ECHOES OF LIGHT

KINGDOMS OF SAND, BOOK SIX

by

Daniel Arenson

Table of Contents

- MAP

- CHAPTER ONE: ATALIA

- CHAPTER TWO: EPHER

- CHAPTER THREE: ABISHAG

- CHAPTER FOUR: CLAUDIA

- CHAPTER FIVE: ABISHAG

- CHAPTER SIX: EPHER

- CHAPTER SEVEN: SENECA

- CHAPTER EIGHT: EPHER

- CHAPTER NINE: TIRUS

- CHAPTER TEN: OLIVE

- CHAPTER ELEVEN: KOREN

- CHAPTER TWELVE: ATALIA

- CHAPTER THIRTEEN: OFEER

- CHAPTER FOURTEEN: SENECA

- CHAPTER FIFTEEN: OFEER

- CHAPTER SIXTEEN: ATALIA

- CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: OFEER

- CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: CLAUDIA

- CHAPTER NINETEEN: EPHER

- CHAPTER TWENTY: ATALIA

- CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE: OFEER

- CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO: SENECA

- CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE: ABISHAG

- CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR: EPHER

- CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE: SENECA

- CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX: EPHER

- CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: VALENTINA

- CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT: EPHER

- CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE: CLAUDIA

- CHAPTER THIRTY: IMANI

- CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE: KOREN

- CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO: SENECA

- CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE: VALENTINA

- CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR: KOREN

- CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE: ABISHAG

- CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX: OFEER

- AFTERWORD

- NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

- KEEP IN TOUCH

Full-sized map: DanielArenson.com/Map

ATALIA

"Lioness! Lioness! Lioness!"

As Atalia stood in the dark tunnel, the muffled chant rose from outside.

"Lioness! Lioness!"

She grunted. She wore the helmet her husband had given her; it was shaped as a lion's head, complete with fangs. Her grunt echoed inside the iron, sounding like a true lion's growl.

A heavy hand slammed down on her shoulder, and a voice rose from behind her. "Ready to die, desert lioness?"

Atalia turned around. Uro stood there, grinning. The burly giant wore only a loincloth, a manica of iron scales across his right arm, and a lion-pelt cloak. The poor lion's head was still attached, forming a toothy hood. The scar Domina Leyla had given Uro, a gift of her whip, had faded to a thin white line across his face.

"Soldiers always are," Atalia said. "But I don't intend to die today." She lifted her helmet's visor and spat. "When I die, it will be as a soldier, not a gladiator."

Many others stood farther back in the tunnel. Some were trained gladiators: Breeana, the foulmouthed she-demon with red hair. Kasran, a smirking brute missing half his face. Bura, a dwarf with massive arms and two axes across his back. Others in the shadows. They all wore lion pelts, the animals' heads snarling above their brows. All but Atalia. She still wore her iron lion, her helmet from the war.

Deeper in the tunnel stood others doomed to fight today, but they were not gladiators. These men were prisoners condemned to death. They had received no training, and they wore nothing but subligaculi around their loins. Rather than costly lion pelts, they sported lion figures branded onto their chests, still raw. To them, the arena would not present a battle but an execution.

"So do I look whorish enough to pass for a Zoharite?" asked Breeana. The red-haired gladiatrix grabbed her crotch. "Don't have enough Aelarian cock in here, I think."

Atalia stared at her, stared at them all. They were all dressed as Zoharites—at least how most Aelarians imagined Zoharites looked. Of course, Atalia was the only true Zoharite here. The others gladiators came from lands around the Encircled Sea, from far northern Elania to the deep southern lands of Nur and beyond.

"You look—and smell—like no cock has fucked you since the fleas moved in," Atalia said.

Breeana howled and leaped toward her, drawing her sword, only for Uro to hold her back.

"Calm yourself!" said the scarred giant, clinging to the wild woman's arms.

Breeana thrashed and spat and hurled her sword. Atalia pulled her head aside just in time, dodging the blade.

"Watch your back, kitten!" Breeana laughed, still caught in Uro's grip. "Watch your back in the arena. Might be one lioness will bite another."

The chanting died down outside. Atalia stepped toward the end of the corridor. She peered through a hatch worked into the heavy bronze door.

She glimpsed a sliver of the Amphitheatrum, this massive theater in the heart of Aelar's Acropolis. Rows of seats spread outside, crammed to capacity. Atalia tried to see the sandy arena—had the opposing team emerged yet? But from this angle, she couldn't see much.

Atalia leaned hard against the locked doors, shoving them as far as they'd budge, changing her view. Now she could see Tirus's imperial box, a veritable palace worked into the tiers of stone seats. The emperor rose from his throne, stepped forward, and stood between red columns topped with golden eagles. The bald, stocky emperor seemed unconcerned with the Gaelian horde that still ravaged the countryside and besieged the city walls. With the city's port still open, and with his daily raids devastating the Gaelian hosts, Aelar was still enjoying the festivities of Tirus's ascension. The emperor wore a resplendent purple toga trimmed with gold, a garment finer than anything he'd ever worn in Gefen, and a golden laurel. He cried out to the crowd. His voice boomed across the theater and entered the tunnel where the gladiators stood.

"People of Aelar!" Tirus held out his arms as if he could embrace them all. "We live in a time of war and victory. Our brave legionaries continue to decimate the barbarian horde outside our walls. Our legions prepare to smite the Southern Empire, which has fallen from our light, and they will bring us the head of Seneca the Serpent. My own daughter, blessed Claudia Valerius, smites the rebels in Aelaria Orientalis, our great eastern province."

Aelaria Orientalis. Atalia spat. The name they had given Zohar.

She shuddered. Was Tirus speaking truth or mere propaganda? Was Aelar pushing back the Gaelian siege? Was her husband still alive, still able to fight? And in Zohar, were her people truly dying, her brother among them? Atalia clenched her fists. More than anything, she wanted to be with those she loved. With her husband outside the city walls. With Epher in the desert. Anywhere but here, about to fight a mock battle for the mob.

"In this time of new glory," Tirus continued, "let us also remember our past victories! Twenty years ago, our brave legions—I myself fought among them—smote the Zoharites at Cadom, sinking their fleet and bringing the island into our light. People of Aelar! I give you again, brought to glorious life—the Battle of Cadom!"

Horns blared. Drums beat. The crowd cheered. Keys jangled in the lock, and Atalia steeled herself and drew her blade.

Whatever enemy awaits me in the arena, she thought, I will slay it. I will live to kill Tirus and Seneca.

Guards opened the doors, and Atalia rushed out into the arena, screaming for battle.

She skidded to a halt.

She gasped.

"Fuck me," she whispered.

Uro smirked and slapped her on the back. "What happened, lion cub? Never seen a naumachia before?"

"They flooded it." Atalia rubbed her eyes. "They fucking flooded it."

Normally, a dozen steps led down from the tunnel to a circular, sandy arena. Today that sand and those steps were invisible. Water filled the arena, rising to the tunnel's archway—deep enough to drown a man. An island rose in the flooded arena, topped with a wooden fortress that bore a Zoharite flag. Somehow—Atalia could not even imagine how the engineering worked—the bastards had turned the Amphitheatrum into a miniature Encircled Sea, complete with a mock Cadom in its center.

Even more astounding were the ships. Actual ships—complete with oars, masts, and sails—floated in the water. Three ships docked right before Atalia, bearing lion banners. Six other ships docked across the arena, and they bore eagle standards. A second archway loomed open there, allowing a second group of gladiators to enter the arena, these ones dressed as legionaries. They weren't true legionaries in armor but gladiators in elaborate costumes, their muscled bodies bare but for loincloths and crested helmets.

The amphitheater was full to bursting, some people even sharing seats, women and children sitting on men's laps. A hundred thousand spectators—by God, it was twice the population of Gefen before its fall—filled the stone tiers. Every man, woman, and child was roaring. Some called out for Atalia, the heroine who had slain the lions. "Lioness, lioness!" But most cried out for Aelar.

"Slay the desert rats!" shouted a woman in the crowd.

"Fuck the lions!" shouted a man. At least this one used the proper animal, which Atalia found somewhat encouraging.

"Let the battle begin!" cried Tirus from his imperial box, and guards blew silver horns.

Across the arena, the opposing group of gladiators—the ones dressed as legionaries—stepped into their six galleys. Men grabbed the oars and began to row. This group outnumbered Atalia and her friends, and they had a higher ratio of actual gladiators to condemned prisoners, and even the latter were towering beasts.

Atalia still stood frozen, staring, blinking, scarcely believing what she saw.

"Get out of the way." Breeana scoffed and shoved past Atalia, jabbing an elbow into her ribs. "Your mouth hangs open like you're ready to suck Tirus's cock. Get into a galley or fucking drown yourself."

The tall, redheaded gladiatrix leaped into one of the galleys and grabbed an oar.

Uro slapped Atalia again on the back—hard enough for her to yelp in protest.

"Heard you already fought one naval battle." He grinned beneath his lion's head hood. "This should be like a night in a whorehouse." He too stepped into a galley.

"But are we the patrons or the whores?" Atalia muttered.

Other gladiators, all wearing their lion pelts, shoved past Atalia into ships. The small galleys were shaped like warships but built no larger than dinghies. The first one, carrying gladiators in Zoharite costumes, began to row toward the island in the arena's center. Guards thrust spears, goading condemned prisoners into a second galley. Unlike the eager gladiators, the prisoners were shivering, some weeping. To them, this was no glorious battle; it was their showy execution.

Most big shows, Atalia had learned during her time in the Ludus Maximus, included both gladiators—trained showmen and crowd favorites, some famous across the Empire—and criminals or slaves condemned to die alongside them. True gladiators rarely died in the arena; they were too costly, too popular among the people. To give the crowd some death and decapitation, wretches were pulled from dungeons to die alongside the prized warriors. Most had no military training, and most were weak from long days in the dungeon; their deaths were all but certain.

Unless they're like me, Atalia thought, still standing in the archway. Condemned to die but elevated to gladiatrix.

"Move it, scum!" A guard shoved Atalia forward. "Into a galley! Let the crowd see a real Zoharite."

Reluctantly, she climbed into the last galley. It was smaller than the ship that had carried her from Zohar, of course—a true warship would barely squeeze into the arena—but large enough for six people. She shared the galley with Uro, a seasoned gladiator, and four prisoners in loincloths. The lion brands on the prisoners' chests denoted them as Zoharites, doomed to death. The other galleys, also filled with gladiators and slaves, were already moving toward the island.

"Kill the lions!" shouted the crowd. "Drown the Zoharites!"

Atalia gave Uro a crooked smile. "Let's kill some eagles." She turned toward the four slaves in the boat. "Grab the oars! Row!"

The galley lurched through the pool. Atalia stared at the artificial island, teeth bared. She grabbed an oar with one hand, held her sword with the other. Other undersized warships were navigating through the water around them. Jagged iron spikes and boulders rose from the water, forming obstacles across the mock sea. One ship, manned by Atalia's teammates, tried to skirt one boulder, only to hit the stone and crack its hull.

"Veer left!" Atalia shouted. "Left!"

A spike rose ahead from the water, lined with blades. Green slime gleamed on the iron—poison, Atalia surmised.

"Left!" she shouted. "Port rowers, stop your fucking rowing!"

The galley creaked. It tilted left. Atalia grimaced, leaped to the starboard, and oared mightily.

The metal spike grazed the hull, etching a line in the wood. It shattered one oar. The galley kept rowing.

They were close now to the island. Two galleys had already navigated the last obstacles, but they slammed together with a clash of wood and swords. Another galley, this one not far from Atalia, slammed into a boulder and shattered. As its rowers spilled into the water, another ship plowed over them. As men floundered, crocodiles—real damn crocodiles—emerged from underwater. Men screamed and blood spurted and the reptiles feasted.

"Right!" Atalia barked. "Row right! Starboard, stop oaring!"

A boulder rose ahead from the water, bristly with metal spikes. The galley veered too slowly. The boulder slammed into the hull, cracking a plank. Water began flowing into the ship—thankfully just a trickle.

"Keep rowing!" Atalia shouted. She pointed her sword toward the island. Several corpses already lay strewn on its banks or floated in the water. "We're almost there."

As the crowd cheered, Atalia, Uro, and the prisoners behind them kept rowing. A final obstacle rose before them—an archway of rusty spikes and circular blades, each dripping poison. By some underwater mechanism, the blades kept thrusting and retracting. The way around the archway was blocked. A ring of blades rose underwater, their tips skimming the surface. The only way forward was through the archway of blades. The mock island of Cadom rose just beyond.

"Careful," Atalia said. "Careful . . . Bit to the left . . ."

Their galley's figurehead, shaped as a leaping lion, nosed through the metal archway. The blades thrust forward and backward, moving on hinges. Atalia had to lean sideways as a blade reached into the galley, nearly slicing her face.

"Forward . . . Bit to the right . . ."

They continued passing through the gauntlet. The rowers behind her ducked, scrambled left, then right, dodging the spinning blades. The galley's port side scraped against the archway. The blades cut into the wood, nearly piercing the hull.

Atalia winced. "Almost there. Keep rowing. Almo—"

"Fuck the lions!" rose a cry behind, and another galley—this one with an eagle ram—plowed into the stern of Atalia's ship.

She screamed as the ship was knocked to the left. They crashed into the side of the archway. The blades thrust out. One blade tore into a man's head, perforating one cheek and emerging from the other. Another blade thrust out, as fast as a striking asp, and disemboweled a rower. Two gladiators with legionary helmets leaped into Atalia's galley, swinging swords, cutting rowers down.

"Keep rowing!" Atalia shouted, racing from prow to stern. "Take us through this archway!"

She leaped between rowers. She vaulted off a corpse, soared and swooped, and drove her sword into a gladiator's shoulder. She shoved the blade deeper, into the lung and heart, then yanked it out with a shower of blood. A bearded gladiator leaped toward her, swinging a shield. The disk slammed into Atalia, knocking her down. One of the blades on the archway scraped along her manica, spraying poison and chipping the iron scales. Atalia sneered, jumped to the starboard, and tilted the vessel. As the bearded gladiator lost his balance, Atalia pounced and shoved, impaling him on a poisoned spike.

"Row, damn you!" Atalia shouted at the prisoners in her galley. "Row!"

The enemy galley was still ramming into them, tearing through their hull. Water came gushing in. With cracking wood and showering blood, they made it through the archway. Their boat limped onward, taking on water fast. It began to sink, and the water rose up to Atalia's knees. Dark shapes moved underwater, snapping teeth. A gladiator fell overboard, only for the reptilian jaws to tear him apart.

"Kill the fucking desert rats!" rose a voice from the tiers of seats. "Cut them down!"

Atalia turned her head and saw Tirus standing between bloodred columns, staring down at the battle with mad eyes, a cup of wine in his hand.

She turned away. She would save her rage for him. The galley she stood on kept sinking, and another vessel approached, full of enemy gladiators. All around the island, ships slammed together, the two teams—lions and eagles—hacking at each other. Blood filled the artificial sea.

"Uro, you hear me?" she said.

He nodded and hefted his spear. "I hear, lion cub."

She pointed her sword toward a ship. The miniature galley, its ram shaped as an eagle, was moving through another gateway, heading toward the island. "That galley. That one is ours."

He nodded. "I do believe it is." He looked at the slaves who remained in their sinking ship. "Row, you sons of dogs!"

As water kept pouring in, they rowed toward the enemy vessel. The crowd roared. A few men were trying to swim toward the island, only for arrows, spears, and crocodile jaws to tear through them. Atalia's ship kept sinking, and she rowed madly toward the eagle vessel.

With a shower of wood, they slammed into the other ship.

"For Zohar!" Atalia shouted. She leaped out of her sinking galley, grabbed the enemy's hull, and hoisted herself upward. She parried a sword, then landed in the enemy ship. Uro leaped in after her. Several of the more brazen prisoners followed. Their waterlogged ship finally collapsed and sank behind them.

Atalia fought in a fury, cutting through the mock legionaries—mere prisoners with crested helmets—in this new ship. She tore through them like a hound through a henhouse. These were not trained soldiers nor gladiators, simply prisoners pulled from the dungeons, frail, half-dead already.

And yet Atalia killed them.

She killed them and wept.

She killed them and knew that their blood would forever stain her hands.

She killed them because she had seen gladiators who refused to fight, had seen their genitals cut off and burned, seen their skin flayed with whips, seen their entrails pulled out with hooks, seen them hanging on crosses—still alive—baking and dying in the sun.

She killed them because she had to live. To someday kill Tirus. To kill Seneca. To see her family again. She killed them all until the galley was hers, until she was rowing again, until the prow of her new ship hit the island in the arena's center.

She leaped onto the island—a pile of dirt and rocks and tar, barely larger than the mock galleys. Uro leaped down beside her, flashed Atalia a grin, then spread out his arms.

"The island is ours!" Uro bellowed to the crowd. "The island of Cadom is—"

"Uro!" Atalia cried as the second galley slammed into the island, spilling roaring gladiators in legionary costumes.

Atalia and Uro raised their blades. They stood together: a woman of Zohar, scarred and beaten countless times, lips peeled back, a lion's helmet on her head; and a massive brute, all muscles and grit, a tattered lion cloak hanging around his shoulders. Six gladiators—beefy, collared, and howling—raced toward them.

"Ready yet?" Uro said.

"To die?" Atalia raised her sword. "Always and never."

As galleys sank and burned in the water around them, battle flared across the island. Atalia fought with a sword in each hand—one she had stepped into battle with, another she had claimed from a fallen gladiator. Her blades cut into her enemies. The gladiators barely wore any armor, just scales over their right arms. There was nothing to protect them from her wrath. The crowds demanded blood, and blood they got. Uro roared with her, his furious blows cleaving bones and tearing off limbs. A spear hit his ribs, but he kept fighting, cutting down his enemies. Atalia had once fought in Zohar; he had once fought in Leer, a land now reduced to ruin. Perhaps both of them, here in the arena, were fighting their old wars again.

One by one, they slew their enemies. Fighting for this mock island. Fighting for the pleasure of the crowd. Fighting old demons that still shrieked.

Finally only one gladiator, a wiry man, remained before them on the island. A showy galea helmet, worked with fake gemstones, hid his face. Several gladiators and slaves still fought in the water, thrashing, trying to reach the island but falling, bleeding, drowning. Only the three of them stood on Cadom: Atalia, the hulking Uro, and the gaunt gladiator.

Atalia charged toward the last enemy, swinging her two swords. And suddenly she wasn't here in the arena anymore. She was in Cadom, the actual island off Zohar's shore, fighting the war twenty years ago, the war in which her uncle had died, Ofeer had been conceived, and Zohar had lost its lumers. The thin gladiator raised a shield. She shattered it. He tried to parry. She knocked aside his sword and rang his helmet like a bell. The gladiator reeled.

"Atalia!" he cried.

She froze.

She tilted her head.

She knew that voice.

She reached out, grabbed the man's helmet, and yanked it off.

He stared at her, cheeks gaunt, eyes sunken. His beard had been shaved off, but Atalia recognized him. His name was Erezel, once the priest of Gefen.

The memories pounded back into Atalia. Restday mornings at Gefen's temple, sitting in the pews with her family, listening to Erezel blow his ram's horn and sing from the Book of Eloh. Evenings in the house of Pine Hill, a feast steaming on the table, and Erezel joining the family for the food and wine. A kind man, gentle, soft-spoken, a pillar of Gefen. She hadn't seen him since that city's fall.

"Erezel," Atalia whispered, tears springing into her eyes.

"Kill, kill!" chanted the crowd, but Atalia could not—how could she kill a man from her home, a family friend, a leader of her ravaged community?

"Atalia Sela." Erezel's voice was soft, and he raised a bleeding hand toward her. "May Eloh's light ever bless you, daughter."

"Kill! Kill!" The voices rose all around, thousands of them, but Atalia lowered her swords.

Let them torture me, she thought. Let them crucify me. This is a life I cannot take. This—

Uro ran past her, knocking her aside, and drove his blade into Erezel's neck. The blood spurted, splattering Atalia.

As the priest fell, Uro grabbed Atalia's hand.

"Play along, you fool!" he whispered, glaring. "Do you want your guts hanging below a cross?" He yanked her hand up over her head, then grinned toward the crowd. "Victory!"

The crowd cheered, leaping up in their seats. "Lioness, lioness!"

Around the island, the last few survivors made it ashore, swimming or rowing what remained of their ravaged galleys. Breeana climbed onto the island, dragging a severed head. She tossed the grisly trophy aside and glared at Atalia, murder in her eyes. Several other mock Zoharites, their lion pelts tattered, bloody, and wet, climbed ashore too. Their enemies floated around them, corpses leaking into the foul sea.

"Zohar!" Atalia shouted, sudden fury and pride exploding through her. "Zohar!"

Not Aelaria Orientalis.

Zohar. Her home. Her pride.

As the crowd roared for the victors, Atalia turned her head toward the imperial box. Tirus stood there in splendor, surrounded with gold and slaves, fists trembling, face red.

This wasn't meant to happen, Atalia knew. We weren't meant to win.

She gave the emperor the smallest of smiles. Tirus spun on his heel and left his box, vanishing into the inner chamber. Atalia turned around, letting all others in the crowd see her. She stood among corpses—of innocent men she had slain, of an old friend. She stood among the barbarism of the world's greatest civilization. She was one light in darkness. She was one lioness among countless demons.

One candle in the dark, she thought. If I cannot light the world, let me be that. Just one candle, ever burning.

Uro patted her back, this time gently. "You did well, lion cub."

But Atalia turned away from him. She could not meet his gaze. He had killed her friend, and the grief, the horror suddenly rose in Atalia so powerfully that she fell to her knees. She looked down at the corpse of the priest, and tears stung her eyes, and she kept whispering, "I'm sorry. I'm sorry."

EPHER

The Mount of Cedars burned as the gates fell and the legions stormed in.

"Epher!" Olive grabbed him, shouting over the din of drums, horns, and marching feet. "Epher, what we do?"

He stood on the defensive wall, staring down, for a moment frozen. The gatehouse had shattered. Line by line, the legions were flowing into the Mount, the last free bastion in Beth Eloh. Thousands of them. Tens of thousands.

Epher's eyes dampened.

It's over.

He had only several hundred warriors—wounded, ill, their swords chipped, their armor frail.

"Epher, what we do?" Olive shouted.

Epher sucked in air between clenched teeth. He raised his sword overhead.

"To the Temple!" he shouted, already racing down the wall. "Warriors of Zohar, to the Temple!"

They ran. As Aelar's wrath poured through the shattered gates, Beth Eloh's defenders raced up the hillside. The ancient cedars and olive trees, some of them two thousand years old, burned. This sacred place, this sanctuary, this home of Eloh. The Mount of Cedars—the holiest place in Zohar, the kingdom's fountain of lume. Around them it burned. Ancient trees dating back to Elshalom cracked, fell, and blazed. Smoke unfurled like demons of Ashael, red and black, covering the sky with dark wings. And behind Epher, marching uphill—Claudia and her legions.

"We come, we see, we kill!" they chanted.

And above their chants, laughter. Her laughter. The laughter Epher remembered, but mad now, mad with cruelty and grief.

He looked over his shoulder once, and he saw her there. Claudia rode on a white horse, cloaked in crimson and gold, resplendent even in the battle. At her sides, archers raised their bows and fired.

Epher turned back forward, running, sliding his shield across his back. Olive ran at his side. Around them, Zoharite defenders fell, pierced with arrows. The survivors kept running. Arrows slammed into Epher's shield, nearly knocking him down. An arrow pierced his calf, and he screamed but kept running. Blood trailed behind him. They passed the trees and ran through the necropolis. The arrows clattered against the craggy tombstones. More men fell between the graves.

"Epher, hurry!" Olive held his hand, pulling him onward. He limped but kept running. Flames roared behind them. Smoke rose ahead. From the inferno soared the Temple—all in white and gold, tall as the sky, a last beacon of hope, a final dawn before eternal night.

A single candle in a world of darkness, Epher thought.

More defenders fell before they had crossed the cemetery. The last warriors of Zohar, only several hundred, ran up the cobble road toward the Temple complex. A third layer of walls rose here, as thick as the walls around the city and those around the Mount. No guards stood here. The gates were open. Epher limped through, leaning on Olive as they ran. Their warriors raced around them, streaming from the flaming hill into a paved courtyard. It was here that a statue of Porcia had once risen, here that Remus Marcellus had murdered Shiloh, here that Maya had entered the city. Walls and columned arcades surrounded the Temple complex, topped with gilded parapets. Ahead, past a massive stone altar, rose the Holy of Holies—a towering structure, lined with marble columns with gilded capitals, soaring toward a golden crown. The tallest building in Zohar.

"Ramael, help me close the doors!" Epher said. "Yoram, Joren! Help us close them."

Ignoring his bleeding calf, Epher turned back toward the gateway they had entered through. The doors were gilded, but under the gold was iron and wood. This was not only a place of grandeur. It was a fortress draped in splendor. For the briefest of moments, Epher stared through the archway, back toward the Mount and city beyond. From the fire and smoke, she rode forth. Claudia Valerius, daughter of an emperor. His Claudia, his lover. Behind her rode her soldiers, armor bright, crests proud, weapons in their hands—the imperial legions, unstoppable in battle, the conquerors of the world.

Across the distance, their eyes met. Claudia smiled.

The Zoharites slammed themselves against the heavy doors, shoving them shut. They locked them, then dropped a beam into their brackets, but Epher knew these doors wouldn't hold for long. Not against the battering rams, the catapults, the vengeance of Claudia.

For a few moments, shielded in the Temple courtyard, the defenders tended to their wounds. Many had suffered burns and the bites of arrows. Epher grimaced as he bandaged his own wound; the arrow had sunken deep but not pierced the bone. Blood and ash coated the courtyard's polished flagstones. Olive grimaced as she touched a wound on her cheek. Epher winced to see it; an arrow had scraped across her from lips to ear.

"All those with healing kits—tend to the wounds that need stitching," Epher said. "Everyone else—into phalanxes. Go."

A few glanced at him questioningly, then looked toward the walls.

"There's no use manning the walls," Epher said. "We have no more arrows, and no wood to make more. Form phalanxes. Now!"

The defenders—haggard, bleeding, some who had gone for days without sleep or food—organized into units. Epher counted six hundred and twelve warriors. His heart sank.

Six hundred left from an army that once numbered in the tens of thousands.

"It's not going to be enough," he said. "We can't defend the Temple."

A boom shook the courtyard. Behind him, the doors rattled. The legions were chanting. The doors jostled at another blow from a ram.

"Come out here, Epher!" Claudia shouted, laughing. "Come die like your sister! She squealed like a dog when I nailed her onto the cross. Come join her!"

The doors shook again. A great clank sounded, and a boulder sailed over the walls. Men raced aside, and the boulder slammed into the courtyard, shattering flagstones.

Olive stepped closer to him. She clutched his hand. She stared into his eyes, somber. "We fight. We fight until last life. Here in Eloh's home."

Epher shook his head. No. Not even with ten thousand warriors could he hope to resist the Empire. Maya's words returned to him.

In the Holy of Holies, inside the Temple, a place forbidden to all but the High Priest, there stands the Gate of Tears.

"We have to leave the city," Epher said.

Olive frowned. "Epher, how we—"

She grimaced as another boulder flew over the walls. Men leaped aside as it slammed down, shattering and scattering stones.

"A secret exit," Epher said. "A tunnel. The way Maya entered and left." He pointed toward the Temple, and as other warriors gathered around him, Epher's voice rose louder. "The priests dug it centuries ago. We can make our way out of the city, then travel south, hard and fast into the desert. We'll make for the fortress of Tarath El. It rises atop a great mountain, taller and steeper than the mountain of Beth Eloh, and it has never fallen. There we'll find more warriors of Zohar. There we'll find hope."

A few of the warriors nodded, a flicker of hope springing in their eyes.

"Tarath El!" said a man, nodding. "The Fist of Zohar."

"Tarath El has never fallen," said a woman holding two spears. "There Zohar will remain free."

As the warriors spoke of the desert fortress, Olive grabbed Epher's wrist. She pulled him closer and spoke into his ear, voice harsh.

"We just leave Beth Eloh?" she said. "Leave city people here?"

Epher found a flicker of anger inside him. "How would we help them by dying?"

Her eyes flashed. "We would die with our people. Our people that we defend." Before he could speak again, she growled and tugged his arm. "Come with me. Now! Come."

She pulled him toward the wall that surrounded the Temple courtyard, then up a staircase and onto a gilded parapet. Olive shoved him forward.

"Look." She pointed. "Look at your city."

Epher looked. Below, the legions covered the smoldering Mount of Cedars like ants covering a hive. Claudia stood near the gates, and her men were busy at the ram, chipping the doors. Any moment now, they would break into the Temple grounds.

Epher raised his eyes and gazed farther. All around the Mount of Cedars spread the hive of Beth Eloh. It was a small city compared to a massive metropolis like Aelar, perhaps a tenth the size. And yet hundreds of thousands, maybe a million Zoharites had entered this city, seeking refuge behind thick walls, leaving the countryside barren. They covered the streets, the balconies, the gardens, the rooftops. The nation of Zohar, here within these walls. From this distance, it seemed to Epher that the city gates were still closed, that the legions kept the people enclosed within Beth Eloh. Even the northern shattered gate was guarded.

Like sheep in a pen, he thought.

"You leave them to die?" Olive said. "And we run to safety?"

"Safety?" Epher shook his head. "We would not flee to safety, no. We would flee down a hard, barren road, the legions at our back. We would draw them away from this city, Olive. Most of them, at least. I would rather the legions chased us than remained here with our people. There's no more we can do in Beth Eloh. Within moments Claudia will break into the Temple, and she would butcher us all. We must flee today even if we leave our people behind. We must draw Claudia in pursuit. We must live to fight another day, to keep Zohar's flame burning."

"For how long?" Her eyes dampened. "How long can we hole up in Tarath El? Even if we hold away legions from that castle, soon—we have no food, no water. We starve even if we survive war."

Epher thought back to the snippets Avinasi had spoken in her lucid moments. Gael attacking the walls of Aelar. Seneca rebelling in the south with the hosts of Nur. Lumers rising up around the Encircled Sea. The princess Valentina fighting to restore the Republic.

"We just need to last longer than Aelar," he said softly. He pulled Olive into his arms. "Empires always fall. Kalintia. Phedia. Leer. Denegar. Berenia. A hundred others. All mighty civilizations that had collapsed, washed away like castles of sand in the waves of the Encircled Sea. Darkness will not endure. Aelar too will fall. We just must keep our light burning long enough to see another dawn."

She blinked tears out from her eyes and caressed his bearded cheek. His beard used to be cropped close, but now was shaggy and stained with ash and blood.

"All empires fall," she whispered. "What about little kingdoms with stupid kings I love?"

"Do you love the kingdoms or the kings?" Epher asked.

"Kingdoms only," she said, smiling through her tears. "The kings always stupid."

As he kissed her, arrows flew from below. They retreated from the wall back to the courtyard.

As the gates shook behind them, they ran across the courtyard. Stairs led toward the glittering entrance to the Holy of Holies, the inner sanctum of the Temple. Even as king, Epher had never entered this place; it was forbidden to all but the High Priest. Yet the priests had fallen, and Zohar was falling, and Epher and his warriors entered the shadows.

He wasn't sure what he had expected—a palatial hall, perhaps streams of luminescence coiling in the air, perhaps even the ghostly spirit of God himself. He found only a simple brick chamber, as plain as any old house in the city. All the gold and marble, it seemed, had been used on the outside of the building. If there was any sign of Eloh's grace here, Epher did not see it. He felt no reverence, no awe, only icy guilt. Guilt—that demon clawed at him. He had justified his decision to Olive, yet doubt filled him.

Hundreds of thousands of Zoharites came to this city, he thought. They came for my protection. And I leave them with the eagles.

He paused for a moment, overwhelmed.

"Claudia will not kill them," he whispered. He spoke to Olive, but mostly also spoke to himself. "She wants to kill us. The warriors. Me. She will turn Beth Eloh into a city of the Empire, but she will not kill our people. We have to believe that. That she will chase us into the desert. That this city will stand. No longer a city of Zohar maybe—but a city of life, not ruin."

Olive nodded. He saw the doubt in her eyes. Too many cities lay in ruins around the Encircled Sea, but Epher had to believe—that this could become a place like Gefen, converted into an Aelarian city, most of its people—those who joined the Empire—spared.

My people will lose their freedom, their culture, their identity—but not their lives.

"A gateway," said a warrior, pointing to the shadows.

A man fell to his knees, eyes damp. "The Gate of Tears!"

Epher stepped into the shadows, and he saw it rise there. A crumbly archway, teardrops engraved onto its stones. It led to shadows.

From outside sounded a shattering boom. Sandals thumped and metal chinked, and Claudia's laughter rose.

Epher looked at Olive. She looked back, and he saw her love, her loyalty, her courage in her eyes. Hand in hand, they stepped through the Gate of Tears into a tunnel.

Forgive me. As Epher walked in shadows, he let his own tears fall—tears he would dare not show his warriors. Forgive me, my people. Forgive me, God. I'm sorry.

ABISHAG

Abishag, daughter of Naeem, had always walked upon light.

She had walked across the plains of Zohar, seeking grass and leaves for her flock of sheep. She had walked the hills and mountain paths, a mere child, seeking refuge in Beth Eloh. She had walked the streets of that city, a consecrated sister, seeking the Gate of Tears and a savior. But now, here in the Valley of Ashes, Abishag walked the longest path she had ever taken.

The dirt path coiled downhill between brambles and boulders, only a hundred steps long, longer than all the shores of the Encircled Sea and the stairway down to Ashael. This was a valley Abishag had always feared. The old tales told that once, many generations ago, idolaters had worshipped a hollowed bronze bull in this valley. Every season, they would sacrifice a child to their god, lighting fires beneath the bull and cooking the innocent within. King Elshalom had smashed that bull a thousand years ago, had smote the idolaters, but the legends remained, the fear of this place. Some claimed that from here, the Valley of Ashes, had sprung the stories of Ashael, the underworld of dead sinners and demons.

Smoke still rose from the nearby Mount of Cedars, hiding the sky. A cold wind blew, and ash flurried around Abishag's bare feet. As the smoke wafted above, the thin, leafless trees seemed to tilt in the valley, and the brick houses that rose on the hilltops turned umber, their shadows stretching out like slender men.

In the center of the valley it rose. The cross seemed separate from the rest of the valley, untouched by ash or shadow, and as Abishag walked toward it, it seemed to her that the faintest light shone upon it.

Three days ago, the legions of that foreign empire had hung Maya here to die. For three days, Abishag had wept, prayed for that death to come. Today, on this third day, as fires blazed on the Mount of Cedars and the kingdom of Zohar collapsed around her, Abishag approached the cross to find Maya still upon it.

No longer did the thin chest rise and fall with ragged breath. No longer did the blood flow, the tears stream, the soldiers laugh and pelt the dying flesh with stones. All was silent now. All was still.

Abishag knelt by the cross, lowered her head, and her tears fell.

"I promised to follow you wherever you go," Abishag whispered. "But I don't know how to follow you now. I don't know how to find light without you."

"You have always walked upon light, consecrated sister."

The voice came from behind. Abishag turned to see the consecrated sisters, those she had once worshipped with, approach the cross. Long ago, Maya had spoken to them in Beth Eloh—back when Shefael had still reigned, when the city had languished under the siege of Yohanan. They had been but starving wretches, clad in burlap, diseased, sores on their lips, their genitals inflamed, their eyes sunken, their minds mad. Maya had healed them. Maya had raised Abishag from those shadows.

She shook her head. "I'm no longer a consecrated sister." Abishag stared at these women, the whores who had serviced the priests outside the Temple, only to later donate their earnings to the very men who had known them. "We did not walk upon light. We claimed to worship the light but we sank into shadows. Maya showed us true light. Maya cast back those shadows that we had drowned in. Let us not be consecrated sisters. Let us forever be her children. We will not forget our savior."

They worked in silence, pulling Maya down from the cross, and Abishag sat in the valley, holding the body in her arms like a mother cradling her child. For long days, Maya had shuddered, rasped, and died so slowly on the cross, but in death she seemed peaceful. Abishag caressed the sunburned cheek and stroked back the damp hair. It seemed to her that just a glimmer, maybe just a trick of the light, still clung to Maya's thin fingers, then rose as mist from the valley.

"Rise, Maya," Abishag whispered. "Rise and be with the light."

They were daughters of Eloh. Their books taught that no afterlife awaited the fallen. They had sprung from the earth, and to earth they must return. Maya knew that many in Nur, in Sekadia, in Aelar, in every other land believed that souls rose after death. Not so Zoharites. Theirs was this life alone.

But perhaps, Abishag dared to hope, a piece of Maya's soul would forever be in the kingdom of Luminosity, forever rest in Eloh's grace.

"To the earth we must return," she said. "Help me, sisters."

They fashioned a litter from a cloak and shattered spears, and they carried Maya through the city. The streets were filled with citizens and legionaries, yet nobody paid them any heed. What was one more body in a city of death? They carried Maya toward the city gates, hoping to bury her outside the city, but found them closed and guarded. The legionaries even blocked the fallen Gate of Myrrh, a mere pile of rubble. Abishag turned toward the Temple Mount, but the fires still blazed there. Finally they found a small garden, just large enough for a fig tree and two date palms. The trees shaded a domed library, a bakery, and a shop that sold flutes and rams' horns and lyres. It was a quiet place, a beautiful place. They began to dig in the garden, and men emerged from the city streets to help them. Some already carried shovels, for they had been burying dead soldiers over the past three days.

Abishag had heard that in Aelar, they burned the dead in pyres. In Nur, they were said to mummify their fallen, placing the organs in jars, the body in a stone sarcophagus, preserved for eternity. In Sekadia, travelers said, they buried their dead in ornate coffins, the boxes inlaid with whatever precious metals and gems the deceased's family could afford. All prepared to send their dead to the next world in comfort, in wealth, or in flame.

In Zohar, we bury our dead wrapped in a simple shroud, Abishag thought. No wood or stone or fire. Only a piece of homespun, that is all. From earth we came. To earth we return.

Yet before they lowered Maya into the grave, Abishag placed a tattered prayer shawl upon the body—Maya's shawl, the one she had worn when entering the Gate of Tears.

For a long time afterward, Abishag stood in the garden by the grave. The palm trees shaded her. Smoke still streamed above, fires crackled, and distant screams and weeping rose through the city. But here—here in this garden was a place of peace. Here was a place of beauty.

"You're not buried in a great tomb," Abishag said. "And maybe, in years to come, none will remember the place of your grave. But I promise you, Maya. They will not forget your name. And they will not forget your wisdom."

The wind rustled the palm fronds, and distant cries of mourning rose on the wind, and Abishag thought back to Maya's words.

Every light must cast a shadow, Abishag thought. But every shadow means the presence of light. I will bring healing to this broken world. As others kill, I will nurture life. As others destroy, I will build. Others slew her, and I will spread word of Maya's wisdom through the world. Her words will not die.

She sat by the grave. She pulled her knees up to her chin. As the city burned and crumbled around her, Abishag thought of a young shepherdess racing through the fields, a crook in her hand, leading her sheep through a world of grass and sunlight and a waiting home.

CLAUDIA

She burst into the Temple, and she saw it at once. An archway leading to a tunnel. The chamber was empty. Epher and his heathens were gone.

Several of Claudia's men entered the Holy of Holies behind her, and thousands more filled the courtyard outside. Legatus Constantius stood at her side. The general pointed the prosthetic strapped to his left arm—it was shaped as an eagle's talon—at the tunnel.

"So the rats fled into their hole." He drew his gladius. "We will chase them."

Claudia shook her head. "No."

The general stared at her, frowning. Claudia stared back, chin raised.

Do you dare defy me, legatus? she thought. I came to this place a soft girl. I was tempered in fire. You will obey me.

"So you would have them flee?" said Constantius.

She nodded. "I would. Because I know where they're going." A grin stretched her cheeks. "I know Epher. He will wait for us."

Her grin tugged the burns that crawled up her neck and jawline. Fire flared, racing along the wounds, again grabbing her neck, her left arm, her thigh, searing the flesh, raising the welts. It had been only days since Epher had tossed his torch, burning her siege tower, burning her, and the pain had never subsided.

Good, she thought. Pain kept her alive, alert, hungry for him. It was nothing compared to the pain she would cause him.

She thought back to their childhoods. He had been only a boy, raising castles in the sand, playing with the other children. Behold Tarath El! he had cried. The desert fortress will never fall!

As youths, as they cuddled after a night of sweaty love, he would sometimes speak of that fortress. The silly pride of a Zoharite. In Aelar, there were fortresses to dwarf anything in the desert, but still Epher would recite the old tales, how Tarath El was the fist of his people, how it had never fallen, not even as the Sekadians and Nurians and Kalintians and all the other enemies had swept across this land.

You're going there now, Claudia thought. You're taking the narrow paths down the mountain, across the rocky desert, to the edifice that rises in the south. And there you will wait for me. And I will come to you, Epher. I will come to you as I always did. You will die at my hands, Epher, but I will keep my vow. Among the rats, you will die last.

She looked at Constantius. "Send a party of fifty men after Epheriah. Make sure they track him, but do not engage him in war yet. Our war in Beth Eloh has not yet ended."

The general's eyes narrowed. The Iron Eagle did not like taking orders from her—the spoiled daughter of a rich man, not a soldier. But he would obey. He was a legatus, yes, a commander of many legionaries, and a suit of armor encased his rancid flesh, turning him into an iron bird. But he was still just a soldier. Soldiers weren't worthy of licking her sandals.

"But the city has fallen, domina," he said. "The walls and gates, the Mount, the Temple—all are ours, and every last defender lies dead or has fled into the darkness."

She raised an eyebrow. "But some in this city still live."

Constantius flicked his eyes toward his soldiers, then back to her. He stepped closer and spoke in a low voice. "The fighters are dead or fled. Nothing but cripples, elders, women, and children, domina. That's all that remains in Beth Eloh."

She nodded. "All rats. And rats must be wiped out." She grinned so widely it hurt her cheeks. "Epheriah abandoned them, legatus. He abandoned them to my mercy. I want Epheriah to hear their screams as he flees. I want those screams to haunt him forever. When I kill him, I want him to die knowing that he betrayed his people, that he left his nation to perish while he cowered." She walked back toward the courtyard, leaving the shadows. She swept her arm across the view of the city that rolled below the hill. "Do you see this city, legatus?"

He walked up beside her. He nodded. "I see it."

"Move through the city," she said. "Choose five thousand. The pretty women. Virgins, if you can find any in this nation of whores. Strong men too, if any still live. The women will fuck in the brothels of Aelar, and the men will break their spines in our quarries or die in our arenas. We can fit five thousand on our ships, that is all. Take no more. Kill the others." She curled her hands into fists. "Do it quickly. Do it now. And after they're dead, I want every last fucking building in this city razed to the ground. The Temple. The palace. Every last hovel where a Zoharite wench squatted to spawn. I want them all fallen. If there are any two bricks still clinging together when we're done, I will slice your neck open myself." She gave him her sweetest smile. "We came. We saw. Now we kill."

Constantius stared at her, silent behind his eagle-head helmet. Then he nodded.

It rained the day Beth Eloh fell.

Outside the city, across dunes and barren mountainsides, buried seeds sprouted, sending forth flowers, fields of white blossoms like shrouds, as if the land itself mourned.

The raindrops passed through the veil of smoke above Beth Eloh, falling heavy with ash—gray, thick drops that splattered like globs of mud. Steam rose over flame until all the city was vapor and water, fire and beams of light, the painting of a madman, all in gold and gray and shimmering crimson.

Claudia stood on the Mount of Cedars, watching with a small smile on her lips. She watched as her legionaries, extensions of her fury, moved through the city streets, their rams driving into the walls of houses. She watched, her smile growing, as spear and sword tore into elders, women, and children, as wagons pulled the corpses to public squares, as the dead burned. She watched, the rain in her eyes, as the catapults and rams tore down the towers and domes, the houses of healing, the libraries and markets. She thought of Epher as the streets burned, because it was beautiful, more beautiful than the sea in sunset, and she missed him.

"You did this, Epher," she whispered, her tears mingling with the rain. The flames and steam and smoke spread before her across the city, a sea of color and light. "You abandoned them. You betrayed them. Their deaths are upon you. The fall of this nation is your burden to bear."

The cries rose from below. A beautiful song. A dirge. Her tears kept flowing.

"It's so beautiful." She raised her eyes, marveling at how the rain fell into fire, how the arrows cut through the steam, how golden light blazed through the mist. "The fall of a nation. We witness history. We witness rebirth."

Below the Mount of Cedars, the people were trying to reach the safety of the Temple, as Epher had, but Claudia had left the gates closed. They piled up against the walls, crying out, pleading, calling for their king. A wounded camel, entrails slipping through a slice on its hide, wailed as it raced down the streets. Soldiers pointed and laughed, then turned back to their work, driving their blades into the Zoharites at the walls. Some Zoharites tried to climb, desperately clinging to the bricks, only to fall into the inferno.

"I'm a goddess," Claudia said. As she stood here at the Temple, gazing below at the city, she knew it was true. She commanded death or life. She was the devourer of nations, the bringer of rain. All this was her doing. All this was for her glory.

When the sun set, the city still blazed with light. The fires roared through the streets, the rain unable to douse them. All was red and gold. All was glimmering. All was luminous. Claudia raised the silver horn that hung around her neck, and she gave a long keen. Summoned like a dog to his mistress, Constantius returned to her from the devastation, bloodstained and ashy. Flesh dripped from his iron talon.

