His father’s grave, the Princeps’ Memorium.
Tavi staggered inside. Though outside the storm still raged behind him, within the Memorium, those sounds came only as something very distant and wholly irrelevant. The vast scream of the storm was broken here to near silence. Here in the dome there was only the slight ripple of water, the crackle of flame, and the sleepy chirp of a bird.
The interior of the dome was made not of marble, but of crystal, the walls of it rising high and smooth to the ceiling twenty feet above. Once, the scale and grandeur of the place had instilled in Tavi a sense of awe. Now, he saw it differently. He knew the scale and difficulty of furycraft it had taken to raise this place from the ground, and his awe was based not upon the beauty or richness of the structure but upon the elegance of the crafting that had created it.
Light came from the seven fires that burned without apparent fuel around the outside of the room, simulated flames that were far more difficult to create than the steady glow of any furylamp. That irregular, warm light rose through the crystal, bending, refracting, splitting into rainbows that swirled and danced with a slow grace and beauty within the crystal walls—crystal that would have long since cracked and fractured had it been wrought with anything less than perfection of furycraft.
The floor in the center of the dome was covered by a pool of water, perfectly still and as smooth as Amaranth glass. All around the pool grew rich foliage, bushes, grass, flowers, even small trees, still arranged as neatly as though kept by a gardener—though Tavi hadn’t seen the place since he was fifteen. The woodcrafting needed to establish such a self-tending garden was astonishing. Gaius Sextus, it seemed, had known more about the growth of living things than Tavi did, despite the differences in their backgrounds.
Between each of the fires around the walls stood seven silent suits of armor, complete with scarlet capes, the traditional-style bronze shields, and the ivory-handled swords of Septimus’s singulares. The armor stood mute and empty upon nearly formless figures of dark stone, eternally vigilant, the slits in their helmets focused upon their charge. Two of the suits were missing weapons—Tavi and Amara had taken them for protection on that night so long ago.
At the center of the pool rose a block of black basalt. Upon the block lay a pale shape, a statue of the purest white marble, and Tavi stared at the representation of his father. Septimus’s eyes were closed, as though sleeping, and he lay with his hands folded upon his breast, the hilt of his sword beneath them. He wore a rich cloak that draped down over one shoulder, and beneath that was the worked breastplate of a somewhat ostentatious Legion officer rather than the standard-issue lorica Tavi had on.
Slouched at the base of his father’s memorial bier was the vord Queen.
She was bleeding from more wounds than Tavi could count, and the water around her, instead of being crystalline, was stained the dark green of a living pond. She slumped in absolute exhaustion. One eye was missing, that side of her once-beautiful face slashed to ribbons by the windmanes’ claws.
The other eye, still glittering black, focused upon Tavi. The vord Queen rose, her sword in her hand.
Tavi stopped at the edge of the pool and waited, settling his grip on his own blade.
The two faced one another and said nothing. The silence and stillness stretched. Outside, the storm’s wrath was a distant thing, impotent. Light flickered through the crystalline walls.
“I was right,” the Queen said, her voice heavy and rough. “There is a strength in the bonds between you.”
“Yes,” Tavi said simply.
“My daughter who lives in far Canea… she will never understand that.”
“No.”
“Is it not strange, that though I know her failure to see it is a weakness, though I know that she would kill me upon sight, that I want her to live? To prosper?”
“Not so strange,” Tavi said.
The Queen closed her eye and nodded. She opened it again, and there was a tear tracking down her face. “I tried to be what I was meant to be, Father. It was never personal.”
“We’re beyond that now,” Tavi said. “It ends here, and now. You know that.”
She was still for a moment, before asking, very quietly, “Will you make me suffer?”
“No,” he said, as gently as he could.
“I know how a vord queen dies,” she whispered. She lifted her chin, a ghostly shadow of pride falling across her. “I am ready.”
He inclined his head to her, very slightly.
Her rush sent out a spray of water, and she came at him with every ounce of speed and power left in her broken body. Even so badly battered, she was faster than any Aleran, stronger than a grass lion.
Gaius Octavian’s blade met that of the vord Queen in a single, chiming tone. Her sword shattered amidst a rain of blue and scarlet sparks.
He made a single smooth, lightning-swift cut.
And the Vord War was over.
CHAPTER 57
The wind had picked up so sharply that the Knights Aeris Fidelias had borrowed began to run out of work. The conditions were simply too harsh for the vordknights to stay aloft, especially when a mix of cold rain and sleet began sluicing down. The changing conditions had ripped the Canim’s sorcerous mist apart even earlier than that, and Fidelias, from his vantage point on the barn’s roof, had gotten an excellent view of the size of the force attacking them.
There weren’t thirty thousand vord. There were more like fifty thousand.
No simple ditch could have given the Legions any real hope against a force that outnumbered them so badly. Oh, had they been fighting Marat, Icemen, even Canim, there might have been a straw of hope. Legion discipline in the face of overwhelming odds was less a professional practice than it was a form of contagious insanity, especially in a veteran unit like the First. They might be killed to a man, but they would never break. That fact alone was enough to grind the determination out of any rational foe.
But the vord weren’t rational.
So the First Aleran would be killed to a man—and Fidelias with them, if it came to that. Perhaps that was the specter of Valiar Marcus inside his thoughts speaking, but if so, Fidelias had no intention of countermanding him. He wasn’t leaving these men.
The rain came down harder, and harder still, until it was almost like one of the typhoons that sometimes visited the southern coast. Fidelias watched his men fighting grimly on against impossible odds and found himself weeping in silence, his face stony. It was raining. No one would see. But even so, force of habit made him reach for the modest watercrafting talents he possessed, which were at least suitable to stop tears.
His head whipped up abruptly, and he snapped, to the nearest courier, “Bring me the First Lady!”
Isana’s cloak and dress were soaked through by the time she reached the barn’s roof. Thank goodness. It was the closest thing she’d had to a bath in weeks.
The ground continued to quiver and shake at odd intervals. Vast sounds, deep and unearthly, reverberated through the night, passing over the screams and cries and drums and trumpets of battle, the roar of wind, the slap of heavy rain. They reminded Isana of the calls of leviathans in the open sea—only a great deal more expansive. She couldn’t see a hundred yards in the rain, and she had a feeling that she should be glad of it.
She hurried across the roof with Araris and Aldrick trailing behind her, to where Valiar Marcus stood with his command staff. He saluted her as she approached, pointed at the ditch the legionares were defending, and said, without preamble, “My lady, I need you to fill that ditch with water.”