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“The gods of Meer have spoken,” Valtik said, raising her voice and her chin as she switched to words they all understood. “The beasts of their waters awoken.” Though she didn’t move, the water around her rippled, pushed by something. “These lands are not your own; I bind you and banish you by rite of blood and rite of bone.”

The kraken howled, the sound shredded and deafening. Corayne held her grasp on the sword, fighting the instinct to cover her ears.

She couldn’t believe her eyes as the beast obeyed, even against its own will. It trembled, shifting, pulling backward inch by inch, the flesh of its body disappearing back into the Spindle.

Corayne took a step forward.

Valtik curled her fingers until her hands became claws, her wrinkled brow tightening as she grimaced, her voice never stopping.

“Be gone, be gone, be gone,” she growled, in seemingly every language. The words of the witch were as a hurricane blowing, breaking over the infernal monster. It twisted and fought, the worms of its body slapping against the flooded ground, sending up sprays of foul water.

Corayne kept moving, the others beside her. She saw the flash of their steel, felt the air stir as they moved, the water flowing around her knees. Sand slid under her boots, turned to mud. It sucked at her steps, grasping her ankles, trying to hold her back.

“These lands are not your own!” Valtik wailed.

A shadow passed over the sun and a tentacle fell like a collapsing tower, the kraken shrieking its killing blow. Until Dom’s sword wheeled, cutting through stinking flesh, sending the appendage plunging into the water, the end still thrashing.

The kraken’s eye rolled and disappeared into the thread, the last of its wriggling tentacles weak and coiling.

“I bind you and banish you by rite of blood and rite of bone.”

Even the geyser sputtered, its whitewater force pulsing.

Corayne felt her skin and muscle part as she ran her hand down the edge of the Spindleblade. Her blood joined the rest, a glittering crimson, carrying with it the hope of the realm. The hope of her father. The hope of herself.

The gash in her palm smarted as she returned her grip to the hilt, blood welling between her fingers. Another tentacle squirmed toward her, reaching like a vine, but Andry knocked it away, his sword dancing. She kept walking, the water cold, the wind cold, the sword cold.

The Spindle, needle thin, winked like a star. It caught its own light, too bright to stare at for long. Corayne expected a glimpse of another realm, the mighty oceans of Meer crashing beyond. There was nothing but the kraken, trying to battle its way into Allward. It weakened, its screams distant and echoing, the jolting motion of its tentacles going slow. One brushed her cheek, barely the touch of a hand. She ignored it. There was nothing else but the Spindle, the call of it a hook in her heart, tugging her in.

“For the Ward,” she murmured.For us all.

The Spindleblade rose and arced, cutting across kraken flesh and Spindle thread, trailing black blood and unraveling gold, the geyser raining down on her in a waterfall. It collapsed and fell to nothing, slapping against the flooded land, drenching them all to the bone. The kraken screamed again from somewhere far away and was suddenly silent, the tear of the Spindle wiped clean out of the air, like the gap in a curtain pulled closed. The remaining tentacles sank in the water, neatly cut from a body now realms away.

Without the steady flow of the geyser and Meer’s gateway, the flood melted, sucked into desert sand parched for centuries.

All over the oasis, hissing echoed, the serpents wailing a lament for their lost realm. Corayne slumped, leaning hard on the sword. She expected the sting of a fang at any moment.

It never came.

Her head lolled against a warm shoulder, and arms tightened around her body, holding her steady. She glimpsed dark amber eyes, a kind mouth, a gentle face.

She tried not to lose focus, keeping her eyes wide. But the sky darkened anyway, the sun losing its brilliance. Figures surrounded them, indistinguishable. Enemies or allies, she couldn’t say.

“It’s over,” she heard Dom mutter, his voice distant and fading. “It’s over.”

Andry felt closer, a hand brushing her arm. His body was warm against hers. She tried to cling to him, her grip too weak. “With me, Corayne. Stay with me.”

Her eyelids drooped, the Spindleblade falling from her wounded hand. “That’s one down,” she murmured, slipping into darkness.

32

THE ORPHANS

Erida

For a man who could crush diamonds in his fist, his touch was featherlight, his fingers gentle on hers.

Queen Erida let Taristan escort her from her horse to the staging ground at the top of the hill, the Madrentine border and the Rose River spread out before them. On the banks, the First and Third Legions formed up like silver beetles in ranks, crawling inexorably forward to the hastily constructed barge bridges anchored in the current. Despite her husband’s glowering presence beside her, not to mention her assembled council of generals and war advisors, Erida could not tear her eyes away from the river. Twenty thousand men marched below, cavalry and infantry and archers, pikemen, knights, squires, and peasants pressed into service with their feudal lords. Men and boys, enamored of war or terrified of it. Rich, poor, or somewhere between.Their hearts beat for me this morning.She breathed deeply, as if she could taste their steel. The moment shimmered in her mind, already a treasured memory.