"The palace still stands," Claudia said, pointing at the towers and columns on the adjacent hill. "The Temple still stands." She pointed at the soaring wonder behind her, its pale marble walls and crown of gold.

Constantius nodded. "They are buildings of splendor, domina. We will rededicate them to the glory of your family and gods. We will worship Camulus in the Temple, and—"

"We will see them fall," Claudia said. "Our glory will not reside in halls where rats writhed and spawned. Our glory will lie only in their ruin. Come with me. We will empty these halls of whatever trifles we find within them, and we will peel off the gold from their parapets, so that it might raise wondrous arches in Aelar. What remains we will crumble to dust."

Throughout the night, the day, and another night they labored. Claudia did not sleep. She sat on her horse on the Mount of Cedars, watching. As every legionary emerged from the palace, bearing treasures on litters, she smiled. They carried out chests of gold and silver and gemstones. They carried out jewels, vases of precious metal, and rich fabrics embroidered with golden thread. They carried the throne of Zohar, on which they had placed the corpse of a Zoharite mother holding her babe, symbols of a falling nation. They climbed ladders and worked with hammers, peeling the gilt off parapets and the capitals of columns, stripping the Temple and palace bare of their gleaming raiment. Litter by litter, the gold piled up, the greatest treasure Aelar had ever plundered.

"Your treasures will gild statues of me in Aelar, Epher," Claudia said, speaking to him across the distance. "I will bring you back with me. You will see the idols that your gold built, soaring in my likeness. You will kneel at their feet before your death in the arena. And you will know what you did to your people. What you did to me." She clenched her fist and let her rage sear away her tears, her horror. "You betrayed me. You burned me. And so now your world burns." She blew her horn again. "Tear them down!"

The rams drove into walls. The catapults hurled boulders at towers. Fires blazed in barren halls. The palace fell first, a collapse that thundered like dying giants. Clouds of dust blew across Claudia even from the distance. Deafening cracks like shattering mountains sounded to her left, and she turned to see the Temple—this ancient edifice, this soaring monument, this center of heathens who worshipped nothing but air—crumble and fall. The towers and columns shattered against the courtyard. The crown of naked pediments drove down the hillside, crashing through walls, digging deep grooves in the earth, and finally tearing out the tombstones in the cemetery like a knife scaling a fish. Dust billowed, finally settling over ruins.

Nothing remained in the Mount of Cedars now. The trees had burned and fallen. The palace and Temple lay in piles of rubble. Dust and debris hid what remained of the tombstones. All the splendor of Zohar was lost. Only the glory of Aelar remained.

The dust clung to Claudia's scars, stinging, screaming, tearing at her. But the pain made her feel so alive. She had killed a boy outside of Gefen. She had strangled her lumer with her bare hands. But she had never felt anything like this. It was headier than murder, than sex, than conquest. It was something even Porcia and Seneca had never attempted, never could muster the courage for. It was genocide and it was more wonderful and exhilarating than the blessings of a god.

"Your god is dead, Zoharites!" Claudia cried. "Eloh is slain! I, Claudia Valerius, slew him in the name of Aelar. Die before your new goddess!"

Across the city they were still dying. But she knew they could hear her.

Claudia turned around. When she squinted and the smoke parted in a gust of wind, she could see beyond the city walls. A road coiled between the hills, heading into the desert of southern Zohar.

"You fled down that road, Epher," she said. "I know what safety you seek. I'm coming to you now, my love. Soon we'll be together again."

ABISHAG

She ran through the city as the world burned.

Around her, the streets and homes blazed. Legionaries marched everywhere, slamming rams into buildings, crushing archways and walls. Bricks fell around Abishag, buffeting her, cutting her skin. She ran onward. She didn't know if it was night or day. Smoke hid the sky, and firelight painted the city. Limbs stuck up from rubble. As she ran, she stepped on a corpse, grimaced, leaped onto a road, and ran onward. The legions were everywhere, lashing spears and blades, killing anyone they saw.

Before Abishag, a mother knelt in a doorway, huddling over her baby. One legionary ripped the babe from her arms. Before Abishag could run nearer, the legionary tossed the babe into the air, only for another Aelarian to shoot him with an arrow. Both men laughed, then grabbed the screaming mother and dragged her off. Their only mercy was slitting her throat before they raped her.

Abishag turned and ran the other way, tears in her eyes. Several children emerged from an alleyway, wailing. An Aelarian chariot rumbled down the street. It crushed the children under its wheels and cut them with spinning scythes.

"Where is your god?" The voice rolled down the street, maniacal. Abishag recognized that voice—the voice of Claudia. "Where is your rat king? Both have abandoned you. I am your goddess now!"

Abishag stumbled down the streets, climbing over ruins, over bodies, seeking a way out. Often in her dreams, she had felt trapped in a labyrinth, seeking an exit, finding none. She kept waiting to wake up, to be by Maya again, yet there was only more fire, more smoke, more iron and steel, more death.

Where are you, Epher? she thought. Where are the defenders of this city?

Claudia's words kept echoing down the stone halls. They abandoned you!

Abishag kept running. She knew these alleys. She had spent years navigating them. She knew every twist, every doorway, every courtyard, every tunnel that ran between brick walls and under archways and balconies and awnings. Yet now she recognized no place. Those arches were falling, exposing the smoky sky. The walls of homes kept falling. Domes and towers crashed to the ground. Some people sought safety on rooftops, only to fall into rubble. Many ran but were cut down.

She skidded to a halt under an archway that led to a wider road. Several legionaries stood there, blood staining their hands and dripping off their blades. They kicked corpses aside, smirked, and approached Abishag. Their blades pointed toward her.

"This one would make a good slave," said one legionary.

His friend spat. "Fuck that. I ain't delivering her to some fancy dominus with a powdered cock. This one's our prize." He licked his lips. "I'll enjoy slitting her throat after we've had our fun."

Abishag grabbed a fallen brick and hurled it, hitting one legionary. She turned and ran, heading back down the alley. The men cursed and followed. But they were slow in their armor, and Abishag was young and slender and quick. She leaped over fallen walls and archways, through the ruins of a house, and over corpses. All around her, the slaughter continued. The legionaries pressed people against walls and slit their throats. They shoved people into pits and cast down burning branches and oil. One legionary sat cross-legged, grinning as he slammed a stone into a girl's head again and again. Barely anything remained but hair caked with blood.

Abishag glanced behind her. Legionaries were still pursuing her. She didn't know if they were the same ones. When she ran toward a well, she saw soldiers grabbing a woman and dragging her off—perhaps to slavery, perhaps to entertain the troops before slitting her throat. On a nearby road, a few elder Zoharites had mounted a defense, battling the legions with knives and clubs, only to be torn down within moments, helpless against the armor and swords of the world's greatest soldiers.

There is no safe place in this city, Abishag knew. No more help will come to us. We must flee to the countryside.

More soldiers turned toward Abishag. Again she ran. Small. Fast. Slipping through tunnels created by fallen archways and walls. Scuttling over ruins that the heavier soldiers could not climb. She saw a house that still stood ahead, rising from rubble. Soldiers were laughing nearby, kicking corpses. Abishag ran toward the standing house, and when she burst inside, she found several children huddling in the shadows. One boy, a few years younger than her, held a trembling knife. The others cowered behind him.

Abishag reached out to them. "Come with me. We have to leave this place." She heard the soldiers drawing nearer. "I'll look after you."

But the boy jabbed the air with his blade, and his siblings trembled and hugged one another.

"I'm protecting them from the bad men," said the boy.

When Abishag glanced out the back window, she saw the legionaries step toward the house, laughing and spitting. One man pissed on a corpse before joining his comrades.

"I need you to protect the little ones on the way," Abishag said to the boy. "Can you do that?"

He hesitated, glanced out the window, and nodded.

Abishag grabbed one girl and lifted her. She let another climb onto her back. She herded the others out of the house and onto the street.

One of the legionaries nearly slammed into them. His grinned, revealing blood on his teeth. "What a pretty little mother and her spawn. I think I'll—"

Abishag never learned what he thought. The oldest boy plunged his knife into the man's foot. As the legionary screamed, they ran around him. They crawled under a fallen archway—it left an opening too narrow for a soldier—and raced over ruins.

Fallen bricks lay in hills, and dusty faces and limbs peeked from the rubble. One of the faces blinked, tried to whisper, choked on blood. Abishag wept as she ran onward. If she stopped, she would die, she knew. A woman crawled over rubble nearby, reaching out to Abishag, calling for air. Her stomach had been slit open, spilling and dragging across the ruins. Abishag ran onward, leading the wounded, taking only the children.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry.

As they raced up a hill of rubble, Abishag saw the Mount of Cedars in the distance. The Temple and palace had fallen, and fire blazed on the Mount, as tall as those old halls, a great demon rising toward the sky, casting out heat and light and smoke. The dawn broke in the east, and horribly, cruelly, luridly, a rainbow rose over the desert like the grin of a painted madman, soon fading in darkness as a new cloud of smoke hid the sun. Abishag turned westward. The Gate of Lions was near, and it would lead to the hills. There a road could take her to the sea, and perhaps she could seek refuge in Gefen, maybe even board a ship and sail to another province. She did not know what fate awaited her outside these walls. But she knew that in Beth Eloh only death or slavery awaited.

She led the children off the mound of ruins, through a veil of smoke, and around the corpse of a camel, its cubs wailing as they tried to nurse from cold teats. The city's outer wall rose beside them, the only structure that still seemed to stand. Abishag and the children ran along it, moving between burning palm trees and howling stray dogs. Soon they reached a craggy tower and a courtyard. Past smoke and flurrying sand rose the Gate of Lions.

Abishag's heart sank. Many others in the city had thought to flee here. They filled the courtyard, crying out, falling. Legionaries stood at the gatehouse, and others lined the streets, firing arrows and lashing blades. Blood washed the cobblestones.

"Come, children," Abishag whispered. "We'll find another way."

They kept moving, racing around the walls of the city, traveling down arched walkways, through rubble, hiding in shadows from the patrolling legions. Everywhere the people fell, and the stench of death hovered over Beth Eloh. But every hour, there were fewer screams, fewer who fled, and more corpses burning in courtyards. Gate by gate, Abishag found only closed doors, only slaughter. She remembered her time seeking the Gate of Tears, seeking salvation, finding nothing but dead ends and despair.

"I want to go home," whispered one of the children, a girl with ragged black hair and green eyes, a rare color in the desert of Zohar. "Please. Can we go home now?"

The other children huddled by the city wall, shivering. Some bled from deep gashes. The boy with the dagger was trembling, pale, his knees skinned.

"We have to keep going," Abishag said. She still carried one child in her arms, another across her back. Her shoulders felt close to breaking. Abishag was barely more than a child herself, and they were so heavy, and she had not eaten or drunk since this bloodshed had begun. How long had it been? Two days, three? How long did it take to raze a city, to destroy a nation?

"We want to go home!" said another child, a boy barely more than a toddler. "Please, Abishag. Can we go home now? To my parents?"

But there was no more home. They had no more parents. They lived what Abishag had lived through three years ago.

She knelt before the boy. "We have to keep moving now, all right? There's one gate that's fallen, that we can escape through. You have to be brave. Can you do that?"

The boy trembled but nodded. "I'll be brave like King Epher."

The words seemed to stab Abishag. Like King Epher who left us. But she nodded. "Yes, child. We'll be like King Epher."

The boy shed tears. "I think my parents are dead. But I'll stay with you. To protect you. To—"

A legionary emerged from the shadows. He grabbed the boy, smirked, and slammed his head against the wall. The skull shattered.

Abishag screamed.

"Run!" she shouted.

The remaining children wailed and ran with her. Two more legionaries leaped and scooped up two more children. Abishag shouted, wanted to fight, to stop, to try to save them, but she still carried two children, still led another two. She couldn't stop. She kept running, leaving the other children behind. She heard them scream, then go silent. Her soul tore.

She ran around fallen columns, down an alleyway between smoking ruins, and vanished into a haze of smoke. She kept running, unable to breathe, eyes stinging, throat burning. One child in her arms. Another on her back. Two more at her side, their footsteps pattering in the smoke. They finally burst out into a pocket of dusty air. A palm tree crackled before them, and an archway rose, all that remained of a fallen home. An old man lay in the rubble, barely alive, praying softly. "Ours is the light, ours is the light . . ."

Abishag moved on, skidding to a halt before a road. Horses came marching down. Dozens of horses. Maybe a hundred. Claudia Valerius rode at their lead, her armor bright, unstained with blood. A crimson cloak billowed across her shoulders, and a red crest rose from her polished helm. The emperor's daughter stared ahead, a small smile on her lips, holding the reins of her white mare.

Behind Claudia marched a legatus, a general of the legions. Both wore breastplates worked with golden eagles, and a standard-bearer rode behind them, holding an Aquila. Many horses followed, their riders wearing lorica segmentata—iron strips across the torso, the armor of the common legionary. Abishag knelt in the shadows, hidden behind rubble, watching as they kept riding. Finally, behind the cavalry, marched many infantrymen, each man holding a shield and spear, and swords hung from their waists. Their sandals slogged through blood. War drums beat and horns blared.

They're leaving the city, Abishag thought, some hope rising in her.

"We will find the rebel!" Claudia cried ahead, distant now. "Epheriah will be ours!"

Abishag dared to creep forward, to stare down the road. Ahead lay the smashed Gate of Myrrh—or at least what remained of it. Here the adversary had torn down the gatehouse. Here the legions had first entered Beth Eloh. The rubble had been cleared away, and now Claudia and her soldiers were exiting the city into the countryside. Abishag waited, breathing in relief, sure that the slaughter had ended. She counted the centuries as they marched by. Century by century—a hundred legionaries each—grouped into cohorts of five hundred. An officer led each cohort astride a splendid horse, breastplate golden. Abishag counted ten cohorts leaving the city—five thousand men in all, an entire legion.

Yet when they were gone, no more soldiers followed.

More than one legion had entered the city, Abishag knew. More than one remained.

So the slaughter was not yet done. Claudia was riding out to seek Epher, but many of her legionaries remained in Beth Eloh to continue the butchery.

Abishag took a deep breath. She gathered the children close.

Then we must leave the city.

"You'll have to run fast," Abishag said. "All right? You see the path out of the city? You have to run. As fast as you can! I'll be behind you. Go!"

They leaped up from hiding. They ran down the road toward the smashed gates. Several legionaries stood here, guarding the exit. They raised their spears as the children ran.

"Over the rubble!" Abishag cried. "There, over that fallen tower. Climb! Run!"

The children scattered off the road. Two towers had once flanked the gatehouse. The demon had shattered them, and they still lay in piles of bricks. The children ran over the rubble, scuttling up, and the soldiers cursed, too heavy in their armor to climb in pursuit. One man tossed a javelin, missing his target. A second javelin hit its mark, driving into the back of the child Abishag had carried through the city.

Her heart shattered.

She stopped in the center of the road.

She took a shuddering breath. The legionaries still faced the rubble, their backs turned toward her, raising more javelins. The last children still climbed, wailing, slipping.

"Soldiers of Aelar!" Abishag shouted, still on the road. "Sons of eagles, I curse you!"

When Abishag had been a child—it seemed a different lifetime—her parents had sent her every evening to a crumbling brick house in the village, to an old man who taught her the Aelarian tongue. Her parents, poor shepherds, had paid the elder with milk, eggs, and wool, hoping to educate their daughter in the tongue of the mighty, to impress suitors of wealth and status. They had not imagined that years later, Abishag would use her lessons in a burning, crumbling city.

The legionaries—she counted eleven—turned toward her. Their eyes and grins widened. Abishag knew that she was fair, that she kindled fires in the hearts of men. She had always earned silver from the priests outside the Temple, not mere copper or tin. She was a more alluring prize than the children who still climbed.

"Well, look at that," one man said. "A Zoharite whore."

His comrade snorted. "Fucking rat whores."

"No, I mean she's a real whore," said the first legionary. "I fucked her once outside the Temple."

He was lying. Abishag had never worshipped with the eagles, only with holy men. Perhaps the man had served here with Porcia's legion, had seen her worshipping, had fled Zohar's Blade only to return under Claudia's command.

"He did!" Abishag lied. "Though his cock was less a spear and more a dagger."

The legionary's face reddened, and his comrades laughed. Behind the soldiers, the children reached the top of the rubble, then leaped down, vanishing outside the city.

Just three lives, Abishag thought. Three lives spared. Three lives I saved. Run, children. Run to the end of the world, and never look back.

"You miserable, lying dog!" shouted the legionary she had insulted. He marched toward her. "I'm going to carve out your tongue."

Abishag turned to flee. But she had gotten too close to these men, had stepped too far onto the shadowy road. One legionary grabbed her from behind. Another—the one she had slighted—backhanded her. One man drew a dagger while the other drew his cock; the two began to argue about which best to stab her with.

"Let's just slit her goddamn throat!" shouted the red-faced legionary.

"With your dagger?" said another. "Or with your spear?"

Abishag struggled madly, desperate to free herself. She kicked the air. She tried to bite the man holding her, but her teeth found only his iron vambrace.

"Do not lie with me," she said, "for it's true. I was a consecrated sister, and I lay with men for coins. And the men of this city knew me, even as the Gray Death spread. Now it spreads between my legs. Lie with me, and your cocks will shrivel and your balls will turn to stone."

One man, the one with his cock already out for thrusting, paled and took a step back. The red-faced legionary raised his dagger before her, ready to plunge it into her breast. Abishag inhaled deeply, chin raised.

If the priests were wrong, and if there is life after death, she prayed, let me rise to you, Maya. I told you that I would follow you anywhere.

"Wait!"

The voice boomed across the road, and Abishag opened her eyes.

She saw a general, heavily armored, ride toward them. His helmet was shaped as an eagle's head, complete with an ugly black beak and a crest of dark, oily feathers. Through the eyeholes, Abishag saw scars. Instead of a left hand, he had a prosthetic shaped like an eagle's talon.

A living eagle of metal, Abishag thought, shuddering. She knew him from countless tales. The Iron Eagle. General Constantius.

"Hail Legatus!" said the legionaries, saluting him. "Hail Aelar!"

Constantius dismounted, walked toward Abishag, and examined her. He was a tall man, his eyes cold. He reached out his iron talon and caressed her cheek. The metal was hot and sharp and smelled like blood.

"Pretty," the legatus said, voice like metal on gravel. "What's your name?"

"Abishag Bat Naeem," she told him.

Constantius turned back toward his men. "Domina Claudia commanded we capture five thousand slaves. You brutes have butchered too many. There might not even be five thousand left in this hive. This one's pretty enough to serve in a brothel or bathhouse."

"She said her cunt's made of stone," said the red-faced legionary, then seemed to gather himself and lowered his head. "Dominus."

"As is your brain," said the Iron Eagle. He turned toward Abishag and stroked back a lock of her hair. "This one is intelligent. She knows how to play the game. I saw how you let the children escape. Are they yours?"

"All the children of Zohar are mine," she replied. "For I was consecrated, and I bear the word of our savior."

Through the holes in his helmet, his eyes narrowed in amusement. He looked back at the legionaries. "Chain her up with the others. And don't touch those stone nethers of hers. If your cocks even stray near her, I'll wear them around my neck."

The general mounted his horse and rode off. The remaining legionaries bent Abishag's arms behind her back. A man struck her again, and white light exploded into a thousand stars. They marched her through the city, jeering, tearing at her clothes and skin. As they herded her into a courtyard full of slaves, and as they closed manacles around her, Abishag trembled with more fear than she had ever known.

EPHER

He stood on the rocky field, gazing back north toward the city. Beth Eloh was but a haze from here, but Epher could see the fire rising, hear the distant screams, smell the death.

"We have to go back." His voice was hoarse, and his eyes stung. "Olive, we have to go back. She's killing them." His fingernails dug into his palms. "Claudia is killing them all."

Olive grabbed him. She pulled his face toward hers, and she glared, teeth bared. Her red hair lay across her brow, caked with sand and dried blood.

"If we go back, she kill us too," Olive said. "But not you. Not at first. She take you back to Aelar. She torture you in arena. We not go back! We not help them by dying too." Her voice softened, and she held his hand. "It too late to save them. We tried. We fought good. Now we must go. We must fight other day."

Several hundred of them—all that remained of Zohar's warriors—stood here on the hills. It was a small force, but Epher could have slain a few more legionaries. True, it took ten Zoharites to kill a single legionary—Aelar's armor was too thick, its weapons too sharp, its soldiers too ruthless. But Epher might have killed a few more, might have died with honor.

History will remember me as a coward, he thought.

"What awaits us out here?" he said. "Death in the wilderness? I would not let Claudia take me alive. I would die fighting her."

"Then all Zohar die too," said Olive. "You our king! You must lead fight long as you can. There are other Zoharites! Many live other countries. But Zohar still their home. You still their king. Come, Epher. Hold my hand. Walk south with me. We find Tarath El. Behind its walls, we find more warriors. We find hope."

Epher nodded. This was the path he had set them on, the choice he had made in the Temple. If he had chosen to remain and fight, then Olive—all of them—would have remained with him, died with him. But he had led them through the Gate of Tears. He had chosen this. The path of a coward, perhaps. Of a traitor. A path he would never forgive himself for taking. Yet Olive was right—a path he could not turn back on now.

The Gate of Tears indeed, he thought.

When he looked toward the distant city again, he frowned. It was hard to tell from this distance, but he could make out glints on the path outside the city, a mere sliver, a thread of shimmering metal, barely there, soon vanishing.

"Soldiers on the road." He squinted, trying to see more details. "A legion is leaving the inferno. They're following us."

Olive began to walk south, sand rising around her. "Then we walk fast."

"I think," Epher said, "that we better run."

They ran. Six hundred men and women. Most had no finer armor than thick leather and some tattered scales. Their swords were chipped, their spears cracked. Many were wounded. Many had seen too many summers, while some were mere youths of twelve or thirteen. Most had not been warriors before this war. They had been farmers, tradesmen, shepherds. Two had been priests and one a singer.

Who are we now? Epher wondered. Soldiers, refugees, or cowards?

The dry hills sprawled before them, leading to the southern desert. A thin arable strip of Zohar lay along the coast. A few forested hills rose in the north. But most of Zohar was this—a rocky desert, all boulders and canyons and hills of limestone and sandstone. While the desert took up most of Zohar, few in the kingdom had ever lived here. It was a cracked, unforgiving land where barely any life thrived.

The hills rolled before them into the horizon, rocky, beige, lifeless and hard. They were not round but elongated, flowing, like folds in fabric carved into a statue. From a distance these hills were indistinguishable from dunes. Only when stepping upon them did one realize they were made of rock, not sand. As the rebels ran, Epher saw no trees, no bushes, no animals, just the crevices and hills and canyons. Epher felt like an ant crawling across a vast, craggy boulder.

It was winter, but the sun still beat down, and sweat still soaked Epher. His wounds kept stinging, worst of all the cut on his leg. He ran with a limp. Around him ran the others, breathing raggedly, covered with sweat and blood and ashes. Their armor clanked, their swords banged against their thighs, and guilt haunted their eyes.

We left. We left them.

Each of these men and women had left friends or families behind. Epher could no longer see Beth Eloh in the distance, but he would never forget those flames rising, those distant screams.

We would have just died with them, said a voice in his head.

Then we should have died!

In the desert we can find hope.

We have already lost!

Zohar still stands so long as we live.

Zohar has fallen!

Again and again, the voices shouted inside Epher's mind. Yet he kept running.

I could not save Gefen. I could not save Beth Eloh. I could not save our people. But there are several hundred warriors here who need me. There is a fortress in the desert where the name Zohar will still be remembered.

Whenever they paused to breathe and tend to their wounds, Epher looked behind him, and the distant army seemed closer. He could see the sun shining off armor and the lines of marching troops, mere threads across the desert. Soon those threads grew, and Epher could make out individual specks—horses, perhaps chariots, and red-and-gold banners.

"They've got a whole fucking legion following us," muttered Ramael. The bearded, crooked-nosed man seemed to remember who he was talking to and bowed his head. "Forgive me, my king. I should speak less crudely."

Weakly, Epher placed his hand on the man's shoulder. "Ramael, I've known you since we were boys. I spent many hours in your grandfather's house in Gefen. I often felt as if Malaci was my own grandfather. We fought together since Seneca sailed into my port. You can curse around me. I'm still the same Epher."

Ramael looked into his eyes. "No, my king. You're not." Then he turned and ran onward, heading south through the desert.

Night fell but no stars emerged. Clouds rich with smoke hid the sky, and the wind shrieked through canyons and over hills. The day's traces of warmth vanished, and they all shivered. Epher's teeth had never chattered in his life, but they kept banging together now, and he felt frozen and feverish at once. He had never known such cold—cold that invaded the skin, crawled through the body, and spread along the bones. Behind them, ever closer, burned lines of light on the dark hills—the torches of legionaries. The smell of fire filled the wind.

"Epher, we need rest," Olive said. "You hurt. We all hurt. We must sleep, heal wounds, running more tomorrow."

He shook his head. "We don't rest. We cannot rest. Claudia draws ever nearer."

Olive panted and shivered in the darkness. They had no lanterns, no torches, would dare light none even if they did. She held his hand and leaned close to him. "We is running for two days and two nights, no rest. Some of the men . . . if they no rest now, they die."

Epher looked behind him. The torches of the enemy were closer now. In the shrieking wind, he thought he could hear the voices. Chanting for death. He thought he could hear Claudia calling to him, laughing, mocking him, promising his death in the arena and the final collapse of Zohar.

"If we rest, we all die," he said. "If some remain behind, then they remain behind."

Olive gasped and glared at him, but when he wouldn't look away, she nodded. They kept running.

Epher judged the night halfway through when the first man fell. His friends called out in the darkness. "Jorah has fallen!"

"Then we will carry him," said Epher. He approached in the darkness, nearly fell into a chasm, and finally reached the fallen warrior. Jorah lay on the rocky ground, panting, feverish, vomiting. Epher slung the man's arm around his shoulders. "Can you walk like this?"

Jorah nodded. They continued, moving slower now, but the enemy behind did not relent. Always the torches moved closer in the night, and Epher could hear them now. Drums. Horns. A distant voice calling out. "Epher! Epher, do you hear me?"

Claudia's voice.

Epher ground his teeth, hefted Jorah, and they kept trudging forward. Another man fell. His friends lifted him and carried him onward.

The land became more treacherous. The hills rose steeply, plunged down, and thrust up jagged boulders. Still the clouds did not part, and the moon was but a smudge, soon vanishing. In the darkness, screams suddenly arose, and Epher rushed toward them and learned that several men had fallen in the darkness, tumbling into a canyon. The clouds kept thickening, hiding the moonlight, and finally Epher was forced to call them to stop.

They set camp in the miserable, cold darkness, and several men scaled down the canyon walls to seek the wounded, only to find that four men had perished in the fall, and the fifth had shattered both legs. All night the wounded man moaned and screamed, until they were forced to gag him. All night the lights of the legionaries grew closer.

"How the hell can they track us in the night?" Epher muttered.

Olive huddled closer to him, shivering. She tried to gnaw on some old bread but spat it out. "Hard like rock." She shoved her hands into her armpits. "Tracking easy. I used to track animals even in desert. The legionaries have torches. They see our trail."

The man with shattered legs let out a muffled cry, and Epher winced.

"I'm not even sure we're on the right path." Epher smiled wryly. "We might be leading them into Sekadia."

Olive was silent for a long moment, aside from her teeth chattering. Finally she said, "Maybe that no bad idea. Maybe we yes go to Sekadia. Find shelter there. Maya healed Sekadia king. Maybe king help us, give us new life. In . . . how you say? Not home?" She thought for a moment, then found the word. "Exile."

Epher had spent the past two days considering that very idea, but he shook his head. "No. Even if we found life in exile, what kind of life would that be? The life of cowards who fled from battle, leaving their people to die. I'm not ready to stop fighting. I abandoned my city, but I won't abandon my country. In Tarath El we can fight on. For Zohar. For what remains of our kingdom."

Olive leaned against him and closed her eyes. "We maybe die there."

Epher wanted to speak to her of hope, of Aelar's weakness, of Valentina fighting to restore the Republic and call back Claudia's forces. But Olive was right. It was likely they marched toward their deaths, a final stand in the last stronghold in the kingdom.

He stroked her hair, as wild and red as flame. "You can still travel east. Take those warriors who would go with you. Seek shelter in other lands."

Olive grabbed his shoulders and snarled. "I never leave you. Your warriors never leave too. We fight with you. Always. For our kingdom. For our king." Her eyes dampened. "For the memory of all who died."

And still the legions marched closer, horns blaring.

Epher did not mean to sleep, not with the enemy only hours away, yet soon he found himself trapped in a dream. He was navigating the dark streets of Gefen on a starless night. He held a swinging lantern shaped like a man's head, seeking Claudia's villa. He had walked these streets countless times, had visited his beloved on many secret nights, yet now he found himself lost, delving deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. Crosses rose on the roadsides, and each held a dying figure, stripped of skin, burned black yet still moaning. Each figure had Maya's face.

Finally he found Claudia's home, only to discover that she now lived on the Mount of Cedars in Beth Eloh, not her old villa by the sea. She greeted him with smiles, wearing an azure stola.

"I feel like I'm wearing the sky," she said.

As she kissed him, he saw that the lantern in his hand was a real man's head, dripping, expression ghastly. The head of his father. Epher dropped it. He wanted to run, but Claudia was kissing him, pulling off his clothes, and they made mad love in the darkness. Her fingernails dug into his back, but no matter how hard he took her, he could find no release, as if he were lost inside her, trapped in another labyrinth.

"I loved you once," he whispered.

She laughed and bit his face, ripping off skin, muscle, feasting, drinking, until he hung from a cross, flayed and dripping before her, dying in the Valley of Ashes as the city burned around him and the Temple fell.

A cry roused him, and he blinked. The first hints of dawn rose in the desert like a line of fire on the eastern horizon.

Epher cursed and leaped to his feet. Olive, who had lain at his side, blinked and rose too, rubbing her eyes. The rest of their camp spread through the darkness. The cry had come from the man with shattered legs; he was shivering, and his gag had fallen out. All was gray and black in the shadows, though the clouds had finally parted and the last stars of night shone above.

When Epher spun toward the north, his belly twisted.

Claudia and her legions were close now, only several hills away. They were close enough that he could make out the Aquila at their lead. They had many horses and chariots and thousands of infantrymen. The terrain was still rough, all folds and canyons like dunes turned to stone, which trouble their horses and slowed their pursuit. But they were still moving. They must have moved without rest since leaving Beth Eloh.

"Epher!" rose the hint of a voice in the distance, though Claudia was still too far to make out from the crowd. "Epher!"

He turned away from them. "Run."

They continued in the dawn, traveling south as fast as they could. They carried their wounded. They trudged on, raising dust. Rocks tumbled beneath their feet. The hills grew larger, leading to mountains. The morning spilled across the desert, painting the world gold and yellow and shimmering bronze. In every direction Epher looked, he could see no life but for the two forces. No greenery. No animals. Just this dead, rocky world. Just boulders, crevices, cliffs—a dead land.

At times, he passed by flat stones that bore strange markings, etched into the rock with crude tools. Some runes resembled the sun, others animals, and a few were marks he couldn't comprehend. Thousands of years ago, before men had nations or tribes, ancient wanderers must have ventured into the desert, had marked the stones. If some ancient civilization had risen here before Zohar, they had left nothing but a few runes, a few dolmens in the north, a few bones in caves. Nothing more. Epher wondered if, many years from now, that was all that would remain of Zohar. A few marks on rocks. A few whispers. Then nothing at all.

He looked behind him, and she was closer, so close he could see her in the crowd, riding at the lead of her army. Claudia wore the fine armor of an Aelarian legatus, complete with a crested helm of command, and she held the Aquila of her legion, the golden eagle of war. Horns blared, and Aelar's horses began to gallop, raising clouds of dust.

"Faster!" Epher said. "Run!"

They ran. Even carrying their wounded, they ran. They had not had water in two days, yet they ran. The slopes grew steeper. They were climbing desert mountains now, deep in southern Zohar. Epher knew this place. He had been here as a child, visiting with his parents. Few ever dared enter this land, not Zoharites nor invaders. The Great Death, some called it. They were near.

It was a steep climb. At times they had to use their hands for purchase, cresting a slope or canyon wall. The mountains rose before them, rocky, tan, baking in the heat of the sun. All the chill of night passed, and sweat washed Epher, stinging his wounds. Many men carried the wounded, falling, rising again, grunting with effort. When Epher looked behind him, he saw that the legions were struggling too. They had abandoned their horses and now were clambering up. Closer. Always closer.

She was climbing below, and she gazed up, crouching, smiling. Across the distance, he could imagine that Claudia met his eyes.

Epher turned and kept scaling the mountain. Olive climbed at his side, hissing and dripping sweat. The hundreds of rebels spread across the mountain. A man lost his grip, cried out, and slid down the slope. Epher reached out and caught him. They climbed onward, struggling for purchase.

Finally they crested a cliff and reached a small plateau, just large enough for their camp. They stared ahead, and Epher lost his breath.

"By God," he whispered.

He had been only a boy when last visiting this place. He remembered almost nothing. A mesa soared ahead—a tall and narrow monolith, high as a mountain, its sides formed of craggy cliffs. The top was flat, creating a natural plateau. The landform reminded Epher of a massive tree stump formed of sandstone. A canyon snaked around the mesa, plunging deep into shadows like a moat. This was a natural structure, but men with all their wisdom and cunning could not have carved a better fortress.

Yet men too had toiled here, augmenting what the desert had given them. The rebels were still far, but even from here, Epher could see the fortified walls and towers that surrounded the plateau atop the mesa. The bricks had been carved from this desert, the same tan color as everything around them. Atop the mesa loomed a fortress—a massive citadel the size of a town. The only fortress in Zohar that had never fallen to an enemy.

"Tarath El," Olive said, and tears filled her eyes. "Safety."

"If we can get there," Epher muttered and glanced behind him. The legionaries were still following.

Ramael limped up toward them and spat. "How the fuck are we going to climb that?" He glanced at Epher again, then cleared his throat. "I mean, my king—a canyon surrounds it, and the cliffs are taller than the mountains of Beth Eloh."

Epher smiled wanly. "Then it'll be hard for the Aelarians to reach us, won't it? Come, Ramael. Everyone. Down into the canyon. A long climb awaits us."

They climbed down the canyon wall, clinging to stones, moving in single file, clinging with hands and toes to the surface. The man with shattered legs moaned the whole time, slung across another man's back. Rocks kept cascading around them, and sometimes the surface was so smooth they slid, scattering scree, before halting their fall. By the time they reached the bottom, the man with shattered legs was dead, and they buried him under a quick cairn.

The cliffs of Tarath El soared before them. When Epher tilted his head back, he couldn't even see the fortress on the mesa's crest. He felt like an ant at the foot of a column. Epher grimaced. Perhaps Ramael had been right.

"How the fuck do we climb this?" he muttered.

Olive pointed. "Look!" She bounded across the canyon. "Hurry!"

Epher frowned, seeing nothing other than the cliff. But he ran after her. The others followed. They raced along the canyon floor, whipping around boulders and cracks, and saw Olive leap onto the cliff and begin to run up. Epher blinked, barely able to believe his eyes. It was as if Olive was using magic, running up a solid wall.

He stepped closer, and then he saw it.

"A path," he whispered.

Ramael reached him and stared up, breathing heavily. "If you'd like to call it that, my king."

The path was no wider than a man's shoulders, roughly chiseled into the cliff. It coiled upward like a snake, thinning down to a distant thread. Epher's head spun just looking at it. He licked his cracked lips with a parched tongue and began to climb.

Olive still bounded ahead like a mountain goat, but for Epher the climb was slow, hard business. His head kept spinning from thirst, and at times he had to pause, lean against the cliff, and breathe. His wounded leg still blazed with pain, the stitches threatening to tear. The way was so narrow they had to climb single file. Even for one man, the path was barely wide enough. At some points, the way was barely wider than his foot. He had to cling to the cliff, placing one foot ahead of the other, then breathing in relief when the path widened just enough to place both feet side by side again.

A hundred or more of his men had climbed onto the path, and the rest awaited in the canyon, when the legionaries crested the opposite side of the ravine.

Epher was halfway up the cliff. He turned his head, clinging to the stone, and saw Claudia across the canyon. She raised her sword, and it caught the sun.

"Hello, my love!" she cried. "You have chosen your grave, I see!"

Around her, a hundred archers stepped onto the canyon's ledge. They nocked arrows and tugged back their bowstrings.

Epher stared, barely able to breathe.

We're out of range, he thought. We must be out of range. This canyon's wider than the longest street in Gefen.

The arrows fired. They arched skyward, curved, and came whistling toward the snake path.

They'll miss us. They're too far. They—

The arrows clattered against the cliff wall. One slammed into the stone by Epher's head, only an arm's length away. Below him, arrows slammed into several of his warriors. They cried out and fell from the path. A few of the bodies slammed into climbers below, sending them tumbling into the canyon.

"Run!" Epher shouted. "Run up!"

He began to run up the path. The way zigzagged. Epher wobbled. He nearly fell, and the world swirled around him. He grabbed the cliff, managed to keep climbing. More arrows flew, hitting the cliff around him, hitting more warriors. Olive cried out above, and her blood dripped onto Epher, but she climbed onward.

We're not going to make it, Epher thought. We're so close, but we're not going to make it.

He kept climbing. Another man fell. More arrows slammed into the wall around them. One grazed across his side, slicing along a rib, and Epher nearly fell. An arrow slammed between his fingers, chipping the stone. He lost his balance and tumbled.

"Epher!" Olive screamed.

He fell through the air, reached out, and grabbed the path. He clung with one hand, dangling. Arrows slammed into the stone all around, raising sparks, shattering, cutting into more men. Warriors fell from the cliff, shattering against the canyon floor below.

I'm sorry, my parents, Epher thought. I failed you.

From above, horns blew.

"Zohar stands!" rose cries above.

A hundred arrows flew above, but these ones flew from higher up, from atop the mesa. Epher's eyes dampened.

The defenders of Tarath El. Zohar still fights.

Olive raced down to him, grabbed his hand, and pulled him back onto the path. They stood together, breathing heavily, watching the arrows sail from the fortifications above into the legionaries across the canyon. Several Aelarians fell backward. Others tumbled into the canyon, joining the fallen Zoharites. The other legionaries retreated from the canyon's rim. Claudia remained an instant longer, staring at Epher across the distance, then she too pulled back and vanished from view and the arrows' range.

The rebels kept climbing the snaking path up the cliff. Finally, so weary they could barely put one foot before the other, Olive and Epher reached the top of the mesa. A defensive wall soared, topped with turrets and battlements, and many Zoharite soldiers stood here, armed with bows. An archway, flanked with towers, provided passageway into the complex. Olive stepped into the gateway first, pulling Epher along. He stumbled after her.

"It's not just a citadel," he whispered, falling to his knees. He shook with relief. "It's Zohar."

The mesa, this jutting monolith, had a flat top the size of a town. And here spread the legendary Tarath El.

A tiled pool, lined with palm trees. Gardens of fig, carob, and apple trees. A temple sporting marble columns. Barracks large enough for hundreds. A domed palace as fine as any in Beth Eloh, worthy of a king. Towers. Roads. Storerooms and a bathhouse. A grand mosaic that sprawled across a courtyard. A corral of sheep and camels. It was civilization in the desert, an entire town atop the mesa. It was life in Zohar.

Several men ran toward Epher, bearing jugs of water, towels, and litters for the wounded. More of Beth Eloh's exiles stumbled into the complex.

As the men tended to Epher, pouring water into his mouth, washing and bandaging his wounds, and feeding him figs and dates, he closed his eyes. He thought of the legion across the canyon, and in his mind he kept seeing that fire in the distance, and he kept hearing the cries from Beth Eloh.

SENECA

"A month," Seneca muttered. "We've been on the road for a goddamn month, and we're only now arriving at Tereen. Fuck, Nur is a big province."

He rode in his chariot, leading his ragtag army. When he looked behind him, Seneca saw them spreading along the bank of the Majina River, marching and riding after his banners. The legionaries took the vanguard, five thousand men, half his original force—the other half had fallen to Porcia's fleet and Tirus's elephants. Behind the legionaries spread the Nurian warriors, lightly armored, their chests bare, headdresses draping across their shoulders. Most of them walked, armed with curved khopesh swords and spears, but hundreds rode war horses or chariots with scythed wheels. The Phedian host took up the rear, the barbarians that had once served Tirus, that had joined Seneca after he'd worn the face of their fallen king. Among this last army walked the most formidable weapon Seneca possessed: eighty war elephants, beasts he would send rampaging through the streets of Aelar.

When I finally capture Tirus, Seneca decided, I'll have an elephant crush his lumpy bald head.

Imani smiled, standing at his side in the chariot. The Queen of Nur was resplendent in her muslin kalasiri, the traditional dress of this southern realm. A tiara shaped as a serpent held back her mane of black curls. Her skin was dark brown and smooth, and her eyes shone. Seneca had married Queen Imani Koteeka to form an alliance with Nur, this southern province he had found rising in rebellion against his family. But he had come to love her—truly, fully. This past month, marching across Nur from the southern pyramids of Shenutep toward the northern coast, had been among the sweetest months of his life. Because he was with her.

"Nur is the largest province in the Empire, my dear." Imani patted his arm. "Without ships to sail on the Majina River, it takes a while to get anywhere."

"We'll have our ships soon enough," Seneca said.

He turned back forward in his chariot, staring north. A couple of weeks ago, the savanna had given way to desert. While the riverbanks remained lush with life, beyond the farmlands and groves rolled rocky hills and dunes. Finally, ahead of them, the Majina River split into a delta of a hundred smaller streams, forming a lush landscape. On the horizon rose the towers of Tereen, the port city of Nur, the gateway to the Encircled Sea.

Last year, Porcia had invaded that port, had smashed Seneca's fleet, had slaughtered thousands of his soldiers. He had survived the battle, yet had been driven south to lick his wounds, to recruit more troops, and to build more ships—only to lose his second fleet when the Zoharites had rebelled.

But the port ahead would still have hundreds of other ships: cargo cogs, merchant barges, fishermen's rowboats, and pleasure pontoons. Probably wrecked ships from that old battle too, maybe in good enough condition to salvage.

"Anything that can float," Seneca said, "will become part of our new fleet. Even if it's a fucking raft."

Imani's smile grew. "It'll be the most ridiculous flotilla the world has ever seen."

Seneca nodded. "But it'll take us home. It'll win us Aelar."

"Just don't put the elephants on the rafts," Imani said.

"The fuckers can swim for all I care," Seneca said. "So long as they smash through the gates of Aelar and make me emperor."

Hooves thundered. Adai, Imani's younger brother, galloped toward them astride a black stallion. The Prince of Nur gazed down from the saddle. Like the warriors he led, he wore only a skirt of white linen, sandals, and a headdress. His armor was formed of but vambraces and greaves, and he held a drawn khopesh. The Nurian prince had always unnerved Seneca. When speaking with his sister and people, Adai was all smiles, a gentle spirit, yet whenever he looked at Seneca, the prince's eyes darkened.

"This army does not follow you for your vainglory, Seneca." Adai must have enjoyed towering over the chariot from horseback, judging by his haughty stare. "We fight for our homeland, for blessed Nur. We fight for the freedom we'll have once we return you to your city. This is not about your ass on a fancy northern seat of ivory."

"Adai!" Imani's eyes flashed. "Enough."

Seneca's hand strayed toward his gladius. He clenched his jaw, had to force air between his teeth. How dare the Nurian speak to him so impudently? Seneca should have him crucified! He would hammer in the nails himself. He would laugh as Adai wept on the cross, pleading for forgiveness, and Seneca would laugh too—laugh as the crows feasted, as all feared his wrath, as his own fear faded under his glory, and—

No.

Seneca swallowed the angry lump in his throat. Shaking, he forced himself to release his gladius.

No. That's no longer me. That cannot be me anymore.

He inhaled deeply, then lowered his head.

"I promise you, Adai. This is not just about my ass on an ivory seat, as comfortable and glorious as that seat might be." He looked into Adai's eyes. "You're my brother-in-law. You'll be uncle to my child. I promise you: Nur and Aelar will exist as allies, not masters and slaves."

Adai grunted, then kneed his horse and galloped ahead of the camp, racing toward the distant port.

Seneca sighed. "I think there might be a very small chance that he doesn't trust me."

"I don't trust you," said Imani. "And I'm your wife."

He clutched his heart. "Your words hurt more than spears. Forget trust then. Fight for vengeance if not trust. The Empire ravaged Nur. It's time for Nur to strike back."

They kept riding, the chariot rolling across the grassy riverbanks. Seneca kept watching the river, waiting to see the sailing merchant ships and the reed boats of fishermen, vessels he'd use for his armada. Yet the river was empty but for several hippopotamuses. He grew impatient to reach the port where he had battled Porcia. There she had struck him, had sought to kill him. From there his conquest of the sea would begin.

"The farms," Imani whispered, pointing.

"What about them?" Seneca asked, not turning to look. He kept staring ahead at Tereen's distant towers.

"They're . . . gone," Imani whispered.

"What?" He turned to look. "I see nothing. Just . . ." He sucked in a breath. "Fuck me."

