regard a disobedient dog. "I'm not happy with you, Lord Pierce."

  "What are you doing in the company of this man? Don't you know he means to overthrow you?"

  "I'm no longer the Night Queen," she said. "And you're no longer my Lord Protector."

  "I don't know what sorts of lies he's told you, my queen," he said, "but I am and always have been your loyal servant. I have always carried out your orders to the best of my meager abilities. As my father did, and as his father did before him."

  "All three of you have been lying to me for years," she said hotly. "About yourselves, about the state of Velon, about everything. You made yourselves rulers here, living in luxury while the kingdom suffered. You're as bad as King Reemus."

  "That's...that's not true," he insisted. He was so worked up now that he was beginning to lose his voice again; he started coughing, and it took him several seconds to recover. "I've always fought for Velon, defended her."

  "You killed my father," Arai said, his voice soft and dangerous.

  "Your father?" he snorted. "Your father was a mercenary. He had no loyalty to Velon or any other nation. Money and power, that's all he cared about."

  Arai ignored these slurs. "You betrayed him."

  "I hired his Steelmen to fight the Al'mud," he said. "And they did a good job of it. If they had departed in peace, then, your father would still be alive. But his victories had made him popular with the people, and he refused to send the Steelmen out of Velon after the Al'mud were driven back into the mountains." He coughed a few more times. "The man was plotting to turn around and attack Fort Drakness, to depose me, to wage war against the Queen of the Night. So yes, I had him killed. I snuffed out those ambitions, to protect Velon." His eyes fell on Lillandra. "To protect you."

  All of this was absolutely untrue; Arai knew for a fact that his father had never had any interest in ruling Velon, nor of taking the fight to the all-powerful Night Queen. The allegations should have enraged him further, but Lord Pierce was so desperate and pathetic that his only response was to shake his head in sad dismay.

  "More lies," Lillandra muttered.

  The man coughed and coughed and sputtered out all kinds of denials. Arai's frowned deepened. He hadn't expected his final confrontation with Lord Pierce to go this way -- he had expected to have to fight the man; in fact he had been looking forward to slaying his father's murderer in single combat. He hadn't expected to find an old, sick, bedridden man, desperately pleading his case. He still hated the man, but...

  His hand had been resting on the pommel of his sword throughout this entire encounter, but he removed it now, allowing it to fall to his side. Lord Pierce was a vile man, a murderer and worse, but the idea of slitting his throat while he lay in bed...no, he wouldn't do that. There was a difference between killing a man in battle in killing him in cold blood.

  "Sir Estil must be rubbing off on me," he murmured. Then, to Lord Pierce, he said, "You killed my father, and you've spent your entire life terrorizing the people of Velon. You deserve to die."

  "What are you...what are you waiting for, then?" he croaked out. The conversation, brief though it was, had obviously exhausted him. "Do it."

  He drew his sword. "This is Silus," he said, showing him the blade, which glinted in the firelight. "The Radiant Blade." He allowed Lord Pierce to look upon it for a moment -- the man looked at it fearfully -- then slid it back into its scabbard. "But I'm not going to sully such a beautiful sword with your blood. You don't deserve that, either."

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  And without another word, he turned and walked out of the room.

  * * *

  Lord Jiles Pierce, the Lord Protector of Velon, died the very next morning, having never left his bed. Arai was not surprised to learn that he had died, for he had obviously been deathly ill, but he was surprised at his own feelings: the news brought him no joy at all, nor even much satisfaction. What he felt, instead, was a strange sort of disappointment. He mentioned this to Sir Estil.

  "Disappointment?" the knight asked. "You're sorry that he's dead?"

  "No."

  "You're sorry that you didn't kill him yourself, then?"

  "No, that's not it, either." He shook his head, confused. "I don't know. The man who had my father murdered is dead; I should be happy about that. But I'm not feeling much of anything at all. Is there something wrong with me?"

  He pondered that for a moment. "I don't think so. You wanted justice for your father. Sometimes, when we want something very badly, we build it up in our minds so much that when we finally get what we want, it doesn't bring us as much comfort or satisfaction as we thought it would."

  "That could be it," he admitted.

  He had scarce time to ponder it further, however, for there were many other matters to attend to. He spoke with Grizz, first, on the military situation; he found the man standing on Fort Drakness' battlements, contemplating the gigantic Al'mud horde.

  "I've never seen anything like this," he muttered. "I knew that Rollaug and his shaman had managed to bring several of the clans together, but this...I've never seen so many barbarians in one place. The largest band your father and I fought, in our final expedition to the Frozen Mountains, wasn't a tenth this size."

  "How long do you think we can hold them off?"

  He shrugged. "It's hard to say. We're very, very badly outnumbered, but Fort Drakness is still a formidable obstacle. The Al'mud know nothing of siegecraft; all they can do is throw up some ladders and try to overwhelm us with their numbers. The sheer size of their army works against them as well. They're probably already struggling to feed themselves." He frowned thoughtfully. "They could try to bypass Fort Drakness altogether, as we did two years ago, but the valley is almost impossible to enter from the west and they'd have to contend with Hammer's Castle in the east." Grizz had ordered the Steelmen to re-garrison Hammer's Castle; he had given the command to Kel. He had also sent Vaix into Hammersvik to try to recruit more soldiers, but so far only a handful had shown up. As far as the people of Hammersvik were concerned, Rollaug's horde was unstoppable. The appearance of the Steelmen had temporarily boosted their morale, but after learning that there were less than four hundred men left in the mercenary company, and that Dayan's Holy Legion was now headed for Velon as well, the people had sunk back into despair.

