Hanish made a show of stepping out of her way when she took her place beside Aliver. At a signal given by touching Aliver’s hand, the two siblings began. “Hear us, Acacia, empire of the four horizons, of the tree of Akaran, of the six provinces…”
They spoke loudly, but as the Carmelia was far too large for everyone to hear, designated speakers took up their words and repeated them. The speech cascaded down from the dais and around the high ranks of benches like a song in the round.
“Edifus was the founder,” both Akarans said, repeating words that had first been drummed into them as children working with their tutor. “You know this to be true. He was born into suffering and darkness in the Lakes, but he prevailed in a bloody war that engulfed the whole world. He met the Untrue King Tathe at Galaral and crushed his forces with the aid of Santoth Speakers. Edifus was the first in an unbroken line of twenty-one Akaran kings…”
Hanish said, “Unbroken until I came around. Don’t forget that. You haven’t written me out of the histories already, have you?”
Corinn fumbled the words of the sanction. She tripped over them for a moment, trying to remember them and to match her timing to Aliver’s. She felt him glance at her. A bead of sweat broke loose from her forehead and ran down her left temple and cheek. “Are the living con… We are the continuation of those who came before, Akaran all…”
“You probably have,” Hanish said. “You’re capable of anything. Two monarchs! What a strange idea, Corinn. I hope you are half as crafty as you think yourself. I really do. For the sake of our son I do.”
He is nothing but a distraction, Corinn told herself. Control yourself! Divide your thoughts. Make them whole but doubled.
She did. Her lips found the words of the sanction. Her face maintained its calm. Her mind danced with the spell that would wipe this phantom Hanish from the world forever. She thought she had the substance of it. She bunched up her malice toward him into one seething ball of song. She held it in the back of her mouth, needing only a break in the sanction to release it.
Because of all these things, Corinn was as jolted as any of the others by the sound. Perhaps more so, though at first she kept on as if she had not noticed. A bang echoed across the stadium, a sound like a battering ram against a mighty door. Another.
“Oh, something is knocking,” Hanish said.
Aliver stopped speaking. He turned toward the tunnel through which they had entered.
Corinn kept on speaking for a moment, but with Aliver’s gaze went the turning heads of the crowd. A third boom rocked the place with a force that shook the foundations of the stadium. Something broke. She realized what the sound was. The iron gates through which she had entered had been bashed open. The rush of air was palpable from where she stood. It tore at the hats and garments of those near it. That’s impossible, she thought. The gates could not be flung open. They were always locked for the ceremony. No one in her service would even think of it, and if they did it would not be possible, not as heavy and secure as they were.
The words finally fell from Corinn’s lips-and the song dissolved in her mouth-as figures strode through the tunnel and into the stadium. “Take the prince away,” she said. “Rhrenna, do it now.”
“Not just knocking,” Hanish whispered, suddenly at her ear again. “They’ve let themselves in.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX
B arad had thought that the presence of a ghost made physical was to be the most disturbing thing he would witness that day. From his box below the dais he watched the figure appear at Corinn’s shoulder. He nearly called out, but the fact that nobody else did stopped him. Or, not just that. Whatever sorcery Corinn had bound him with stopped him. He feared the man was an assassin, and then wondered why he feared that. Let the queen die. That would be a fine thing. Let his inability to warn her be the death of her. As ever in his life since the queen had captured him, his mind rocked like a boat atop choppy waters, first leaning one way and then the next, all the time making him sick to the stomach.
Because he could only watch, he did. Through watching, he saw. The queen could hear the words the dead man whispered in her ears. She fought not to show any sign that she acknowledged the phantom’s sudden appearance, but to Barad’s eyes it was obvious. Her jaw clenched when the man’s lips moved. She shifted away from the touch he gave her elbow. Her eyes darted around, checking to see if others saw the man at whom she would not herself look. Not an assassin, then. Barad stared harder.
The man’s hair was long and golden, with a few thin strips of colored leather woven into its braids. Meinish. His face looked odd beside Corinn’s. His features did not show the contrast of light and dark that hers did. No touch of the sun on them. He seemed to stand in the dull light of another place entirely. He did stand in another place, Barad realized. He was dead. As soon as he had the thought, he knew it to be true. A ghost was whispering in the queen’s ear. Why could he see the dead man when nobody else seemed to? His stone eyes, surely. They were works of sorcery, after all, and they were Corinn’s doing. Through them, he watched as the man moved around the dais unseen, talking much of the time. More than that, Barad knew every word the man spoke. Intimate. Playful. Teasing. Even his whispers reached him. He did not follow the intricacies of the ceremony at all, just watched the queen and the ghost, hearing his one-sided conversation, wondering what was going to happen.
He had no better understanding of it when the gates to the Carmelia crashed open. He rolled his stone eyes away from the dais and watched the figures march through the tunnel and into the crowded stadium. They were not ghosts, these ones. For a moment Barad thought them monsters with elongated heads like eaters of ants, but that image faded as the light touched them. They were men, larger than normal, but men. They cast shadows and had about them a solidity that was even more tangible than the crowd who drew back in horror from them. They must have been heavier than normal men, for their feet split the stones across which they trod. Even the tattered robes they wore swung with a martial weight, as if the fabric were woven of metal and as likely to cut as a blade. They drove a wedge through the people standing on the entry causeway. The crowd cringed away from them, some pressing back so hard that those along the inner railing went toppling over onto the lower benches.
The intruders took no notice of the people at all until the guards remembered their duty. With a lieutenant shouting them into motion, they snapped into ranks and began marching toward the intruders. The front rank thrust before them a treacherous bristle of halberds. The foremost of the intruders raised their arms in unison and roared out something. The soldiers’ flesh went liquid. Their clothes and armor dropped to the stones, sodden with blood. Their weapons clattered down among the filth, all of which was trodden over by the intruders’ feet a second later.
Sorcerers, Barad named them. They are sorcerers.
The sorcerers turned and ascended the stairs toward the dais. General Andeson barked a command. Archers-Barad had not even known there were archers-on the ledge up beyond the dais let loose a volley of arrows. They should have fallen a hundred or so right on top of the intruders, but the sorcerers tilted their heads and blew at them. The motion was like shooing away a bothersome fly. The arrows skidded away from them. They careened through the stadium, looking suddenly like sleek, black birds, erratic fliers that impacted randomly among the crowd, puncturing chests and throats and embedding in skulls. People sprang away from the injured, sending waves of panic through the tightly packed audience.