To the east, where farms had once sprawled, he saw nothing but blackened earth overgrown with rough brush. He met Imani's eyes, and he saw her fear. Standing together in their chariot, they both turned to face the northern city, and Seneca whipped his horses.

The beasts galloped, and the chariot roared forward. Behind them, his fellow charioteers followed, raising a storm of dust. They reached a cobbled road that stretched toward the city. As Seneca rode along the cobblestones, he grimaced. Crosses rose on the roadsides, hundreds of them, each bearing a corpse. The dead looked a week old, maybe fresher, rancid flesh still clinging to the bones.

"No," Imani whispered, looking around with damp eyes. "Oh gods, no. Seneca." She gripped his hand.

They kept charging forward. Their army raced behind them, chariots, horsemen, infantrymen. The walls of Tereen rose ahead. The gates were open, and gibbets hung from the archway, corpses dangling within.

The chariot burst into the city, racing along the boulevard. Seneca's heart sank.

"Oh fuck," he whispered. "Oh fuck. Oh fuck."

At his side, Imani grabbed the reins and gave them a mighty tug. The horses halted in a plaza. Tears on her cheeks, the Queen of Nur leaped from the chariot and stood on the road. She looked around, trembling. Then she fell to her knees and gave a great howl that scattered the feasting crows.

Seneca knelt beside her and placed a hand on her shoulder. "I'm sorry, Imani."

He looked around him. The bastards had done a good job. Nearly every building in Tereen had been knocked down. The crosses rose from the rubble like a forest, bearing the dead—men, women, children. A single tower still rose from the rubble—it was the same tower where Seneca had first made love to Imani, placing his child in her belly as below Porcia's fleet burned. Upon the tower hung a banner displaying a bull.

"Sigil of House Valerius," Seneca muttered. "Tirus got here first." He rose to his feet. He winced, the fear growing in him. "Imani, come with me."

He had to pull her to her feet. She was trembling, heaving, shocked. They returned to the chariot and continued through the city, passing by more and more ruin, until they reached the sea.

The port—the port where he had defeated his sister—was gone. Not just ruined or burnt. Gone. The breakwaters, the piers, the boardwalk, and more importantly—the ships—all gone. He saw nothing but ruins along the beach.

"Why?" Imani whispered. "Why did Tirus do this? If he wanted to kill you, why not wait here for you, ambush you with his army? Why just . . . just slaughter and destroy and leave?"

"Because it's easier," Seneca said softly. "The bulk of our forces were in the south. Why battle us when he can just shatter our doorway to the sea?"

He left the chariot and walked along the ruins on the coast. Bones rose from the wreckage. Imani joined him, and their soldiers filled the city behind them, silent.

"I used to visit this city every year," Imani whispered, looking at the fallen houses along the boardwalk. "Tens of thousands lived here. My friends. My people. Oh, Seneca . . ."

He embraced her, and they stood together on the beach, silent. As she wept, his own eyes stung with tears. He stroked her hair, not knowing what to say, how to comfort her. He thought back to Gefen, the city he himself had destroyed. How many of its survivors had stood along its coast, weeping for the loss? How many hearts—as pure as Imani's—had he himself broken? How could he hate Tirus when he himself had been—perhaps still was—just as monstrous?

Thus is played the game of nations, he thought. The cruel play it. The meek weep in the wreckage we leave.

"It's over," he whispered, holding Imani against him, stroking her black curls over and over. "We'll return south to Shenutep, far from the Encircled Sea and the monsters who fight for it. We'll raise our child among the pyramids, deep in the savanna. We'll forget about this war."

She looked at him, her arms still around him. The waves whispered against the ruins. "What of your empire? All our dreams?"

He gazed east along the coast. "Without ships, we'd have to walk around the Encircled Sea. Traveling east, it would take us to Zohar, where Claudia's forces wait—Claudia Valerius, daughter of Tirus, the last person we want to meet. And even if we can march past her unscathed, what waits after that? We'd have to travel north and west again along the northern coast. Province after province, Kalintia and fucking Gael and gods know what other backwaters, each swarming with legions. It would take a year, maybe two, and every league, another enemy would bite at us until nothing is left." He shook his head. "No. Without a port, without ships, it cannot be done."

Imani turned to look west. The coast spread there into the sunset. "But if we go west, we'll reach Phedia. Within six weeks, maybe five if we travel hard and fast, we can be there. They still have a port. They'll have ships. And from Phedia, it'll be only a few days at sea. We can be in Aelar within six weeks."

"Phedia," Seneca whispered. "That's still Tirus's province. He still commands their forces, the . . ." He turned around to see the elephants walking through the town, the bald, tattooed barbarians in their howdahs. "The forces that now follow us. Of course." He pulled back from Imani and pounded the air with his fist. "Of course! Phedia! Fucking Phedia! And if Tirus still has troops there, we'll recruit or kill them. We'll take their ships—real ships, galleys of war, not fucking reed boats and rafts. We'll sail into Aelar as true conquerors! We'll . . ." He released his breath slowly, and he held Imani's hands. "I'm sorry, Imani. You grieve for the loss of your people, and I speak only of my own conquests. Enough have died. If you wish it . . . I will abandon this war. We can still return home to Shenutep, still live there in peace."

Imani looked at the ruins. She looked at the sea. Then she looked into Seneca's eyes.

"Peace?" she said. "Peace lies in ruins on this beach. That is the only peace Tirus Valerius understands. We will go to Phedia and from there to Aelar. To Tirus himself. And we will kill him. And we will kill anyone who stands in our way."

The hosts of the Southern Empire left the ruins behind. They traveled west through darkness along the sea. For long hours, Imani stood silently beside him in the chariot, fists tight around the reins, chin raised, jaw tight. But that night, as they camped on the beach, she lay in his arms and wept. He held her close until the dawn.

EPHER

He had never been wearier. He had never been so hurt.

My city fell. My sister died. All of Zohar burns while only we remain. I abandoned my people.

The pain clutched at Epher, the pain of his wounds and the infinitely worse pain of guilt and grief. But he allowed himself only a moment. Only a few breaths, a few beatings of his heart. Then he rose to his feet, looked across Tarath El, and he made a vow.

I will not flee again. I will not leave this place. These people here—they are my people, mine to defend. I will save them. Or I will die with them. No more running. Here we make our final stand.

Olive stepped up toward him, and in her eyes, he saw that she knew his thoughts. She held his hand tightly and nodded. The last of their warriors climbed up the cliff, stepped through the archway, and gathered in the courtyard. They gasped, tears filled their eyes, and many fell to their knees, weeping with joy. The complex spread across the plateau, hope and comfort in a dead land: a palace, temple, bathhouse, tiled pool, gardens, barracks, an entire community thriving in the sky. Here upon this monolith, high above the desert, thrived life. A handful of doves, perhaps those who had fled Beth Eloh, had found a new home here, walking among the trees—symbols of new hope.

When Epher looked back out the archway and across the canyon, the legions were still there. Still. Staring.

"Try to get us here, Claudia," Epher said under his breath. "Try climbing that fucking path up the cliff with arrows raining onto you."

A ram's horn blared—a long, organic sound that rolled across the complex and sent doves scattering. Epher turned toward the sound. Across the complex, past the garden and pool and courtyard, rose a palace with a golden dome. Its doors opened, and a woman descended a staircase, still too distant to see clearly. The woman walked across the plateau, accompanied by several guards. They passed by the barracks, the columned temple, and a row of silos. Finally they walked across the mosaic that sprawled across the courtyard, then halted before Epher.

"Epheriah Sela," said the woman, a thin smile on her lips. "Or should I say—King Epheriah Elior?"

She was a tall woman in her fifties, her skin deeply tanned, and her white hair flowed down to her waist. Her eyes were brown and intelligent, and she wore a white dress, simple yet richly woven, and a belt of golden links. A lion talisman hung around her neck.

"Issazion," Epher said, nodding to her.

Her smile didn't reach her eyes. "You were only this high when I last saw you. You probably barely remember me. How old were you when you last visited? Four? Five?"

"Seven, I think," he said. "And I remember you well." That last part was a lie. He had been too young to remember much of this place, only vague recollections of grand walls and towers. He had completely forgotten the climb up the cliff or the splendor that awaited atop the mesa. But as king, he knew the names of all lords and ladies across this land, Issazion's included. Hers was an ancient line, a powerful family that had ruled this citadel for generations.

"I suppose I'm meant to kneel before you," Issazion said. "But I won't." Her smile vanished. "Smoke has filled our sky, moving from the north, and now the king of Zohar arrives at my doorstep with a few hundred wounded warriors, and behind them a legion of Aelarians. I don't need a lumer to know what this means." She stepped closer, and her voice dropped. "Beth Eloh fell."

There was more accusation than grief in her voice, Epher thought. He nodded. "It fell. It's gone. The city has been laid to waste. We're the only survivors."

Issazion sucked in air and peered across the plateau, then stared back at him. "Where are the mothers, the babes? Where . . ." Her voice faded, and she tilted her head, and her eyes narrowed.

"I left them," Epher said, staring into her eyes. "I left them all to die. Elders. Mothers. Babes. We warriors of Zohar fled from the legions and abandoned our people to death and slavery, and if you would order your men to slay us now as traitors, I would not blame you, and I would welcome your judgment. I seek no forgiveness, no salvation. There can be none for me. I seek only to fight another day. To kill a few more Aelarians before the end. To maybe—just maybe, in the grace of light—last long enough to see the Empire fall and a seed of Zohar rise again from ruin."

Issazion stared at him a moment longer, as if seeking conceit, then nodded. She spoke softly. "Come with me, Epher."

Leaving their warriors behind, they climbed a staircase and walked atop the defensive wall that surrounded the flat top of Tarath El.

"The mesa of Tarath El stands half a mil tall," Issazion said as they walked. "That's the distance between the Gate of Lions and the Mount of Cedars in Beth Eloh. The only way up is that path you climbed. Even unencumbered, the way is treacherous, the path so narrow one must focus all attention on climbing. We've kept it that way." She smiled wryly. "Now imagine trying to climb in heavy armor, pelted from above with arrows and stones."

"It would be impossible," Epher said.

Issazion nodded. "We have a hundred thousand arrows. If we run out, we have no shortage of stones to throw. Even the mighty legions of Aelar cannot reach us here, unless they sprout wings. Even the mightiest soldiers in the world must climb that path one man at a time, clinging to the cliff, desperate not to fall. If they climb, we'll shoot them down into the canyon." As they kept walking along the wall, they passed by a fortress built atop the platform. Issazion pointed. "That garrison holds two hundred warriors. A hundred children live here too, in that building behind it. With the warriors you bring, we're over nine hundred souls here atop the mesa. We're safe."

They kept walking along the wall, moving between the archers, until they faced the northeastern deserts. Beyond the canyon, the rocky beige hills rolled into the horizon.

"And what if they set siege?" Epher said. "They can still starve us to death."

The sandy wind billowed Issazion's white hair. "We've spent years stocking up. We grow our own fruits and vegetables in the gardens. We keep a corral of animals for milk and cheese and meat if we need it. Buried deep within the mountain, we've carved a network of cellars, and we've stocked enough grain, dried fruit, and preserves to last for years—even with the extra mouths you bring us." Her smile turned sour. "Since the legions took Cadom from us twenty years ago, we've been awaiting this day."

"What of thirst?" Epher said. "We're in the middle of a desert, far from any stream or well."

She raised an eyebrow. "Are we? Look there, Epher." She pointed back toward the plateau. "What do you see?"

He looked down from the wall toward the plateau. A pool shimmered there, tiled and lined with palm trees. Several men were actually swimming. Beyond, rose the columns of what looked like a bathhouse. Epher could just make out another pool there, a few people luxuriating in steaming water.

Issazion nodded. "Water flows deep underground. Tunnels delve down through the mountain, tapping into the reserves. Our engineers built an elaborate system to raise the water to the mesa's top. We've even devised pipes to heat the water in the bathhouse but keep the water in the pool cool. It doesn't rain often in the desert, but when it does, the rainwater flows into those gutters you see, and finally down into our cisterns, supplementing the reserves from underground. Water will not be a problem. Nor will food. Nor will defense. This is an impregnable fortress, the mightiest in the world. You and your warriors are safe here, Epher." She turned back toward the north and stared across the desert, and a sigh flowed through her. "Though I grieve for the rest of Zohar. It might be that we here are the last. The last lions who still roar."

Epher stood at the walls, staring north too, and a lump swelled in his throat. His fingers clutched the sandstone battlements.

I lost you, my parents. I lost you, Maya. I lost you, Beth Eloh.

How many people had been in Beth Eloh when Claudia had burned it? A hundred thousand normally lived there, but countless more had been fleeing into Beth Eloh from the ravaged countryside. Half a million? Twice as many? All Zoharites from across their tiny kingdom, aside from this oasis atop the desert?

Did you slaughter them all, Claudia? Are we few hundred all that remain of our nation?

Her ghost seemed to rise before him, to caress his cheek, to kiss his lips as she had kissed them countless times. Nausea rose in Epher. How could he have once loved Claudia? How could he have loved one who had descended into such madness, had slaughtered his nation, carrying out atrocities that even Seneca and Porcia had not dreamed of?

He climbed a guard tower that rose from the wall. The stairway coiled upward, and finally he emerged onto the battlements. He stared northwest, and he saw the Aelarians there, camped across the canyon. An entire legion, five thousand men bred to kill. If even two hundred made it into this compound, their superior weapons, armor, and training would mean the end of Tarath El. The end of Zohar.

"They will not enter." Epher's eyes stung. "I swear it, Father. I swear it, Mother. I swear it, Maya. I could not save you. But the nine hundred here will survive. We will outlive this cruel empire that has ravaged our home. Eventually Aelar will fall, even if we must survive here for years, for decades, for generations. And Zohar will rise again from the ashes."

He looked down at the legions. On the hill across the canyon, Claudia still sat on her horse. She stared up at him. She raised her hand in a mock salute.

Epher turned away, left the guard tower, and rejoined his people. The siege of Tarath El began.

TIRUS

Today is my wedding day. Tirus licked his lips. Today the world is mine.

A thousand souls stood in the temple of Aelia, goddess of music and mythical founder of this splendorous city. A marble statue of the goddess rose here, thrice the height of a man, holding a lyre. Tirus stood at the altar, wearing an ultramarine toga strewn with golden eagles, and a laurel rested on his head. He had never been one for fancy dress—back in his long, languishing years in Zohar, he had rarely worn more than a simple white toga—but now his life had changed. He was no longer merely an ambassador to a backwater, a dog on the Octavius leash.

Now I am the master. Now all those in this empire will bark for me.

Julia, his beloved, stood at his side. Tirus looked at her, savoring the sight. For twenty long years, as he had rotted in Zohar with his shrew of a wife, Tirus had longed for her, his sweet, young, delicate sister-in-law. For twenty long years, he had watched her from a distance. He had watched her bloom, her breasts grow, her hips widen, her eyes fill with the wisdom of women. And he had watched her spring pass, watched her begin to wither—the first wrinkles invade her face, a streak of white flow across her hair. And still he loved her.

Today Julia was resplendent, wearing a crimson stola and jewels from the east. Unlike many ladies of Aelar, she did not dye her hair. The white streak blazed across her dark mane, and her eyes shone as she gave him a small, crooked smile.

I could have any woman I want in this empire, Tirus thought, reaching out to clasp her hand. I could have any young, sweet flower off the street, beauties still in full bloom. But I choose you, Julia. Always.

Porphyry columns surrounded the temple's rotunda, holding aloft a dome worked with stucco engravings. A sunbeam shone through an oculus, illuminating marble statues, blue tiles trimmed with gold, and the guests. The finest of Aelar had come here—the wealthy, the powerful, the sniveling and the ass-licking toads from across the city. For long years, Tirus had stood among them. Today it was him they fawned over.

A priest stood before Tirus and Julia, a bent old man with scraggly white hair.

"Only several months ago," said the priest, "a tragedy struck Aelar. The savages of the east, may the gods curse them, took from us the lovely, demure Adriana Valerius, leaving our blessed Tirus a widower."

Adriana had been about as lovely as a toad, Tirus thought, and about as demure as a hog in heat.

"Surely the gods have blessed our beloved emperor," said the priest, "for so soon after his grief, they gift him the pure and pious Julia, great of graces."

Only last week, Tirus had seen Julia slowly, lovingly strangle a slave girl to death, desiring to experience the delights of murder—one of the many delights the palace gave them. She was about as pure and pious as a whore's crotch by morning, another reason why Tirus loved her.

The priest droned on, and Tirus grew weary. What was the use of being emperor if he couldn't even strangle the gods' messengers? Finally, blessedly, the old priest shut up, and a slave brought forth a dog. The hound was well-groomed, tall and noble and white with intelligent eyes. The priest placed the dog upon the altar, and Tirus himself did the honors, slicing the animal's throat and letting it bleed into a bowl, a sacrifice to Aelia. When the animal had fallen still, the priest placed a drop of blood upon Tirus's lips, then more blood on Julia's lips. They sealed their bond with a bloodstained kiss.

"With blood," said the priest, "with sacrifice, and with love—good Tirus and Julia are wed!"

That evening in the palace, they feasted. Even as the Gaelian horde still terrorized the countryside and camped outside the walls, the goods of the world flowed into Aelar through its free port. The Empire's foundation had always been water, not land, an empire of ports and galleys and splendors along coasts. The guests reclined on low couches, while nude slaves danced and played lyres and flutes. Other slaves served course after course. There were fertilized duck eggs, a favorite of Tirus's, the embryos soft and chewy and wet when you cracked open the shell, their beaks rubbery. There were plates of mollusks and living clams, their salty flesh quivering. For the main course, the slaves wheeled forth an entire roast lion, its mane reattached to its cooked body. Its arrival drew cheers from the diners.

"Someday we must travel to Nur and hunt these beasts ourselves," said Julia, feeding on the meat. "I've heard men even eat giraffes there."

Tirus plucked another duck embryo out of its shell and slurped it down. "After I crush the skull of that pup Seneca, we'll winter there. It's warm there in winter. We'll hunt all the giraffes that you please."

"And the Nurians," said Julia. She shivered with excitement. "They're such splendid barbarians. I would adore to kill one."

"We'll kill many together, my love," said Tirus. "They still sell a few in the slave markets. We'll have some killed in the arena tomorrow."

Tirus had been making secret love to Julia for nearly twenty years—hidden away from his wife and prying eyes. Tonight they finally made love as man and wife in the bed of an emperor. Their passion nearly shattered the bed and sent the slaves fleeing, and Tirus no longer felt like a man in his fifties, stocky and lumbering, but a youth with enough fire in his loins to boil the sea.

Nobody can stop me now, he thought as he climaxed into his wife. Not the Gaelians. Not the Zoharites. Not Seneca the pup. The world and all its treasures are mine, and I've earned them. With blood and sweat and the passage of too many summers, I've earned my triumph.

That night, as Julia slept in their canopy bed, Tirus rose and walked across the cold floor. He stood naked at the arched window, staring out at the city. From here in the palace, he could see for leagues. The lights of Aelar spread down the hill and across the plain, finally ending at the sea. Countless lights shone here like a field of stars. One of those lights, Tirus knew, was the light of the Lunapar, the finest brothel in the city. The place where he had seen Ofeer. The place where she had cut him.

The wound had blessedly healed, leaving but a thin scar, but Tirus couldn't stop thinking about it. About her. Even back in Zohar, whenever he would visit Jerael's villa, Tirus's eye would stray toward the man's daughter, the half-Aelarian. To Ofeer. Her older sister had always been brutish, the younger sister too meek, but Ofeer . . . Often, Tirus had dreamed of seeing Ofeer naked, of taking her back to Aelar, of making her his concubine. His old wife, curse her soul, would never have approved. But Julia . . . He looked over at his slumbering new wife. Julia would approve of such a thing.

Ofeer can be ours, Tirus thought. Ours to break. Ours to slowly suffocate until she stops kicking.

He pulled on his toga, then covered himself in cloak and hood. He left his chamber, Julia still sleeping in their bed. He left his palace. He took with him only two guards, disguising them too in cloaks and hoods. They walked through the dark, cold city. Wind moaned through the alleyways, beggars reached out scrawny hands, and drunkards stumbled to vomit into alleys and gutters. Finally Tirus reached the street corner where rose the Lunapar, the finest building on the block. Warm lights shone in its glass windows, and even at this late hour, close to dawn, laughter and moans of pleasure sounded behind its door.

Tirus stepped into the brothel. It felt like coming home. Erotic frescoes covered the walls, finer than any of the prim and proper artwork back in the palace. The lupi lounged on low couches, their togas open to expose their breasts, as they smoked hintan from bubbling hookahs. A girl—a new one Tirus didn't recognize—was serving wine to patrons. Tirus remained hidden in his hood. He recognized some of these men. They had been his wedding guests only hours ago, men who all owned concubines at home yet still visited the Lunapar for its pleasures.

Mariana approached Tirus. She was one of his favorites, a woman with long brown hair and pale skin, one Tirus had taken into his bed many times.

"Dominus!" She smiled broadly, though he saw the fear in her eyes. He had beaten that fear into her during his last visit. "How may I serve you, dominus?"

Tirus walked through the brothel, gazing around, seeking her. He turned toward Mariana. "She hasn't returned, has she? The girl you called Odelia?"

The girl I call Ofeer, he thought. The girl I will find and kill.

Mariana shook her head. "No, dominus. I know of your desire for her. If she returns, I will summon you at once. I—"

He struck her. She gasped and fell back a step, her lip cut.

"You know nothing of my desires," Tirus said, "nor of where to summon me." He snorted. "Fetch me Calina. She's more phlegmatic than you. Send her up to my chamber."

He spun around, not waiting for an answer, and walked upstairs. They kept a chamber for him, always empty whenever he was away. Once the pup Seneca would frequent that room, the finest in the establishment, but now the boy was fucking his Nurian wife in the south. There was another wretch Tirus vowed to slay with his own hands. He had always loathed the boy. Seneca had no more backbone than a squid, and he spread his tentacles too far.

Finally Calina entered his chamber, her toga wrapped around her. Some of Tirus's rage faded. Calina had always been a favorite, a rare beauty. Her mother had been an Aelarian lupa, her father a Nurian sailor. Her skin was dusky, her eyes huge and dark, her frame delicate yet her hips wide. In Ofeer's absence, she would mollify Tirus before he returned to his wife's bed.

"Come to me, darling," Tirus said, then noticed that tears filled her eyes. "Sweetness. Why do you weep?"

Calina sniffed and opened her toga, exposing her nakedness. Her belly swelled, barely noticeable, no larger than after a heavy meal. She placed her hand upon it.

"I am with child," she whispered, finally daring to meet his eyes. "Your child."

Tirus stared.

His rage roared back. Fire filled him.

"My child?" He roared and knocked aside a side table, scattering mugs of wine. "My child!"

Calina cowered. "Please, dominus. Do not rage. I—"

"You lie." Tirus grabbed her throat, cutting off her scream. "Some drunken soldier filled your belly, and you claim the spawn to be mine. Do you think an emperor would father the child of a half-breed barbarian?" He squeezed tighter. "Do you seek to blackmail me for coin, is that it?"

When he loosened his fingers just the slightest, Calina gasped for air. "I'm sorry, dominus. I'm sorry. Forgive me."

But no. This Tirus would not forgive. For her to claim that he—emperor of Aelar!—should father a child with a whore, a subhuman mongrel no less?

"This is a problem," Tirus said. "One I will not tolerate. One I will take care of right now." He clenched his fist.

Her screams rolled through the Lunapar that night. Her screams were so loud that even across the street, lanterns kindled in windows, and the other lupi burst into the chamber. Tirus shoved the whores aside, leaving Calina curled up on the floor, bleeding between her legs, gasping, weeping.

Tirus made his way out into the street. For long moments he stood, drawing breath after breath until the rage calmed.

"I did what I had to do," he said into the night. "Only one womb will bear my son—the womb of Julia."

His guards rejoined him. As he walked back to the palace, Tirus imagined meeting Ofeer here again. She had been pregnant last time he had met her. Perhaps he would slay her baby too, would hear Ofeer scream. Yes, that would please him. Tirus smiled and licked his lips.

You will suffer, Ofeer. You will see your child die before I strangle the light out of your eyes.

OLIVE

As the world burned, they stripped bare in shadows and dancing candlelight. As the world fell, they stood before shimmering water. As the screams of the dying still echoed, as all their kingdom swirled as ash, they had these shadows, these candles, this love.

Olive did not know her true name, if she had ever had one. She did not know if she was even Zoharite, perhaps the babe of some lost northern traveler who had bequeathed her flaming red hair, pale skin that burned here in the desert, and a wild heart. But she knew this: She loved her husband. She loved all that Epher fought for. All she lived for now, with the world gone, was their love.

The bathhouse atop Tarath El was dark, and between the columns that surrounded it, Olive could see countless stars strewn across the night sky. Within the bathhouse, a thousand candles burned like flaming stars, sisters to the heavenly lights. She and her husband stood on opposite sides of the pool, facing each other. Between them, the water steamed, flowing from hidden pipes that delved deep into the mountain, drinking from the deep caverns where the world was all fire and stone and steam. Solemnly, Olive pulled the straps on her tattered tunic, a gift he had given her months ago, simple cotton that was precious to her. Her garment fell around her feet, and the steam caressed her nakedness. Her body was still too slender, lacking the wide hips and heavy breasts that the men of this dry, hard desert desired, the body a woman needed to birth healthy babes who'd survive in this kingdom. She was not beautiful, not like the demon who had burned their world, not like the other women Epher had loved in his days as a lord upon the coast. But all that Olive had she gave to him.

She had grown up wild. She had grown up lost. She had run with jackals and wolves across the desert, and she had kindled fires in forests, and she had howled to the moon, coated with mud, the blood of animals on her teeth. She had never known the love, the emotions, the thoughts and dreams and wonders and fears of men. She had been an animal, but with him she was a woman.

Across the pool, Epher too doffed his tunic, and he stood naked before her, the steam rising around him. Like her, he carried the scars of their long war. Every scar was a life saved. Every scar was a miracle, as true as the miracle that Maya had summoned at the Gate of Myrrh.

Olive stepped into the pool, moving down a staircase until the hot water rose to her shoulders. Epher entered the pool from the other side, walked through the water, and stood before her. She caressed his cheek.

"You fucking bastard piece of shit," she whispered.

He smiled thinly. "I love you too, my sunrise."

They kissed in the pool, the steam rising around them. Outside, the world had fallen. Outside, the last shadows gathered to extinguish the light. But here they were pure. Here they were at peace. Here they were lions.

They made love in the pool. Softly yet urgently, her back pressed to the tiled wall, her elbows against the rim. He thrust into her, steadily, surely, gazing into her eyes, and she clutched his hair and tugged it as she climaxed. Then she collapsed into his arms, and she felt his seed fill her underwater.

She melted into his embrace, her head against his shoulder.

"Epher," she whispered. "Epher and Olive. Your name is Red."

He held her for a long time. In warmth. In safety. Olive closed her eyes, and she remembered those long years before him.

She had been nameless.

She had hunted on the hills.

She had been fire. She had been blood and meat in the dawn. She had been shelter in a cave as rain streamed outside. She had been lightning. She had been fangs shining in shadows. She had been disease, shuddering, shivering. She had been a thousand pine nuts smashed under stones. She had been a dance of sunrise and sunset and the bustle of birds. She had been wind on a cliff, and the sea whispering, then roaring, roaring to her, howling, a blue-and-gray beast exploding over the shore. She had been seashells in the sand and secrets under the water. She had been raw, rotten fish washed ashore, leaking between teeth. She had been hiding from men who roamed the forest, who stoned her, who mocked her. She had been the sticky wound on her head, the slow recovery after the fall from a shattered branch. She had been thirst. Sometimes all she had been was thirst, seeking, trembling, finding no water in the dry summers. She had been feet racing from wildfires that crackled through the brush. She had been feet bouncing on hot stones and smoldering ash. She had been the shivers of cold when the rain would not stop and she could not find her cave. She had been eyes. Yellow eyes in the forest staring into hers. She had been rustling in darkness. Owls. Things in the night. She had been the moon. She had been the observer of the stars, of a thousand comets that streamed above and made her laugh and spin around and weep for their beauty. She had been thoughts in pictures. She had been a mouth that knew only feeding, drinking, cackling, screaming, but not the words the others spoke. She had been afraid of the others. She had been fingers raw when carving arrows. She had been fury. She had been fear. She had been all those things before she had learned what they meant. Before she had met him. Before she had learned the secret words, these symbols for everything that she was, had been, would never be. Now she was Olive. Now Olive meant everything but meant nothing.

"Epher and Olive," she whispered to him, holding him so close. "Together. At the end of everything."

"This isn't the end," he said. "This is an oasis. This is the last safe place in the world. I don't believe that this storm will endure. When the winds blow and the hail hammers down, and all is darkness and sound and rage, it's easy to think that the world is ending. But the storm always passes, and new light dawns. We'll outlast our enemies. We'll outlive this empire. This is not the end."

Tears filled her eyes, and she stroked his cheek. "Epher, I am with child."

His eyes widened, and she prepared herself to see fear in them, to see these tidings, normally so blessed, crush him at this time of war. But she saw joy. He laughed, grabbed her waist, lifted her high, and kissed her belly.

"A child." Suddenly he frowned, lowered her, and stared into her eyes. "You should not have been fighting! You need to rest. You—"

"I fine." She kissed his lips. "You going to be a father. Here on island in desert. Here in little kingdom rising above the world." She trembled, and her tears turned bitter. "We need make this place safe. This can no be the end."

His arms were stronger than the walls of cities. His embrace was warmth, safety in the storm. "We're safe here, Olive. The three of us. All of us. We're safe."

Issazion had given them a bedchamber in Tarath El's palace, three stories above the plateau. Embers glowed in a brazier, filling the room with warmth and soft light. As Epher slept, Olive lay holding him, eyes open, unable to find rest. She kept glancing at the wall, at the fresco of Beth Eloh that sprawled there, a masterwork with details of a hundred towers and a thousand homes, the Temple rising above them all. All gone. All fallen to rubble. When she finally slept, she was there again, running through the city, running on the walls, running from fire, then lost, lost in the forest again, blood on her teeth and howling at the moon.

KOREN

They marched down the road to Aelar, passing through devastation. The Republic Army. Thousands of legionaries, once stationed in distant Elania, now marched to topple the Empire. And among them marched a Zoharite, a man far from home.

Koren walked quietly at the vanguard. For the first few days on the road, he had laughed, jested, sung songs to pass the time, rarely silent, sometimes spinning around or dancing as he walked. But as they drew closer to Aelar, as the landscape changed, his mirth left him. This was not a land for mirth. This land had seen war, and its smoldering, stinking remains still lay along the roadsides.

Valentina walked beside him, eyes haunted, blinking too often. She had abandoned her soft stolas on this road. She now wore the armor of a legatus, a commander in the legions. An eagle soared across her breastplate, studded leather straps hung across her pale thighs, and a crested helmet hid her white hair. A gladius hung at her side, and she carried a semicylindrical scutum shield. It was hard for Koren to imagine that this warrior, ash on her armor and steel in her eyes, was the same soft-spoken, frightened Valentina who had plucked him out of Claudia's grip.

"Gael," Valentina said. She wrapped her fingers around the hilt of her gladius. "Gael did this."

The Republic Army kept walking, three legions pulled from the end of the world, heading toward the capital that still lay many parsa'ot in the south. The ruins of a town smoldered along the eastern roadside. The homes had burned. The city gates lay smashed. Gibbets hung from the town's archway, clutching skeletons like iron fists. Crows bustled over what remained of the temple and villas, and feral cats hissed from the streets. If anyone had survived the slaughter, they had fled this place long ago, perhaps seeking shelter within Aelar's walls.

"How do you know it was Gael?" Koren asked.

Red rimmed Valentina's eyes, and tears spiked her lashes. "No Aelarian challenger to the throne would do this. Not Seneca. Not any legatus. All other enemies—the Zoharites, the Nurians—if any did attack, they would come from the south. This could only be the work of the Gaelian horde. They did not come to conquer. They came to destroy."

She mourned the victims, Koren knew. Yet as he walked here, he couldn't help but feel a sickening sense of . . . justice perhaps? Sweet revenge? Aelar had crushed a hundred lands. They had destroyed his own kingdom, murdered his friends, his family. Now they tasted their own bitter medicine. They deserved this. But then they passed by the bones of two children, curled up on the roadside, and all sense of gloating abandoned Koren, leaving room only for remorse. For mourning.

"I'm sorry, Valentina." They walked by a burnt inn. Its walls had fallen, and skeletons lay on its floor. "I have no proper words of comfort."

The road took them through the ruined town. A smashed temple rose to one side, its roof fallen, its chipped columns rising like teeth in a wolf's grin. A marble statue of a goddess—Koren thought it was Dia, goddess of spring—still rose outside the temple, but its head had been knocked off, replaced with the rotting head of an Aelarian, a golden laurel resting in the maggoty hair. A fountain rose in a courtyard, corpses seeping into its water. A chained dog barked madly, withered down to skin and bones. A stone theater rose beyond burnt trees. A mountain of blackened corpses still smoked in the arena, limbs slung together.

Everywhere, Koren saw the signs of battle. A cloven shield thrust out from the mud beside what might have been stables. A shattered blade lay by a severed leg. Koren saw signs of the Gaelian forces now: a cloven mead horn, a shield bearing a wyvern sigil, a shattered harp with torn strings, and a cracked vambrace worked with motifs of rampant elks. He thought back to the Gaelian fleet that had assaulted Seneca's ships a year ago, the battle Atalia had drowned in.

"The Gaelians murdered my sister," he said softly. He looked at a clump of golden hair that clung to a fallen club. "When we were both slaves."

The Republic Army walked in solemn silence. A few legionaries mouthed prayers. Some gazed at the ruins with red eyes, while some bowed their heads. Other soldiers stared with dark eyes, clutching their weapons, as if already imagining their revenge.

Yet there was one in this army who smiled.

Avia, the dark lumer they had picked up farther north, walked beside Koren, wrapped in a white cloak. Her eyes shone as she gazed at the devastation, and when she saw the mountain of corpses in the arena, her smile grew into a grin. Her golden hair flowed in the wind like a banner, her blue eyes shone, and the cold wind turned her cheeks pink. Her pendant, an inverted candelabrum, hung around her neck.

Koren shivered to see that amulet, to see the amusement in Avia's eyes.

Dark lumers, he thought, and icy fingers clutched his spine. Those who ignite luminescence not to harness its light but its shadows.

He was about to approach Avia, to tell her to wipe the grin off her face, when movement caught his eye. Koren turned his head to see a shadow scuttling between the ruins. He frowned and drew his sword.

Valentina stepped closer to him. "What is it?"

"We're not alone in this town," Koren whispered.

Valentina gestured for several legionaries. They departed from their cohort, drawing their swords. Koren stepped off road, approaching the ruins where he'd seen the shadow. Valentina and several soldiers followed. Fallen bricks and shattered furniture lay around their feet. Koren winced when he stepped around a burnt cradle, a baby's bones inside. Again—there! He saw it. A shadow ahead, soon vanishing, and a sound of scattering pebbles. Several columns rose ahead, perhaps once the portico of a villa or small temple, the rest of the building gone.

Koren took a deep breath, raced around a column, and raised his sword.

"Please, dominus! Mercy!"

Several children huddled in the ruins, pushing themselves back against the remains of a wall. Blood stained their hair and clothes. One girl was ashen, her leg shattered, her foot all but gone.

Koren lowered his sword. Valentina emerged around the column too and gasped. She looked over her shoulder. "Healers! We need healers! Batya, we need you!"

They waited with the orphans for an agonizingly long time. Three were well enough to stand, and one girl even clutched a brick as a weapon. But the others could only lie in the rubble. One boy's belly was pierced, a hint of entrails pushing at the wound; he lay breathing raggedly, moments from death. Another child was burnt, half her face gone. Crows circled above, waiting for the feast.

You'll have to go hungry, crows, Koren thought when the healers finally arrived. Two were medici—healers of the legions. In Aelar's military, only the medici were allowed to grow beards, signifying their wisdom. They knelt by the wounded children and opened kits, revealing the tools of their trade: scalpels, vials, and bandages. Batya rushed forth with them. The gray-haired lumer had once served the cruel governor of Elania, bearing his bucket of meat for ravens. Now the aging Zoharite knelt above the children, kindled her reserves of lume, and placed her glowing hands upon the wounds.

Koren stood a few paces back, watching with bated breath. Yet hard as she tried, Batya could not heal the child with the slit belly. Finally the lumer gave up and moved to another child. A medicus replaced her, pushed the seeping entrails back inside, then stitched the cut. The child screamed all the while, and it took two legionaries to hold him down.

Koren turned away, sickened. He walked away from the ruins. His head felt too light.

"How could men do such a thing?" he said softly, speaking to himself.

A voice answered from nearby. "How could men fight the evil of the Empire? Quite easily, it seems."

Koren started, nearly falling in the rubble. He realized that Avia had stood near him all this time, blending into one of the walls that still stood. She stepped closer, smiling.

"Where were you when Valentina called for healers?" Koren said, not bothering to mask the harshness in his voice. "You know Luminosity. You could have helped the children. You can still help."

Avia raised her eyebrows. "Can I? No, Koren. I'm no healer. I do not use the light of Luminosity." She stepped closer, leaned toward him, and grinned savagely, exposing her canines. "I use the shadows. I do not heal. I hurt."

Koren shook his head sadly. "You grin with bloodlust as children lie dying. Fighting the Empire? These are innocents."

She scoffed. "Aelarian children. In a few years, they'll be old enough to join the legions, to pillage and rape and burn and destroy. If you truly cared about defeating the Empire, why didn't you kill them? When you stumbled across the cowering children, if you cared for life, you'd have slit their throats."

He grabbed her arms, glaring. She only smiled sweetly in return.

"How is killing children caring for life?"

Honey dripped from Avia's smile. "You'd be saving all those they'll kill in a few years, if our quest to destroy the Empire fails. Look around you, Koren of Zohar. Look at the ruins, the charred skeletons, the ghosts of a dead town. Do you think Zohar looks any different now? This is victory. This is conquest. This is what Aelar, a city of a million monsters, will look like if we're to save our home."

Koren released her. He looked away. "Is Zohar even a home to you? You're only half-Zoharite. Your mother is from Berenia."

"Another nation the Empire destroyed," said the dark lumer. "Another nation I will avenge. Come now, Koren. The precious children of our enemy have been tended to. Let us continue south, so that we may butcher all their countrymen."

"We won't have to butcher anyone," Koren said. "We're marching to restore the Republic, not to conquer and burn."

She patted his cheek. "Whatever lets you sleep at night, sweet prince of lions."

As she walked away, Koren thought back to the legionaries he had slain—in Zohar and on the road to Denegar. He knew that their faces would always be with him, and that more would join them before the end.

They continued down the road: Koren, Valentina, two lumers, the wounded children, and thousands of legionaries. The ruined town gave way to a forest of pines, cork oaks, and cypress trees. After many days in the snowy north, Koren welcomed the sight. Gone were the elms and maple trees of the north, and gone was the snow. They were drawing near the southern coast now. Soon they would reach Aelar, the end of their journey.

But not the end of my journey, Koren thought. If we can truly take Aelar, I will then travel home to Zohar.

The thought chilled more than comforted him. He had been away from Zohar for nearly a year now. What would he find when he returned? Was Epher still alive and fighting? What about Mother and Maya? How would Koren tell them of Atalia drowning, of Ofeer sold into slavery? Did they even know that Father had died?

Koren lowered his head as he walked. Whatever home awaited him in Zohar, it was not the home of his youth. The memories of the villa on Pine Hill, of his family gathered around the table, joyous, lighting candles and singing—those would remain merely memories. If that villa still stood, it would be full of ghosts now, forever the place where Father had died.

A bird hooted in the forest, pulling Koren back to the present. He looked toward the trees, seeking the animal. Another bird called out, even louder, from the other side of the road.

Thousands of whistles filled the air.

Koren froze and looked upward.

"Arrows!" he shouted. "Shields up!"

He raised his scutum shield—a gift from the legions, painted red and gold and fringed with bronze. Arrows slammed into it. From under the semicylindrical shield, he glimpsed more arrows peppering the forces. Valentina knelt at his side under her own shield. There were not the simple, functional Aelarian arrows. These arrows were carved like birds and dragons and painted blue and red, each one a work of fierce art.

The last arrow slammed into a shield. The air erupted with countless howls, and Koren peeked around his shield to see a horde charging through the trees toward the road.

He leaped to his feet, drew his sword, and moved closer to Valentina.

The barbarians ran from both sides, thousands of them—warriors of Gael. Brutish men, the largest Koren had ever seen, roared and waved clubs and swords and spears. Their beards flowed down to their waists, the colors of dawn, strewn with bones and beads. Women ran with them, shrieking, their blond hair braided, their faces painted green and red. The barbarians wore patches of armor over fur and leather, and they moved with no units, no discipline—a mob pouring from the forest and roaring for death.

Koren raised sword and shield. "Stay near me, Valentina."

She did not draw her sword. She held open hands to the sky. "Gael!" Valentina shouted. "Gael, lower your weapons! We mean you no harm! Speak to us!"

Yet the horde ignored her. A Gaelian charged toward Koren, grinning, swinging a sword in one hand and an axe in the other. She was a towering woman, as tall as Koren, wider and probably stronger. Iron rings pierced her nose and ears, tattoos coiled across the shaved sides of her head, and death danced in her eyes.

Koren raised his shield, catching the axe's blow, and parried with his gladius. The barbarian shrieked, spun, and lashed her blades again. Koren fell to one knee, catching the assault on his shield. The axe cracked the wood, emerging by his face, nearly close enough to shave his beard.

Koren rose with a howl, shoving the Gaelian back—by God, the woman was strong—and thrust his gladius over the bronze rim of his shield. The barbarian knocked his blade aside and swung her axe again, cracking the scutum's bronze lining. Koren shoved forward his crumbling shield, slamming the iron bulb in its center against the Gaelian. The woman fell back, and Koren drove the shield forward again, smashing her face. He thrust his sword. It sank through the furs coating the Gaelian. Blood spurted and the woman fell.

From the corner of his eye, he caught another blade swinging his way. He raised his shield—what was left, at least—and caught the blow. A chunk of shield fell off, revealing a towering Gaelian with a bushy beard. The man dwarfed Koren, and it took several thrusts of his blade to shove the man into a crowd of legionaries. Their gladius swords did the rest.

The battle raged across the road and forest. The Gaelians kept swarming, thousands emerging from between the trees, trapping the legionaries in a gauntlet. The Aelarians were skilled in open battlefields. On the forest road, they hunkered together, shields raised, a frightened centipede beset by countless biting ants. Every moment, another legionary fell to the onslaught.

"Kill them, they're just fucking barbarians!" shouted an officer before a shieldmaiden's axe cracked open his skull.

Koren fought wildly, but for every barbarian he killed, more emerged from the trees.

"Off the road!" Koren shouted. "Valentina, we have to fight them in the forest! We're getting killed here."

She nodded. She pointed her blade toward the trees. "Legio XVI! Into the forest! Off the road. Legio XVII, take the other side!" She coned a hand around her mouth. "Gaelians, hear me! I mean you no harm. We come in peace!"

The legions spread out, leaving the road and marching between the trees. Koren ran with them, but he quickly saw the flaw of this approach too. The Aelarian legions trained for meticulous formations, shields locked together, blades thrusting out from the enclosure, forming impenetrable walls. In the dense forest, trees, shrubs, and boulders broke their formations, segmenting the units into individual men. Meanwhile, the Gaelians moved like ghosts. Shrieking, they leaped from trees, swung from branches, and vaulted over boulders, unburdened by cumbersome armor.

They were raised in the forest, Koren thought, parrying a blow from a one-eyed brute. They will slaughter us all.

He hacked the one-eyed man's legs, then turned around, panting, seeking Valentina. He could not see her, only hear her in the distance. The battle spread all around, and the road was lost.

He spotted Avia sitting in a tree, dangling her legs and whistling a tune. She laughed as a Gaelian below clove a legionary's helmet, scalping the man. Koren ran, cut down a Gaelian, and reached the tree where Avia sat on a branch. He glared up at the dark lumer. She was drinking wine and snacking on nuts as she watched the battle.

"Avia!" he shouted. "Avia, for fuck's sake. Do something!"

She looked down at him and waved. "I am! I'm enjoying a splendid performance."

He grunted, grabbed her foot, and yanked her off the branch. She landed before him, and a scowl replaced her smile.

"You made me spill my wine."

"These Gaelians will spill our fucking brains unless you help." Koren grabbed her shoulder. "Do that thing! With . . . the ice demon! Whatever you did back north."

Avia ducked as a Gaelian thrust a spear. Koren cursed, kicked dirt onto the man, and ran him through. He looked back at Avia.

She shrugged. "There's no ice here."

"Then do something else!" Koren shook her. "Summon some other creature. Use your dark magic."

She chewed her lip. "I think . . . not. The Aelarians have been butchering our people, Koren. They've been slaughtering Zoharites across the world. I quite enjoy seeing them being slaughtered."

"We need these Aelarians to restore the Republic!" Koren said. "To let Valentina rebuild the Senate! You want to help whatever's left of Zohar? Make sure Valentina makes it to Aelar."

Avia rolled her eyes and sighed. "I don't have much lume left. I haven't been to Zohar since this whole messy war began. You do know that lumers need to visit home once in a while to restock, right?"

"Use whatever lume you have," Koren said. "Do whatever you need to do, just stop those bloody Gaelians."