  "But I don't like what I've been hearing about this shaman, this Allugog," Grizz went on. "He's a sorcerer of some power, I understand. He burned down the Trident's Gate at Harbor Town with some kind of black fire." He glanced at Silus, which was hanging from Arai's belt. "We may have need of that sword of yours, before this is all over. How's Leila coming on the Nightfall? Everything depends on her."

  "She left a few hours ago, to get a closer look at it," he said. "I was just about to go find her."

  "Everything depends on her," he muttered again. He was plainly worried. "Everything."

  "She won't let you down," Arai assured him. And with that, he left the battlements, saddled a horse, and headed for to the city, which was less than an hour's ride from the fort. There was a single soldier guarding the northern gate, and a few more at the Graile; the men did not attempt to stop him.

  Hammersvik remained as he remembered it -- a dark, vertical city, crowded with buildings, full of fences and ironmongery, and riven with secret warrens and shadowy alleys. Having been built over a series of hills, which had never been leveled off, its streets were so steep that it sometimes took an effort to climb them. Rising above the rest of city, on a particularly high hill, was the Waterglass Palace, a gleaming white spire which stood at least three hundred feet high. There were decorative waterspouts all over the tower, designed to direct melting snow away from it; in the spring the snowmelt gushed out of these spouts, making it appear as if the entire tower was some kind of great waterfall.

  Arai gave the Waterglass only a passing glance, however. Hurrying through the streets, he passed through the city, exiting through the southern gate, and twenty minutes later he found himself at the foot of the Nightfall. Lillandra, Shell, and Sir Estil were already here, standing on the dirt road that ran up to it; he had no trouble finding them.

  Lillandra was gazing up at the tower, contemplatively, while Shell was shaking her head in amazement. "I can't believe you spent a hundred years in there," she said.

  "It's not much to look at," she admitted. "Good morning, Arai."

  "Good morning. What have you discovered?"

  "It's just as Feri and the others said. Several protective spells have been placed over the entrance -- the Fifth Warding, the Seventh Warding, the Tainted Air, the Reflective Barrier. And they're all woven together, quite cleverly, which makes it hard to untangle them. I'm not surprised Feri had difficulty with it."

  "Could I cancel the spells with Silus?"

  She hesitated. "Probably. This sorcerer was clever, though, like I said. They tied the spells to a set of Aerial Volcanics. You see those little lights floating around near the entrance?"

  Arai squinted. There did indeed appear to be dozens, maybe hundreds, of glowing red lights hovering around the Nightfall's huge gates.

  "They're rigged to go off if the Reflective Barrier or any of the other spells fail. Your sword would probably protect you from the worst of it, but I don't think you'd come away unscathed."

  "I might be willing to risk it," he said.

  "There's another problem, though. The gate itself, and even the chains and hinges, have been enchanted with the Elephant's Seal. That's a permanent modification; Silus can't cancel it. That gate probably weighs a hundred tons now. It would take an extraordinary amount of strength to rip it open."

  Arai considered that. "We could rig up a team of oxen," he suggested.

  "The Tainted Air would prevent them from getting close. The air around the tower is poisonous. You see all the dead bird out there?"

  It was true; the area around the tower was littered with dead animals. Arai clenched his fists in frustration. "So how do we get this damn thing open?"

  "I can untangle the spells," she said. "And Shell or Feri could lighten the gate with the Baby's Breath -- that's a pretty simple spell. But it'll take about a week."

  Arai hissed through this teeth. "That's cutting it close."

  "I'll do the best I can."

  "Where did all these spells come from?" Sir Estil asked. "Who cast them, and why?"

  "That's a very good question," Arai said. "Lillandra?"

  She hesitated again. "I don't know. Someone obviously doesn't want us going into the tower." She frowned, looking up at it. "My own spell has been...altered, as well."

  "What do you mean?"

  She turned to face him. "My plan was to transform to Nightfall itself into a gigantic zemi, one I could use to bring Julien back to life. It was extremely complex; it had at least a thousand layers. It was incomplete, though -- I was still tinkering with it when the two of us were suddenly transported to Addis." She furrowed her brow. "Someone's been working on it while I've been away -- adding new layers, subtracting others."

  "To what end?"

  "I don't know that, either. It's the same spell, but modified in ways I don't understand."

  This was all rather unsettling; the last thing they needed was a rogue sorcerer meddling around with Lillandra's world-shattering resurrection spell. "This sorcerer...do you think he's taken up residence inside the Nightfall?"

  "I think that's quite likely, yes."

  Arai exhaled. "Our first priority is unlocking the Nightfall and recovering the Dragon's Bit. I want you working on this thing morning and night. Is there anything you need from me? Should I send some Steelmen up to make a camp for you here?"

  "That might be a good idea."

  "I'll leave you to it, then," he said. He took her hands in his and looked into her eyes. "You're not going to let me down, are you? You've never failed me before."

  She smiled faintly. "Well, there's always a first time."