The dark lumer nodded. "Watch over me."

She closed her eyes, inhaled deeply, and raised her chin. Around them, the battle still raged. The legionaries tried to form smaller formations, to lock shields together, but could barely move in the rough terrain, and the Gaelians kept leaping and running everywhere, cutting them down.

Better hurry, Avia, Koren thought, tapping his foot. He stood by her with a raised sword. He tossed down his cracked shield and grabbed another one from a corpse. When he glanced at Avia, he saw the first hints of light weave around her fingers, barely perceptible.

Howling, a Gaelian charged toward them, swinging a massive mace, its iron head shaped like a horned skull. The barbarian's eyes were mad, his beard stained with blood, and Koren grimaced.

"Avia . . ." he muttered, but the dark lumer still stood with closed eyes, breathing deeply.

The Gaelian bellowed. Koren cringed and raised his shield. The mace slammed into the wood, shattering it into a thousand pieces, nearly snapping Koren's arm. Koren fell to his knee. The Gaelian raised his mace again, and Koren rolled aside. The iron skull hit a rock on the ground, cracking it. Koren lashed his sword and nicked the brute's arm.

"Avia, hurry!" he shouted.

The Gaelian raised his mace again, grinning at Koren, and spoke in a foreign language. Koren didn't need to understand Gaelian to know the brute wasn't wishing him well. The mace swung, and Koren leaped back, hit a tree, then leaped sideways when the mace cracked the trunk. He thrust his sword again, slicing the barbarian's side.

"I am the son of Jerael Sela, the grandson of King Rahamyah!" Koren dodged another blow. "I learned swordplay from the best masters in Zohar." He grunted as the mace glanced off his vambrace, denting the metal. "But you still fucking terrify me!"

The Gaelian swung the mace down again, and Koren caught the blow on his arm, screaming as the iron vambrace cracked. He drove his sword forward, plunging the blade into the Gaelian's neck, then shoving, shoving it deeper, shoving with all his strength, shouting as he drove the blade deeper until it emerged from the other side. He pulled the sword free, then stumbled back, struggling not to gag, not to faint.

"Thanks for the help, Avia," he said, turning toward her.

When Koren saw the dark lumer again, he gasped. Light now crawled up her arms and glowed behind her closed eyelids. Her hair rose around her as if floating underwater. Slowly, Avia levitated. She hovered above the fallen pine needles. Her cloak billowed, and when she opened her eyes, they shone white. For an instant Koren lowered his sword, awed by the brilliance and wonder of Luminosity.

But Avia was a dark lumer. She cared not for this light.

Beneath her, shadows gathered.

When Avia raised her arms, the shadows spread out like serpents slithering across the forest floor. Avia's fingers uncurled, twisted, weaving the shadows. Fallen leaves rustled, wilted, crumbled. The shadows kept spreading across the ground, then grabbed the roots of trees, climbed trunks, and creaked along branches.

The forest wilted.

Creaking, mournful sounds rose from the boughs. Animals fled from the branches. The leaves crackled and curled as if burning, though Koren saw no fire. The trunks shriveled, twisted, and tilted. Hundreds of trees around Avia withered, then disintegrated.

The dark lumer gasped for air and fell to her knees, and the light fled from her.

Valentina stood across the wilted forest. She stared at Koren for an instant, then turned toward her men.

"Back into formations!" she shouted, raising a javelin overhead. "Wall formations! Now!"

Across the land, with the trees gone, the legionaries were able to quickly form their lines. They created tortoise formations, shells of shields closing them. Centuries now moved together with precision, shields locked into place, spears thrusting out from the enclosure. The Gaelians charged against them, but their weapons couldn't break through the shields, and they fell to the spears and swords. Aelarian chariots now charged from the road, free to maneuver through the clearings, and tore through the barbarian horde. Spinning scythes ripped through the legs of Gaelians. Still the shadows continued to spread like a fungus, withering tree by tree, leaving the Gaelians no places to hide. Their corpses piled up.

The sun was low when the battle ended and the final Gaelians fled.

Hundreds of legionaries had fallen, and their living comrades burned the corpses in great funeral pyres.

The survivors marched on in darkness, leaving the smoldering dead.

"More of those bastards await us in Aelar," Koren said to Valentina. They walked side by side under the moon.

Blood stained Valentina's breastplate and helmet. When she looked at him, he saw grief in her eyes.

"I was able to make peace with the Elanians," she said. "I failed here. Hundreds, maybe thousands died because of my war. All because they don't speak Aelarian." She lowered her head. "They died because of a misunderstanding. They thought I was calling for war when I was calling for peace."

Koren held her hand. "We'll have peace. When this is all over, when the dust settles, when the dead are mourned, when the Empire has fallen, we'll have peace."

Valentina looked at him with damp eyes. "Yet how many more will die before that day?"

He had no answer. Hundreds? Thousands? Millions?

"May these have been the last," he said, knowing those were hollow words, knowing that many more would fall before the end.

They walked on in darkness, heading south along the road to Aelar.

ATALIA

She lay awake in her cell on the eve of battle, unable to sleep.

Her chamber was comfortable enough. Atalia the Desert Lioness had won enough battles in the arena to earn some comforts. She still lived in a small chamber in the Ludus Magnus, the school of gladiators, and a barred door still trapped her at night. But the chamber was no longer bare stone and straw. A mattress topped her bed, stuffed with actual feathers. A jug of strong red wine stood on her table. Leyla, the school's domina, had even offered Atalia a slave to rub her feet, massage her back, and—if Atalia wished it—pleasure her in bed. Atalia lay on the downy mattress, and she had drunk most of the wine, but she had refused that last gift.

I want nobody but my husband by my side, she thought, gazing up at the ceiling.

She had loved men before. There had been a couple of boys in her youth, silly ones back in Gefen, one or two she had kissed on the beach. There had been Daor, her soldier, whom she had loved, whom she had left buried in Gael. But she had never known a love like with Berengar. She had hated him at first, true. Had fought him, sought to kill him. She had seen him as nothing but a beast, burly, brutish, all hair and scars and cruelty. And she had peeled back those layers. She had seen the noble, kind soul within. Now Atalia would have given anything to lie in his arms, to feel so small, so safe in his massive embrace.

"But I don't even know if you still live," she whispered into the shadows.

When finally she slept, she dreamed that she broke out of the Ludus Magnus, that she found him again, that she leaped into his embrace, and that they fought Aelar together until its walls shattered. Yet in her dreams, when the walls fell, they became the walls of Gefen, falling into the sea as Seneca laughed, as her father hung on the cross under a storm.

Leyla woke her at dawn. The gladiator trainer yanked the barred door open and entered the chamber. As always she wore the armor of a gladiatrix, armor for show, the breastplate molded to accentuate the breasts, the navel bare, the pteruges showing more thigh than they protected. Such armor would not protect a soldier on the field, but it wowed the crowd. Only the guards wore proper armor here. The collared slaves wore showpieces.

"Are you ready?" A whip hung from Leyla's side, but she did not move to grab it, and her voice was soft. "The time is near."

Atalia rose from her bed. She nodded. "I'm ready."

Today was the day Atalia had dreaded for weeks. The Ludi Victoriae. The grandest day in the Aelarian calendar. It was today, in the last days of winter, that Aelar celebrated its past victories, a day to honor savagery and bloodshed. Around the Acropolis, the chariots would race for laurels. Across the Empire, backyard slaves would battle for coins, and the dead would pile up in arenas. And in the glorious Amphitheatrum, where the emperor himself celebrated, the finest gladiators of the realm would battle to the death.

Atalia stepped into the bathhouse, where slaves washed her, shaved her body, oiled and perfumed her skin, and braided her black hair a hundred times. Here she dressed for the show: a manica of scales across the right arm, a strip of cloth for her loins, and metal cups for her breasts. It was lurid armor, ridiculous armor, the kind that always drew delighted roars from the crowd. Today, unlike many days in the arena, Atalia bore no dulled blades. The slaves placed a sharpened sword into her one hand, a small shield—no larger than a dinner plate—in the other. Finally they placed her helmet on her head, her old helmet, the one Berengar had given her, shaped as a lion's head.

When Atalia gazed at herself in the mirror, she did not see the brave soldier of Gefen nor the warrior of Gael. She saw a caricature. A slave. One whose death would not be in glory but for the entertainment of bloodthirsty spectators.

She hefted her sword. It was well balanced. Good steel. A better sword than she had ever wielded in Zohar's army. Today it would drink much blood. Because Atalia refused to die this day. Refused to die without seeing her husband and her home again. She would cut them all down. She would cut through every gladiator in the world until she had nobody left to fight, and then she would plunge her blade into Tirus's heart.

That morning the training yard was subdued. A few gladiators halfheartedly banged swords together. Most were silent. This day, they knew, many of them would die. Atalia spent the morning swinging her blade, forcing all memories and thoughts out of her mind, until all that remained was the sword.

It was noon when the horns blared from the Amphitheatrum, signaling the start of the festivities. The gladiators lowered their weapons and stared. From here in the training yard, they could see the top tier of the amphitheater and fluttering banners. They could hear the buzz and hum of the crowd taking their seats.

The bald, hulking Uro turned toward Atalia. His wound from Leyla's whip had healed, leaving only a thin scar across his face. He clasped Atalia's shoulder.

"Fight well today, lioness. May you shatter your enemies or die in glory and rise to the gods."

Atalia had no god but Eloh, and even Eloh seemed to have abandoned her, but she nodded. She clasped his arm. "Fight well today, you stinking brute. Shatter your enemies and all that."

A gladiatrix approached, her red hair strewn with braids, her face painted with blue stripes. Breeana stared at Atalia, sneered, and spat on her feet. "You won't last five fucks in there, rat. Get ready. Our blades meet today. Mine is thirsty." She walked on, knocking into Atalia as she passed, shoving her back.

"Good to have friends," Atalia muttered.

Uro grunted. "Better to have enemies in the Ludus. Makes it easier. May our blades never meet in battle. Come now. It begins."

Horns sounded again from the arena, and Leyla cracked her whip, herding the gladiators forward. They left the training yard, entering a tunnel that delved underground. The gladiators walked in darkness, passing under the city streets, until the tunnel sloped upward and led to a doorway. Beyond the doors Atalia could hear the roar of the crowd. Beyond the doors she would triumph or die.

The doors opened. The games began.

Uro was first to enter the arena, and Atalia watched as he battled a man on an elephant, finally slaying the animal with a sword between its ribs. The crowd roared and cheered as the mighty beast fell, then laughed as Uro slammed the rider's head against the ground, killing the man without the use of steel. Next, fifty criminals from the city were crucified in a great ring around the arena, their corpses set on fire as the crowd cried out in wonder. A chariot battle followed. Breeana rode in one chariot, and twenty more raced through the arena, until all had shattered and Breeana stood over the wreckage and the corpses of her enemies. As the games continued, Atalia stood in the tunnel, watching, her nausea growing with every death.

Throughout the battles, Atalia kept raising her eyes and staring across the arena. Tirus sat there in splendor, his imperial terrace worked into the tiers of seats. The emperor sat on an ivory throne between red-and-gold columns, guzzling wine as nude slaves lounged around him. With every death in the arena, Tirus leaned forward and cheered. Atalia remembered a stern, laconic ambassador, a man who had often frequented the villa on Pine Hill, speaking to Father of trade and politics as his daughter sneaked loving glances at Epher. But this Tirus seemed a different man, surrendering to excess and bloodlust while his daughter, they said, hunted Epher in the ruins of Zohar.

The corpses of several criminals, at least what remained after the tigers had feasted, were dragged out of the arena. Horns blared again, shrill cries like dying men. Atalia was the last gladiator in the tunnel. Domina Leyla, who stood at her side, nodded to her.

"It's time, Atalia," the trainer said softly, and Atalia was surprised to see true concern, true softness in the fierce warrior's eyes.

"What will happen to me?" Atalia asked. "Who will they have me face?"

"I don't know." Leyla placed a hand on Atalia's shoulder. "I was once much like you. Be brave, Atalia. Be strong. Survive today. Live. Someday you might be a trainer like me."

Atalia did not wish for that. All she wanted was to go home. But she nodded, then stepped out into the arena.

Thousands of spectators surrounded her. Some chanted her name. Others booed and tossed refuse into the arena. Tirus rose to his feet and spread out his arms. He cried out in a booming voice that filled the amphitheater.

"Behold! Here before us stands Atalia Sela!"

"Atalia! Atalia!" chanted some in the crowd, and Atalia raised her eyes toward them and gasped. Zoharites! Zoharites were in the amphitheater, some wearing slave collars, others free citizens. They were chanting for her.

But most in the crowd booed. They pelted Atalia with rotten vegetables and what she hoped were clumps of mud.

"Desert rat!" they shouted.

"Barbarian!"

"Demon!"

Atalia stood still, clutching her sword, letting them curse, letting them pelt her. She was a segen in the hosts of Zohar—even here. They could not take her pride.

Tirus waited for the commotion to die down, then continued speaking. "Atalia Sela is sister to Epheriah Sela, the rebel who spits on our Empire in the desert province of Aelaria Orientalis." The crowd erupted in more boos. "Atalia Sela is sister to Ofeer, the whore who escaped from the Lunapar and now plots against us." The crowd tossed more refuse. "Atalia Sela is wife to Berengar, the barbarian who led the horde to our walls!" Now the crowd overflowed with hatred, shouting, spitting.

Atalia looked toward the Zoharite section in the amphitheater, hoping against hope that Ofeer herself would be there, maybe Koren too, that maybe both still lived. But she could not see them. Hope rose in her—hesitant, barely there at all—that Ofeer and Koren were here in this city, that she could someday still find them. For that chance she had to survive today.

"Atalia and Berengar fought against us!" Tirus boomed. "Side by side, the lovers sought to topple our walls. Yet now, here in the arena—behold the lovers torn apart! Behold Atalia and Berengar, doomed lovers, fight as enemies!"

As the crowd roared, Atalia's head spun. She could not comprehend those words. What could he mean? What . . .

Doors opened across the arena, and he emerged.

Berengar rode into the arena as Atalia's tears streamed. He sat astride his white stag, which drew gasps from the crowd. He wore the same armor he had worn throughout their invasion, the breastplate worked with silver elks. His beard flowed, long and golden, and he held his mighty war hammer.

Yet Atalia saw at once that something was wrong, that he was different, that he was still wounded, perhaps still dying. His armor hid the wounds of the arrows, but his skin was still sallow, his eyes still pained. His hammer rested against his thighs, not held overhead.

"Berengar," she whispered. "No." She turned toward Tirus, and her voice rose to a shout. "No! Stop this, Tirus! We are not your playthings!"

She stomped toward him. He leaned across his pavilion, smiling down at her. "Oh, but you are, sweet Atalia. You are mine to torment, you and your husband. Though tomorrow, only one of you will remain my toy. Fight him, Atalia. Fight him or you will die slowly on the cross. I will make it last for days—long days of your screams rolling across the city."

Atalia's breath trembled. She had once seen a gladiator who had refused to fight. She had seen him whipped, his arms dislocated, his hands nailed onto the cross. She had seen him force-fed, kept alive on the cross, tortured for days before finally left in the sunlight to slowly die. There were fates far worse than a death in the arena. This she knew. This all gladiators knew.

She turned back toward Berengar. His elk trudged closer, and Berengar slumped in the saddle, sweat on his brow. Atalia wept to remember those times she would ride with him on this elk, her arms wrapped around him, as the wind whipped their hair and the landscapes rolled around them. That had been freedom. That had been joy, even in a burning world, even lost so far from home. His elk nickered and pawed the dirt, and Berengar looked down at her from the saddle. He reached out a trembling, pale hand.

"My beloved," he whispered.

She clutched his hand, tears on her cheeks. "My love."

Horns blared across the arena.

"Fight!" Tirus cried, and the crowds roared.

Atop his elk, Berengar struggled to raise his hammer. His mighty arms, which had once wielded it with ease, now trembled under the weight. He gave the hammer a labored swing.

Atalia leaped back, dodging the blow.

"Are we defeated?" she whispered, tears falling. "Has the horde fallen?"

He swung his hammer her way again, but she still saw the love, the grief in his eyes. "The warriors of the forest ride now in the realm of the gods. Soon I will ride with them across the endless moonlit plains."

She retreated from another swing of the hammer as the crowd booed. "Fight!" they chanted. "Fight!"

"Fight," Berengar whispered. "We must do this."

She shook her head. "I cannot."

"Let me die in honor, Atalia." He smiled at her, a trembling smile already yearning for his last ride. "Let me rise to them in battle."

Atalia wept as she swung her sword toward him, as the blade cut his leg, as he fell from his saddle.

Many in the crowd howled for more violence, demanding a proper fight. But some, Atalia saw, gazed in silence. Some had tears in their eyes. As Atalia stepped toward her fallen husband, the amphitheater seemed unusually subdued. The odd cries of scorn seemed magnified, echoing, too loud.

Berengar knelt in the sand, gasping for air, sweat on his brow. Blood seeped from beneath his armor—perhaps the old wounds of the arrows had opened, or perhaps Tirus had tortured him before this fight.

"Don't die here," Atalia whispered.

With a grunt, Berengar rose to his feet, nearly fell, and swung his hammer toward her. Atalia leaped back, parrying, nearly snapping her blade as she diverted the hammer's blow.

"I will not die upon a cross," Berengar said, swinging the hammer again, tears in his eyes. "You fought me once, my love. You bested me in the forest, the day I learned that I loved you. Fight me again. Best me again. I would gladly die falling to your blade, seeing the triumph of the woman I love. I can think of no better death."

Again she stepped back from his hammer. The crowd was silent now. Watching. Listening. Some were weeping. Tirus stood above, leaning forward, eyes glittering.

Tears in her eyes, Atalia swiped her blade. She let out a sob as the blow hit Berengar's armor, sparking against the iron.

"Stronger!" Tirus cried from his pavilion. "Give us a real fight or suffer the cross!"

Berengar rose taller. His back straightened. His arms no longer shook as he raised his hammer. He stared into Atalia's eyes, once more the mighty warrior. She was a tall woman, yet she felt small as a child before him. His hammer swung again, and now the blow caught her arm, shattering the scales of her manica armor. Atalia's sword again hit his armor. Again. Again. She chipped into the iron, knocking him back step by step, dodging his swinging hammer. Dust rose around them. Iron and steel clanged. The crowd roared now, and again they were chanting her name—not just the Zoharites but all of them, a hundred thousand spectators.

Yet the hammer began to slow. More blood leaked from Berengar's armor, and weariness filled his eyes. Another swing from Atalia's sword dented his armor, and Berengar fell to his knees.

He knelt before her, panting, and his hammer thumped into the sand. He looked up into her eyes.

"Kill!" chanted the crowd. "Kill! Kill!"

Atalia looked up at Emperor Tirus, her blade lowered.

"Mercy," she whispered.

"Kill!" chanted the crowd.

Mercy, Atalia prayed silently.

Tirus stepped toward the ledge of his pavilion between the crimson columns and golden eagles. He held out his fist . . . then pointed his thumb downward.

The crowd roared. A hundred thousand people stretched out their arms, thumbs pointing downward.

Atalia looked back at her husband. The world suddenly seemed so quiet. She could barely hear the crowd, barely see anyone but him. He knelt before her, love in his eyes. He nodded.

"I'm ready," he said.

"I'm not." Atalia shook her head, her sword still lowered.

Her husband smiled. "I will see you again, my love. We will ride in fields of eternal glory, and the sound of our horns shall forever fill the forests. Farewell, lioness of Zohar, warrior of Gael."

He reached out a trembling hand and caressed her cheek, and her tears wet his fingers. Then he grabbed her hand, the hand holding her sword. She sucked in air, tried to resist him, but he pulled her sword toward him, plunging the blade into his neck.

He still lived. He gurgled. His eyes filled with pain. Atalia wept as she shoved the blade deeper, letting him die quickly, letting it be her—a woman he loved—who sent him on his final journey.

You fell in battle, she thought. Rise now in honor.

When she pulled the blade free, he fell to the sand. She knelt by him, cradled him in her arms, and stroked his hair. Her tears splashed him.

"Farewell, Berengar. I love you. Always."

She realized that the crowd had fallen silent. No cheering. No horns. A deathly silence. Atalia raised her eyes, looking toward the crowd, and there—there she saw her. A young woman with olive skin, a hood covering her head, a baby in her arms. And though the face was shadowed and distant, Atalia knew her.

"Ofeer," she whispered.

OFEER

She waited for a long time outside the Amphitheatrum, watching the crowd drain back into the city. Ofeer kept her hood raised, shadowing her face, but who would recognize her aside from Tirus, a man who never walked among the people?

Ariel gurgled in his sling, and Ofeer kissed his forehead. He was three months old today, but he should have been only a month. Every time she gazed at him, she smiled. After weeks of frailty, he finally looked like any other baby. Gone were the wrinkles, the red skin, the hair on his body, the fragility and miserable wails. He could suckle from her breast now, and she no longer needed to feed him from her fingertip. He cried in a strong, clear voice when he needed her, and sometimes when he slept, he gave the briefest of smiles, perhaps dreaming of her. Three months ago, all who had seen him would recoil. Now people smiled to see her Ariel, cooed, and spoke of his beauty.

"You're beautiful, my child." She kissed him again. "We're going to find your Aunt Atalia now. We're going to save what remains of our family."

Ofeer took a shuddering breath, still scarcely believing what she had seen. The rumors had been true. Atalia was alive!

"I thought she drowned," Ofeer whispered to her son. "When the ships sank, when Atalia wasn't here when we arrived in Aelar, I thought . . ." She sniffed back tears. "But she's alive. She's a slave, but she's alive. And Koren might be alive too. And the others—Epher and Maya too. You'll meet them, Ariel. We'll be together as a family again. I promise."

He cooed in his sling, closed his eyes, and fell asleep. Shaded by the amphitheater's soaring arches, Ofeer reached into her cloak's pocket. She caressed the iron collar there, the one Noa had forged her, the one that contained a skeleton key. Ofeer had used this key to escape the dungeon and find the imperial lumer. Noa had sworn it could open any lock in the city. Ofeer would test this today.

She waited for a long time until the last stragglers left the amphitheater and its gates were closed. A few guards remained, and Ofeer slunk into shadows. The sun dipped in the sky, and evening's shadows spread across the cobblestones. Finally the stars shone. They were the same stars Ofeer would gaze at from Zohar, so far away, and she wondered if her siblings were looking at them now too.

I'll find all of you, Ofeer swore. We'll be together again in the villa on Pine Hill. And I'll be different. I'll be better. She wiped her eyes. I'll be a Zoharite.

There were eighty entrances to the Amphitheatrum, ornately carved gateways, their keystones numbered. A handful of guards were patrolling the perimeter. Ofeer huddled in the shadows of a cypress, waiting for them to pass by. Then she scurried forward. She approached one of the entrances. The archway was formed of limestone, its keystone engraved with the number LXIII. Heavy doors stood within the archway, locked shut. Ofeer glanced around, waiting to make sure the guards were gone. When she heard nothing, she pulled the collar from her pocket, opened it, and slid out the skeleton key. She held her breath when she placed it into the lock, for a moment certain it wouldn't fit, that her quest would fail. She exhaled shakily when the lock clicked.

Glancing around, Ofeer hurried into the amphitheater.

The arena spread before her, covered in sand. On some days, the Aelarians flooded their arena and staged naval battles here. On other days, the ground writhed with snakes. Today the arena was simply packed with sand, its trapdoors hidden. The stone seats rose in rings, too many levels for Ofeer to count. During her days in Zohar, she had never imagined a structure so massive. The entire population of Beth Eloh, the largest city back home, could have fit into this single amphitheater. Only hours ago, there hadn't been a spare seat to be found. Yet now, in the night, the place was empty, eerily silent, bereft even of guards.

Ofeer glanced down at Ariel. He still slept against her chest. Perhaps she should have left him in the care of another, with Shaveet the priest, with kind Periel of the congregation, even with Noa the lumer. This was not a place for babies. And yet Ofeer had dared not part from Ariel; she would have sooner parted from her right arm. He still needed her, and she would continue to hold him, tend to him, even here.

She stepped toward the center of the arena. The moon shone directly above, and the ring of stone spread around her. The moonlight drenched her, leaving all else in shadow, and Ofeer felt like an actress on stage. Often Ofeer had felt so, as if her story, the story of Zohar, were a tragedy played for the amusement of celestial spectators. She didn't know if that meant that Eloh was cruel, a god who tortured his children in a grand arena, or whether like a playwright weeping over the death of his beloved characters, he tormented his creations to teach them morals.

Ofeer wished none of this would have happened. She wished that Seneca had never arrived in Zohar, that Jerael had never died, that the world had never shattered. And yet perhaps her own world had always been shattered, her soul cracked. Perhaps all this pain, this fear, these tears—perhaps they had changed her. Mended her. She was no longer the girl who would drink, cuss, and fuck in the port, drowning her pain in sex and spice and wine. She was no longer the girl who had joined Seneca, laughing as his forces destroyed her home. She was no longer the girl who would yell at her mother, torment her sister, and hate her home. That girl had drowned in the sea somewhere between Zohar and Aelar. Water and fire had cleansed her, and so perhaps, Ofeer thought, whatever invisible playwright forged her tale still loved her, still sought her redemption.

She looked at the babe in her arms, reflecting how Jerael would never meet him, how perhaps others in her family had died.

"What of them then?" she whispered. "What of all those who had died? What of the mausoleum where I saw the epitaph of a dead child? Were they not worthy of life, of a happy ending?"

Ofeer did not know, but she could only be the heroine of her own tale, could only see and hear and grieve in her own reality. A single player on a moonlit stage, all the other actors offstage, all the spectators faded into shadow.

She looked down, and in the moonlight she saw a stain in the sand. Blood. Remembering her task, Ofeer hurried toward one of the ornate gateways carved into the side of the arena, the one she had seen Atalia step through. The gateway loomed, tall and large as a house. Four columns supported a pediment engraved with stucco reliefs, and above reared four iron horses, life-sized, their hooves gilded. The bronze doors were closed, but when Ofeer placed her key in the lock, they too opened, and she stepped into a dark tunnel.

She could see only a few steps ahead. The tunnel plunged into total darkness. Ariel wriggled in his sling and gave a short cry. Ofeer froze, terrified that guards would hear, but no guards came rushing forth, and Ariel soon fell back asleep. Ofeer walked down the tunnel until all light faded, and she walked with one hand against the wall. The tunnel delved deeper, passing under the city streets, until it began to rise again, and she saw light ahead.

An archway led to a corridor lined with lanterns. Ofeer froze, pressed herself against the wall, and listened. She heard two male voices, gruff, speaking with lowborn accents.

"You saw Uro's wife?" one man said. "The tits on her."

The other man laughed. "Bigger than her head."

"Last time she visited here, I watched them. Through the bars. He fucked her right in the tits."

"Did he now?"

A snort. "Doesn't want to place another miserable slave in her belly, I reckon."

Hiding in the dark tunnel, Ofeer thought back to the grisly display she had witnessed from her seat that day. Uro had been one of the gladiators, she remembered. A beefy, bald man who had slain three attackers. Was his wife not a slave, then? Did wives visit this place?

She peeked around the corner, just for an instant, then pulled her head back. She had seen a small chamber with two guards. Both men wore armor and helmets, and swords hung from their belts. Both seemed lowborn, not legionaries or Magisterian guards, just stubbly brutes, hulking and dumb and mean. Both men sat at a table, playing dice. Beyond them, Ofeer had seen a corridor, torchlit and lined with barred cells. When she peeked again, she glimpsed shadowy figures in those cells—gladiators.

"I heard that bald brute already stuck slave babies into a hundred bellies in the city," said one of the guards. "A hundred bald bastards now roaming around the Empire. Good thing we got him trapped behind bars now."

"I'll tell you who's got nice tits. That clawed lioness. Now with her husband dead, think she'd let me into her bed?"

A spit. "She's a fucking gladiatrix. You're a guard. Go stick your cock in one of the Lunapar's whores."

Raucous laughter. "Once they start paying us silver. Until then I'll stick to back alley whores."

Ofeer took a deep breath. Confirming that her key still hid in her pocket, she stepped into the lit chamber.

The guards glanced her way, then gasped and leaped to their feet. Their chairs and dice clattered down, and the men reached for their swords. Ariel woke up and wailed.

"Who the fuck are you?" a guard said, red-eyed and large-nosed.

Ofeer made a show of meekness. "The guards outside told me to come through the back door. My name is Odelia." She held out her crying babe, and she let tears fill her eyes. "I want his father to see him. I want Uro to see his son."

The red-eyed guard grunted and turned toward his friend. "What did I tell you? A thousand fucking bald baby bastards."

"You said a hundred," said the other guard.

The first guard spat on the floor. "Thousand more likely." He looked at Ofeer, nodding. "Aye, she's a pretty one. Anytime we let Uro out into town, another girl's belly fills."

"Can I see Uro?" Ofeer said.

The guard scratched his crotch, looked around, then back at her. "The master's not around. Hurry. If he comes back here and sees you, he'll have our hides—and your babe too, most like." He grabbed Ofeer's arm and tugged her with him. "Come on."

He pulled her down a corridor lit by oil lanterns. Cells lined the wall, their doors barred. Ofeer looked into each cell she passed, seeking Atalia, but saw only hulking men in loincloths, a hissing woman with braided red hair, and then—there!

Ofeer's heart skipped a beat. Atalia! It had to be her! She was lying on her side, her back to the bars, and did not see Ofeer. Perhaps she slept. But Ofeer would recognize her sister anywhere, even in the shadows. Before Ofeer could call out, the guard pulled her onward, and they left Atalia's cell behind. Ofeer's heart wrenched as Atalia was torn from her view.

They approached a cell at the back of the corridor. Uro the gladiator sat there, a sword across his lap. He raised his eyes, looked at Ofeer and her baby, and tilted his head. The guard opened the barred door and let Ofeer in, then slammed the door shut.

"You got the length of a shit," the guard said, then walked away.

Uro looked back at the sword on his lap. "Usually when the guards bring me a lupa, she doesn't have her baby with her." He frowned. "Wait a minute. That one isn't mine, is it? I don't think I ever lay with you."

Ofeer turned her back toward him. She peered between the door's bars back at the shadowy corridor. The guard was gone. She looked back at Uro. "I'm not here for you. I'm here for Atalia. Can I trust you?"

Uro's frown deepened. "What's going on, girl?"

She glared at him. "Can I trust you? If you care about Atalia at all, be quiet!" She pulled her skeleton key from her pocket. Gently—wincing at every clack and creak—she unlocked and opened the cell's door.

Uro cursed and leaped to his feet. "What—"

"Hush!"

Ofeer stepped into the corridor, holding Ariel. Blessedly, the baby was still sleeping. She knew she had only moments. She hurried toward Atalia's cell, unlocked the door, and burst inside.

Her older sister still slept, curled up on her cot, her back to Ofeer.

"Atalia!" Ofeer grabbed her. "Atalia, it's me!"

Atalia rolled over, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. "Go away, Ofeer," she mumbled. "I'm tired. I—" She opened her eyes. She leaped up. "Of—"

"Shh!" Ofeer said. "Quie—"

Atalia grabbed her, pulled her into her embrace, and squeezed her.

"You fucking stupid little . . ." Atalia wept onto her shoulder. "I should fucking strangle you. I fucking hate you. I should fucking rip out your heart and . . ." She shook, tears falling. "But I love you. I love you, you goddamn piece of shit."

Ofeer wriggled herself free. "Careful with the baby."

Atalia stared at the child, then up at Ofeer. Her eyes widened. "Is it . . ."

Ofeer grabbed her sister's hand. "No time. We only have the length of a shit." She laughed at the absurd notion. "Hurry. Let's get out of here."

There were so many things Ofeer wanted to say. She wanted to apologize. She wanted to tell her sister about Ariel. She wanted to ask if Atalia knew about the others. She hadn't seen her sister in nearly a year, had thought Atalia dead for most of this year—but all that would have to wait. Atalia grabbed her sword, and the two left the cell and walked down the corridor.

They walked into the guards' chamber, where a lone man was playing with dice. When he saw them, he leaped from his chair and reached for his sword.

"Get back into your—" he began.

Atalia's blade slammed into his neck, driving deep, twisting. She pulled it free with a shower of blood.

"Atalia!" Ofeer screamed, couldn't help but scream, horrified, the blood splashing her. Ariel woke and wailed.

The second guard walked into the room, lacing up his trousers.

The man saw Atalia with her bloody sword. His eyes widened, and he drew his own sword, managed to parry as Atalia attacked. She kicked, driving him back, and swung her blade into his armor. The guard grunted, shoved off the wall, and lunged toward her. Atalia ducked, dodging his blade, but the guard pressed on the attack.

Watching the battle, Ofeer realized that these guards weren't merely dumb brutes. This one fought with skill, perhaps once a soldier or a gladiator. Atalia kept landing blows, but the man's armor protected him, and his sword nicked Atalia's side.

Ofeer grabbed the dice from the table and tossed them. The guard stepped on one, lost his balance, and Atalia's blade drove into his throat.

The sisters glanced at each other. The sound of more guards came from down an unfamiliar corridor.

"Into the arena," Ofeer said.

Atalia nodded. They ran down the dark tunnel, passing under the city street, then into the moonlit arena. The tiers of seats rose around them in a ring. Ofeer led the way, running toward one of the exits. A guard emerged from behind them, shouting.

"Escaped slaves! Escaped slaves!"

Another guard emerged from the archway Ofeer had been running to. Three more guards raced in from another archway. The men moved in, surrounding Ofeer and Atalia in the arena.

No, Ofeer thought, holding her baby close. No, it can't end here. Not like this.

"Watch over your baby, Ofeer," Atalia said softly. "I'll look after you."

Ofeer pulled her little saw from her belt. "Just leave me a few of them to saw. This saw bloodied the cock of an emperor. It can take on the world."

The guards ran toward them. Atalia howled and swung her blade. Swords clanged together and sparked. A blade nicked Atalia's leg, and she cried out, dropped to one knee, rose again. A soldier leaped toward Ofeer, and she scampered back, holding Ariel with one hand, thrusting her saw. She screamed as a sword hit her thigh. Her blood spurted, and Ofeer fell, crying out in terror, dropping her saw and clutching Ariel with both hands. She hit her back, and her baby screamed, and Atalia fought above them, trying to hold back five armored guards, her blood dripping, and Ofeer knew that they would die.

A roar tore across the arena. A shadow leaped and slammed into two guards. Uro bellowed, swinging his sword. Another gladiator leaped forward, then another. Soon a dozen filled the arena, lashing at the guards, cutting them down until all lay dead.

Ofeer panted and struggled to her feet. Her thigh bled, and Ariel was wailing. As she tried to comfort the baby, she looked around and saw the other gladiators looking at Atalia, solemn.

Uro nodded at her. "You did all this," he said. "Yourself. That is what we'll tell them. That you're the greatest among us."

Atalia touched his arm, and her voice was soft. "Come with me." She looked at the others. "All of you."

Uro shook his head. "There is no more place for us in the world. This arena—this is our only world now." He gazed upon the tiers of empty seats. "This is our only battlefield, our only glory."

Atalia looked at the other gladiators, but they all moved closer to Uro. All but one, a gladiatrix with red hair and a painted face. She stepped forward, and Atalia stiffened and raised her arms as if preparing for a blow. But the redhead clasped Atalia's arm and nodded.

"Go find your home, lioness," the gladiatrix said. "Fuck the arena's sand. You should roar in the desert."

Atalia still bled from her leg. She nodded. "Thank you, Breeana. Glory to you in the arena and in the world after."

Ofeer took her sister's hand. They exited the amphitheater and stood in the dark Acropolis, cedars rustling around them. Both were bleeding, panting, afraid in the shadows and far from home. But Ofeer had her sister back. All was right in the world.

"I love you, Atalia," Ofeer whispered, and her tears flowed. "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. For everything that I did. I'm sorry."

Atalia's eyes too were damp, and she squeezed Ofeer's hand. "I love you too, little sis. You are forgiven." She sniffed and blinked away her tears. "Now come on. Let's get the fuck out of this city and grab a ship home."

"No." Ofeer shook her head. "Not yet. There's something here we still must do."

"What?" Atalia asked.

Ofeer stared at the city lights that sprawled below the hill. She caressed the saw that hung from her belt.

"Kill Emperor Tirus Valerius," she said.

KOREN

He walked through the camp at night, moving between tents, campfires, and legionaries, seeking her. Around Koren sprawled the Republic Army in all its might. Thousands of Aelarian soldiers spread across the field, playing dice, sharpening gladius swords, shaving in front of small bronze mirrors, and speaking of their homeland, which drew ever nearer in the south. They had spent years in cold, distant Elania, and they all missed Aelar. Camp followers moved between them, drawn from towns and villages they had passed. Old men sold buttons, thread, and needles. Children juggled and danced for coins. A handful of women and boys sold their bodies for the night. Many legionaries had no need for purchased flesh; they had married wives in Elania, and they had brought the red-haired women along, often with children in tow.

This isn't just an army, Koren thought. It's civilization on the move.

Finally he saw Valentina's tent, woven of crimson wool and embroidered with golden eagles. He stepped inside to find her standing by a table, gazing at a map that covered the tabletop. Wooden eagles, dragons, and lions were placed on the parchment, painted in different colors. Red eagles were the most numerous, representing the imperial legions of Tirus Valerius; they covered many areas on the map. Black eagles marked Seneca's legions south of the Encircled Sea, while blue eagles represented the Republic Army, which Valentina commanded. Dragons represented the Gaelian horde besieging Aelar's walls and ravaging the countryside. A single wooden lion roared in Zohar, battling Claudia's eagles. Here it was, spread across this map—a war that was burning the world.

As she studied the map, Valentina's back was turned to Koren, and for a moment he stood, watching her. The candlelight shone on her armor, white hair, and the hilt of her sword. During the days, she rode at the head of her army, shoulders squared, chin raised, Domina Valentina Cassius, fighting to restore the Republic. But here, alone in her tent, her head was lowered, her shoulders stooped.

Koren cleared his throat and stepped closer. "Valentina."

She spun around, drawing her gladius, cheeks flushed and lips peeled back. Koren started, for an instant sure she'd attack, but then she exhaled shakily.

"I'm sorry, Koren. I'm . . . jumpy."

He cringed and nodded. "And stabby. Your sword nearly sliced through me like a ham."

Valentina sheathed the blade. "I hate this sword." She looked back at the map, and for a long moment she was silent. Finally she spoke in a soft voice. "Koren, what am I doing? I'm not a soldier."

He stepped closer to the table and stood at her side. He gazed at the wooden pieces. Eagles. Dragons. A single lion. A world aflame. Kingdoms falling like so many sand castles.

"We don't want another soldier to lead Aelar," Koren said. "We want somebody kind, gentle, wise."

"All qualities that would see my enemies crush me in battle," Valentina said. "When the Gaelians attacked us on the road, I . . . I kept trying to stop the violence. I told myself that I'm a leader of peace, of prudence. But Koren . . . the truth is that I was afraid. Every night, that battle haunts me. When we finally reach Aelar, when we face the true might of Gael and the true wrath of Tirus, will I have the strength to lead us?" She sighed. "I'm not like Seneca. He's always delighted in war, spending countless hours training with the sword. How can I do this, Koren? I seek peace, yet it seems I can only achieve peace with war."

Koren raised his eyebrows. "Well, you have me helping you—the greatest warrior in the world, Koren the Conqueror!" When Valentina sighed, he bristled. "Well, Koren the Killer? Koren the Crusher? Fine. We'll settle on Koren the Cuddly. Less intimidating to my enemies, but hopefully comforting on a cold, dark night like this." He slung his arm around her. "Listen, Val. War's scary. I was so scared when I fought the legions in Zohar I nearly wet my armor. My father once told me something that stuck with me. He said that only damn fools are fearless in war. Wise leaders are terrified of violence. That's what makes them wise leaders."

"Then I must be the wisest woman who's ever lived," Valentina said. "I had this dream. The dream of a naive girl. That I would march south through the Aelarian countryside, spreading word of the Republic's rebirth, and that the people would emerge from every village and town to join me. That by the time we reached the walls of Aelar, the country would be united behind me, calling in a loud and clear voice for Tirus to fall. Instead we found those villages and towns destroyed, and the only people following us are whores, jugglers, and crows."

"I saw a haberdasher too," Koren offered.

Valentina smiled thinly. "Valentina the Victorious, inspiring haberdashers to raise needles and march to fight loose buttons."

Koren thought back to that night. The night far in the northern hinterlands, cold and shivering and afraid, when they had made love. Valentina had been so distracted since then, so burdened with her duties. He had rarely been alone with her. There had always been generals, engineers, trackers, scouts, and a hundred other people crowding around her. But Koren had never forgotten the touch of her lips, the warmth of her body, the joy she brought him. Now, finally alone with her, he stroked her hair and kissed her cheek. She stood still, staring at the map, and he gently pulled her face toward his, gazed into her eyes, and kissed her lips.

Valentina looked away. "Koren, I . . ."

He pulled his hand free from her hair. "I'm sorry. I thought . . ."

She looked back at him, eyes soft. "Koren, what happened in the north . . . I was afraid. I was alone. I love you, Koren—as a friend, as a brother-in-arms. But the kind of love you want . . . I gave it only to Iris."

"Iris has been gone for a year," Koren said, trying to keep his voice soft. "I know what loss is like, but—"

"No time can erase what I felt," Valentina said, and now a sharpness filled her voice. "I will not forget her."

"I don't mean that," Koren began. "Not like that."

She nodded, then embraced him. "I know, Koren, and I'm sorry. I loved what we did in the north. I enjoyed making love to you, truly I did. It's a night I'll always remember fondly."

"But not a night that'll happen again," he said.

She walked around the table toward the bed. "Come, Koren. Let's go to sleep. It'll be a long ride tomorrow."

Yet Koren could not imagine sharing her bed, feeling her warmth, her hair tickling him, burning for her and knowing she did not feel the same.

"I need to walk," he said. "I need to feel the night around me."

Not waiting for a reply, Koren left the tent. His throat felt too tight, his legs stiff. He walked fast, staring ahead, ignoring the camp around him.

I shouldn't be here.

He clenched his fists.

Why do I fight with her?

He marched between campfires and tents, heading toward the edge of the camp. As the campfires crackled, he saw again the fire in Gefen. As a pair of legionaries laughed over a game of dice, he heard again the legionaries laughing as Seneca raised Jerael on the cross. As he reached the dark edge of the camp, he saw again the darkness of the slave galley, the black sea Atalia sank into.

His head spun and his chest constricted. He kept walking, passing by the legionaries patrolling the camp, then standing amid the trees. He struggled for breath.

"My brother fights in Zohar," he whispered to the shadows. "And I'm here, fighting with the legions—the damn legions, the same military that destroyed my home, that killed my father. All for . . . what? For her? For Valentina? For a woman who sees me as nothing but another loyal animal, no worthier than her horse?"

He stared into the darkness, wanting to keep walking, to vanish between trees. He could just keeping walking, day after day, living off the land, seeking a way back home to Zohar. Surely even life in the wilderness would be better than this, than fighting for a half-baked dream of resurrecting a dead Republic.

A voice rose beside him. "You're worth far less than a horse, Koren Sela. Soldiers are cheap. Horses cost gold."

He turned to see Avia approaching him. The dark lumer's golden hair spilled out from her hood, and she smiled at him crookedly. Her amulet, an inverted candelabrum, hung against her chest.

"Do you always sneak up on people?" Koren said. "What if I were here peeing?"

"Then truly you'd prove yourself lesser than a horse." She took his hand. "Come with me."

She pulled him between the trees, and they walked into the dark forest, leaving the camp behind.

"Where are we going?" Koren said.

"I'm going to slit your throat in the night, then carve out your heart for dark magic," Avia said.

Koren sighed. After Valentina had all but broken his heart, having it ripped out couldn't be much worse. He followed. The trees twisted around them, roots rose to snag their feet, and jackals howled in the shadows. Avia held a tin lantern, its glow like a pulsing red heart. Soon the sounds of the camp—talking, laughing, clattering armor, and crackling fires—faded, and all the world was but the dank, thick forest. Koren didn't know how he'd find his way back, but Avia kept walking confidently, still holding his hand.

Finally he saw firelight in the distance. He frowned. As they stepped closer, he saw a ring of low fire. The flaming circle surrounded a small clearing. Avia hopped over the flames, and Koren followed. A blanket lay on the ground, woven with images of serpents. Raven skulls dangled on strings from overhanging branches. What looked like a mummified baby, brownish and crinkly and bedecked with beads, sat propped on one branch.

"So you're not big on military tents, I gather," Koren said.

Avia doffed her cloak and hung it across a branch, remaining in a mustard tunic. She spat. "I don't sleep among legionaries. The bastards stink."

Koren gazed at the mummified baby on the branch. "Unlike rotten corpses?"

The dark lumer glared at him. "That's my princess. Don't you badmouth her. She's not rotten."

Koren tore his eyes away, shuddering. He didn't want to know who that baby had been.

"Why did you bring me here, Avia?"

The dark lumer shrugged. "We're both Zoharites. They're fucking Aelarians."

"You're only half-Zoharite," Koren said.

"I'm still not a goddamn Aelarian." Her blue eyes flashed. "We don't belong among them, Sela. We're both just slaves to them."

Koren bristled. "I'm not a—"

"Did Valentina ever emancipate you?" Avia asked. "No? So you're still a slave by the laws of Aelar. I heard how Valentina speaks to you. You're like a dog running at her heel. You fight for her when you should be fighting against her. You should slit her white throat in the night."

"I'm not going to slit her throat."

Avia drew her knife. "Why not?" She slashed the air between them. "A good, clean cut, and a princess of the Empire is dead."

Koren looked at the raven skulls that dangled around him. He had the eerie feeling that they were watching him. "I don't want Valentina dead. I want her to rebuild the Senate, to restore the Republic, and to cast out madmen like Seneca and Tirus."

"That is the senator's daughter speaking." Avia grabbed his cheeks, forcing his face back toward her. "What does Koren Sela, the grandson of a desert king, want?"

"Grandson of a king? Yes. My mother's father was King Rahamyah. But that palace fell to Claudia. All of Zohar cries out under their yoke. What do I want? Freedom for Zohar. My home back. My family back. And . . ."

And Valentina in my arms, he wanted to add. Valentina loving me like I love her. But he could not speak those last words.

"Then we'll fight for these things," said Avia. "For they are what I too desire. We are only two, Koren. But we are mighty. We are a daughter of Luminosity and a son of desert royalty. Together we can bring this Empire falling down."

Her eyes frightened him. Gold light swirled in the blue.

"How?" he whispered.

She dropped her knife and held both his hands. "First you must trust me. As we draw closer to Aelar in the south, all will come clear to you. I promise. This night, all I need is your loyalty. To Zohar. To your family."

"Always," Koren said.

"And to me," Avia whispered. She tugged the laces of her tunic and let the garment fall to her feet.

Koren stood speechless before her. The firelight danced against her naked body. Her skin was pale, strewn with many small birthmarks, and her golden hair flowed to her hips. She grabbed at his clothes, and with deft hands she undressed him, then kissed his lips.

"Let us bind together," she whispered, kissing his ear. "Let us be one."

She lay on the blanket and pulled him down beside her. Koren didn't want this. Suddenly he just wanted to be back in Valentina's tent, lying at her side. But at the touch of Avia's fingers, his body awoke to different desires. He found himself kissing Avia's lips, her neck, her breasts. She wrapped her legs around him, guiding him inside her. Her back arched and her eyes closed. Her fingers dug into his back, and the fire crackled around them. All he knew was her heat. Luminescence glowed behind her eyelids, seeping out, leaking from her lips and fingers, flowing around him, until they were cocooned in light and shadows. She cried out, her fingernails tearing his skin, and her light flared like the sun.

The luminescence faded, and he lay at her side, winded, damp with sweat. She curled up beside him and kissed his chest.

"Now we are joined," she whispered. "Now the world will tremble."

The skulls jangled above, and the mummified baby stared down at him, seeming to grin.

SENECA

On a windy, miserable gray morning, Seneca beheld the ruins of Phedia in the distance.

"Fuck me," he muttered. "My father did a piece of work here."

Only a decade ago, Phedia had been a massive city, among the largest in the world. Hundreds of thousands had lived here along the southern coast of the Encircled Sea, only a week or two south of Aelar. Seneca had seen a model of the city in the imperial palace, built in preparation for the war. Even as a prince of Aelar, a boy who had grown up in the Acropolis, Seneca had marveled at the walls, minarets, domes, porticoes of countless columns, and—grandest of all—the port that had been carved into the landscape, a man-made canal that ended in a ring of water large enough to encircle most towns.

That glory was now gone.

The minarets had fallen. The countless domed houses and temples lay buried under dirt. Only a handful of columns remained standing, the last from a forest of thousands. The only structure that remained intact was the port. Phedia lacked a natural harbor, and so, five hundred years ago, men had dug a canal from sea into land, ending with a ring of water. Once walls, columns, and manors had lined this port, and hundreds of ships from foreign lands would sail up and down the canal, traveling into the heart of Phedia, around the ring of water, and out into the sea again. Today only a few crude barracks rose along the water, the home of the Phedian auxiliary. Today thirty-odd ships anchored here, a mix of cargo barges and Aelarian galleys in service of Tirus.

It's not much of a fleet, Seneca thought. But it'll be enough. It has to be enough.

Imani stood beside him in their chariot. Her eyes narrowed as the army rolled toward the distant ruins, and she flexed her fingers around the shaft of her spear.

"Are you sure about this, Seneca?" she said. In the distant ruins, soldiers were leaping into chariots and forming defensive lines along the wooden palisades that surrounded their camp.

Seneca shook his head. "Sure? No. But I can tell you this of auxiliaries. They hold no loyalty to ideals, only to coin. Any Phedian loyal to his fallen kingdom is dead. My father saw to that. Whoever still lives will fight for whoever pays the best." He gave a wan smile. "I just hope Tirus is a cheap bastard."

In the distance, the Phedian officers were shouting commands, and chariots rolled into formation, and many riders flanked them. Archers lined the palisades. Seneca imagined it must have been an intimidating sight, his motley army rolling forth.

"They're going to fight, Seneca." Imani sneered and hefted her spear. Behind them, their army took battle formation. It was a motley host, a mix of Aelarian legionaries, Nurian warriors, and Phedian barbarians. Combined, they were the might of the Southern Empire, and soon they would rule the world.

Seneca pointed at the distant soldiers in the ruins. "Look at those men. They wear the armor of the legions, and they raise the banners of Aelar, but they're not Aelarian. Here are ethnic Phedians, traitors to their nation, gathered from across the southern desert. They're unwashed barbarians with some armor slapped on, paid with Aelarian coin, and guarding this shithole until Aelar can build a proper city over the ruins. All we need to do is pay them a little bit more, and they'll fight for us."

He looked over his shoulder and snapped his fingers. Several elephants moved closer to his chariot. Prince Adai rode one, and officers of the legions rode others. Each beast was laden with treasures—golden chalices, chests of coins, jugs full of jewels, rolls of silk, and baskets of frankincense. It was a fortune here in the south. It was just a trifle compared to the fortunes awaiting Seneca north of the sea.

He lashed his crop. The four horses that pulled his chariot cantered forward. The elephants followed. The rest of their host remained behind upon the dry landscape. The sea rolled to their right, the water azure patched with green. To their left rolled tan hills coated with scrub, sprouting the odd palm tree.

Phedian chariots formed a line before him, blocking his passage to the port. The chariots were built in the Aelarian style, and the men wore the armor of the legions, but their skin was darker, and tattoos—frowned upon in Aelar—coated their faces and bald heads. Behind them rose a wooden palisade topped with archers.

Fucking mercenaries, Seneca thought.

He tugged his chariot to a halt, and the elephants came to stand around him. Seneca grimaced as he put on his mask of human skin. The fucking thing still stank like a corpse. He stepped off his chariot, grabbed a jug that hung from an elephant's howdah, and stepped toward the opposing army's chariots. On the palisade farther back, the Phedian archers drew their bowstrings.

"I do not come bearing gifts!" Seneca said, tossing the jug forward. It shattered between the two forces, spilling jewels. "This is not charity. This is not benevolence. This is payment. I am Seneca Octavius, son of Marcus, true emperor of Aelar, and I wear the face of your king. You will grow rich and fat fighting in my army." He gestured at the horde behind him. "Refuse to join us, and my elephants will rape your fucking corpses."

The chariots stood still before him, their riders staring, eyes hard, not sure if to bow or charge to battle. A voice rose from behind them, deep and gravelly.

"Make way! Let me see the pup."

The chariots parted, and a man rode forth on a horse. He was a massive brute, so beefy Seneca felt sorry for his horse. Red stubble covered his face, and his eyebrows were the color of fire. He wasn't Phedian, that much was certain. Probably Elanian from the far northern island. Possibly ethnic Aelarian, though Seneca remembered seeing only one Aelarian before with red hair—Justus, the legionary who had struck Porcia back in Gefen a year ago. The boy had screamed like a slaughtered hog when Seneca had ordered him whipped.

Seneca drew his gladius. "Dismount now!" he shouted at the redheaded rider. "Dismount and kneel before me and accept your payment."

Behind him, he heard his archers draw their bowstrings, but Seneca didn't turn to look, refused to look away from the red demon before him. The brute drew two scimitars—curved, ugly weapons that dwarfed Seneca's gladius.

"The only payment I'll accept is your head on a pike and your balls fed to the crows." The man spat at Seneca's feet. "Do you know who I am?"

Seneca snorted. "I don't bother learning the names of outpost warlords." He added a healthy dosage of scorn to his voice, but ice filled his belly and his breath shook. The man was huge, and those scimitars made Seneca want to turn and run. He forced himself to stand his ground. He would no longer hide behind his men as he had done in Gefen.

That cowardly prince died. Today I am an emperor.

"And tell me," said the brute, "did you bother learning my son's name when you ordered him whipped in Gefen?"

Oh fuck.

Seneca's heart sank.

"Justus," he said, too softly. "His name was Justus. He struck a woman, and—"

"He struck a Zoharite!" said the man. "He struck a filthy whore rat, one that you were fucking while cowering from battle. Yes, I know the tale. If you had bothered to learn more about your troops, you'd have known that Justus is the son of Jacobus." He brandished his scimitars. "No longer does our family crawl in the dust and serve House Octavius. Tirus has made us mighty. Take your gifts. Take your horde. Go back to whatever hole you crawled out of. Linger one moment longer, and you'll know punishment tenfold what you inflicted upon my son."

Seneca sighed.

"Is there any fucking army I can muster without having to kill somebody first?" he muttered under his breath. He raised his voice again, directing it back toward Jacobus. "Then we'll settle this like civilized men! Choose a champion from among your army, if you can find a man who won't piss in his armor. I'll choose a champion from mine. We'll fight them in the local arena. You do have a theater here in the backwaters, do you?"

Seneca rattled names through his mind, finally settling on Lidia Marcellus. He glanced back toward her. She sat on an elephant, grinning savagely, sword drawn. She was a woman, yes, but the deadliest fighter in his army. The daughter of Remus Marcellus had been bred for war. He was about to call her name, to summon her to fight whoever the enemy chose, when Jacobus spoke again.

"No, Seneca," the man said. "You will not choose another to fight your battle, as you chose another to whip my son. You and I will fight. We'll settle this like civilized men, as you called it."

As the brute stepped closer, towering head and shoulders above him, Seneca couldn't help but feel the man had a slight advantage. Seneca adjusted his skin mask and raised his gladius, a weapon woefully small compared to his opponent's twin scimitars.

"Seneca, wait!" Imani called behind him, but Seneca refused to look back at her. If he turned toward his wife now, all the troops ahead—thousands of barbarians—would see him as weak. They would never serve an emperor who turned to his wife for aid.

"Stay back, Imani!" he said, not removing his eyes from the brute ahead. "All of you. Stay back!"

As Jacobus brandished his scimitars, Seneca gulped. His legs shook, and his heart beat faster.

The things I do for Aelar . . .

Jacobus reached him and swung both scimitars. Seneca raised his shield and gladius, blocking both blows. Behind Jacobus, his men cheered.

When Seneca blocked another blow on his shield, he fell back a step. His shield cracked. The brute was strong. Seneca was not a large man, no taller or wider than an average soldier. Standing before this beast, he felt as small as a child. The scimitars slammed down again, and one reached around Seneca's shield and sparked against his armor, denting the breastplate.

Remember your training! Seneca told himself.

He had spent years training for war in Aelar's finest castra. He imagined that he was still back there, in a training yard, listening to his sword masters. He placed his feet in the right position, ensuring speed and balance. He held his semicylindrical scutum shield before him. He raised his blade above the shield, resting its base upon the scutum's bronze rim. He advanced, stabbing, protecting himself while—

A swipe of Jacobus's scimitar knocked Seneca's gladius aside, nearly ripping it from his grasp. A second blow cracked the left rim of his shield, cutting through bronze and removing a chunk of wood. The Phedians cheered louder. Seneca grimaced, tightened his grip on his gladius, and took another step forward, trying to reach Jacobus, but the man was too large, too tall. His scimitar swung down from above, and Seneca leaped back. The blade shattered the top of his shield, then bit Seneca's hand, cutting the thumb, and blood spurted.

Seneca dropped his sword.

He scampered backward, weaponless. Behind him, Imani cried out in fear.

"Stand back!" Seneca shouted.

He held his cracked shield before him. More blows hammered the wood. Where was his gladius? He tried to see it, could see nothing but dust. The fucking skin mask slid across his face, obscuring his vision, stinking and hot. Why hadn't he removed it before battle? He was forced to take two more steps back, and the blows kept hitting his shield. Another scimitar's swing hit Seneca's thigh, cutting through the studded leather straps and nicking the skin. If not for his armor slowing the blow, the blade would have cut off his leg. Seneca took another step back, his crumbling shield blocking more of the assault, but chips of wood kept flying. Finally a scimitar's terrifying blow tore his shield in half.

Where is my fucking sword?

Seneca panted, shieldless, weaponless, walking backward. Jacobus grinned before him, his twin blades raised.

I can't fucking see!

As Jacobus charged, Seneca ripped off his stinking mask and tossed it forward. It slapped onto the ground. The giant's foot hit the peeled-off face.

Jacobus wobbled.

For a horrible instant, a mere heartbeat, Seneca thought the man would right himself and keep charging.

Then Jacobus pitched forward and fell.

Seneca ran forward. He kicked as hard as he could, driving his foot into Jacobus's face.

Seneca's toes bent. He screamed, the pain driving up his foot, but kicked again, again. His toe was broken, had to be broken, and the agony blinded him, but he kicked another time, driving his foot into Jacobus's face, crushing the nose, shattering the teeth.

He saw it! His sword was there, just behind Jacobus, but he had no time to grab it. The giant rose, still holding his scimitars, his face shattered. Blood filled his toothless mouth and spurted from his broken nose. Seneca grabbed a rock—it was the size of his fist—and drove it into Jacobus's ravaged face.

His skull cracked.

Jacobus emitted a wet scream, and his scimitars fell.

His toe blazing with agony, Seneca lifted one of the scimitars. He held it with both hands, held the blade back, then swung, howling, putting all his strength into the blow. The blade sank into Jacobus's neck, cutting halfway through, shattering segments of spine.

Seneca limped back, and Jacobus fell into the dust. His blood pooled.

Seneca spat. "Saved by a dead man's face."

He lifted his fallen gladius and limped past the red-haired corpse, heading toward the Phedian chariots. The treasures still lay in the dust.

"Your dead master was weak!" Seneca said. "His corpse will presently feed the worms, and the maggots will eat his face. I offer you wealth and glory! Join me, and we will sail to Aelar herself, and the treasures of an empire will be yours."

They did not cheer, but neither did they charge to kill him. Seneca took that as a very positive sign.

He nodded, then looked over his shoulder. "Lidia! Have your men distribute the coins. Then organize these brutes into proper centuries and cohorts. I want to see an army, damn it, not some provincial mob. Soon we set sail."

He forced himself not to limp as he returned to his chariot, though every step was like hammers pounding his toes. When he stepped back onto the chariot, Imani looked at him with concern.

"How do you feel?" she asked.

"Like one of the elephants just ran me over."

She placed a hand on his shoulder. "I think the elephants were smaller than that man."

Seneca wanted nothing more than to soak in a bath, have a lumer heal his wounds, then hold Imani in his arms in a warm bed. He doubted the garrison ahead offered any of those luxuries. But there ahead in the port, he saw them rising: the masts of ships. Ships to carry him to Aelar.

I had all the comforts of the world in Nur, he thought. But I chose you, Aelar. I'm near now. After a year of agony, I'm near. I'll be home soon.

He rode his chariot into the ruins of Phedia. Only a few days north, his throne awaited.

OFEER

As she walked down the dark street with Atalia, there was so much Ofeer wanted to say. She wanted to tell Atalia how sorry she was—for how she had been, for what she had done. She wanted to speak of Ariel, explain how he was a child born of war and incest, born ill and dying, saved by Luminosity and destined to be emperor. She wanted to ask Atalia so many questions—about her ship sinking, about her wars in Gael, about her days as a gladiatrix.

Yet Ofeer struggled to speak, and for long moments, they walked in silence through the dark streets of Aelar.

We were never friends, Ofeer thought. Even as children, I shied away from Atalia, afraid of her strength, her courage. She fought with swords as a child, while I cowered at the port. She looked up at her taller, older sister. May we now become what we could not as children.

"And you have no news of the others?" Ofeer finally asked, softly. "The rest of our family?"

Atalia shook her head. "Not since we left Zohar on the same fleet. But . . ." Her eyes darkened. "Rumors speak of devastation. Of countless dead. Of Claudia's forces raging through the kingdom."

Ofeer shivered. The houses along the road seemed to close in around her.

"There is a lumer here in Aelar," Ofeer said. "One that I know. She once served Porcia. You might have seen her back in Gefen on the day . . ." She swallowed. "The day you were taken. Her name is Noa, but Porcia called her Worm. I've pleaded with Noa before to use the Sight, to gaze across the sea to Zohar, but she refused to spend her dwindling reserves of lume."

Atalia sneered, and her fists clenched at her sides. She looked so fierce that an old beggar, slumped on the street, scurried into an alleyway.

"I would have made her," Atalia said. "I would have pounded her face in until she used the lume."

"She needed that lume for Ariel," Ofeer said softly. "To heal him." He still slept in his sling, warm against her chest. "He was very sick for a long time. She saved his life."

Before almost killing him, Ofeer added silently, not yet ready to share that tale.

Atalia's eyes softened and she caressed the baby's hair. "He's beautiful, Ofeer."

As they walked, Ofeer slung her arm around Atalia and leaned against her.

I was never a true sister to you, she thought. Let me be one now.

"We'll take him home someday," Ofeer said. "We'll raise him in the villa on Pine Hill. When he's old enough, you'll teach him how to use the sword, and Maya will teach him letters and numbers. And on Lel Urim, we'll all walk together through the dark house, singing and holding candles. Remember, Atalia? Like we used to."

Atalia nodded, and her face softened. "Like we used to."

Ofeer paused from walking. They stood in a dark street so narrow they barely fit. The walls of apartment buildings rose at their sides, eight stories tall, revealing only a strip of sky. If the Magisterian Guard had discovered the corpses in the arena yet, Ofeer heard no sign of it. The city was silent in the night. She held Atalia's hands, staring into her sister's eyes.

"Atalia," she said, "please know how sorry I am. I can never find redemption for what I did. For my betrayal. I don't expect you to forgive me. I . . . I did terrible things to our family. To our kingdom. And I'm so sorry. Please know that I love you, my sister." Her voice shook. "I love you so much."

Atalia sniffed, then mussed Ofeer's hair. "Love you too, little sis. Even though you're a little shit."

"Well, you're a big shit," Ofeer said, unable to curb a smile.

Atalia gave her a playful shove. "And you stink like a horse's ass."

"And you look like a donkey's balls," Ofeer said. She couldn't help but smile, eyes damp. They were the same insults they would hurl at each other as children.

They walked onward. Ariel awoke, and Ofeer fed him as they walked through the dark city, then changed his swaddling clothes in a quiet courtyard, and they walked on when the baby slept again. Finally Ofeer saw it ahead: Ohel Adom, the small Zoharite temple where she had been living. From the outside, it appeared humble, two stories high and built of simple bricks. Its only sign of divinity was a pomegranate engraved onto the doorway's keystone, a symbol few in Aelar recognized. At these times of rebellion in Zohar—which Tirus now called Aelaria Orientalis—Ofeer was thankful for the anonymity.

They entered the temple. Only a handful of candles burned in the main floor, illuminating rows of pews, the pulpit, the heavy Book of Eloh, and the silver pomegranate on the wall. The pews lay in shadows. As the sisters walked toward the staircase, a voice spoke from the dark back rows.

"Atalia Sela."

The sisters spun around to see Noa sitting in the back pew, wrapped in cloak and hood, barely visible in the shadows.

"Noa," Ofeer said. "Why are you still awake?"

Ofeer stepped toward the lumer and sat beside her. Ariel awoke and gurgled, but Noa did not acknowledge the baby. She stared at the pew ahead of her.

"Noa, are you all right?" Ofeer whispered.

Noa turned her head toward her, eyes haunted.

"I did what you asked," Noa said.

Ofeer began to tremble.

Oh God. Oh God, no.

Atalia approached too and sat beside them. She looked at the lumer, eyes narrowed. "Tell us. Tell us the news from home."

The lumer reached out and held the sisters' hands, and she spoke for a long time, voice low, cheeks wet with tears.

Ofeer sat silently, listening. She listened as Noa spoke of her mother's throat slit in the Temple. She listened as Noa spoke of Maya crucified. She listened as Noa spoke of Zohar destroyed, a million people slain—nearly the entire nation. She listened and she did not know how to react. What to say. What to feel.

It was impossible.

It was impossible to understand.

When Noa finished speaking, they all sat silently. Atalia stared at the lumer, no rage, no pain, no expression on her face. Just emptiness. And Ofeer knew that she would never forget seeing her sister like this, just staring, blank, a hollow shell.

Ariel woke up and wailed, the loudest Ofeer had ever heard him cry. His screams filled Ohel Adom until the others awoke upstairs—Shaveet the priest, and Periel who tended to the temple, and the others who lived here—and they came down, and they saw that Ofeer had returned and heard the tidings.

They said nothing.

There were no words they could speak.

With her baby cradled against her, Ofeer held Atalia's hand, and they stared into the shadows.

For a long time—silence. And then thunder. And then Ohel Adom shook and erupted with blood and screams.

ATALIA

Mother is dead.

Atalia's eyes stung with tears.

Maya is dead.

She trembled.

Zohar is destroyed.

Atalia clenched her trembling fists. She couldn't see. She couldn't breathe.

The footsteps pounded outside the temple. Feet kicked in the door. Bricks shattered the windows. Soldiers burst into Ohel Adom, raising swords and torches.

"Desert scum!" shouted one soldier.

"Kill the rats!" shouted another.

"For our dead brothers!"

Atalia raised her sword. It seemed like the dead guards at the arena had been discovered.

"Is there a back door to this place?" Atalia said.

"There's a window at the back!" said Ofeer.

"Then go!" Atalia shouted, holding her sword before her. "Take the others. Get out of here!"

Behind her, Ofeer and the others ran into an adjacent room. Atalia remained in the main hall as the soldiers burst in. She snarled and brandished her sword.

"Zohar might have fallen," she said as they advanced toward her. "But there is one Zoharite soldier who still stands."

The Aelarians charged, blades swinging, and Atalia fought them. She roared as she fought. She wept as she fought. They cut her but she stayed standing. Her blood flowed but still she killed them. Her mother was dead. Her sister was dead. A million souls in Zohar were dead. But Atalia still lived, and she killed, and she was back on the walls of Gefen with her father, and she was back in the galley, chained to the oars, and she was riding with her husband again, and she was roaring in the arena, and she would have her vengeance. Her blade tore through a man's neck. Another man's leg. She sliced off a third man's fingers. She ignored the sting of their blades. She feared no more death, no more pain. All that remained was her grief and her fury.

Zohar is fallen. The world has gone dark.

As corpses of guards lay around her, as she panted and bled, more Aelarians kept streaming in from the streets. Two men tossed down torches and oil, and Ohel Adom began to blaze. Flames rose from the pews, crawled up the walls, and consumed the scroll at the pulpit. Smoke stung Atalia's eyes and filled her lungs. She cut down another man, then turned and ran, heading toward the back room.

She found Ofeer there, helping a bearded priest out the window. She still held her baby. The smoke flowed into the chamber, and fire had gripped the rug.

"Out, faster!" Atalia said, helping Ofeer climb outside. Atalia quickly followed. They stood in an alleyway, the flaming temple banishing its shadows. More soldiers came racing into the alleyway, firing crossbows. One bolt slammed into the priest, and the bearded man fell. Another crossbow tore down a woman.

Atalia grabbed the fallen priest; he was still alive.

"Run!" she shouted.

They ran, leaving the woman's body behind. A handful of other Zoharites, dwellers of Ohel Adom, ran with them. Crossbows tore into another man. He fell, and Atalia could not pause to help. They raced through the streets, the soldiers following.

Ofeer led them. After nearly a year in Aelar, she knew these twisting alleyways and dark passageways. Finally they lost pursuit, vanishing into the labyrinth. The group of Zoharites made their way to a small park, not much larger than the burnt temple, where they huddled between cypress trees. In the distance still rose the voices of the guards, moving in the wrong direction, finally vanishing. A dog barked. A child cried a block or two away. Then silence fell once more upon the city.

Only eight Zoharites had made it to this park. The others had either died or fled to different shadows. As Noa tended to the wounded, her hands glowing, Atalia and Ofeer sat together, holding each other. The pain clawed at Atalia's throat, and she felt as if she were back in the dark sea, her ship sunken, drowning in blackness. She clung to Ofeer as if clinging to a raft, and Ofeer held her tightly, and the two wept together.

Maya is gone. Their tears mingled. Mother is gone. Zohar is gone, and we are all that's left.

"I can't believe they're dead," Atalia whispered, thinking of them. Shiloh's kind brown eyes, her warm embrace, her wisdom, her love. Maya's innocence, her sweetness, her joy. Gone. It seemed impossible. It could not be. It seemed a dream, a terror she could not accept. She clung to Ofeer, perhaps the last family she had, and the waves of grief pulsed through her.

For a long time, the sisters sat in the darkness, holding each other, shivering, mourning. Finally Noa moved toward them. Those she had tended to rested against the trees, their wounds closed. Shaveet the priest was breathing heavily, eyes shut, scars on his chest. Luminescence still lit Noa's hands, but the glow seemed faded, mere wisps.

"There's not much left," Noa said to the sisters. "But let me give you what I have."

Both Atalia and Ofeer had suffered wounds in the arena, and the lumer's hands eased their pain, closed their wounds. As Noa tended to the cut on Atalia's leg, her glowing hands dimmed. The luminescence rose in last wisps, then went dark.

"That's all I had left," Noa whispered. "All the lume still in me. My magic is gone." She lowered her head. "With Zohar fallen, perhaps I will never visit home again, never draw more lume from the mountain." She inhaled deeply and raised her chin. "Then so be it. I don't need Luminosity to fight. Tomorrow we'll make new plans, new schemes, and plot our revenge. Tonight we'll focus on finding shelter. I know many in this city, Zoharites with small homes. They'll shelter us, and in the morning's light, we'll devise our plans."

"I have a place for tonight," Ofeer said softly. "Atalia and I will head there now. And as for plans . . ." A cold fire filled her eyes. "If mine succeeds, Tirus will soon fall, and I will be there to spit on his corpse. Come with me, Atalia." Ofeer took her hand. "We go there now. We will be avenged."

OFEER

The sisters walked in silence through the night, shocked and haunted and grieving, until they reached the Lunapar.

Ofeer wanted to lie down in shadows. To weep. To pray. To mourn. But lost here in a foreign city, hunted, she could not afford to mourn. Mourning would have to wait. Right now, Ofeer had only two purposes: survival . . . and revenge.

"The Lunapar," she whispered, pointing at the three-story building that rose at the corner of two busy streets. "The true heart of the Empire."

Even at this late hour—dawn was near—the brothel was in business. Lights shone in the glass windows, and laughter rolled from inside. On the dark cold street, far from the glory of the Acropolis, here was a place of warmth and light and life. Ofeer had not been here since last summer, but strangely, this place still seemed like home to her. During the terror of the past year, the Lunapar—a brothel, of all places—had been an oasis of safety, of comfort, of companionship.

"A whorehouse?" Atalia said.

Ofeer nodded. "I was employed here once." Before her older sister could gasp too loudly, she added, "Only as a singer and a server of wine, never more than that. I found safety here, briefly. If the mistress of this place still remembers me kindly, she'll shelter us for the night."

Atalia grumbled. "I'm not sure I didn't prefer the arena."

"You'll prefer this place," Ofeer said. "When he visits here, he visits alone."

Atalia whipped her head toward Ofeer. "What are you talking about?"

Ofeer spent a moment recounting the story from last summer, how Tirus had tried to hire her services in the Lunapar, and how she had attacked him and fled.

"You cut off his cock?" Atalia asked, gasping.

"Sawed it," Ofeer said. "Just a bit. Luckily, not off."

"You should have sawed it off," said Atalia.

Ofeer looked back at the brothel. She spoke softly. "No. If his cock still throbs for women, he'll return to this place. When last he visited, he seemed like a usual customer. He knew his way around the Lunapar like a rooster knows his way around the henhouse. He was not emperor then, but men's habits are hard to break. I learned that in the port of Gefen." She turned to look at Atalia. "And he craves me. God, he craves me. I saw it in his eyes. The lust. If he learns I've returned to the Lunapar, this time as a lupa—a prostitute, as they call them here in Aelar—he'll return. He'll want me to suck the cock I sawed before he kills me."

Atalia understood. "Someone will kill someone all right." She patted the pommel of her sword.

Ofeer nodded. "All the forces of Gael could not break Tirus, nor the armies of Zohar. It'll be his lust that's his undoing—and our fury. I know his twisted, bitter mind. Even back in Zohar, in the villa on Pine Hill, his eyes would linger on my breasts. He'll be back here. Without guards. He'll come in disguise. But come he will, and his blood will spill."

Atalia's eyes narrowed, still red and damp, the icy grief and flaming fury mingling within them. She had taken a cloak and hood from Ohel Adom, but beneath them, she still wore the armor and bore the sword from the arena. "His blood will spill."

They walked toward the Lunapar. Phalli were engraved onto the road's cobblestones, pointing toward the front door, where a bronze phallus formed a doorknob. The sisters entered to find the same place Ofeer remembered from the summer she had spent working here. Lanterns still cast warm light, illuminating erotic frescoes, nude statues, and divans topped with tasseled cushions. Despite the late hour, several patrons lounged here, smoking hintan from hookahs, filling the room with green smoke. A few young women—the lupi, givers of love—reclined with the men, their togas open to reveal their nakedness. The stage where Ofeer had performed so often was empty, and goblets and plates still littered the tables, remnants of a long night of pleasure. From upstairs, Ofeer could hear some of the pleasure continuing. Beds banged and people moaned, the ceiling doing little to conceal the sound.

A lupa approached them. Her toga—a garment for esteemed men or loose women—was open to reveal the breasts, and her long brown hair hung in tresses.

"Welcome!" she said. "Welcome to the Lunapar, I—" When she stared into the confines of Ofeer's hood, she gasped. "Odelia!"

Ofeer nodded. "Hello, Mariana."

The brown-haired lupa's eyes widened, and she tightened her toga around herself. She grabbed Ofeer's hand and pulled her across the main hall and into the kitchen. Atalia followed, hand inside her cloak, wrapped around the hilt of her sword. The kitchen was large, full of shelves stocked with preserves, grains, salted meats, and spices. Casks of wine rose along one wall, and two stone ovens still held warm embers. Sausages hung from rafters. Though Ofeer was still shaken by tragedy and injury, she realized how hungry she was. She couldn't remember the last time she had eaten.

"Odelia, do you know that you're being hunted across the city?" Mariana said, using the alias Ofeer had given herself last year. "Tirus's men almost burned the whole place down. We had to stroke their cocks all autumn to stay their swords and torches. They say terrible things, that you . . . That you . . ."

Ofeer nodded. "That I'm Ofeer Sela, the sister of Epheriah the Rebel King, and mother to Seneca the Snake's child." She held out her baby. "It's true, Mariana. All of it."

"What's also true is that we're bloody hungry," Atalia interjected. "Mind if we have a bite?"

Mariana nodded distractedly, her hair in disarray. She moved about the kitchen, preparing a quick meal of sliced cheese, fatty sausages, dried figs, and grainy bread with olive oil for dipping. Ofeer was thankful for the meal; she needed to keep eating well to nurse. She polished off her plate, then fed Ariel. Throughout the meal, they spoke, sharing their stories, speaking of the terrors Tirus had inflicted upon them.

"Does Tirus still come here, even as emperor?" Ofeer asked, breath catching.

Mariana nodded. "He does. In disguise. Dressed in a simple toga, often with a wig on his bald head." The lupa sighed. "He's emperor of Aelar now, and he has a thousand slaves to fuck in his palace, yet he still comes here. To our Lunapar, to our lupi. And I think, Ofeer, that he comes here hoping that someday you'll be back." Mariana lowered her head, and a shudder ran through her. "Whenever he chooses me for his bed, as he thrusts into me, he speaks of you. He calls your name, your real name—Ofeer, Ofeer! And he hurts me." She showed Ofeer bruises that ran along her arms. "He pretends that I'm you as he fucks me, and he punishes me for what you did."

Ofeer's teeth clenched. "I'll do far worse to him next time he's here. I gave his manhood just the tiniest of slices last time. This time we'll drive a blade into his rotten black heart."

She inhaled deeply. She did not relish the thought of murder; it was a sin in the eyes of Eloh. But Tirus had condemned Atalia to die in the arena. Tirus had hurt Mariana. Tirus had sent his daughter to destroy and ravage Zohar, and Ofeer's family and all her people had perished in those flames. All she had left was revenge.

And so I will kill him, Ofeer thought. And I hope that I'm not cast out from your grace, Eloh.

"You'll have to hide here," Mariana said. "If Lena Florine knew you were back, knew what you planned . . ."

Ofeer remembered Florine, the lena—mistress—of the Lunapar. The woman had frightened her at first, so corpulent she could barely leave her bed, so covered with jewels and cosmetics she barely seemed human. In time, Ofeer had learned that Florine was kind, gentle despite her gruff exterior, a woman who had sheltered Ofeer during a dark time in her life. Yet Mariana surely spoke truth. Florine's compassion would not extend toward the murdering of an emperor within her establishment.

"Lena Florine never comes downstairs," Ofeer said. "She's too heavy to use the stairs, bless her. Atalia and I will sleep downstairs—on the kitchen floor or in the pantry—if the other girls agree to keep our secret."

Mariana nodded. "Tirus has hurt us all. There was one girl . . ." Mariana shuddered and glanced at Ariel, then back at Ofeer, and her voice dropped. "He got her pregnant. When she told him, he punched her belly until she miscarried. The lupi of the Lunapar will help you, Ofeer Sela of Zohar. We all crave his death."

It was the first time Mariana had called her by her true name.

For a long time, they waited.

As it turned out, there was no need to live in the kitchen while waiting for Tirus's next visit. Mariana revealed that the best chamber in the house—the same one Seneca would once frequent—was kept for Tirus's exclusive use. It was in this chamber that Ofeer and Atalia spent the last hour of the night, sharing the bed. In the morning, Mariana brought them breakfast: grainy bread dipped in olive oil, fresh boiled eggs, grapes and berries, and smoked and peppered cheese. Two slaves entered to dust the chamber, change the sheets, and take the empty plates. All swore silence; they would not reveal Ofeer's presence to their mistress.

During that day, as Ofeer and Atalia waited in the chamber, they often heard Lena Florine from down the hall. The heavyset mistress of the Lunapar barked orders at her girls, shuffling back and forth, ruling her establishment with military rigor. One time Ofeer heard the floor creaking and saw slippered feet below the doorframe, and she prepared to leap out the window and hide in the alleyway. Yet Florine never entered the chamber, and Ofeer and Atalia remained here, sitting on the bed, waiting for the emperor to arrive.

Sunset fell, and now the sounds the Lunapar's business rose all around them—giggles, moaning, sometimes a scream. And still they waited.

Finally the sisters lay down on the bed, and they spoke softly in the darkness, recounting old tales of home. It brought tears to their eyes as they remembered home, as they spoke of Mother, of Maya, of the others, of the memory of Gefen and Beth Eloh, places that had fallen, that were gone. They prayed that Epher still lived. They prayed to find Koren again. They feared that their brothers too, like Maya and Mica, were gone. In the darkness, the sisters mourned, and finally they slept.

The next morning, they formulated a plan, keeping it between Mariana, Ofeer, and Atalia but secret from all others.

"Let's review it one more time," Ofeer said as they ate breakfast in the upstairs chamber. "When Tirus finally returns to the Lunapar—and we know he comes here every few days—Mariana will ply him with wine."

"Poisoned wine," Mariana said, holding up the jug. "I got this from an alchemist down at the port. They use it to sedate elephants when shipping them from Nur. A cup of this, and he'll fall asleep as soon as he hits a bed."

Ofeer nodded. "Good. Just don't give him enough to kill him—just enough to dull his senses, to slow his reactions. Make sure that after he drinks, he comes to this bed." She patted the bed she sat on—the bed Tirus always used on his visits. "It must be us—Atalia and I—who kill him. We've earned that right."

"While he drinks, I'll send a girl up to warn you," Mariana said. "Atalia, you know your part?"

Atalia nodded, caressing her sword. "I'll hide behind the curtain and listen and peek. To make sure he has no guards with him, and that he has no armor or sword. You two will put him to sleep, and then I'll leap out, and . . ." She thrust her sword into the air. "Carve out his heart."

They all nodded. The wait continued.

Three days passed in this room. Three days of tears and grief. Three days of tales. They spoke of their year apart, of Atalia's time in Gael and Ofeer's in this city. Sometimes Ariel cried, and Ofeer worried that Lena Florine would hear, but thankfully one of the lupi in the Lunapar had a baby too. Mariana assured Ofeer that the mistress did not suspect that two babes now wailed within these walls.

There could have been three babes here, Ofeer thought, remembering the tale of Tirus beating the woman he had impregnated.

It was finally, on the fourth evening hidden in this bedchamber, that Ofeer heard Mariana cry out in the corridor.

"Dominus!" Mariana said. "Dominus, will you drink no wine before visiting your chamber?"

Ofeer froze. She had been feeding Ariel, and she pulled him off her breast. He wailed. Heavy footsteps sounded outside, and Ofeer heard an unmistakable voice, gruff and low, the voice she had never forgotten.

"Shut your mouth, wench. Out of my way. Why are you stumbling around my feet?"

Tirus is here, Ofeer thought.

According to their plan, when Tirus arrived at the Lunapar, Mariana was to ply him with poisoned wine, enough to dull his senses and let Ofeer plunge a blade into his heart. Yet it seemed that Tirus had charged upstairs like a stallion after a mare in heat. And here Ofeer stood, holding her babe, her breast still dripping milk!

"Fuck!" Atalia mouthed as a key rattled in the door. Grabbing her sword off the table, Atalia hurried to the nearest hiding spot—behind the curtain that draped across the window. There she vanished, tucking her bare feet under the curtain's hem.

As the door opened, Ofeer stood in the center of the room, heart racing, her baby crying in her arms.

Tirus took two steps into the chamber, froze, and his eyes widened.

"You," he mouthed.

"Dominus!" Mariana said behind the emperor. "Are you certain you'd care for no wine, or—"

The emperor shoved Mariana back into the corridor, slammed the door shut, and stared at Ofeer.

"You fucking whore," he whispered, eyes alight, and licked his lips. "You're back."

Gently, Ofeer placed her son on the bed, where he writhed and cried. She faced Tirus.

"You knew I'd come back," Ofeer said. "You came here every week for months now, hoping I'd come back."

Come on, Atalia, he's alone and unarmed, Ofeer thought. Burst out from those curtains and kill him!

Ofeer had planned to kill Tirus herself, her revenge against him, a gift Atalia wanted to give her. Yet that was when Ofeer had thought Tirus would be dazed on bad wine. Now she wished for Atalia's strong arm, yet she dared not call out to her sister, dared not blow Atalia's cover.

Come out, Atalia! Kill him yourself!

Tirus inhaled with a wet, gurgling sound. His mouth was watering. His eyes traveled down to Ofeer's exposed breast, the milk still on the nipple, and she saw him harden beneath his toga.

"Yes, I knew you'd come back," he said. "You're nothing but a whore, and there's no life for you outside a whorehouse. Did you rid yourself of your saw?" He barked a laugh.

"No saw," Ofeer said, waiting for Atalia to burst out with her sword. Come on, Atalia, a little help! "I now live to pleasure men, not cut them."

Tirus doffed his cloak, then his toga, remaining naked.

"Get undressed," he said to Ofeer. "And get rid of this miserable baby."

He stepped toward the bed and reached for Ariel.

"Atalia, now, damn it!" Ofeer shouted, leaping toward her son. "Don't you fucking touch—"

With a howl, Atalia leaped from behind the curtain, sword flashing.

Tirus cursed, grabbed the baby, and bellowed as Atalia's sword slashed his leg.

"Ariel!" Ofeer screamed.

"Stand back!" Tirus cried, holding the baby. His leg gushed blood. Ariel wailed in his arms.

For an instant they all froze: Ofeer reaching out to her baby; Tirus holding the child, his leg bleeding; Atalia with her sword red and dripping.

"One more move," Tirus said, "and I smash this fucking baby's head against the wall. One more move and—"

"Grab Ariel!" Atalia shouted, leaping forward.

Ofeer screamed.

Atalia's blade lashed.

Tirus made to swing Ariel against the wall.

Atalia's blade slammed through the emperor's arms, cutting both through the elbows, severing the limbs.

Ofeer leaped forward, arms outstretched. Ariel fell. He landed in Ofeer's grasp, still gripped by Tirus's hands.

Armless, Tirus crashed to the floor.

As Ariel wept, Ofeer pried off the dead hands, shoved the severed arms aside, and cradled the baby against her, weeping, trembling.

"What the fuck is going on in there!" sounded a voice outside—Lena Florine's voice, and the locked door rattled.

"Are you all right?" Ofeer whispered to Ariel, then looked over her shoulder. "He's covered in blood. He's covered in blood, Atalia! We need a healer! We need a—"

"It's not his blood," Atalia said, standing above them, still holding the wet sword. "Ariel is fine. Tirus never got a chance to hurt him. It's Tirus's blood. Ariel is fine, Ofeer."

Ofeer forced herself to take deep, steady breaths. She grabbed a blanket and wiped blood off Ariel, examining him for injuries. Atalia had been right; the baby was rattled but unharmed. Soon he calmed and even gave her a wan smile.

"What's going on in there?" Florine demanded outside, and Ofeer heard Mariana in the hallway too, trying to soothe her mistress, to lead her away.

Finally the door swung open. Lena Florine stood there, leaning on a cane, her wide frame wrapped with silk. When she saw the blood and the armless Tirus on the floor, she gasped, clutched her heart, and took a step back.

Tirus moaned.

Ofeer whipped her head toward him and covered her mouth. He was still alive! The bastard was still alive. He bled from a gash on his leg, and his arms were both severed at the elbows, but the wall-pisser still drew breath, even managed to rise to his feet. He stumbled forward, and Florine shrieked and stepped back, and even Ofeer retreated from the grisly sight.

"I need help," Tirus whispered. "Please. Please. A healer."

He limped out of the room, waving his stumps, a spectacle so gruesome Ofeer couldn't help it. She laughed. Terror pulsed through her, but she laughed.

Holding Ariel, she stepped out into the corridor, past the shocked Florine, and saw Tirus race downstairs. Patrons and lupi fled from his advance, shrieking. Ofeer was sure Tirus would collapse any second—he was losing so much blood—yet the emperor managed to careen toward the door and out onto the street.

"Fuck," Atalia said. "Come on, Ofeer. After him!"

They ran through the Lunapar and burst outside. Tirus swayed along the dark street, his stumps still spurting and waving pathetically. If he had brought any guards with him, the men were drunk somewhere, for none approached to aid him.

"Help me!" Tirus wailed. "Help me, somebody!"

Yet the street was quiet at night. Only two old men walked here, then turned to flee from the gruesome figure. Tirus fell to his knees and shuffled forward, as if hoping to cross the entire distance to the Acropolis on the hill.

Ofeer and Atalia approached and stood before him. Tirus looked up at the sisters, his skin gray, his eyes sunken. His mouth worked but no sound came out.

Ofeer looked down at this wretched man kneeling before her.

"You tried to rape me," Ofeer said. "You enslaved my older sister. Your troops murdered my little sister. Your troops destroyed my kingdom and slaughtered every man, woman, and child in Beth Eloh." Tears wet her cheeks. "You tried to murder my son."

Gently, Atalia placed her sword's hilt into Ofeer's hand. Ofeer held her son with one hand, the sword with the other.

"He's yours," Atalia said softly.

Ofeer nodded and handed Ariel to her sister. She held the sword with shaking hands, pointing it at Tirus.

"Beg me," Ofeer whispered.

And Tirus begged. Kneeling before her, bleeding to death, he begged. And Ofeer watched. And she listened. And she let him suffer. And then, moments before his heart could stop beating from blood loss, she plunged her blade into it.

She pulled her blade free and looked down at the corpse. She felt nothing.

Atalia exhaled slowly. "He begged for his life, Ofeer," she said softly.

Ofeer nodded. "I wanted him to. And I wanted to take it anyway." She looked at her sister. "I'm not a good person, Atalia. The good, the meek, the righteous—they don't survive in this world. It's only we, the bastards and broken ones, who survive."

Curious people, roused by the sounds, were emerging from their houses. They converged around the armless body, pointing, whispering.

One woman cried out, "It's the emperor! The emperor is dead!"

The call spread through the crowd. "Emperor Tirus is dead!"

Ofeer tucked the bloody sword into her cloak. Atalia held Ariel to her chest. The sisters walked away, vanishing into the shadows.

CLAUDIA

"Climb!" she shouted. "Fucking worms, raise your shields and climb!"

Claudia stood atop the canyon, the sun baking her armor. Her voice echoed in the crevice. Across the canyon, the mesa soared—a massive monolith of stone, its cliffs taller than all of Nur's pyramids stacked together. A century of her legionaries stood below, deep in the canyon, where the snake path began its ascent. The trail coiled up the cliff—at times just the width of a man's foot—toward the gates of Tarath El above.

"Climb!" Claudia shouted from above the canyon.

She had selected these legionaries for their brazenness and courage; these hundred men had been the first into the Temple of Beth Eloh. Their centurion led the way. Man by man, they stepped onto the snake path. They climbed, their shields held overhead, locking together, forming a long semicylinder like armor on the back of centipede. Claudia watched from across the canyon, her fingers tapping the pommel of her gladius.

She drank from her wineskin, watching the soldiers make their laborious ascent, moving step by careful step. Even in late winter, it was so damn hot and dry here in the desert. Her lips were chapped, her skin burnt and peeling. She could scarcely believe that only a year ago, she had been a pampered daughter of wealth, that she had worn silk stolas, not iron armor, that rings had adorned her hand, not the hilt of a sword. That had been a different person—a giggly, vacuous girl, soft-skinned, painted with cosmetics and sprinkled with perfume.

"You killed that girl, Epher," she said, staring up at the walls high upon the mesa. "You burned her away in the fire. And you made me a demon."

The fire he had kindled in the siege tower still blazed across her. The scars ran along her arm, her neck, and her left jawline. She would never be pretty again. Never be soft. Never laugh in a garden. Never love again. Yes, that pampered girl had burned away in his flames. She had been reborn—stronger, always stronger, and the demon he had summoned would burn him.

She drank more wine. What was that saying Seneca had always used? Ale for courage, wine for strength, blood for lust. Claudia had lost her fear in the fire, and soon she would have what she lusted for.

The legionaries were halfway up the cliff when the assault from above commenced.

Zoharites emerged onto their battlements, the turrets and ramparts that surrounded the plateau atop the mesa. Their arrows rained down, slamming into the legionaries' shields, embedding into the wood. One legionary swayed, screamed, and fell, reaching out to grab a comrade, only pulling that man down with him. Both tumbled down the cliff and finally shattered against the canyon floor. The others kept climbing, ninety-eight men, shields blocking the barrage of arrows.

"You can't keep firing arrows forever, Epher." Claudia licked wine off her teeth. "You'll run out of arrows before Aelar runs out of soldiers."

As if in response to her words, the arrows from above died down. For a few steps, the legionaries kept climbing. Then the stones began to fall from the battlements.

Some stones were small as fists, others large as skulls, some even larger. They hailed down from the walls, slamming into the shields. A few legionaries managed to keep their shields overhead. Others lost their balance and careened down to the canyon. Several boulders shattered the shields they hit, crushing the men beneath. Hundreds of stones hailed down, an avalanche, tearing into the century. Finally only three men remained on the wall, trying to flee before arrows picked them out and cast them down onto their dead comrades below.

A hundred elite warriors—wiped out. Within moments.

"Fuck," Claudia said.

She stormed off to her tent. She drank more wine. She closed her eyes, hugged her pillow, and thought of Epher, pretending that he lay here with her, that he was making love to her until she climaxed with a scream—a scream like the men falling off the cliff, like the million slain in Beth Eloh, like her mother had screamed.

When dawn rose across the desert, and the Zoharites still taunted her from the walls, the new troops she had summoned arrived from the north. Claudia had chased Epher here with one legion. Now a second arrived, swelling her numbers to ten thousand men. With the new arrivals came wagons laden with wood, taken from the forests of northern Zohar, and an army of engineers and carpenters.

Claudia led the team around the jutting mesa, laboriously down into the canyon, along the chasm, and finally to the eastern facade of Tarath El. The cliffs soared here too, just as tall. There was no snake path on this side, simply a wall of craggy tan stone.

"Build!" she said.

For a long time, the legion's engineers built.

Hammers pounded the cliff. Scaffolds rose across the stone. The cliff was taller than any temple or palace; never had men raised scaffoldings this high. The hammers swung, nailing bolts into the stone. The paths of wood rose, plank after plank.

They were several stories high when the fire rained from above.

The Zoharites were hurling what at first Claudia mistook for stones. When they shattered against the scaffolds, fire spread. She realized the defenders were tossing clay jugs full of ignited bitumen. Aelarians screamed across the scaffolds and fell, and soon nothing remained of the structure but black stains and metal bolts in the cliff.

"Fuck," Claudia said again.

She had arrived at Beth Eloh with the finest siege engines in the Empire. Ladders. Rolling towers of wood and metal, as high as city walls, covered with metal plates. Battering rams that could shatter any door. Catapults, trebuchets, and ballistae that could crack even the sturdiest turret or merlon.

All those were useless here.

She returned to her tent. She screamed. She fell to her knees, and she felt the fire blazing across her again, and she saw her mother die, and she slept and dreamed of holding Epher, kissing him in a distant garden, young and in love.

"Bring me catapults!" she shouted. "Tear down their walls!"

Constantius approached her. With that ridiculous iron talon of his, he held his spear.

"Domina, no catapult can reach high enough."

"Then shatter the fucking cliffs!" she shrieked.

The men exchanged glances. Yet they obeyed. For a full day, the catapults pounded the cliff, chipping off bits of stone, as Claudia screamed. And the cliffs stood. And the Zoharites taunted her from above. And she tugged her hair, clawed her face, stormed back into her tent. She curled up, shivering, missing him.

In the morning she stepped out into the desert, and she stared north.

"Slaves," she said. "We need slaves. Hundreds of slaves. A thousand slaves." She grinned, breathing heavily, her fingertips tingling. "We will do something here that has never been done. We will build a monument to last for eternity. Ride north! Bring me slaves!"

EPHER

"Yeah, get lost, cunts!" Olive shouted. "Go back to Aelar and fuck your mothers, you wall-pissing sons of whores!"

Standing on the defensive wall of Tarath El, she pulled up her tunic and wiggled her bare backside at the Aelarians across the canyon. When a hailstorm of arrows followed, Epher pulled her behind a merlon. The arrows slammed into the stone battlements.

"Watch it," Epher said. "I happen to like your backside. I'd hate for an arrow to stick into it."

"You no like sharing?" Olive stuck her tongue out at him.

Epher looked through an arrowslit at the landscape beyond. The desert canyons and hills rolled to the horizon, beige under a pale sky. Claudia and her men were still there. He couldn't see Claudia now, but he could see her tent pitched across the canyon, and he could see thousands of her brutes.

Claudia had chased him here with one legion, a terror of five thousand killers. Two more legions had since joined her. The enemy now sprawled across the desert, surrounding the mesa, like a sea around a tor. For a month now, the legions had attempted to climb, to build ladders, to scale the cliffs—and every time, the flame and arrows of Zohar sent them crashing down.

And yet the legions lingered.

We're safe here, Epher told himself—as he told himself every day, struggling to calm the anxiety within him. We have enough food and water to last for months, even years, and they cannot climb. We're safe.

"Yes. I'm a possessive, jealous monster." Epher gave his wife's backside a pat, then touched the curve of her belly. "How do you feel, Olive?"

"Like I going throw up," she said. "Like everything hurts. Like boulder pressed on my bladder. And like I completely in love with this baby already."

"I think I felt him move," Epher said.

"I think that just my stomach rumbling," Olive said. "I hungry."

They walked across the plateau, the flat top of the mesa. They passed the palace, the place where Epher and Olive had taken up residence, sharing the building with Issazion, ruler of Tarath El, and her retinue. They kept walking, passing by the bathhouse, the gardens, the corral of sheep, the columned temple, and the silos. They reached the barracks, a sturdy fortress that rose along the rim of the cliff, gazing upon the canyon below and the desert beyond. In the main hall, hundreds of warriors were eating at tables. Hundreds more could be heard eating, speaking, or singing in other chambers in the fortress.

As Epher entered the hall, many of the warriors fell silent and stared. He took his seat, and Olive sat at his side, and they reached for their rations—a piece of flat bread, a small bowl of olive oil, a handful of roasted chickpeas, a cup of wine, and two carobs each.

For a long time nervous silence filled the hall. Eyes gazed toward the king, then away.

Epher placed down his bread. He sat in silence for a moment.

"What is it?" he finally asked.

The warriors looked at one another. Finally a man rose, tall and bald and bearded. "How long can we keep doing this, my king?"

"For as long as we need to," Epher said. "We have enough water. Enough food for a year if we ration it, maybe two."

"And what then?" demanded another man, rising to his feet. "Would we languish here on the mountain, only to be butchered in a year, starving and weak?"

More voices rose in approval.

"We must speak to Claudia," said a woman. "We can make peace!"

"What peace means is surrender," shouted a man at her side. "That Zohar will not do."

"Then we surrender!" rose another voice. "There's no shame in that."

"Fuck surrender!" A bearded warrior leaped to his feet, knocking his chair back, and drew a sword. "I'd fuck one of our sheep before I surrender to Aelar."

Soon it seemed that everyone in the hall was shouting. Epher stared at them. They were afraid. They were afraid like he was.

"Hear me!" he said. "Warriors of Zohar, hear me!"

When nobody seemed to heed him, Olive leaped onto the table—pregnant belly and all—and shrieked, "Shut the fuck up, you bunch of yapping dogs!"

Once more silence fell across the hall. Epher inhaled deeply and helped Olive sit back down.

"There can be no surrender to Claudia," Epher said, addressing the crowd. "Her forces toppled every last building in Beth Eloh. As far as I know, she butchered everyone there who could not escape. If we meet again, she would kill most of us. She might take some as slaves, forcing us to fight in the arenas of Aelar—or simply torturing and crucifying us for the crowd. And Zohar would fall. And our land would become Aelaria Orientalis, a province for the holidays of Aelarian nobles, and all our lore would be forgotten. Thousands of years of Zoharite culture—erased, gone forever, our light never more to shine." He shook his head. "I would not have it so. Here in Tarath El, in the desert, we have found an oasis of safety. We can withstand this siege. Empires all fall. I don't know how long Aelar will last. The Empire might fall in a year, perhaps in a century, perhaps not for a thousand years. But one thing I know: We, the last Zoharites, must keep the last flicker alive, like a candle burning low. It's our duty to protect this flame. Here, in this hall, upon this mountain—this is all that remains of our ancient civilization. This is a gift too precious to squander. And so every day, we will fight. Every day, we will say the name: Zohar. Every day that we live, we resist, and we are blessed."

Many of the warriors nodded in approval, eyes shining. Yet despite his own words, Epher's heart chilled.

What kind of life do I give my child here on this mountain? he thought. What kind of kingdom will he know?

Not everyone in the crowd seemed swayed. One man—among the original defenders of Tarath El—rose to his feet and spat on the floor.

"The king fled Beth Eloh like a coward." He tossed a piece of bread at Epher. "Eat another. That's what you came here for. Food and safety while our people died. I serve no coward."

The man turned to leave.

Olive screamed, drew her dagger, and made to run after the man. Epher grabbed her shoulder.

"No," Epher said. "Let him go." He spoke loudly enough for the crowd to hear. "He's right to be upset. He's right to scorn us who fled Beth Eloh." All eyes watched him, and Epher struggled to keep the grief from his voice. "I could tell you that we could not save the women and children, that we were trapped in the Temple, the legions outside, our only path a tunnel leading to the wilderness. I could tell you that we believed Claudia Valerius would spare the city. I could tell you that by the time we turned back toward Beth Eloh, by the time we saw the fire and heard the screams, it was too late. And all those things would be true. Yet the fact remains. Six hundred of us fled the devastation. And a million who remained behind died. Nothing can undo that shame—the shame I feel for still living. For lingering on while so many fell." Now his voice cracked. "I would gladly plunge a blade into my own chest if I could save just one child who fell in Beth Eloh. I would gladly carve out my own heart to see a single grandmother or beggar or leper brought back to life. But all I can do now is live. Is fight. Is try to keep whatever flame we still have burning. There is no surrender. There is no fate for us at Claudia's hands save for slavery or death." He pushed the bread aside. "Eat, children of Zohar. Live. Sing the songs of our kingdom, for tomorrow the fire of Aelar might burn us all."

That evening, Epher entered the temple by the cliff's edge. It was a round building, built into a natural depression where two sides of the plateau met at a rounded corner. Columns lined the temple's round wall, affording a view of the desert. From here, Epher could not see the rest of the plateau, nor the cliffs of the mesa. It seemed as if the temple floated in the sky.

He stood between two columns, gazing out at the moonlit canyons and hills and dunes, and above them the stars. He could see the lights of the legion's camp.

One of those lights belongs to you, Claudia. The woman I loved. The woman I never knew.

He lowered his head to remember those days under the stars of Gefen. Holding Claudia in his arms. Wanting to never part from her.

We never did truly part, Claudia. Still our fates are entwined.

"I don't know if you're real, Eloh," Epher said softly, raising his eyes to the stars. "I don't know how a benevolent god can truly exist when so much evil has fallen. I don't know if anyone watches over us, or whether you have cursed us, or whether we are simply lost children in the dark. But now I turn to you in the darkest moment of my life. And I pray and plead, Eloh. Do not let my child be born into a world of fire and death and bones. Do not let Olive, a soul I love, fall to the enemy. Deliver us, Eloh. With everything that I am, was, can be, I pray: Deliver us."

The night was silent.

Epher turned and left the temple.

When he returned to his bed, Olive was already asleep, lying on her side. He lay down behind her and held her close. She mumbled and kissed his hand, then pulled it down so that it cupped her breast.

"You can make love to me," she whispered.

He did, holding her from behind, gently, slowly, until she slept again in his arms. Yet he could find no rest, flitting in and out of sleep, lost in a dream where he wandered an endless desert.

"My king!" Maya called to him from the cross. "King Epheriah!" Her eyes bled, and ravens bustled across her body, and the sky swirled above the Valley of Ashes. "My king?"

Epher opened his eyes. Dawn spilled through the window, and Olive lay at his side, mumbling and rising from sleep. A knock sounded on the door, and the voice rose again from outside. "King Epheriah?"

"Come in," Epher said.

A guard entered the chamber, a young woman with two black braids and green eyes.

"Lior," Epher said. "What is it?"

Fear filled those green eyes, and the armored woman could say nothing. Epher rose from bed, pulled on his suit of scales, and followed her outside. Olive followed. They hurried across the courtyard to the northern wall and stared into the desert.

They were approaching from the distance, raising a cloud of dust. Thousands of them.

Olive leaned across the battlements, squinting in the sunlight. "Who are they?" she whispered.

"Zoharites," Epher said grimly, clutching a merlon. "Zoharite slaves. The last survivors of Beth Eloh."

ATALIA

"Atalia! Atalia, can you teach me how to kill rephaim?" Maya ran toward her through the garden, curls bouncing. "There's a creature under my bed. A monster with wrinkly gray skin. Can you teach me how to kill it?"

Atalia laughed and embraced her little sister, a girl of eight springs. As the kingfishers sang in the pines, she mussed the girl's wild mane of curly hair. "Of course. Let's go kill it together."

"Father!" Atalia said, tugging at his beard. "Father, can I have a real iron sword for Harvest? Please, Father, please please please."

The giant lifted her, laughed, hugged her against his massive chest. His eyebrows were black as coal, his eyes warm as hearths. "Not until you're older, little one."

"I'm seven!" she said. "I'm old enough."

"Shush, Atalia, be quiet." Mother held her hand. "This isn't time for rowdiness."

They entered the gates of Beth Eloh. Father, Epher, and Koren wore their prayer shawls, and Atalia wore a horrible white dress she hated, wanted to tear off.

"I want a prayer shawl too!" she insisted, stamping her feet.

"Prayer shawls are only for boys," Ofeer told her, raising her nose, but Atalia insisted.

Mother sighed, looked at Father, then bought a prayer shawl from a vendor. When Atalia walked through the city with the shawl around her shoulders, some priests and bearded men gave her stern looks, and she stuck her tongue out at them, made faces, and laughed. Mother grumbled at first, then laughed too, and they held hands as they walked through the city, heading toward the Temple on the Mount of Cedars. All around them walked thousands, all in white, and the songs of priests rose from marble halls.

When Atalia woke up, it was still dark, and those dreams still filled her. Memories of a family gone. A home lost.

She looked around her, for a moment confused, not sure if she lay in her cell at the Ludus Magnus, in the cypress park, or still back in Zohar. A single candle shone. She saw a brick chamber, cold ovens, and sacks of grain on shelves. She lay on the floor, a blanket tossed across her, and several people—Ofeer and Ariel among them—lay around her.

Of course. Elner's bakery.

They had been living here since killing Emperor Tirus, seeking shelter from the roaming soldiers who were harassing Zoharites in the streets. Hundreds of Zoharites, some said thousands, lived here in the city of Aelar—many of them slaves, some free citizens. Since the Magisterian Guard had burned one of their temples, revenge for Atalia's escape from the arena, they had been hiding. Elner, a kindly Zoharite baker with a white mustache, had opened his home to them.

Atalia rose to her feet. Ariel stirred against Ofeer's breast; Ofeer mumbled sleepily and stroked his hair, and soon both slept again. Atalia tiptoed away, grabbed her sword and cloak, and stepped outside into the night.

Berengar is dead, she thought, eyes stinging. But some Gaelians might still be alive, still be fighting.

From where she stood, deep in the labyrinth of Aelar, Atalia could barely see the sky, only a strip above between the towering buildings. Judging by the hint of indigo, dawn was near. The city was cold despite the coming spring, and she wrapped her cloak around herself. Her sword pressed against her thigh, a comforting presence, and a hood hid her face. She walked down the narrow streets, navigating by glimpses of the sky, which slowly grew bluer in the east, still black in the west. Even after all this time in Aelar, she still struggled to grasp the size of this place. Beth Eloh had always seemed massive to her, yet Aelar was ten times the size.

Though Beth Eloh no longer exists, Atalia thought, and fresh pain stabbed her, and she wished she could tear this entire city down.

Finally Atalia reached the city's curtain walls. They soared like the walls of the Amphitheatrum, encircling the city. Suddenly it seemed to Atalia that all of Aelar, this city of a million people, was itself a great amphitheater, and all those within it were fighting a great battle for a crowd.

A ramp ran parallel to the wall, allowing passage to the battlements. Several soldiers stood above in the dawn. Atalia pulled off her sandals and climbed the ramp, silent, and sneaked into an empty archer's embrasure. A cross-shaped arrowslit revealed a narrow view of the landscape beyond.

Atalia breathed out in relief. There were still Gaelians camped outside the city.

Gone was the massive horde that had once surrounded the city. Atalia had stormed here with tens of thousands, swallowing the land beneath them. Through the arrowslit, she now saw what looked like a mass grave, a hill of earth and stone. Farther back, a wooden palisade surrounded a camp of tents. From here, she could see several hundred Gaelian warriors rising in the dawn, drilling with their weapons, and tending to their horses. As Atalia watched from the wall, she gripped her sword and fire blazed through her.

The war is not yet lost.

She stepped out from the embrasure, leaped onto a merlon, and stood high in the open air. Before her spread the landscape.

There were thousands.

Thousands of Gaelians still camped outside.

"The legions must have captured Berengar in a raid," Atalia whispered. "The Gaelians are still fighting. They—"

"Hey!" A legionary raced toward her along the wall. "You! Who are you? Get down!"

Atalia leaped back onto the ramp and ran, returning to the city. She trembled. The siege was ongoing. They could still fight. They could still smash this city.

She ran down the streets. Thousands of Aelarian citizens were emerging from their homes, traveling to markets and workshops. The city bustled with life, with joy, all while Zohar lay in ruin, while Jerael, Shiloh, and Maya lay dead, maybe Epher and Koren too.

"But I still stand," Atalia said. "I still fight."

She reached one of the city's gates. Several guards stood here, defending the doors. Soldiers. Soldiers like those who had destroyed Atalia's home, like those who had imprisoned her, forced her to kill her husband.

My enemies.

Atalia walked toward them.

She doffed her cloak, revealing the armor of a gladiator.

She drew her sword.

She smiled and raised her blade.

The guards' eyes widened, and they ran toward her. But Atalia had fought Seneca's legions on a distant shore. She had ridden with Berengar, a great chief of chiefs. She had studied in the Ludus Magnus, and she had fought the finest gladiators in the Empire. Now these guards were her enemy, and Atalia cut them down, and their blood spilled upon the cobblestones of a cruel city—a city she would see fall.

She tugged a ring of keys off a dead guard. She unlocked the city doors. Coated with blood, shuddering yet still smiling, Atalia shoved the massive doors of the city, and they creaked open, revealing the countryside and the horde that awaited.

"Forth, Gael!" she shouted, arms raised, sword dripping. "Forth, warriors of the north! Send this city crashing down!"

More guards came running from within the city. Soldiers cursed on the curtain walls and raced down toward her. Yet they were too slow. The warriors of Gael stormed forth, howling, weapons swinging, and flowed into the city.

OFEER

Ofeer woke up to the sounds of screaming.

At first, in the haze of slumber and fleeing dreams, she thought it Ariel who was wailing. But no. Her baby lay calmly in her arms, gazing up at her. The sound rose from outside the bakery—screams, howls, laughter, weeping, thousands of voices crying out. Iron banged together, and the bakery shook, the shelves rattling. A sack of flour fell and spilled, raising clouds.

Ofeer knew what this sound meant. She had heard it often enough.

She walked toward the window and stared outside. The other Zoharites who sought safety in the bakery crowded around her.

Outside she saw them. Countless of them.

"The Gaelians," she whispered.

The barbarians stormed through the streets, wearing fur pelts and crude iron, their yellow hair braided, their hammers and axes swinging. The Magisterian Guard raced toward them, and weapons clanged, and blood spilled.

Ice flooded Ofeer's belly. She couldn't breathe. She felt faint. Finally—finally she had found some safety, some relief, some hope for her babe, only to see it all crumble down, to see this city fall like Zohar had fallen.

The entire world crumbles, Ofeer thought. All we are is sand. Kingdoms of sand washing away in the waves.

Ofeer slammed the window shutters shut. She spun around, facing the small crowd in the bakery.

"Don't be afraid," Ofeer said. "We'll be safe in here. It's the Aelarians they're after, not us."

Some of them were trembling, though one among them stood still, a strange light in her eyes—Noa the lumer, her magic gone.

"Come, friends!" said Elner the baker, nervously tugging his splendorous white mustache. "Let us go into the cellar. We'll be safe there. Let us hide until the storm passes, and let us pray."

As they began heading into the cellar, Ofeer grabbed Noa's arm. She stared into the lumer's eyes.

"Did you do this, Noa?" she whispered. "Did you open the gates, as once you planned?"

Noa stared back at her, eyes haunted, face ashen. She shook her head. "It wasn't me." She looked around her. "Someone has gone missing, I see. Someone and her sword."

Ofeer looked around, and indeed she didn't see Atalia, nor had she seen her enter the cellar.

The bakery's front door banged open.

Ofeer screamed and spun around, drawing her saw, then gasped.

Atalia had returned. She stood at the doorway, clad in her showy, impractical gladiator armor—a humble subligaculum around her loins, manica armor across her arm, metal cups for her breasts, and a lion's head helmet. She held sword in hand, and blood coated her, splashing her limbs, her bared belly, her face, and her hair. Ofeer raced toward her.

"Are you—"

"The blood's not mine." Atalia bared her teeth, and her eyes blazed with the fire of burning nations. "We have vengeance, Ofeer. Vengeance not just against Tirus but against the entire Empire, against all those who hurt us."

Gently, Ofeer placed her baby in Noa's arms. "Noa, will you take him into the cellar?"

Noa nodded and stepped into the shadows, taking Ariel with her. Ofeer turned back toward Atalia.

"Don't be afraid, Ofeer," Atalia said. "I'll look after you. The Gaelians won't hurt you. They know me. They—"

"You doomed a million people to death," Ofeer whispered, and her eyes dampened. "All those in this city—mothers, fathers, elders, children, servants, slaves."

"The enemy!" Atalia said. "Aelarians!"

"My people!" Ofeer said. "Just as much as Zoharites are. Yes, I was born in Zohar. Yes, I'm a daughter of Eloh, and forever I will worship him and the light of Luminosity. But I'm also of Aelar." She took a shaky breath. "A million people live in this city. Each one a world entire. You doomed them."

Atalia breathed heavily, lips peeled back, cheeks flushed. "And what of a million lives in Zohar? What of a million lights there gone dark? So let a million here die! We will be avenged."

"We will be murderers!" Ofeer shouted, shoving Atalia back. "We will be forever stained with blood—like this blood that coats you! We were avenged already. We murdered Tirus. We murdered him! We didn't battle him, didn't fight him in a war. We murdered him. And now you would murder a million more! What are you, Atalia?"

Ofeer stood for a moment, heaving, unable to speak anymore. Atalia stared at her, eyes narrowed.

"I am what they made me," Atalia said softly. "What they made me when they butchered all my soldiers in Gefen. What they made me when they chained me in a ship. What they made me when they forced me to fight for the crowds. What they made me when they destroyed my home." Her voice dropped. "What they made me when they raped my mother—and when they made you."

Ofeer looked away, trembling, weeping. "I don't know who you are." She fell to her knees, only able to whisper. "I don't know who you are."

Her body shook and seemed to shatter. Her world collapsed. Ofeer wept, body convulsing with sobs. Atalia tried to stroke her hair, tried to whisper soothing words, but Ofeer would not listen. All she could hear was the screaming from outside—the screams of the dying—and the wailing from the basement, the sound of her son.

SENECA

They sailed across the Encircled Sea, the fleet of the Southern Empire, heading north toward Aelar, toward the throne, toward fire and death and the birthright Seneca had spent his life pursuing.

He had chosen the Avem Nox to be his flagship, a hexareme galley. Hundreds of rowers worked within its bowels, propelling the ship onward. Its banners streamed, displaying the eagle of Aelar with spread wings. Behind him sailed the rest of his fleet. The armada was not large, only whatever ships he had gathered from the Phedian garrison. Warships. Cargo ships. Even fishermen's boats trailed behind them. Every vessel was crammed with as many warriors as could fit. Aelarians, Nurians, Phedians—all crowded together on the decks and in the holds, pressed so close they could barely move. Seneca had carved out a little space at the prow of his flagship, and behind him, his warriors coated the deck and pressed up against the balustrades. From below in the hold, he could hear the rumble of three elephants. More of the beasts hid within the other ships at his sides.

"It's a wonder the goddamn ships aren't sunken down to the mastheads," he muttered. "All Tirus must do is train a seagull to land on our ship, and we go under."

Standing at his side, Imani smiled. The wind ruffled her curly hair and muslin kalasiri. "It's only for four days, and three days have already passed. We're near. And our archers are keeping an eye out for enemy seagulls."

Seneca took her hand. He stared across the northern sea, envisioning it. Soon—within only hours!—they would arrive in Aelar. Finally after this year of war, pain, loss—he would claim his birthright.

All that I did, Seneca thought, all the blood I spilled, all those I mourned, all those I slew, all the pain I endured—for you, Aelar. For you.

Already in his mind, he saw the port of Aelaria Maritima, its breakwaters spreading out in a waiting embrace, welcoming him home. The boardwalk would be lined with people cheering for their prince's return. He would ride through the city atop an elephant, Imani resplendent at his side, as the crowds knelt in awe of his might, of his wife's exotic beauty, and of the splendorous army that marched behind them. Into the palace Seneca would ride, and there he'd find Tirus cowering behind the throne, pleading for his life. And Seneca would grant that life—would send the brute into exile in the ruins of Zohar, to live as a dog in the wilderness, and all in the Empire would praise Emperor Seneca's mercy. In some dreams, Tirus rejected the offer and challenged Seneca to a duel. Before the eyes of the crowd, Seneca slew the man, and all cheered and served him.

Seneca took a deep breath of the sea air, turned to look at Imani, and exhaled slowly. As always, her grace calmed the roaring flames inside him.

It's not only for my own glory that I do this, he reminded himself, as she reminded him. I do this so that I can heal a broken world. So that I can stop the killing, the brutality of evil emperors. To save Imani's home. To save Ofeer's home. To save this world that collapses around us, even as we sail here.

He squeezed Imani's hand, and she smiled, perhaps hearing his silent words. She kissed his cheek.

Without you, Imani, he thought, I would be like Porcia. I would be like Tirus. You make me a better man.

When he turned forward again, he saw it. A thin line along the horizon. The coast.

"Aelar!" the men cried behind him. "The Sacred City!"

Seneca's eyes dampened as they sailed onward, as he watched details emerge. Soon he could see the cityscape he dreamed of every night. The walls, towers, and glittering domes of Aelar. The City of Gods. The Jewel of the Sea. The Capital of the World. Aelar was known by many names, and all roads, all dreams, all hopes led to it. Aelar. His birthright. His home.

"It's almost over, Imani," he said. "All our wars, our struggle, all this blood and pain—it's almost over. The world will be ours."

She looked ahead, and he expected her to gasp, to marvel at the beauty, and he already imagined himself showing her the wonders of the city. But a thin line appeared on her brow. She tilted her head.

"It's . . . burning," she said.

Seneca squinted. Plumes of smoke were rising from the city.

His heart seemed to freeze.

As the fleet sailed closer, the voices died across the ships. All stared in silence. Soon Seneca could hear it, a distant chorus on the wind: screams, banging steel, flying stones.

War.

Soon the stench of smoke flowed over the fleet, overpowering the smell of the sea. Seneca grimaced. Aelaria Maritima came into view, the fabled port of Aelar, the source of all its might. The breakwaters spread out, lined with columned walkways, lighthouses soaring at their tips. A handful of islands rose in the harbor, topped with colossal statues of the gods. Normally hundreds of ships filled the bay, and beyond them sprawled the boardwalk and the villas and temples of the city.

Today those ships were burning.

Today a horde of barbarians roared on the boardwalk, firing flaming arrows, and beyond them the city crumbled.

"Gael," Seneca said. "They've taken the city. Gods, Imani. The city has fallen."

The Nurian queen stared ahead, eyes narrowed, teeth bared. "No. The city has not yet fallen. Battle still rages here."

As they sailed closer to the port, Seneca saw that she was right. Aelarian archers still manned the walls—but they were firing their arrows into the city. Between the homes and atop hills, he still saw the banners of the Magisterian Guard—laureled eagles on crimson fields. Between them rose the banners of Gael's tribes—wyverns, wolves, bears, dragons, rampant upon green fields.

As the fleet approached the lighthouses on the breakwater, about to enter the harbor, terror shot through Seneca.

No. It wasn't supposed to be this way.

He struggled for breath. His hands shook on the balustrade.

I was meant to sail in to the cheers of the crowd. Not a war. Not thousands of bloodthirsty barbarians.

He could see the Gaelians everywhere. They ran along the breakwaters. They lined the boardwalk. They stormed through the streets. Towering warriors, bearded, foul, the creatures who had attacked Seneca's fleet last year, who had nearly killed him.

He wanted to turn around. To flee back south. To find another way. To raise more troops. Anything but to sail here into fire and smoke and death—so close to the end, so close to his throne.

At his side, he saw Imani flex her fingers around her spear. When Seneca turned around, he saw his troops along the deck, staring ahead grimly, some licking dry lips, some trembling, but all ready to fight.

"For Aelar," he said. "For our homeland."

He turned back forward and drew his sword. They sailed between the breakwaters and into the harbor.

A thousand Gaelian women stood along the breakwaters, raised bows, and fired flaming arrows at Seneca's fleet. Several men fell. The arrows slammed into the hulls, the masts, the shields of warriors. The ships caught fire, and men screamed and burned, yet still they sailed onward. They plowed through the wreckage of charred, shattered ships the Gaelians had already destroyed, moving under a veil of smoke toward the shore.

The piers had burned. Gaelians fired arrows from the boardwalk, and Seneca raised his shield. In the hailstorm, he directed his ship to plow through the charred docks and bang against the boardwalk.

"Fighters of the Empire!" he shouted. "Cut them down!"

He looked at Imani. She met his eyes. They turned together, leaped onto the boardwalk, and charged into battle.

They fought through the city of his childhood, of his ruin, of his dreams.

He stormed across the city, leading his army, a song of bloodshed and splendor and terror such as Aelar had never seen. The elephants led the charge, finally free of the stifling hulls of ships, trumpeting as they trundled down the cobbled boulevards of Aelar. Seneca and Imani themselves rode one of the beasts, leading the assault, as behind them rolled the chariots, the riders, and finally line after line of infantry. Aelarians. Nurians. Phedians. A united army under his command, as all around them, from every road, alleyway, and rooftop, the barbarian horde slammed into them with hammers, axes, and shattering iron.

The world fights, Seneca thought. Here is the great battle of nations.

Along the avenue where, a year ago, he had led Ofeer among slaves, a hundred of Seneca's men fell to the barbarians' spears. In a courtyard where he and his father had once sacrificed a pregnant cow, sharing the meat with the plebeians for the Fordicidia festival, the Gaelians now tore down an elephant, roaring as the beast fell and shattered a home. Near the bakery where Seneca used to take Valentina for cakes, a horde of Nurians slammed into a Gaelian assault, javelins flying, horses kicking, blood splashing the street.

Everywhere—in every alleyway, every courtyard, every garden, every home—they fought. From balconies. From roofs. From the gardens of villas. Along the staircases of apartment buildings that soared eight stories tall. In temples of marble columns and rotundas. In slums where beggars fled and sandals kicked through filth. Through brothels and houses of healing, scattering lupi and lepers onto the streets. Through smoke and fire. Buildings burned. Walls fell. People fled and died. And still they fought.

Not in five hundred years, since its founding by the goddess Aelia, had an enemy breached the walls of Aelar.

And the city will never fall, Seneca vowed.

When a storm of arrows took down his elephant, he fought from a chariot. When the Gaelians slew his horses, he fought afoot. Always Imani fought at his side, lashing a spear, and her brother fought with them, suffering several gashes but never straying from his sister's side.

The sun fell, and still they fought.

Through dawn and day and dusk again, Seneca's army flowed through the city, coursing like ointment through the grooves of a wound, killing the poison.

At sunset, he reached the gates of the Acropolis and saw that it still stood. Across the city around him, street after street, his hosts slew the last of the enemies.

Weary, wounded, barely able to stand, Seneca raised his sword and shield.

"The city is ours!" he shouted. "Gael is slain! Aelar stands! Aelar stands!"

At his side, Imani raised her spear. "Our masters are slain! Nur is free!"

"Nur is free!" shouted her warriors.

"Aelar stands!" shouted his men.

The city still burned. The city still stank with death. The city stood.

As the horns and bells of victory sounded across the smoldering city, Seneca pulled Imani close to him.

"Everything will change now," he said, hoarse, eyes damp. "Tirus, Porcia, the Gaelians—all our enemies lie dead. You and I will rule this world together. Nur will have its freedom. It will be a time to rebuild, to heal, to live again in peace."

Covered in blood, tears in his eyes, he kissed her.

They turned together toward the gates of the Acropolis—the same gates he had entered a year ago upon his victorious return from Zohar, leaving Ofeer in the slave market.

The gates were locked.

Seneca cleared his throat. He had hoped for a triumphal march into the Acropolis, not an awkward search for its keys. He took a few steps back. Curtain walls surrounded the Acropolis, topped with ramparts and guards.

Seneca coned his mouth and called out, "Hear me, Magisterian Guard! Tirus lies dead and the barbarians are slain! I am Seneca Octavius, son of Marcus, heir to Aelar! Open these gates to a new age!"

The Magisterians stared down from above. The Acropolis gates remained closed.

"What's wrong?" Imani said.

Seneca was exhausted. He had fought through day, night, day, and now night was falling again. He wanted to collapse into his old bed in the palace. Failing that, he wanted to collapse right here onto the street and sleep. He forced himself to remain standing.

"It seems our war might not yet be over," he said.

He looked behind him. He had sailed here with thousands of warriors. Most lay dead across the city. From where he stood, Seneca could see several hundred fighters. Not enough. Not enough to break through these walls, to defeat the Magisterian Guard—the finest soldiers gleaned from the legions.

He turned back toward the walls. "Magisterian Guard! Open these gates, and we will draw the future of this glorious empire!"

A voice spoke beside him. "Come with me, Prince Seneca."

Seneca turned and saw a young man on the roadside, wearing a simple toga. He looked vaguely familiar, but Seneca could not place his face. That face was ordinary, utterly forgettable. Soft. More pretty than handsome. The brown hair fell across the brow, thin and smooth. He looked like the son of a tradesman or local clerk.

Then finally Seneca remembered. He had seen this man in the palace before. Had seen him speak to his father.

"Caelius," he said. Commander of the Magisterian Guard.

Several other Magisterians stepped forth from behind a row of cedars. They wore togas, but Seneca saw the hilts of daggers peek from the folds of the fabric.

"Come with us," Caelius said, smiling thinly, gesturing for Seneca to approach the cypresses. "We'll talk."

Seneca thought of the stories he had heard—that it was Caelius who had arranged the assassination of Porcia, who had plunged the killing blow into her heart. Perhaps with the same dagger that now hung at his side.

"Stay here, Imani," Seneca said softly.

She grabbed his arm. "I will go with you. With a hundred soldiers."

Seneca shook his head. Not ten thousand soldiers would help him now, not against a determined, disciplined Guard in possession of the Acropolis. Not if he wanted to see any part of this city still stand.

He kissed Imani and caressed her cheek. "Wait for me."

He turned and approached the smiling Caelius. They stepped between the trees, and Seneca felt as if he were walking toward his most dangerous battle.

ABISHAG

"Toil!"

The whip cracked.

"Faster!"

Leather tore into flesh.

"Up!"

Feet kicked. Clubs cracked against bone. Screams rose across the desert.

"Toil! Faster! Up!"

Abishag swayed. She stumbled forward, ankles hobbled, the sun beating down. Her hands trembled around the handles of the cart.

"Faster!"

A whip cracked, and pain blazed across Abishag's back. She nearly fell. She bit down on a scream. She had seen what happened to those slaves who fell. Some still lived upon the crosses.

With thousands of other slaves, she trudged forward, step after step, barefoot on the hot stones, wheeling the cart forward. In the wooden cart rose piles of rock, sand, soil, and mortar. Abishag's hands blistered. Her feet bled. The welts rose on her back, and sweat soaked her, stinging her eyes and cracked lips. The other slaves of Beth Eloh toiled around her, wheeling their own carts of soil and stone. Their Aelarian masters moved around the slaves, lashing whips, tearing skin. When Abishag lost a step, she screamed as another lash tore into her, and she smelled her blood. Under the blinding sun, she toiled on.

Ahead of her, she saw the mesa. A monolith of stone soared from the desert, taller than any mountain Abishag had ever seen. Jagged cliffs formed its flanks, leading to a flat plateau. The mesa was so tall Abishag had to tilt her head all the way back to see its crest. From down here, she could just make out the fortifications atop the mesa: towers, turrets, a round fortress lined with columns, curtain walls, archers' embrasures, and ramparts. The greatest and last stronghold in Zohar.

"Damn it, slave. Faster!"

An Aelarian approached her, one of thousands who had come here, waiting to break into the fortress above. The man raised a club and brought it down hard on Abishag's shoulder. She yowled. She nearly fell and spilled the cart's contents. She moved on.

Ahead of her, hundreds of slaves were overturning their carts, then packing down the soil and earth, filling a massive wooden framework. Abishag didn't even know what they were building. It was larger than a wall. Larger than a hill. It drove across the desert like a dune, many times the height of men, pointing toward the mesa.

She climbed the pile of rock and sand already there. It rose taller even than the walls of Beth Eloh. When she finally reached the top, Abishag tilted her cart over, adding its contents to the construction.

For a brief moment, Abishag paused for breath, here high atop the pile, and looked around her. Ahead, still a good distance away, soared the mesa and Tarath El atop it. Directly below and behind her, five thousand slaves, the last survivors of the slaughter in Beth Eloh, toiled at filling and wheeling forth more carts. All across the desert spread the legions. Fifteen thousand Aelarian warriors were here. Several hundred served as masters to the slaves. The others surrounded the mesa. More slaves were toiling elsewhere, building crude walls around the mesa, complete with towers for archers, as if the Aelarians sought to cut off all escape, to surround Tarath El with prison walls.

They not only want to climb the mesa and break in, Abishag realized. They want to block escape.

A crude circumvallation wall, large enough to enclose a city. Slaves toiling at a massive structure, its purpose unknown. A soaring mesa. A citadel at its top. And all around them, the parsa'ot of desert, leading to nothing but ruin. This was all the world that remained.

"Slave! Back to work!"

Abishag nodded, her back stinging with too many lashes. She climbed down the pile of stone and earth, rolled her cart toward the quarry, and refilled it.

She toiled on.

Hour by hour.

Day by day.

And still the slaves labored.

Whenever Abishag thought the work might be complete, that the wooden framework was finally full, the Aelarians commanded more wooden frameworks built over the existing edifice, forming more places to add soil and sand and stone. The structure kept rising. First the height of a wall. Then the height of a palace. And still the earthworks rose taller. Eventually the structure soared even taller than the Temple had risen in Beth Eloh. And still they toiled.

During the nights, Abishag trembled in the darkness, pressed between the other slaves. During the days, she struggled under the blazing heat, sweat and blood dripping across her, suffering lash after lash. As the great structure grew taller, so did the wall around the mesa. Within weeks, the circular wall where other slaves labored rose as mighty as the walls of Beth Eloh, lined with legionaries. No aid could come to Tarath El now, and none could escape it. The mesa of stone, and the citadel at its top, was now isolated from the world not only by desert but by ramparts and guard towers and ditches.

You came here for safety, Epher, Abishag thought, gazing at the mesa through the sweat in her eyes. But you found yourself in a trap.

And she worked on.

The structure she and others built rose taller, longer, a dune the size of a mountain. Its soil was soaked with her sweat, blood, and tears. Every day more slaves died, and they buried them in the earthworks, and they built higher.

As she labored—bleeding, weak, perhaps dying—Abishag thought of Maya.

She thought of Maya's teachings, her wisdom, her kindness, and Abishag knew that she had to survive this. She had to live. She had to spread the word of Maya's wisdom throughout the world. When so many slaves fell dead around her, slain by thirst or whip or weariness, Abishag took another breath, took another step, added another stone to her cart. She toiled on. She survived.

The days and nights rolled by.

The structure grew.

And finally, when it rose so tall it was half the mesa's height, Abishag understood its purpose.

She stood at its top, holding her cart, and gazed toward Tarath El, and she knew.

It was a ramp.

EPHER

He stood on the wall, barely able to breathe, his fingers digging into the battlements. His head spun. The fear paralyzed him. Epher forced himself to take deep, slow breaths, to think, to breathe.

Below in the eastern desert, they toiled. Thousands of slaves. For many days now, they had been laboring. Under the whips of their Aelarian masters, the slaves of Beth Eloh had built a circumvallation wall around the mesa, blocking off all aid or escape. The wall was crude, formed of rough stones and mortar, but tall and lined with guard outposts. A dry moat ran along the wall, filled with jagged spikes, and always the legions patrolled the perimeter. Within this great circle, the legionaries had raised a camp—rings within rings of tents, home to fifteen thousand troops. Across the camp, horns kept blaring, drums kept beating, and legionaries kept chanting.

"Crucify them!" shouted a man.

"Burn the rebels!"

"Snap their bones!"

"Peel their skin!"

The chants continued. They never stopped. For weeks now, the legionaries had been laughing, singing, shouting—an eternal, demonic song. Claudia's voice rose loudest among them. Even now, gazing down, Epher saw her riding through the camp on her horse, shouting until she grew hoarse.

"We come, we see, we kill!" she chanted. "The crosses will rise from Zohar to Aelar!"

We cannot escape, Epher thought. Even if we tried to flee the mesa, we're trapped. We're a tor rising from a sea of fire.

And day by day, as the legions manned the wall and prepared for war, the slaves kept toiling. Zoharite slaves. Cart by cart, they were raising the great earthworks of wood, stone, mortar, and soil. Cart by cart, the fortress grew taller and closer to Tarath El, this fortress in the sky.

The ramp.

Day by day, growing.

The death of Tarath El.

The final fall of Zohar.

"This is ridiculous," Ramael said, standing at Epher's side. "We have to shoot them. We have to fucking shoot them." He clutched his bow and pointed at the slaves laboring on the ramp. "We have arrows! We have archers! We can stop this."

Epher shook his head. "I will not have us shoot the slaves. They're our own people. Wives. Sisters. Children. No."

Epher stared back at the rising ramp. It now rose halfway up the mesa. Hundreds of Zoharite slaves moved up and down the structure, adding cart after cart of earth and rock. All Zoharites. All people Epher could reach with his arrows. All people he could not, dared not slay.

"Epher," Ramael said, softer now. "Once that ramp rises as tall as the cliffs, and once it reaches us . . . we will die. We will all die. We're nine hundred and sixty people—many of us not even warriors. They're fifteen thousand, the most efficient killers in the world. If they break into Tarath El, we cannot defeat them."

Epher stared down at the ramp. He recognized one of those slaves. Even from here.

Abishag, he thought. Maya's friend.

He nodded. "If they break in, we cannot defeat them."

Ramael groaned and paced along the wall. "Then we have to shoot the slaves."

Epher lowered his head. Perhaps Ramael spoke truth. If they slew the slaves, perhaps Tarath El could still survive. Yet how could Epher do this?

"We abandoned Beth Eloh," he said slowly. "We left a million people to die while we sought safety here, and that is a sin no god could forgive. Let us not stain our souls further. If we slay our own people, we are monsters. I would rather die with whatever righteousness, whatever honor still remains for us, whatever forgiveness we can still claim. I would prefer this death to a life of evil."

"An evil they force upon us!" Ramael said. "You led us here to protect us. You abandoned Beth Eloh so that a thousand could live. Do not see that work undone now."

"So a thousand could live!" Epher said. "Yes. Yes, so a thousand could live. Not even a thousand; a few hundred only. Yet more than a thousand of our own people toil before us! Would I slay them to save us?"

"What kind of lives do they have?" Ramael's eyes were red, and he gestured toward the growing ramp. "A life of whips, chains, misery."

"Lives of misery," Epher said softly. "Yet not lives that are ours to take. I will not kill my own people. My father would not ask me to."

"And your father died," Ramael said, then turned and walked away.

For a long time, Epher remained on the wall, staring down at the desert, at the ramp that grew every day, and at the siege tower already being constructed in the distance.

That night, he entered the palace built onto the precipice of Tarath El, and he climbed the stairs to his chamber. Olive was still awake, standing by the window, gazing out at the night. The moonlight limned her form—slender, graceful, her belly bulging. From the distance rose the sounds of the legions. Cracking whips. Screaming slaves. Rolling stones and creaking wood. Horns and drums still rose in a din.

"They never stop," Olive whispered, still looking outside, not turning to face Epher. "The damn horns. They never stop."

Epher approached, stood behind her, and wrapped his arms around her. "Turn away from them. For tonight."

She turned to face him, her back to the window, ghosts in her eyes. Over her shoulder, Epher could see the legions below, their campfires spreading from the foot of the mesa to the circumvallation wall. He pulled the curtains shut.

"We can no win," Olive whispered, holding him. Her eyes dampened. "What we do?" She pulled his hand down to her belly, and he felt the baby move. "How we save our child?"

Epher wanted to speak comforting words, inspiring words. But he could only say, "I don't know."

Olive lowered her head, her red hair brushing his chin. "Then we surrender."

Epher looked aside. He stared at their bed, at the crib that rose beside it, still empty. "I would have surrendered many days ago, if I thought that was an option." He shook his head. "There is no surrendering to the legions. Not after Beth Eloh. Our fate would not be slavery. It would be crucifixion for our warriors along the road from Polonia to Aelar and my death in the arena."

"Then what we do?" Olive said. She ran her fingers through his short beard, eyes damp. "Tell me. Tell me how to stop this."

A lump grew in his throat. Epher wanted his father here for guidance. Wanted his mother. Wanted Avinasi. Someone wiser, older, stronger. Why should he lead them? Why should he be king of Zohar's last survivors? This was not a burden he had ever wanted, not a burden he'd been born for.

I should be back in Gefen now, he thought. I should be at the table under the painting of elephants, as mother lights candles and father sings in a low voice like rolling thunder. I should be banging wooden swords with Koren and Atalia, or listening to Ofeer speak of distant wonders, or reading with Maya from scrolls. I should be on the beach, making love to Claudia, not waiting for her to break into this hall and murder my people, my family. None of this. None of this should be.

"There are many cellars, cisterns, and tunnels within the mesa," Epher said. "If the legionaries breach the walls, we go underground. We find shelter there."

"For how long?" Olive said. "How long can we stop so many legionaries, how—"

"Then what would you have me do?" Epher said, suddenly shouting. He tore himself away from her. He placed his fists against the wall and lowered his head. "What do you fucking want, Olive? For me to become a lumer and blast them all with magical fire? For me to summon Eloh himself to fight our battles? Maybe for me to leap into the legionaries' camp and slay them all with my sword?" He turned his head and looked at her through the veil of grief and rage. "They all come to me. You. Ramael. The others. A constant fucking barrage, as if I'm a god to be prayed to. For the first time in my life, when you all need me the most, I am helpless. So what would you have me do? What, Olive?"

She was weeping now. She stepped toward him. "Just hold me. Right now just hold me."

He held her. For a long time, he held her in the night, as outside the horns kept blowing.

SENECA

I'm so close. I'm only a few steps away. It's there. There before me. The Acropolis. The heart of the empire. My birthright. Ultimate power.

And yet here they had him. Here they surrounded him. In a grove of cypress trees, trapped between the Acropolis wall and the bustling city streets. Here Seneca stood, facing his last—perhaps his greatest—battle.

Caelius stood before him, smiling thinly. Seneca was not a large man—he was shorter and thinner than many warriors—but he felt downright burly by Caelius. The slender man must have been at least a decade older than Seneca—he had been commander of the Magisterian Guard for years now—but seemed even younger than Seneca. The face soft. The nose and lips thin. The ears protuberant. The hair limp. He wore only a toga, no armor, even as the city smoldered after its greatest battle in history. A dozen of Caelius's men surrounded the cypress grove, a man behind every tree, also wearing humble togas but carrying daggers.

"Well, Seneca Octavius, son of the dog," Caelius said. "We have much to discuss."

Seneca felt like collapsing. His armor was dented and cracked. He bled from several gashes, losing another drop of blood every moment. He had not slept nor eaten in two days, or was it three? Right now just standing up felt like battling an army.

"Caelius, what do you want?" he said. "And make it quick. I've come home to see my city burning under your watch. I'd like to start rebuilding it."

Caelius's thin eyebrows rose. "Your city? My, my." The young man tsked his tongue. "I do believe that this city has not belonged to any emperor, not for a very long time." His smile widened. "This city belongs to me, my boy. Tirus, that brute who died like a fool outside a whorehouse. Your sister, a bloodthirsty madwoman who died in a pool. Both were just puppets. And I am the puppeteer." Caelius sighed. "Your father was the only emperor who had any balls beneath his toga, but he was a rare breed. One I'm glad to see burned away from this world."

Seneca grunted. "Is this some pissing match, where you try to prove your worth to the Empire? Yes, you hold some power. I'll grant you that. Now—"

"I hold all the power, Seneca." Caelius's smile stretched wider, shaking, twisting. "I hold the only power. For a long time, I was weak. For three years, I served in the legions under your father. A skinny boy. Mocked and beaten by your father. And when I would not break, he tossed me to his men, and they—" With visible effort, Caelius swallowed the rest of his sentence and uncurled his fists. "I made a vow then. I vowed to destroy your family. And so I will keep you alive, Seneca. And I will place you on the throne you so crave. And I will make you serve me."

Seneca had no patience, no strength for this. Not now. Not so close to the end.

I should draw my sword, he thought. I should cut through them all. Even as I am, wounded and weary, I can kill them all. A year of war gave me this strength.

His hand strayed toward his sword, just a finger's length. Across the grove, the Magisterian guards drew their daggers. In a turret on the nearby wall, he glimpsed movement, and he saw a man with a crossbow, pointing it at him. Seneca froze, his blood dripping, his hand still.

Caelius never lost his smile.

"Go ahead, Seneca. Draw your sword. Try to cut me—like your father and sister cut me. Who do you think withdrew the usual guards from the bathhouse, letting Septimus Cassius shatter your father's head on the poolside? Who do you think placed daggers in the hands of Porcia's harem? Who do you think arranged the death of Adriana Valerius, motivating his daughter to butcher the Zoharite rebels?" Caelius's smile stretched. "And who do you think gave the Zoharites access to the imperial lumer, using her lume to raise her sisters in rebellion across the Empire—a rebellion that ravaged your ships and would have slain you, if not for your Nurian wife? It was my work, Seneca. All of it. I pull strings attached to the most distant provinces. Sometimes my marionettes stumble. Sometimes they fall. Sometimes they must be discarded and replaced with more malleable puppets. Yet make no mistake, Seneca. They are all attached to my hands. You will become one of my puppets, or you too will be replaced."

Seneca tried to think, even as his mind fogged. Most of the legionaries he had brought with him here had fallen on the streets, dying to rid Aelar of the barbarians. Most of his other troops were Nurians and Phedians, loyal only to their homelands; they would not remain here to defend him. Seneca didn't know how many Magisterians still remained in the city, how many had survived the war, but he knew that Marcus had often boasted that they were the finest warriors in the Empire, gleaned from the legions' elite cohorts. Only those who had distinguished themselves in battling the Empire's enemies were chosen to defend her capital city.

Seneca sighed.

"Fine." He nodded at Caelius. "You're the puppeteer. Now pull some of your strings and open the Acropolis gates, and let me sleep."

I'll kill the fucking bastard later, he thought.

Caelius nodded. "Good. You understand now. So like a good slave, kneel before me."

Seneca frowned. "What—"

"Kneel," said Caelius.

Seneca grunted and turned away. "I have no time for this. I—"

"Kneel!" Caelius shouted.

Seneca spun back toward the boy, rage flaming across him, and reached for his sword.

The Magisterians leaped toward him. Pain bloomed across the backs of his knees, forcing him to kneel. Seneca cried out, began to draw his sword, and screamed as a dagger drove into his hand. He lost his grip, and rough hands grabbed his arms, tugging them behind his back. Another hand wrapped around his throat, squeezing, constricting his breath. Feet pressed down onto his calves, forcing him to remain on his knees, while another hand pulled his hair, tugging back his head. Seneca struggled, unable to free himself. His hand was an inferno, the palm pierced.

Caelius stood before him, smiling again.

"Good," Caelius said. "And now I want you to kiss my feet."

"Fuck you," Seneca managed to mouth, his voice only a hoarse whisper. The Magisterian behind him still squeezed his throat, pressing against the Adam's apple, and Seneca struggled not to gag.

Caelius reached into his robe. He pulled out a small vial.

"I assure you, Seneca Octavius," he said, "this treatment is far more pleasant than how your father treated me when I was but a lowly legionary."

Seneca thrashed in the men's grip. He tried to call to Imani, to his warriors, but the hand tightened around his throat. Caelius approached, placed his hand around Seneca's jaw, and squeezed, forcing his mouth open. Seneca tried to spit, could only sputter.

"This will have no taste," Caelius said. "I assure you, it will go down smoothly." He tilted the vial over Seneca's mouth. "Drink it. Swallow it all."

When the vial was empty, Caelius forced Seneca's jaws shut. Seneca tried to spit out the liquid, could not. The hands worked at his throat, forcing him to swallow.

"I'm going to fucking rip out your guts," Seneca said, the hand on his throat letting him speak with but a whisper. "I'm going to . . ."

He coughed. His words died. When he tried to speak, only a hoarse wheeze left his throat. He realized that the hand no longer constricted him. That no hands even grabbed him anymore. He tried to rise but faltered. He tried to speak again, but no voice emerged. He gasped for air. He reached for his fallen sword, but Caelius kicked it away.

"You'll feel no pain," Caelius said, looking down at him. "That's the beauty of this poison. No taste. No odor. No sensation at all. The breath merely . . . stops. And you fall asleep. And never wake up."

Seneca stuck fingers down his throat, forcing himself to vomit. The sparse contents of his stomach emerged from him with a shuddering, heaving, burning mess. He still couldn't rise to his feet. He trembled. He couldn't speak. He couldn't breathe.

"Oh, I assure you, it's quite too late for purging," Caelius said. "The poison is already in your bloodstream, no longer in your gut. By the time I finish this sentence, you might already be dead." He pulled another vial from his toga. "Unless, of course, you drink this antidote."

Seneca made a grab for it. He fell. Caelius stepped back, and Seneca tried to rise, to tackle the man, but trembled on his hands and knees. His head spun. Only thin wisps of air now entered his windpipe, and still his throat constricted, narrowing, narrowing still, vanishing. He saw stars.

"Oh, are you trying to beg for it?" Caelius said. "You know what you must do." He stepped closer. "Kiss my feet. Kiss them and vow to always serve me. To be my puppet. Do this, and I'll let you live."

Seneca wanted to spit at the man. Wanted to die before serving him.

Darkness spread before him.

In the shadows, he saw Imani smile, her eyes alight.

He saw Ofeer in a rare moment of joy, laughing, the wind in her hair.

He saw Valentina running through the gardens.

He saw himself as a boy—just a boy with dreams, running along the beach, building empires in the sand.

For them I must live, he thought. For everything that I did. For all the lives I took. For all the horror I unleashed. For this world that I shattered, this world I must rebuild. For all those I hurt. All those I can still heal. I must live.

Caelius stood above him, nodding, smiling—smiling with kindness, Seneca thought.

Seneca crawled toward him, and he kissed one foot after another, and he raised a hand in supplication.

"You're mine now," Caelius said. "As the emperors before you were mine. The hole I put in your hand? That is where I insert my string. That hand will be mine. I will place you on the throne, Seneca Octavius, for your family has grieved me, and I will derive great pleasure from seeing you serve me. You will not pass a single decree without my approval. You will not so much as piss in the imperial chamber pot before first asking for my blessing. You will be nothing but a performer in the arena that is Aelar. You are my creature now, and rest assured, I will always be watching. Any time you dare defy me, poison will find its way into your wine, onto your pillow, onto the lips of your wife. Emperors don't last very long in Aelar. You will last so long as you serve me. Do you agree?"

Seneca tried to speak. He tried to nod. He fell.

His cheek hit the dirt, and again he was lying in bed in Zohar, in the villa on Pine Hill, while Ofeer lay at his side. Outside, Jerael had finally died, finally lay underground, and the soft light of dawn fell upon him, upon Ofeer's long dark hair that flowed between his fingers, and the sound of the sea called him. Forever had those waters called him home. He could taste the sea, salty against his lips, and rose in the sand.

He rose in a garden of cypress trees.

He rose, the antidote in his mouth, and swallowed.

For a moment Seneca's head still spun, and he could barely see, barely remember where he was. He blinked, rubbed his eyes, and took a step.

Caelius and his men were gone.

"Seneca!" The voice rose from haze. "Seneca, gods!"

He turned to see a figure running through shadows. He couldn't focus. It took all his energy just to remain standing.

"Imani?" he whispered.

She ran up toward him, holding a lantern. "Gods! Your hand. Seneca!" She looked over her shoulders. "Bring a healer!"

"No." He shook his head. "Help me. Help me walk."

He stumbled forward, leaning against her. They left the grove of cypresses, heading back toward the Acropolis gates. As Seneca approached, the Magisterians on the gatehouse battlements bowed their heads. A moment later, the doors swung open.

Coated with blood, their armor cracked, their hair full of soot, Seneca and Imani walked through the gateway, entering the Acropolis—the center of Aelar, the center of their power, their new home. Before them, hundreds of guards stood along the road to the palace, saluting.

"Hail Emperor Seneca!" cried an officer.

"Hail Emperor Seneca!" the hundreds cried.

Across the city, the cry swept, a chant rolling through the streets and ruins. "Hail Emperor Seneca."

Eyes damp, Seneca turned toward his wife. He stroked her hair.

"I will make this a better world for you, Imani," he said. "And I will be a better man. I love you. Always."

She kissed him, and they walked together into the palace, and they slept.

EPHER

"Epher!" Olive ran toward him across the plateau. "Epher, they're leaving! A bunch of them. They're leaving!"

For an instant, Epher thought she meant the legionaries, and hope sprang in him, and the weight of mountains lifted—for just a heartbeat—off his shoulders.

"They're climbing down the snake path!" Olive said when she reached him, flushed, damp with sweat. "Issazion and twenty others."

Epher's belly tightened again, the fear rushing back into him. He nodded.

"Stay here, Olive," he said. "Rest."

Leaving her, he ran, climbed a staircase onto the defensive wall, and raced along it. From up here, he could see the legionaries below. They filled the area between the circumvallation wall and the mesa in its center. Slaves still toiled across the ramp under the whips of their masters, raising more wooden platforms and piling up more stone, soil, and mortar. The ramp pressed up against the eastern cliff, rising more than half the way up.

Epher kept racing along the wall. Finally he reached the gatehouse in the defensive wall. Below, the snake path coiled down the cliff toward the canyon.

The gatehouse doors were open. Issazion, mistress of Tarath El, was climbing down the snake path. She wore a simple tunic and held no weapons, and her white hair streamed in the sandy breeze. She paused, nearly falling, then kept walking down step by step, pressed against the cliff. Behind her walked twenty other Zoharites, clinging to the cliff, slowly descending the narrow path carved into the mesa. Legionaries watched from below but fired no arrows.

"Issazion!" Epher shouted from above the gatehouse. "Issazion, listen to me! Return here!"

She paused, already halfway down the cliff. She looked back up toward him. Her voice rose from the distance. "It is over, King Epheriah! Stay there and die if you like. My family and I surrender."

The group continued to walk down the path: Issazion, her elderly father, her siblings, their children, twenty in all. The legions below waited, bows lowered. Epher wanted to run after Issazion and her family, to drag them back, but dared not climb onto the snake path, dared not risk summoning the arrows of Aelar.

"Issazion!" he called down again. "There is no surrender to Aelar. Not anymore."

She stared back up at him. Epher was too distant to see her facial expression, but he heard the fear and doubt in her voice. "They could have shot us the moment we stepped onto the path."

"Only slavery or crosses await you below," Epher said. "Come back, Issazion. Come back to safety."

She emitted a sound halfway between laugh and sob. "Safety? There is no safety from the Empire, Epheriah. Even as we speak, the ramp grows taller, and we are too weak, too fearful to slay the slaves who raise it. There is no victory against the might that has risen across the sea. Farewell, and I pray your death is quick."

She and her family continued walking down the path, finally reaching the legions below. Claudia met them there with open arms.

Epher did not want to look. Did not want to see this, hear this. Yet he stood on the gatehouse, watching, forcing himself to watch, to see what awaited him. He watched as the legions stripped Issazion's family naked. As they twisted their arms until they dislocated. As they nailed them onto crosses. As they swung hammers, shattering the legs of the condemned. As they thrust sharpened sticks into groins. As they left what remained of Issazion and her family—barely human, barely alive—to rot on the crosses in the sun, to slowly die over hours.

"Your death will not be as kind!" Claudia shouted from below. "Do you hear me, Epher? Your death will not be as quick! You're coming with me back to Aelar, Epher. You and your wife and all your soldiers! The crowd will savor your screams for weeks!"

Finally in the night, when the moans of the dying had faded, Epher turned away.

He did not join his wife in bed. For a long time, Epher walked through Tarath El, this fortress in the sky. He walked outside the palace that rose on one side of the plateau, facing north. He walked along the outdoor pool of cool water, then through the bathhouse of heated water that rose from deep wells. He walked between the stone houses of the hundreds who lived here. He walked through the gardens where Tarath El grew its fruit, and he passed the corral where the animals gave forth milk and cheese and fur. Finally he reached the southern tip, where a temple rose at the meeting of two cliffs, a place of solitude where scrolls rested on shelves, where a portico afforded a view of the desert and the countless stars. He walked through an archway and down a staircase. He traveled into the deep recesses below the plateau, carved into the mesa. He found storerooms, armories, cisterns, tunnels. Places of tunnels and silence.

Olive's words echoed in his mind. What do we do?

For hours, Epher searched, seeking some gateway to a hidden tunnel, one that would deliver him to the wilderness like the Gate of Tears. Yet all the paths he took led to dead ends, delving only several stories down into the mesa, then halting.

Just one way out. Just the snake path down the cliff, leading to Claudia.

Any way we climb down, Epher thought, we reach the legions. Even should we carve a path through them, their circumvallation wall awaits us. What do we do? What is the way out?

All night he wandered, seeking, thinking, drawing in sand. There had to be a solution. Had to be some path of escape. Some way to hold off the legions. Some way to survive, to save his wife and unborn child, to save nine hundred people, to save a nation, to save Zohar.

When Epher finally slept, in his dreams, he was still trapped in a labyrinth. Lions chased him, and he ran through dark tunnels, seeking a way out, lost in the dark.

VALENTINA

She rode through ruin toward the walls of a smoldering city.

The devastation of battle still covered the countryside. Rivulets flowed between the fallen arches of aqueducts. Scraps of tents, cloaks, and human skin blew in the wind. Spring had come to Aelar, and flowers bloomed between corpses that still rotted in the field. A poppy sprouted from the socket of a skull, dry flesh still clinging to the bone. Grass rustled around a rib cage, and crows tugged at its last bits of flesh; the birds had managed to unstrap the armor, which lay rusting nearby. A pole still rose from the killing field, clutched in the skeletal hand of a dead Gaelian, and a banner unfurled from it, displaying a green wyvern coiling across an indigo sky.

Valentina's horse nickered, and in the cool dawn, steam rose from its nostrils. Valentina's armor—breastplate, greaves, pteruges—felt icy against her, as if she were a demon of frost. She held an Aquila, the golden eagle dull under the veiled sky. Behind her followed the legions she had taken from Elania. Hundreds of horses. Thousands of infantrymen. They were eerily quiet as they walked through ruin and rotting death. The only sound was the chinking of armor, the thump of hooves, and the odd snort from a horse.

I came back too late, Valentina thought. Is there anything left here to save?

The walls of Aelar rose before her. The scars of fire and catapult stones marred them. Many of the battlements had fallen. Bricks lay strewn across the field. A turret lay in the dirt, an archer's corpse still within it. Beyond the walls, smoke plumed from the city, and when the wind blew, Valentina smelled burning corpses.

Koren rode up to her side. He had refused to don Aelarian armor. Instead, he wore a breastplate salvaged from a slain Gaelian, an elk rearing upon it. A dark green cloak draped across his shoulders. He wore a short beard, marking him apart from Aelarian men who shaved their faces, and his dark eyes narrowed as he gazed at the city.

When I first met him, Valentina thought, his eyes were filled with mirth, with hope. Now I see only ghosts within them.

"Has the city fallen to Gael?" Koren said.

Valentina squinted. As they rode closer, she shook her head. "No. Look up at the battlements. Aelar still stands."

Legionaries stood on Aelar's cracked ramparts and guard towers. They held bows, and several trebuchets stood ready to hurl their projectiles. Valentina raised her arm, and her forces halted. She wheeled her horse around toward them.

"Stay here, beyond the range of arrows," she said. "Soon we will ride through the city."

She turned back toward the walls, and she rode alone.

As she approached the walls of her city, she removed her helmet, letting her long white hair stream in the wind. She rode past charred skeletons of men and horses, then halted a distance from the city gates. Twin towers flanked the doors, and Valentina raised her eyes toward the guards upon them.

"I am Valentina Cassius!" she said. "Daughter of Senator Septimus, consul of the Senate! Stepdaughter of Marcus Octavius, fallen emperor! I've come to remove Tirus the usurper from his throne. Open these gates, and let Tirus face the justice of a reborn Republic!"

The guards did not budge, did not speak. The only sound came from two crows fighting over a skull.

Valentina raised her voice again. "Summon Tirus to these walls! He is not rightful lord of this city. I will grant him exile rather than death, for I am merciful. If he resists me, my legions will—"

A voice rose from above. "Tirus is no longer emperor, dear sister." A figure stepped onto the battlements atop the gatehouse. "I am."

She stared up at the man. He wore golden armor, an ultramarine cloak, and a silver helmet topped with a red crest. When he pulled off the helmet, Valentina's heart leaped.

"Seneca!" she cried.

A huge grin stretched her cheeks, and Valentina leaped off her saddle. She took another step closer. "Seneca! Thank the gods!" She hopped on her heels, suddenly feeling like a girl again. "Open the gates and let me hug you!"

Seneca—emperor! Valentina could scarcely believe it. She had heard, of course, the tales of Seneca fleeing south across the sea, of mustering an army, but few had believed him capable of returning. Finally—Seneca upon the throne! Valentina's heart had shattered when Porcia had claimed the prize, but she had always loved Seneca.

"What are you waiting for?" she said, still grinning.

Seneca stared down at her from above. He did not stir.

"You speak of a reborn Republic, Valentina?" He shook his head. "That is dangerous talk, sister."

Her smiled faded. She took a step back. "Yes! The Republic! I've come to rebuild it, Seneca. Rebuild it with me! It's what my father wanted, what—"

"Yet my father was emperor," Seneca said. "I am the true child of Marcus Octavius. I learned many things this past year, Valentina. I learned that you are not the person you always claimed to be—not my sister at all. No." He barked a laugh. "As it turns out, Ofeer is my true sister, and you are the daughter of a traitor. The daughter of the man who murdered my father. The Republic? It died. It died with your family, Valentina Cassius. And by the gods, I will not see its ghost resurrected. Return to Elania, Valentina! I loved you once. That is my gift to you—exile in the Empire's farthest province. Return there now, and do not knock on my door again."

With that, Seneca left the gatehouse. On the walls, his soldiers raised their bows.

Valentina mounted her horse and rode back to her army.

"Shall we prepare for siege, domina?" asked one of her generals. "Our engineers will build rams, towers, and—"

"No." Valentina shook her head. "No more violence. No more killing."

I cannot fight him. I cannot go to war against him, a man I love as a true brother.

Koren stepped closer to her, eyes narrowed, breath heavy, his hand on his sword. "Then how do we do this?"

Valentina did not know.

EPHER

He stood on the wall, watching the slaves tilt their carts, spilling the last rocks and soil onto the ramp.

After three months of toil, the ramp was complete.

It now soared from the desert below toward the top of Tarath El's plateau—taller than a Nurian pyramid.

At the top of the ramp stood Abishag.

She stared at Epher. She was only a few paces away from him. Her back was torn by countless whips. Her face was bruised, emaciated. Her feet bled. Tears filled her eyes.

Standing on the battlements, Epher reached out to her.

"You can join us," he whispered.

A tear drew a line through the dust on her face. Abishag turned and walked down the ramp.

Epher stared toward the bottom of that colossal earthen ramp. Olive stood at his side. Their warriors stood along the wall with them. Down in the desert, Claudia stared up at them. She raised a horn to her lips, and a shrill blare rolled across the desert.

Wood and metal creaked.

Legionaries beat drums.

A great siege tower, several stories tall, began to roll up the ramp. Metal plates coated it, solid but for arrowslits. Great wheels, taller than men, moved below it. A hundred slaves tugged ropes, pulling it upward, whipped by their masters. The structure was as tall as the palace atop Tarath El—large enough to contain a hundred legionaries.

The end of the world, Epher thought. There before me—of iron and stone.

He looked at Olive. She stared back with damp eyes, a trembling smile on her lips.

"I love you," he whispered.

She wept. "I love you too, Epher."

He turned toward his men. As the siege tower rolled up toward them, as thousands of legionaries lined up behind it, Epher spoke softly.

"Fire no arrows." His warriors stared back, eyes grim, listening. "They have more men than we have arrows. Toss no stones. Their iron is mightier. Do not fight them. They seek not to kill you here but to capture you, to take you to torture and slow death across the sea. Follow me now! Through fire into darkness."

Across the wall, they lit torches.

They turned away.

They descended from the wall onto the plateau, and they burned.

We cannot do this! they had shouted yesterday.

We will not!

We must fight!

The voices still echoed. In the barracks. In the temple. They had shouted, wept, refused to hear him. Yet at the sight of this ramp, at the legions that followed, they now followed Epher. With him, they set fire to the last of their kingdom.

As the drums beat and the legionaries chanted, the last defenders of Zohar moved across Tarath El. They set fire to the gardens and groves. They set fire to the corral, where the corpses of animals lay with slit throats. They set fire to a palace coated with tar, and its flames soared. Storehouse by storehouse. The barracks. The houses. All rose in flame, and they left only the columned temple untouched.

The siege tower emerged atop the ramp, wreathed in flame like a beast of metal risen from Ashael. A great cry rose from within. Its doors opened, its gangplank slammed down, and legionaries poured into Tarath El.

Epher waited, sword in hand, as his people raced into the temple, as they descended down the staircase and tunnel, plunging deep into the hideaways carved into the mesa.

As the legions stormed across the plateau, seeking life in fire, Epher stood alone in the temple, holding a torch. He stared through its archway, and he saw Claudia among the legionaries. Their eyes met. She stood on the plateau, the fire rising around her. She nodded.

Epher dropped his torch.

Around him, the fire raced across the temple. He had spent last night coating it with tar and oil. The flames now consumed the pews, the holy scrolls, the walls, the tapestries, so hot it melted the mosaics on the walls. As the fire shrieked, Epher ran into the tunnel, leaving the inferno above. He plunged into darkness. He moved down the network of craggy stone and heard the temple collapse above. The tunnel shook, and dust flew across him, and he could imagine columns shattering, falling, burying him.

He kept moving, hurrying down the trembling tunnel.

Finally he reached a doorway. Two massive bronze doors stood here, thick as walls, forged during the past three months of siege. Epher passed through the doorway, then closed the doors behind him. They shut with a boom, and he dropped a beam into the brackets, securing them shut.

Here were the secret cellars of Tarath El: three pantries, a cistern, several storehouses, and an armory. The last survivors of Zohar stood here, nine hundred souls. Only a few scattered clay lanterns lit the darkness, their flames flickering, their oil burning low. All eyes turned toward Epher, in the chamber where he stood and from the doorways that led to deeper cells. All were silent.

Epher spoke.

"There is no shame in this." His voice was low at first, getting stronger with every word. "This is a defeat, but this is honor. We will not fall to slavery, a short life of chains and whips, ending with a long death of nails and hammers." He took a deep breath, and he closed his eyes. "I once lived by the beach. I remember the waves rolling over the sand, and the seashells gleaming in the sunlight. I remember the wonders of the sea and the mysteries it held. I remember rolling hills, lush with pine trees, mint bushes, red anemones and violet cyclamens and countless stones of chalk and granite. I remember my mother holding me, and my father teaching me wisdom, and siblings whom I love. I remember the sunset dripping across the walls, domes, and towers of Beth Eloh. I remember the desert. I remember the song of rams' horns, the smell of frankincense and myrrh, and the light of Luminosity. I remember light. Even in darkness, I remember light. I remember Zohar." He opened his eyes and he looked at them, the last of his people. His wife among them. "Remember Zohar. Here in darkness, remember your homes, remember those you love. This is who we are. This is who we will always be."

From behind the doors, Epher could hear them now. Thumping feet. Shouts. Fists against the doors. Claudia calling out to him, trying to break in, and behind her an empire.

Epher drew his sword.

Across the chambers, nine hundred other Zoharites drew their own blades.

"The Book of Eloh prohibits suicide," Epher said softly. "We will be brave."

Tears shone in their eyes. One man began to sing "The Shepherd of Zohar," an old song.

Epher nodded, eyes stinging, barely able to see.

He turned toward a woman beside him—a young soldier, barely more than a girl, trembling yet staring into Epher's eyes. Brave.

"Ours is the light," the girl whispered before Epher plunged his sword into her heart.

Across the chamber, they were brave. They did not look away. They did not fight. They did not run. Sword after sword rose. Sword after sword drove into the hearts of lions.

Nine hundred. The last of a million. One by one, as the doors shook and the legions roared outside, they fell.

Finally only Epher and Olive remained.

They stood in the middle of the chamber, the dead around them. They stood together, staring into each other's eyes. Tears flowed down Olive's cheeks, and she trembled, but she did not look away, and still she stood tall.

Epher held her hand.

"I met you a year ago by the sea," he said. "You are the greatest light in my life, brighter than the light of Zohar. I love you. Always."

"I love you," Olive whispered, tears flowing.

He caressed her hair with trembling fingers. He kissed her lips, and her eyelids fluttered, tears spiking her lashes, and she smiled. He kept holding her hand, even as she fell, his sword in her heart. He knelt beside her, and he cradled her in his arms, and he wept over her, waiting until the life inside her fell still.

The doors shattered, but Epher did not look up. He kept staring at Olive's face as he placed his sword's hilt on the floor, as he lowered himself slowly beside her, as the blade went through his heart. He held his wife in his arms.

"Epher, Epher!" Maya ran through the halls of the villa on Pine Hill. "Epher, we're ready!

Darkness filled the house, but his family carried lanterns. Maya handed him one, a clay lamp no larger than his palm, a wick floating in its oil, casting golden light. Maya led the way, walking through the house, holding two lights—one for herself and one for Mica. Ofeer followed her younger sister, for one night her bitterness and pain forgotten, and she sang with her siblings, songs to banish the shadows. Atalia walked third, chest thrust out, shoulders squared, singing loudly, eyes flashing, imagining that she was fighting demons of the underworld. Koren walked next, dancing a little jig every few steps, holding his lamp near his chin and making silly faces. Epher followed, and his parents walked behind him, smiling and singing with low voices. On Lel Urim, this festival of lights, they banished the darkness, filling their house with light, with life.

Epher lay down in the garden that night. He lay by the pomegranate tree and the pine, by the cyclamens that always grew near stones. In the distance, he could hear the sea, whispering, calling to him. He closed his eyes and slept.

CLAUDIA

The doors shattered.

She stepped into the chamber.

She stood still. For a long time, she stared.

A soldier scoffed behind her, probably meaning to whisper to a friend, but his voice echoed in the underground. "Cowards."

Claudia looked over her shoulder. The legionaries stood there in the tunnel. "No," she said. "They were brave."

She looked back down at him. At her Epher. He lay between his people, holding his wife, like he had so often held Claudia. She lowered her head.

"Take the king and queen," Claudia said. "We will take their bodies with us."

Legatus Constantius nodded. "We'll display their corpses in Aelar."

Claudia shook her head. "We'll bury them. There is a hill by the port of Gefen, a hill with a villa and vineyard and garden, and there are two graves already there. Two more graves will join them."

"Gefen, domina?" Constantius said. "Do you mean Valeria Maritima?"

"What?" She blinked, then nodded, distracted. "Yes. Yes, of course."

They left the ruins of Tarath El that day, three legions and their slaves. For three days, they traveled north across the desert until they reached a mountain topped with ruins. Beth Eloh was no more, its Temple fallen, its ancient olive trees burnt, its walls gone, all its whispers silenced. Nothing but ruins. Nothing but memory. From here, they traveled westward along the road to the sea, taking many wagons of trophies—precious metals, gemstones, and perfumes taken from the city. Within another three days, they reached the coast.

On Pine Hill, Claudia buried the man she loved, and beside him, she buried the woman whom he had loved. By the graves of Jerael and Mica Sela, they would rest. Epher and his wife. King and Queen of Zohar.

Zohar.

Zohar—the name of the kingdom where Claudia had been born, where she had grown up, where she had fallen in love, where she had suffered loss, where she had killed, where she had triumphed.

Zohar—her childhood by the beach, eating apricots and persimmons and laughing in the sand. Her womanhood in secret gardens and forests, loving him. Her adulthood of blood. Of shame. Of madness. Of burning fire.

Zohar—a kingdom gone, forgotten. Already none spoke its name. She stood in Aelaria Orientalis, the eastern province of the Empire.

The language I grew up speaking, Claudia thought. The songs I heard as a child. The foods I bought at the market and ate at his home. The lore and music and light. Gone. Sand castles, fading under the waves.

They set sail in the spring, leaving behind Aelaria Orientalis, an eastern wasteland. A fleet of many ships upon a warm sea. In their holds, they carried their loot, the treasures of a nation. Three thousand Zoharite slaves to be sold in the markets. Chests of gold stripped off the columns and towers of the Temple. Many jewels and gemstones. The throne of precious metal, taken from the palace. It was a great treasure, as great as any in Aelar's history of conquest. All for a thousand years would praise her name, Claudia knew. The history books would speak of her triumphs.

But none would know about the kingdom where she had lived. None would know about a girl in a garden by the beach. A girl in love. A girl burnt. A girl broken. A girl forever haunted.

For three weeks, they sailed. For three weeks, Claudia stood at the prow of her ship, thinking of home. The only home that had ever been hers. Thinking of him. Thinking of herself, what she had done, who she had been, and who she was.

When she finally saw the towers of Aelar in the distance, her soldiers sang, but Claudia found no joy. And she knew that none in this city—this city the size of the kingdom she had destroyed, had lost—would ever understand.

The ships sailed on, but Claudia did not sail with them.

When she leaped into the water, her soldiers cried out. A few leaped after her. Tried to reach her. To save her. But the sea was wide, and the currents soon claimed her, pulling her away from her fleet, away from a city not hers. Never hers.

She sank. Beads of light danced above her, growing smaller, fading, until all was indigo and starlight. Then darkness.

I'm sorry.

Claudia closed her eyes, and she felt no pain as the sea flowed into her lungs. She felt no fear of the underwater, for she had always been a child of the sea. Only fear of herself.

The fire no longer burned her.

She felt nothing, and all was darkness and water and beads of floating light.

IMANI

Imani Koteeka, Queen of Nur, stood in the Amphitheatrum at dawn, a lone figure in a great hollow shell. She stood on a stone tier of seats, one of many that circled the sandy arena below. The amphitheater was empty now, but when the wind blew, she heard echoes of a roaring crowd, of a woman screaming. The wind fluttered Imani's kalasiri, ruffled her hair, and raised ghosts of sand in the arena.

This is the place, Imani thought. Where my mother died eleven years ago.

She lowered her head. She had been only seventeen, barely a woman, when the Aelarians had captured her mother, taken her across the sea to Aelar, and butchered her in this place. They said that a hundred thousand spectators had filled the arena that day, that Marcus Octavius himself had whipped and crucified Queen Anaya Koteeka, that his own blade had carved off her limbs and head, trophies to hang upon the city gates.

"I was too young," Imani whispered, tears in her eyes. "Too young to assume the yoke of a puppet queen. Too young to lose you. I miss you every day, Mother." She took a shuddering breath. "I fought for you. Across desert, sea, and this city of stone, I fought for you, and I cast back the cruel emperors who crushed us." She placed a hand on her swelling belly. "And I married one, Mother. I married the son of the man who murdered you. I carry his child inside me. I did what I had to do. Because Seneca is different. I have to believe that he's different, that I can raise our child in our ways. That both father and child can be good."

Movement caught her eye. She rubbed the tears away and saw a figure step into the amphitheater. He climbed the stone tiers, then came to stand beside her. Emperor Seneca Octavius wore the full regalia of his new position: a deep purple toga, an ultramarine sash, and a golden laurel. Yet he too wore a yoke. At the gateway below stood guards in white togas, daggers at their sides—men of the Magisterian Guard, there to defend their emperor . . . and keep him in line.

Seneca stood beside Imani, looking down at the sandy arena.

"I remember that day," he said. "I was only a boy. But I remember." He looked at her. "I'm sorry, Imani. This city must hold so much pain for you."

She could not stop her tears this day. "I want to believe that you'll be different, Seneca. I want to believe that I did not do all this—did not sail here, did not slay men, did not stain my hands with so much blood—to see another tyrant on the throne. To see Nur crushed under the heel of another Octavian emperor. I want to believe. But I'm scared. For my country. For the memory of my mother. For our child."

His eyes softened, and he placed a hand on her belly. "For our child," he repeated. He looked around him. "When I was a child, I hated this place. I feared it. Porcia delighted in seeing the gladiators fight and the prisoners executed. Father did too. But I always loathed coming here. My family called me weak, called me a coward. But I don't think it was cowardice. I think it was disgust." For a moment he stared at the arena in silence, as if lost in memory. "I'm not a good man, Imani. And I don't know whether I'll be a good emperor, or a good husband, or a good father. But by the gods, I will try, and I will fight to become the best man I can be. This will be my greatest war, and one I will fight with all my might. One that I will win."

Imani stroked his cheek and gazed into his eyes, and she saw honesty there.

"When you first freed me from captivity," Imani said, "I hated you. I wanted to kill you. When I married you, I did it only for Nur, only to bend Aelar to my will, and your touch sickened me. I would lie in bed beside you, and I would feel so disgusted—with myself, with what I had done, whoring myself out to the son of my mother's killer. But you're not like your father, Seneca. You try. Maybe you're not a good man. Maybe I'm not a good woman. But you try." She kissed his cheek. "For that I love you."

She saw the flicker of pain in his eyes. She hadn't confessed true, romantic love—not the sort of love he felt for her, that she saw in his eyes. Her words wounded him. They had been meant in kindness, but yes, they wounded him.

Thus it has always been, Imani thought. Honesty always cuts men more than blades.

He took her hand in his. "Come with me, Imani. I have something to show you."

She exited the amphitheater with him. Surrounded by guards, they walked across the Acropolis, the heart of the Empire. Here were the halls of Aelar's splendor and might: its temples, palaces, and colossal statues. These halls were five hundred years old—ancient for Aelarians yet mere infants by the antiquity of Nur. The pyramid where Imani had lived had been ancient when these halls had been only drawings on wax tablets.

A beast awoke upon the world, she thought, looking around her at the marble temples and statues. A monster risen from the earth, its hunger knowing no bounds, and its name is Aelar. I miss my home.

He took her through the halls of the palace, places of splendor where columns soared, capped with gold, and pastel frescoes of gods swept across vaulted ceilings. He took her through gardens where flowers bloomed, where marble statues rose, displaying the beauty of the human body. Finally he took her deep into shadowy vaults. Chests of gold and gemstones and trophies of war shone in dark chambers.

Here, at the end of a corridor, Seneca took her into a glittering hall piled high with artifacts. Weapons from across the world hung on the walls: khopeshes of the south, scimitars of the east, dragon axes and hammers from the north. Skulls stood on stone pedestals, silvered and jeweled. Three ancient royal chariots, their gilt peeling, stood in the center of the hall. A dozen thrones lined one wall, and behind them hung tapestries from foreign lands, each displaying a different kingdom's tale.

"What is this place?" Imani whispered.

"My family's little collection," Seneca said, and there was weary grief to his voice. "My father kept trophies here from the lands he conquered, the enemies he killed. Every weapon on these walls belonged to a chieftain, warlord, or king slain in battle. Their chariots and thrones stand here too."

He walked toward the back of the room. Several statues stood here: a dragon the size of a horse, forged of precious metals, its eyes jeweled; a man with a dog's head, carved of obsidian; and several beasts that looked like tigers with long, coiling necks. Among them, on the floor, lay a chest. It was the simplest object in the room, constructed of unadorned wood and iron.

Imani stood, staring at the chest, and sudden tightness gripped her throat.

"What is it?" She was afraid to touch it, afraid to look inside.

Seneca placed a gentle hand on the small of her back. "Your mother did not deserve what happened to her, Imani. And her bones do not deserve burial here in this hall of shame. When your brother sails back to Nur, let him take these bones. Let him bury them in Nur. That is where your mother should rest."

She leaned against him. Her damn tears. "Thank you, Seneca," she whispered.

That evening, Imani stood at Aelaria Maritima in the south of the city. The port bustled. Fishermen were returning with their catches, loading crates of fish and squid onto the docks. Sailors emerged from their vessels, their day's payment jangling in their hands, and headed toward the gambling halls, alehouses, and brothels that lined the boardwalk. Children scurried underfoot, begging for coins, while buskers performed with flues, lyres, and drums. Undeterred by the setting sun, gulls flew overhead, perched on masts, and walked along the cobblestones, seeking crumbs. One of the birds, more brazen than its siblings, dived and grabbed a roast squid right from the hand of a feasting merchant. Lanterns swung on poles, their light gleaming on the water and wet boardwalk, and hundreds of ships swayed in the harbor, their own lights shining.

Nur's warriors, whom Imani had led here in battle, were busy loading their ships—with their supplies and with their dead. She had sailed here with thousands of her people, rebels who had first taken up arms against Governor Cicero Octavius, who had sailed to Aelar to see the Valerius family deposed.

And a thousand return home in coffins, she thought, gazing at the solemn line of warriors carrying their fallen comrades onto their ships. She looked down at the chest at her feet. And you return home with them, Mother.

Adai stood at her side, clad in white, the color of mourning. He wore no gold today, no sign of his royalty, and red rimmed his eyes. He knelt and lifted one side of the chest. Imani lifted the other side. They carried their mother's bones along the gangplank and onto the Avem Nox. It was the flagship that had led their fleet here to war; it was the ship that would take them and their fallen home. They placed the chest in the hold, then rose back to the deck. Imani stood at the balustrade, looking at the twenty other ships that would be carrying her army home.

Heroes of war, she thought. Mere boys and girls. Some no older than I was when my mother died. Too young to lose their friends.

"We won," Adai said, voice low. "Yet it feels so hollow."

"Victory in war is always hollow. It comes at too great a cost." She watched a gull peck at a crust of bread on the boardwalk. "But those days of war are over, Adai. Our days of pain, of grief, of rebellion—they are over." She leaned her head against his shoulder. "It's time to rebuild Nur."

He nodded, and finally the hint of a smile touched his lips. "We will laugh and run through the Night Gardens again. We will travel the savanna and climb the great cliffs of Anakten. We will dine and sing freely in the pyramids, and play mancala like we used to, and we will worship the old spirits. We will be as we were, Imani. Like when we were children."

She closed her eyes, imagining it. That world of her childhood, of cinnamon cakes, of dancers and drums, of trips to the waterfall outside Shenutep, of a land blooming with flowers, with life.

She opened her eyes, finding herself back in Aelar, and stared across the city. There in the distant city center, so far she could barely see it, rose the Acropolis. There Seneca awaited. The father of her child.

She looked at her brother—at his kind eyes, honest face—and she did not know her path, did not know if she still had a home.

How can I leave Seneca now? How can I leave my husband? His demons still haunt him. He still needs me. She placed a hand on her belly, feeling the flutter of life within. And perhaps I do too.

She did not know what to do. Imani inhaled deeply, the scent of salt and fish and spices filling her nostrils. She stepped off the Avem Nox, along the boardwalk, and back into the city. And she felt lost.

KOREN

He stood alone, apart from the Republic Army he had marched with for months, and stared up at the walls of Aelar.

He is emperor.

Koren's eyes stung. His hands curled into fists.

Seneca, the man who murdered my father, won.

Tears burned. Koren's chest rose and fell. He clenched his jaw and lowered his head, and the grief seemed too great to bear.

Zohar has fallen. Epher is dead.

Koren let out a sob, fell to his knees, and breathed raggedly. He drew his sword, not sure if he wanted to charge the walls alone or slit his wrists.

The stories had spread quickly through the camp. Seneca—emperor. Epher, Maya, and Mother—gone. Zohar—in ruins, most of its people slain.

With damp eyes, Koren gazed up at the city. Aelar still stood. Seneca—a murderer, a monster—sat on the throne.

Koren lowered his head.

He wept.

He felt a soft hand on his shoulder, and he turned to see Valentina there. Behind her sprawled a camp of tents, home to thousands of troops. Her eyes were soft, and her hair streamed in the breeze.

"Koren, I'm sorry," she said. "When I heard the news from Zohar, I . . ."

"We must kill him." Koren rose to his feet, voice twisted, shaking. He grabbed Valentina's arms. "With all our troops—we must kill him. I will kill Seneca myself. I will carve out his heart. I will hear him scream. I will do to him what he did to my father. Let us attack. Now!"

Valentina's eyes were damp, and she touched his cheek. "He is my brother."

He shoved her hand again. "He's not your brother! His father murdered your family. His father carved you out from your mother's pregnant belly. They're monsters! They're monsters, all of them. We will kill them all. We will kill them all!"

"Would you kill me too?" Valentina said, voice harsher now, her tears seared away. "I love him! Yes, I love Seneca. He killed your father, and I love him."

"He murdered my father."

"He killed him in war!" Valentina said. "As you killed men. I watched you kill men." Her cheeks flushed. "We are all monsters. And if we attack now, if we kill a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand more—who will we be then?"

"Victorious!" Koren said. "Avenged!"

Valentina shook her eyes, eyes red. Her voice dropped to a whisper. "Do you know who you sound like? You sound like the man you want to kill. You sound as bloodthirsty as he ever was. Seneca is not a good man. I know this. I've always known it. I've known it since I was a child. But he is human, and he is worthy of compassion and life. Same as you. Same as his soldiers on the wall. Your father died. Your brother and sister died. Most of your people died. And I'm sorry, Koren. I am so, so sorry, and I grieve and weep for them, and I would sacrifice my life in a heartbeat to bring them back. But I can't do that. And I will not bring more death to a world already reeling from genocide."

Koren stared at her, silent for a moment. "I don't know who you are," he finally whispered. "I don't know you. Where is the kind, gentle girl who plucked me from Claudia's grasp? The girl who would have done anything for the Republic?"

"She burned on the road to Elania," said Valentina. "Same as the boy who was with me. Same as the silly boy who told jokes, and sang, and danced, and even as a slave in a burning world still found joy everywhere. Both that girl and boy burned. We are all that remain."

"Then what was this all for?" Koren said. "For what did we hide from Porcia, travel across the sea, battle a dark lumer and a horde of Gaelians, and come here—to the very walls we sought for so long?"

"For a dream of peace," Valentina said.

"There is no peace in this world," Koren replied. "There are the cruel and the strong, and there are the dead. My family learned that. My people learned that. And you will learn that before the end."

He walked off, leaving her there beneath the walls.

He walked across the misty field, under the veiled sky, and he felt lost.

He had no more home to return to.

No more home to dream of.

I am alone.

He reached a grove of cypress and pines, and he stood between the trees. A drizzle fell. At his feet, Koren saw cyclamens growing by stones, the flowers his mother would grow in their garden. He thought of that garden, thought of his parents gone, and he found no hope, no light in the world.

He drew his sword. The blade trembled.

I can end this pain. I can sleep without nightmares.

His tears fell, and he tightened his grip on the blade.

"I'm alone," he whispered. "My family is dead. I'm the last. I—"

A voice rose behind him. "You are not the last."

Koren started and turned around, pointing his sword at the trees. "Who's there?"

"I'm here." A shadow stirred nearby, and Avia stepped forward. She must have been standing there the whole time, blending into the trees with her cloak of gray and green patches. She pulled back her hood, revealing her pale face, blond hair, and blue eyes, the gifts of her northern father.

Koren hadn't seen Avia since that night in the northern forest—the night they had made love in a ring of fire. Since then, the dark lumer had slunk outside the camp, never drawing near. Sometimes when seeking her, Koren would find remnants of her camp, a circle of embers in the forest, a strand of golden hair, a dangling raven's skull. But Avia was never there, always flitting beyond his sight.

And yet the dark lumer had never left his mind: her kisses and her warm body moving with his, the luminescence that had flowed across him, the raven skulls, and the mummified baby. Every night in his dreams, he was back with her, lying with her in the forest, skulls and flames surrounding them, her fingernails digging into his back, her limbs wrapped around him, her light effusing over him.

At the sight of her now, those memories flared with new intensity. Koren's blood heated. He could almost feel the heat of that ring of fire again, and her blue eyes pierced him.

"You were eavesdropping." It was all he could think of saying.

Avia stepped closer and touched his cheek. "I need not eavesdrop. I am a child of dark Luminosity, and your mind is open to me like a scroll. As are the minds of all those in the city before us. Its walls block the passage of soldiers but not my Sight. I have gazed into those shadows, Koren, and I saw them. Your sisters." A thin smile touched her lips. "Ofeer. Atalia. They're alive, Koren. They are in Aelar. Put down the blade that you wanted to plunge into your heart. You are not alone."

Koren stared, silent for a moment.

"Ofeer is alive?" he whispered, and tears stung his eyes. "Atalia . . . Atalia is alive? I thought she drowned, I . . ."

Avia nodded. "They're both alive, Koren. They're in the city. And you must live too."

"They're alive," Koren whispered, then laughed, tears on his cheeks. "They're not all gone. Ofeer is alive. Atalia is alive. I thought that wall-pisser had drowned, but she's still alive!"

From among the trees, he stared at the distant city. In the ruins of the world, in the devastation, the loss of Zohar, the loss of a million souls—there were still two lights. There was Ofeer. There was Atalia. They were there, in this city, so near.

For them, Koren had to keep fighting. When all other lights had gone dark, when all was hopeless—there were still Ofeer and Atalia. There was still some light in a world gone dark.

"I miss you, my parents," he whispered. "I miss you, Maya. I miss you, Epher. But you're still alive, Ofeer. You're still alive, Atalia. We're going to be together again."

Avia spoke softly beside him. "And I can help you, Koren Sela, heir to Zohar."

"Heir to Zohar?" Koren looked at her. "Yes, I suppose that's true. With my cousins and older brother gone, that leaves me in charge of the ruins."

Her eyes flashed. She grabbed his arm, baring her teeth. Her skin was so hot it nearly burned him. "Zohar is not just rock and dirt and flesh. Zohar has always been a kingdom of light and of shadows. The blood of Zohar's rightful king still carries power—power that is eternal, that knows nothing of corpses or scattered bricks."

"Unless that power can kill Seneca," Koren said, "I don't care."

Avia stared into his eyes, still gripping him. "That power can kill everyone in Aelar."

He was about to laugh, but he froze and stared. He thought back to the ice demon Avia had summoned, a creature with a dead man's pulsing heart in its chest. He thought of her shadows wilting every tree in a forest, leaving the Gaelian assault exposed. From what he had seen so far, Dark Luminosity—tapping into the shadows of luminescence rather than the light itself—was far more powerful, or at least far more destructive, than anything regular lumers did.

He looked into Avia's eyes. As a child, Koren would walk along the breakwater at Gefen until he reached the very edge, then stare into the sea. An uneasy yet alluring feeling would always fill him that other worlds pulsed below the water, murky kingdoms of splendor that he would never see, never understand. Looking into Avia's blue eyes now, that feeling returned.

She smiled thinly. "I see the rage in you. I see the lust for vengeance. Good. Those are strong feelings and pure. With your royal blood, with the power of Luminosity that flows through it, we will wipe out the enemy." Her lips parted into a sickening grin. "Screams will rise this night."

Koren suddenly realized how dark it had become. The sun was setting, and only gray light made it through the clouds. "What do you mean?" he whispered, daring speak no louder.

She released his arm and looked at a gnarled oak tree. A shadow, no larger than a crow, climbed its bark, then coiled along its branch, wilting the wood where it passed.

"There is a curse I've never attempted," Avia said softly. "A curse I've only read of in ancient scrolls. A curse that requires the blood of Elior, of Zohar's kings. Only the blood of royalty can raise a light that bright, cast a shadow that dark." She looked back at him, and luminescence now filled her eyes. "With your blood, I will summon him whose true name I dare not utter. Some call him the angel of death. I will send him through the city of Aelar, and he will pass over all houses of Zoharites and foreigners . . . but he will enter every Aelarian home, and he will take all those he finds."

Koren inhaled sharply. The angel of death. Yes, he had heard of that creature. Yet was he not a mere story from old scrolls?

Koren shuddered. He leaned closer to Avia.

"You have this power?" he whispered.

She shook her head. "No. But you do." She grabbed his wrist, pulled it toward her nose, and inhaled deeply as if savoring the scent. "The blood of Elior himself, the first king. Your mother was Shiloh Elior. Your grandfather was King Rahamyah. A dynasty that runs from the founder of our kingdom, from Elshalom himself." She trailed her fingernail along his artery. "There isn't enough lume inside me—not enough lume even in the ruins of Zohar—to summon this dark angel from his domain. But in your blood there flows the ancient lume of kings. How do you think Maya gained such might, more than any lumer before her? The same blood flowed through her."

"Maya was a healer," Koren said.

Avia scoffed. "Every light casts a shadow. Every shadow comes from light. Maya brought the dead back to life; I saw it in the luminescence. No lumer in a thousand years has shone a light so bright, has cast a shadow so dark. With her miracle, she summoned a great curse, and Beth Eloh fell. Now, Koren, we will make another city fall. Now another million will die." She pulled a knife from her cloak and brought it toward his wrist, then gazed into his eyes, her face twisted with hunger. "Do this with me. We are joined now. In the forest, our souls and bodies bonded—with blood, with flame, with flesh, with light. We are forever joined. Together, as one, we will summon him. We will have our vengeance."

Koren closed his eyes. His legs shook.

Vengeance.

Vengeance for Zohar.

Vengeance for his parents. For Maya. For Epher.

He opened his eyes.

"And Ofeer and Atalia will be unharmed?" he said.

"In a thousand years, none have cast this curse," said Avia. "But in the old tales, the angel of death passed over all those of Zohar, smiting only their enemies. We will send him into the city, and all will perish around your sisters. But they will remain unharmed. A great cry will rise from Aelar . . . then fall silent."

Koren looked back toward Aelar, imagining it.

The angel of death sweeping across the city.

The great scream.

The silence.

Just echoing silence.

It's what you wanted, whispered a voice inside him. What you demanded from Valentina. Victory.

He remembered the legionaries in the tavern, somewhere on the road to the sea. Men he had killed. He remembered the blood in Gefen. He remembered his home—a home of light, laughter, warmth. He thought of his mother's eyes and his father's embrace.

He lowered his head.

"If I could destroy Aelar to bring back Zohar," he said, "I would. I would kill a million of them to save a million of us." He turned back toward Avia. "But that's not what this is. We cannot bring back the dead. We cannot bring back those whom we lost. I will not see another tragedy. I will not see another million slain, not even if they're enemies. This is a city of mothers. Fathers. Siblings. Like those whom I lost. I cannot let their blood be on our hands. We are broken. Vengeance would only break us further. Revenge?" He sighed. "Revenge is a hollow victory. All I want is my sisters. Not more death."

He turned to leave. He had taken three steps when Avia shrieked behind him, ran, and leaped onto his back.

"You will not refuse me!"

He struggled to shake her off, finally knocking her to the ground. "Avia, it's not the way."

The dark lumer snarled up at him, the light still in her eyes. "It is the only way." Her voice rumbled, demonic, and the light flared in her eyes. Shadows spread out beneath her like twisting roots. "They destroyed our home. Only vengeance is left for us now." She pointed her knife toward him. "I will have your blood."

She leaped toward him again, blade flashing.

Koren grimaced and stepped back, dodging her. When the blade lashed again, he caught her wrist.

She stared at him, eyes aglow, and shadows spread out from her feet, grabbed his ankles, and knocked him down. At once, she was on him, blade plunging. Koren caught her wrist, holding the knife away.

"Avia, listen to me! It's too late. It's too late to save Zohar. But we can—"

Her fist slammed into his cheek, and pain blazed across his forearm. The weight lifted from him. Avia stepped back, holding a bloody knife. Koren clutched the wound on his arm.

The dark lumer stepped back, smiling, and licked the blood off the blade. She tossed back her chin, spread out her arms, and hovered over the forest floor. Luminescence gathered around her, suffusing her body, rising as a pillar, and the shadows darkened beneath her.

Koren ran.

He leaped into the effulgence and barreled into Avia. He screamed as the light burned him. Her arm swung, knocking him back. He slammed into a pine.

"You're right, Koren!" rose her shriek from within the light. "It's too late to save Zohar. But it's never too late for vengeance. See him, Koren! Bow before him whom you summoned!"

Between the dark trees, Koren saw a shadow gather, move, stare with dark eyes, black on black. The creature opened its jaws, pulsing, slithering, and its arms spread out, dripping sheets of dry skin like tattered cloth, and it held a circular blade on a staff. A crown of thorns wheeled above its head, and its fingers were like talons, gleaming, black.

"I did not summon him," said Koren. "Not by my blood."

"By the blood of Elior!" shouted Avia from the light. "Rise, dark angel! To the city! Pass over the dwellings of Zohar's children. Take all the rest. They are yours to feed on. They—"

"Hear me, angel!" said Koren. He stepped toward the apparition between the trees. "I am Koren Sela, son of Shiloh Elior, descended of King Elshalom. I am rightful heir of Zohar, and it is my blood that summoned you. Hear me now! You are to return to the underworld. You will not heed this lumer. Leave now and hunger still."

The creature screeched.

Trees cracked and shattered.

The light blazed skyward from Avia, a pillar reaching the clouds, and the shadows grew. The angel darkened, bloomed, spread out its arms and claws. Its eyes seared Koren, darker than night.

We must feed . . . rose a voice in his mind.

"You have fed enough!" Koren said. "You have fed upon the people of Zohar. You will feed upon the dwellers of this city too—but not tonight. Their lives are not yours to take." He raised his bleeding arm. "This is the blood of kings. The blood of the land of light and shadows. By this blood, I command you—leave now. I know your name. I call you Azrael! I name you and I banish you. Return to the shadows."

The creature grinned, its patches of skin fluttering, translucent, revealing glistening black organs and a thrumming white heart.

We will meet again someday, Koren Elior.

"I will be ready," Koren said.

The angel of death dispersed. Flecks of black glided down like ash. With a crackle, the light that rose from Avia vanished, and the dark lumer fell to her knees. Her skin was charred, her hair burnt.

Koren knelt beside her. She stared at him, panting. Her dagger had fallen, and Koren grabbed it.

"Why did you stop me?" Avia struggled for breath. "We could have killed them all. It's what you wanted."

"I wanted it." Koren nodded. "But I cannot be that man. I cannot be the monster they would turn me into, or truly they would have won. We already lost our homeland. We cannot lose our souls. Someday, maybe not for years, maybe not for generations, we will forgive Aelar for killing our children. But we could never forgive them for making us kill theirs."

Avia looked at him with damp eyes. "Then I will leave too," she said. "To the ruins of Zohar. To desolation. To see if lume still flows. And perhaps like Zohar, I will fade." She kissed his lips. "Goodbye, Koren. If you ever make your way back home, seek me there. May we someday meet again in a rebuilt Beth Eloh." She turned to walk away.

"Avia," Koren said. "Wait. Back in the forest, in the ring of fire, when we . . . when we lay together . . . what did that mean?"

She smiled at him sadly. "I wanted your loyalty, and I wanted your child. To replace my princess. To replace the one I lost." She placed a hand on her belly. "I can feel him inside me, and through his veins flows the blood of kings. He will have the power to destroy the world."

Koren stared at her, shock and horror pounding through him. "My child . . ." His head spun, and then a deeper shock filled him. "You will use him to . . . ?"

She looked at her feet. She shook her head. "I will not cut him. I will not use life that I create to summon death." She stepped closer to Koren, tears in her eyes, and kissed him again. "Goodbye, Koren Sela, son of Zohar."

She turned and vanished between the trees. Koren followed, calling for her, running through the forest, but Avia was gone. It was a long, cold walk back to the camp.

SENECA

He stood on the balcony of the imperial palace, gazing upon Aelar.

It was a warm summer day. The boulevards spread out like spokes, lined with trees. People bustled back and forth, shopping at markets, visiting theaters, cooking their food in public kitchens, bathing in columned baths. Children ran through gardens and public squares and splashed in fountains. Marble statues shone in the sunlight. Countless villas and apartment buildings filled the city, home to so many lives—merchants, tradesmen, soldiers, slaves, each with their own story, their own world. Each a player in this great amphitheater.

Life continued.

Peace reigned upon the Sacred City.

Not far from the Acropolis, workers were bustling across scaffolds, raising a triumphal arch—the largest in the city. It spanned a boulevard, taller even than the palace where Seneca stood. Engravings on its marble, taken from the quarry Tirus had once ruled, depicted the spoils of Beth Eloh—Zoharite slaves, chests of gold, and the kingdom's throne. When completed, artists would paint the marble, gilding the engraved spoils with actual Zoharite gold. Tirus had commissioned the archway before his death, already predicting victory in the east, and when Seneca stared at the archway from his palace, his belly curdled.

They ran through Gefen, screaming.

A man ran on stumps.

A woman burned.

Seneca laughed and swung his hammer.

He looked away from the triumphal arch. He returned into his palace.

He walked down the halls. The Magisterian guards stood everywhere. They lined the corridors, manned every door, patrolled the gardens. The Guard had been created to defend the city and its rulers, but Seneca felt like a prisoner. These men were not here to protect him; they were here to monitor him.

He met with his generals over breakfast, sharing soft-boiled eggs sprinkled with sea salt, bowls of grapes and apples, tangy smoked cheese, and plans to assault Valentina's forces that still camped outside the city. Seneca wanted to scrap those plans, to toss them all into the fire, but at a glance from Caelius—the man was always there, standing in the shadows—Seneca merely nodded. He spent the rest of the morning meeting with his ministers, hearing them bleat about the costs of rebuilding the city, and as he signed each decree, allotting coins to rebuild this tower or that temple, Caelius smiled over his shoulder. At lunch, Seneca reclined on a low couch, forcing himself to sip wine, to entertain the ambassador of Sekadia and redraw the border between the nations—a border now east of Aelaria Orientalis.

East of Zohar, he thought.

He hunted in the hills.

He fired his arrow, slaying a dog.

He made love to Ofeer in a cave.

Jerael moaned outside the window.

Porcia slapped a grisly gift against his chest.

Taeer screamed, a spear in her chest.

A woman burned.

A child burned.

Seneca nodded. "Yes, ambassador. The line will pass east of Beth El—" At a nod from Caelius, Seneca swallowed the forbidden word. "East of Orientia Capitolina. There we will have peace."

For now, he thought. Peace for now. Until the Guard decides it needs more war. More fire. More memories.

In the afternoon, a group of lords wanted to meet Seneca in the bathhouse—to see his bare ass and kiss it, no doubt.

"Tomorrow," Seneca said, not bothering to glance at Caelius, ignoring the man's frown.

If you want to kill me over skipping a fucking bath, Seneca thought, then find an otter to be your emperor.

Leaving the ingratiating bathers for another day, he headed to his bedchamber—the bedchamber his father had once occupied. A guard stood in the corner. Seneca couldn't even piss in his chamber pot without a guard around. Nobody else was here. Imani was spending the day at the port, parting from her brother who was sailing home with the Nurian warriors. Ignoring the guard, Seneca was about to crash onto his bed, to read a scroll on the Aelarian tax system, then sleep for a few stolen moments before the tax collectors came to beg for more hired brutes. He was two steps from the bed when a knock sounded on his door.

Seneca groaned. "I told you, not now! Taxes will wait."

And yet his door opened, and Caelius stood there, smiling thinly. "Ah! Glad to see I caught you decent. You have a visitor, dominus."

I should kill him now, Seneca thought, aching for a sword. While there's only one guard here.

"No tax collectors," Seneca said. "I . . ."

His voice died.

Head lowered, holding a baby in her arms, Ofeer walked into the chamber.

Seneca stood frozen, unable to breathe.

Ofeer glanced up at him, then looked down at her feet.

"Guards," Seneca said, "leave."

Caelius tilted his head, frowned, and opened his mouth to object. Seneca silenced him with a glare.

"Leave," he said again.

The lord of the Magisterian Guard tightened his lips, then nodded and gestured to his inferior. Both men exited the chamber, leaving Seneca and Ofeer alone.

For a moment both were silent, and still Ofeer would not meet his gaze.

"Ofeer," Seneca said softly, stepping closer to her.

She took a step back. The baby in her arms looked at Seneca, curious.

Last time I saw her, I was waving a sword, vowing to kill her, Seneca remembered. He lowered his head, shame flowing over him.

Finally Ofeer spoke. "For a long time, I didn't want to come here. For a long time, I wanted to leave the city. To find a village far in the countryside. To find work. To forget about you, forget what happened between us." She raised her eyes, finally meeting his gaze. "But I had to come here first. I could not leave without seeing you."

Seneca did not know what to say, how to start.

"Ofeer." His voice shook, and suddenly the words were spilling out from him. "Ofeer, I'm sorry. I have so much I want to say. I don't know where to begin. I don't know how to tell you it all—all that happened, all that I became, that I was, that I am. But please know that I'm sorry. I'm so sorry for everything that I did to you, to your family, and I'm ashamed." Tears filled his eyes, and his voice shook. "I know that can't change anything. I know that doesn't buy me redemption. I don't ask for forgiveness. I will never forgive myself, and I know that I can never undo the pain that I caused you. I don't ask for anything other than you knowing this: I'm sorry."

She looked away, crying softly. "It's too late for that, Seneca."

"I know." He nodded. "I think back to who I was. When I met you on the hill. When we fought. When we bled. When we sailed across the sea. And I don't know who that boy was. He was not me. He was the son of Marcus. He was the brother of Porcia. But he was not me, not who I am now. He died somewhere between Gefen and Nur, Ofeer." Suddenly Seneca was weeping. He was fucking weeping like a baby. "I don't know why I did it. I don't know why I killed him. I can't stop seeing it. I can't stop. I can't stop. I'm sorry and I can't fix any of it."

She was sobbing now too. She smiled through her tears. "I didn't come here to forgive you. I cannot forgive even myself for what I did. We have both sinned, Seneca, and perhaps we are both beyond redemption. But I did not come here for that. I came here to show you Ariel." She held out the baby.

The baby looked into Seneca's eyes and smiled.

"He's beautiful," Seneca said. "I didn't know . . . Who . . ."

He fell silent.

Ofeer nodded, smile shaky. "He's yours, Seneca."

It felt as if the sea flowed across him. He could barely stay standing. He reached out and stroked Ariel's hair, and the baby giggled.

Fresh tears filled Seneca's eyes. "He's beautiful. He's so beautiful. Thank the gods he looks like you." He laughed, then felt a sudden stab of fear, remembering who Ofeer was, remembering their shame. "Is he . . . is he normal, or . . ."

"He's perfect," Ofeer said. "He's as healthy as can be."

Seneca breathed out in relief. "I'll take care of you. Both of you. I'll find you rooms in the palace. You'll never want for anything."

Ofeer shook her head. "I'm leaving, Seneca. I'm leaving this city with Ariel. With Atalia too. As soon as Valentina's siege ends, as soon as the gates open—we're leaving. They say that Koren is out there with Valentina's forces. We'll find him, and we'll find another place to live."

"Where will you go?" Seneca asked, unable to bear the thought of parting from her now, from his son. "To Zohar, or . . ."

"Zohar lies in ruin," Ofeer said. "There is too much pain there. Too many memories. Too many legionaries that still patrol the ruins. I don't know where we'll go, what we'll find. We are lost now. We are vagabonds in a cold world. Maybe our lives will forever be on the road. But as we walk those paths, we will dream of the Zohar that was, and we will dream of Beth Eloh rising again."

She turned to leave.

"Wait," Seneca said. "Will I see my son again?"

She looked over her shoulder at him. Ariel met his eyes, curious and confused. Ofeer didn't have to say anything. Seneca knew the answer.

I could keep her here, he thought. I still have some autonomy, even with Caelius breathing down my neck. I can order Ofeer locked in a room—a comfortable room, with all the wealth of a princess—a bird in a gilded cage, like Valentina was.

And he knew, too, that he would not do this thing. He had enslaved Ofeer before, had locked a collar around her neck, had caged his pretty, exotic bird. He was no longer that man.

He stroked Ariel's head and kissed the boy's forehead.

Goodbye, my son. Goodbye.

Ofeer turned and left.

Seneca met with his tax collectors, and with his masons, and with his landowners, and with his shipwrights, with the countless other clerks and dignitaries and officers who ran the empire. But he kept thinking of a little smile, of curious eyes.

That night, Imani came into his chamber. His wife wore the regalia of a Nurian queen. A white kalasiri hugged her form, and golden serpents coiled around her arms and brow. Henna darkened her eyelids, and she held her scepter of royalty. Her belly bulged. The child within was growing quickly now, would soon emerge into the world.

I still have Imani, Seneca thought, comforted by her presence. We will raise a family here. We will find joy.

Yet Imani did not doff her royal raiment. She stood for a long time, staring out the window at the lights of the city and distant port. Finally she turned back toward Seneca.

"Adai and all the others are on the ships," she said. "Ready to take the journey home to Nur. Seneca . . ." She stepped closer to him. "I'm going with them."

His breath caught. His heart twisted. He touched her hand. "Imani! I thought you would stay. That we would rule together. That we would raise our child together."

"This was not a choice I made lightly." She couldn't meet his eyes. "Seneca, we sailed here to depose a tyrant. To heal the world. But I cannot heal Nur from here." Finally she met his gaze. "I need to be there. I need to walk among my people. I need to dwell in the pyramid of my forebears. I will always be your wife, Seneca. I will always be the mother of your child. But my heart lies across the sea."

"Will you stay the night?" he said, voice soft.

She embraced him, and she smelled of sandalwood and cinnamon. She touched his cheek and smiled, tears sparkling, and kissed his lips.

"My sweet Seneca. My king of gold and rust, of marble and blood, of shadows and burning light. We sought to heal the world, but we had to heal ourselves. With every wave of the sea, I will remember."

She turned and left.

Seneca remained in his chamber, alone.

He lay on his bed.

The ship swayed below him, and he stood at the prow, staring at the city of Gefen.

"Pathetic." Seneca scoffed. "Look at them. They barely have a hundred candles between them to cast back the darkness. Aelar shines with a million lanterns, while the barbarians lurk in shadows."

He sat in a villa on a piney hill.

"Pig piss." He tossed down his mug in disgust, shattering it, and the wine spilled across the floor. "I haven't sailed for eighteen days to drink pig piss."

He stood outside the walls of a crumbling eastern city, laughing.

"We come, we see, we kill!" His voice was hoarse. "Kill them all! Kill all the fucking rats!"

He swung the hammer, raised the cross. He dragged the man's daughter into the man's own bed, fucked her for three days, drunk on wine, drunk on triumph, savoring the spoils as his enemy slowly died on the cross.

Seneca woke up in darkness, damp with sweat, unable to breathe. He had seen death. He had seen torture, destruction, fire taking to flesh. Those horrors perhaps would fade. But the blood on his hands would not. The horror of who he had been, who he still could be. In the darkness, alone, everyone gone from him, it was all that remained.

Taeer is gone.

He trembled.

Ofeer is gone.

The blankets stifled him.

Imani is gone.

He rose from bed.

My children are gone.

He stood at the window, seeking relief from the heat.

Valentina betrayed me.

He felt as if fires burned across him. Outside, he saw the Empire. The lights of Aelar spread for leagues in the darkness, leading to the sea. All around that sea, the world was his. After all his struggles, he was emperor. He was trapped in a cage.

Seneca sat at his table, lit a lantern, took parchment and quill, and began to write.

Dawn rose, and still he worked, putting words to parchment. Two scrolls. In one, he granted complete freedom to Nur. No more would Aelarians set foot in that southern land nor approach its waters, and Queen Imani would reign independently, beholden to no emperor, and her child after her.

In his second scroll, Seneca granted freedom to a land of ruins. A land no longer known as Aelaria Orientalis. A land to forever be called Zohar.

Around the Encircled Sea, he wrote, thousands of Zoharite refugees still live, cast out from their kingdom, fleeing the legions, seeking a home. I grant them the right to return to their ravaged homeland. To rebuild. To live as free people. Zohar will rise again, and no more will Aelar seek to douse its light.

Seneca signed both scrolls and rolled them up.

That morning, accompanied by guards, he rode in his chariot toward the Amphitheatrum. The mightiest in Aelar had gathered here today—praetors, consuls, generals, all those who ran the world. Eighty thousand commoners came here too, and in the arena, dancers and musicians performed for the Vinalia, a festival of spring and wine. As Seneca sat in the front row, he remembered coming here as a child, watching prisoners die, cowering as Porcia laughed and Father frowned.

When the last note fell silent, Seneca rose. Crimson columns flanked the imperial seat, topped with golden eagles. Seneca stood between them, two scrolls in hand. He stood for a moment, watching the silent crowd. Lords and ladies. Soldiers. Commoners. And one young man in the crowd, face completely forgettable, watching him, eyes narrowed, lips twisted into a cruel smile.

Seneca unrolled his scrolls, and he read from them, loud enough for all to hear, to gasp, to whisper among themselves.

Freedom for Nur.

Freedom for Zohar.

As Seneca rolled up the scrolls, he glanced back at Caelius. The lord of the Magisterian Guard still sat among the commoners, his mouth a thin line, his eyes dead.

Seneca returned to his palace. He entered the garden, the place Valentina had loved so much. Fig trees shaded a pond, lavenders and roses bloomed, and cupids pointed arrows atop marble pillars. A place of rustling leaves, singing birds, and memories. Two children ran ahead—a young prince and his albino sister, laughing, splashing in the pond, climbing the fig trees and feasting on the fruit.

"Will you make me another doll from a dry apple?" little Valentina asked, squinting in the sunlight, her hair like a drift of snow.

"Only if you invent another song for me," young Seneca said. "One where I'm a great hero."

She stuck out her tongue at him. "That'll cost you two dolls."

He chased her, and they laughed, and the robins sang. A place to escape their family. To escape the cold halls and theaters and temples of a blood-soaked empire.

Emperor Seneca stood below the fig tree and touched one of its fruit.

"Make this place good again, Valentina," he said softly. "Remember me here."

His sword still hung at his side. He had not gone without it since the war. He unstrapped it now, looked at the blade—looked at the falling city, the tearing flesh, the pleading eyes—and tossed it into the pond.

When he turned around, they were there. They stood between the columns lining the garden. They wore togas and they held daggers. Caelius walked at their lead, his face blank, his eyes hard.

Seneca nodded at them. They drew closer, and their daggers rose.

Seneca inhaled and closed his eyes.

"Tell me about Aelar," Ofeer said, lying at his side in his tent, propped up on one elbow.

The sunlight fell upon her, and she smiled, teeth brilliantly white, and he stroked her long black hair and soft cheek. Outside, the legions were still pounding the walls of Gefen, but here beyond the battle, here in his tent, there was only him and her.

"It's a city of a thousand temples," Seneca said. "Each a wonder of marble and gold. Into its port sail a thousand ships a day, bearing wonders from across the world. In its theaters, exotic animals, dancers, and musicians from all stretches of the Empire perform for the crowd. The towers of Aelar touch the sky."

"Will you show me all these wonders?" Ofeer said, eyes alight.

He gazed at her, marveling at her beauty, at her smile. He kissed her lips. "All these and more. We'll be happy there, Ofeer. The world will be ours."

She nestled against him, her hair tickling his nose, then looked up at him with damp eyes. "I love you," she whispered, then held him close, mumbling against his chest. "I love you, Seneca. Forever."

He held her as the world burned around them. For a brief moment, here in this tent with her, Seneca was happy.

VALENTINA

The gates to the Empire opened at dawn.

Valentina had been awake most of the night in her tent, penning letters to governors around the sea, requesting their loyalty and their troops. For hours, she had labored, phrasing and rephrasing and calculating travel times to each province. With no more lumers serving the Empire—they had all died or fled during their rebellion—it took so damn long to speak to anyone. Even the fastest messenger could take a month to reach a typical province, then another month for a message to return.

Then again, if there was one thing Valentina had plenty of here outside of Aelar, it was time. For months now, she had camped outside the walls, woefully inadequate at besieging the city without violence. Her generals pestered her to assault Aelar with ram and catapult, but Valentina refused. From within the city, Seneca too kept the peace. The Magisterian Guard was mighty—mightier, perhaps, than Valentina's own legions—yet none emerged on raids to cast her back.

And so she had been waiting here. Blocking the roads while the port remained open. Waiting for messengers to carry scrolls to the sixty-odd other legions so far from home, cut off from the network of Luminosity that had once glued the Empire together.

Finally, bleary-eyed, Valentina emerged from her tent. She strapped on her breastplate and brushed back tangles of her white hair, then placed on her helmet. Leather straps hung across her thighs, sandals enclosed her feet, and iron shielded her shins and forearms. She had almost forgotten what it felt like to wear silk, to dine in a palace, to live as a princess. That innocent girl had died; she had emerged from the fire of war harder, stronger, a warrior of the Republic.

She was stepping toward a campfire, seeking a pot to boil some mint tea—warrior or not, she still craved the drink—when she saw the city gates opening in the distance.

At once her troops leaped up from their campfires and formed rank. Valentina rushed toward her horse, leaped into the saddle, and drew her sword. Other riders gathered around her.

"Riders to the flanks!" Valentina cried. "Pikes—to the front!"

As her legions formed for battle, pikes thrusting toward the gates, Valentina narrowed her eyes, waiting for her brother's troops to storm into the countryside.

That was when she heard the bells clanging in the city.

Mourning bells, she realized, and a chill flooded her.

The sound keened. The same bells that had rung when Emperor Marcus had died.

Only three horses emerged from the city gates. Upon them rode three men in white togas. Valentina recognized the man at their lead, a young, soft-cheeked guard she had often seen in the palace. She rode toward him.

Caelius, commander of the Magisterian Guard, bowed his head to her. "Valentina," he said.

She looked into the city, then back at him. She understood.

"Take me to him," she whispered.

She rode through the city with Caelius and his men. She left the others behind. Across the streets of her beloved city, people cried out in mourning, and the bells clanged from every temple. They rode down the boulevards, across courtyards, and under an engraved triumphal arch—taller than a palace and still under construction—that depicted the fall of Zohar. Finally they entered the Acropolis, and Caelius took Valentina into the temple of Plutonia, the goddess of death and afterlife.

He lay there on a stone altar. Logs and kindling soaked with oil piled up around him. From the center of the domed ceiling, an oculus let in a beam of light that fell upon him.

Her stepbrother. Her Seneca.

Valentina approached slowly. She touched his cold cheek. He wore a simple white toga, and a laurel rested in his hair. He seemed peaceful in death, more peaceful than she had ever known him in life.

She turned back toward Caelius. "What happened?"

The young guard stared at the body. "Being an emperor is a constant battle, one often fought with words and quills. I hear that our beloved Seneca was quite accomplished with the blade." He shook his head sadly. "It was his quill that faltered." He looked at Valentina. "I'm sorry for your loss, domina. I pray to the gods that his successor fares better upon this battlefield."

Valentina inhaled deeply. "He will have no successor, Caelius. He was the last emperor of Aelar. I will see the Republic restored."

Caelius only smiled thinly. He reached out and stroked her cheek. "So pale," he said, and his fingers moved to her hair. "So soft. Like fresh snow when all the world still yearns for warmth. The seasons come and go, child. So do emperors in this city. Yet the Empire remains—stronger, eternal. You will rule this empire for me, Valentina. And your quill and words will be wise. I will be there to guide you." He kissed her forehead. "Or I will be there to cull you from the herd."

Valentina frowned. She pulled away from him. She returned to her brother—at least the man she had grown up thinking was her brother—and she pulled back his toga, revealing his chest. Revealing the clean cuts, as from daggers, deep enough to reach the heart.

Caelius sighed, looking at the body with her. "When I was very young, I served in the legions. When my officer wanted to punish me, he sent me to clean shit in the stables. For days and days, I would shovel, and I would watch the trainers with their horses. The best trainers formed a bond with their beasts—they showed the horses love, but when the animals disobeyed, they were quick and cruel with the whip. As generals rode to battle, they praised the glorious stallions when they should have praised the trainers. For it was the man with the whip, behind the battle, who tamed the stallion. But sometimes, Valentina . . . sometimes there was an untamed horse, a wild animal who still longed for freedom. An animal who kicked, who bit, who ignored both love and the crop. When such a horse would not be tamed, I watched the trainers give the animal a quick death, and another was brought in to replace it." He caressed the dagger at his belt, then placed his arm around her, holding her close. "You will be my animal, Valentina. And you will be glorious."

That evening, the priestesses set fire to the pyre. Valentina stood in the temple, watching the flames spread across the logs and kindling and claim her brother. The fire lit the temple, and the smoke rose through the oculus, and Valentina prayed that Seneca's spirit found its way to the fields of afterlife.

In the temple, professional mourners—hired for the death of every dignitary—wailed, tore clothes, and ripped their hair. Throughout the city, the bells of mourning still clanged, and the city wept. All but Valentina. She stood silently in the temple for a long time, long after the mourners had departed, long after the priests had collected the ashes in an urn.

Finally she walked to the palace, and she entered the starlit gardens, the place where they used to play, where they said Seneca had died. The place where Iris had died. The place where Valentina's true father had first spoken to her.

She lowered her head.

This is where I come for solace and grief, she thought.

Blood still stained the grass, and she remembered coming here over a year ago, seeing Iris—the woman she loved more than life—dead at Marcus's feet. She had sworn then to fight. To fight Marcus, to fight the Empire, to fight for the dream of her true father. To fight for the Republic. How could she become the monster she had vowed to slay? How could she become empress when this empire had murdered all those she loved?

"I promised you, Father," she whispered, looking up at the stars. "When Porcia murdered you, I promised to continue your fight. To rebuild the Republic that you loved. Yet if I fight them, will I find myself here in this garden, lying dead in the grass, joining the others who fell here?"

No voice spoke to her from the afterlife. There was no wisdom here, no guidance save what was already in her heart.

She lifted the folded letter. The letter she had kept through fire and rain. She read the words there, words Iris had penned on the night of her death.

Dearest Valentina,

I'm so sorry.

I love you. And I betrayed you.

Tears filled Valentina's eyes, dampening the parchment.

Live your life, Valentina, a life of joy and light. Grow your flowers, and read your scrolls, and tend to your birds, and remember that I love you.

Someday this will end, Valentina. Someday he will die. Perhaps from poison, perhaps a knife in the back, perhaps in war, perhaps even from old age. That day, when we are safe, if you still love me by then, find a swift ship. Sail to Zohar, and come to a city called Gefen on the coast. You will walk along the beach there, admiring the seashells and smooth stones and palm trees, and you will feel great peace, the peace of lume flowing across you, soothing all your fear, all your pain.

And as you walk there, you will see a girl—perhaps a woman, perhaps even an old woman—walking along the shore, collecting seashells too. Her hair will be long and black, or perhaps streaked with silver, or perhaps fully white. She will run to you, and hold your hands, and kiss you with a thousand kisses, and she will love you. Because every day, Valentina, from this day until that day, that woman will wait for you. And every day, she will walk along that shore, and gaze upon the sea, and watch for a ship sailing in, watch for a soul she misses. A soul she will always love.

Yours always, with my magic, with my soul, with my heart,

Iris

Valentina was weeping now, and she folded the letter and tucked it away.

"I'm sorry, Iris," she whispered. "I wanted this to end. I wanted to sail to Zohar and find you, but you're gone now, and Zohar is gone, and I see no hope in the night. I'm so sorry, Iris. I love you. And now I must betray everyone who fought for me, everyone whom I fought for. Now I must sit on a throne that I loathe, and I must serve cruel masters in the shadows. Because there is still light in the world. There is still Koren. And Atalia. And Ofeer. There is still a dream for Zohar to rise again, and for me to sail there someday, and to walk on that beach, and to think of you. For you, Iris. The woman I love." She smiled through her tears. "Someday, I know that I will walk along a beach. A beach of purest white sand and silver waves, with countless stars above and below. I will feel no more pain, no more fear. And I will see a girl there—perhaps a woman, perhaps even an old woman—walking along the shore. A woman who waited for me. I will run to you then, Iris, and I will hold your hands, and I will kiss you with a thousand kisses, and I will love you. Because every day, from this night until that night, I will remember you. But you will have to wait for me, Iris. You will have to walk along that shore a little longer without me. My war does not yet end."

The next morning, Valentina stood in the temple of Aelia, greatest of the goddesses. Light flowed through stained glass windows, illuminating the columns, mosaics, and the crowd of Aelar's finest. Valentina wore a deep purple stola, and the High Priestess placed a golden laurel upon her white hair.

"May Aelia bless Valentina Octavius!" the priestess said. "May the gods bless our new empress!"

As the people knelt, Valentina felt encased in ice. Octavius—the name of her captors, the name of tyranny, the name she must use now. Not Valentina Cassius, a warrior for democracy and justice. Everyone in the crowd lowered their heads. All but one man. A young guard in a toga, nodding at her, smiling thinly.

The words echoed in her mind.

And you will be glorious.

She looked away.

KOREN

He wandered through the city, lost, disoriented, calling to them.

"Atalia!" he cried out in marketplaces.

"Ofeer!" he shouted on bustling streets.

For days now, Koren had been wandering this vast, confusing world. Valentina had offered to send a thousand guards across the city to scan every house and alleyway, but Koren had refused. His sisters would cower away from any soldier of Aelar. He had to find them himself.

Yet as the days went by, the task seemed insurmountable to Koren. This was a city larger than some nations. How would he find two souls among a million? And what if Atalia and Ofeer had left Aelar, were now traveling the wilderness or sailing on the sea, seeking a way back to Zohar?

"Have you seen two sisters?" Koren asked in every tavern, bathhouse, and theater, describing Atalia and Ofeer.

"The lioness!" they said.

"The prince's paramour!" they said.

"Tirus's killers!" they said.

It seemed that everyone in the city had heard some tale or another about Atalia and Ofeer, yet none had seen them since Valentina's coronation. Koren kept wandering, feeling lost in this city. He had never imagined a place like this, had never imagined that men could build structures so tall, cities so vast. Temples, towers, statues, courtyards, palaces—all crowded together in a mosaic of human life. People from around the world filled these streets, not just native Aelarians but slaves and citizens from every land around the Encircled Sea and the distant provinces beyond. Priests and paupers, soldiers and slaves, buskers and beggars, travelers and tinkers—every color, shape, and form of man and woman, all forming the tapestry of Aelar.

Yet Koren sought only two people. A tall, bluff warrior with flashing eyes, and a broken woman seeking healing.

He sat in a tavern, one of countless in the city. In Aelar, only the wealthy had kitchens in their homes. Most lived in cluttered apartments, stacked tall one atop the other, that contained little more than beds. They ate in public taverns, cooked in public kitchens, bathed in public bathhouses, and used public latrines where rows of toilets rose along the wall, not so much as a curtain to offer privacy. Here was a small tavern, and a mosaic covered one wall, depicting food items and their prices. Koren filled his plate with olives, stewed pears, fava beans, and even some fried shrimps—a food he had never seen in Zohar. He skipped some of the more exotic items, such as roasted dormice and buttered snails, which the locals consumed with fervor.

He sat at a back table, prepared to plan the rest of his search over his meal, when a hooded figure took a chair close to him.

"You might," rose a voice from the hood, speaking in Zoharite, "consider searching for your sisters a little more furtively. We Zoharites aren't the most popular people in this city of late."

Koren's breath caught. The figure pulled back the hood, revealing the face of a woman, the cheeks gaunt, the eyes large, the hair long and black.

He recognized her. He had seen her before—on the slave ship that took him to Aelar.

"You were Porcia's lumer," he said. "Worm, she called you."

"Call me Noa." She pulled the hood back over her face. "And never call me a lumer again. My lume is gone, and the lumers are all dead, haven't you heard?" She rose to her feet. "Now come with me, Koren. Unless you want to finish your shrimps?"

He didn't. They left the tavern together.

Hidden in her cloak and hood, Noa led him through the city. They traveled to the crowded alleyways of the dregs, far from the villas that surrounded the Acropolis. A place where apartment buildings rose eight stories tall, stray cats hissed, and beggars held out trembling palms. A woman dumped a chamber pot from a balcony, splashing the street. An unshaven man sat in a corner, flicking a knife. They stopped by a bakery, the smell of fresh bread wafting through the windows, mingling with the stench of the city.

"You didn't get to eat your shrimps," Noa said. "I think you'll find you have more of a belly for bread."

She nodded at him, pulled her hood lower, and vanished down an alley.

Koren hesitated for a moment, his breath shaky, then steeled himself and entered the bakery.

Two women stood inside, their backs to Koren. Both were kneading dough and forming rolls for the oven. One was tall, her black hair cut to the length of her chin. The other was smaller, her dark hair flowing down her back. Both women were busy talking, not noticing that Koren had entered.

"I told you, Atalia! God. You have to braid the bread. If you ever grew your hair longer, you'd know how to braid."

"Oh be quiet, Ofeer. My bread is fine. Who cares what bread looks like? It could be shaped as a dog's turd, so long as it tastes good."

"You only taste half the food with your tongue, you know. You taste the rest with your eyes. Luckily, I know something about presentation, or this whole bakery would close down."

Koren stepped closer. "Atalia?" he whispered. "Ofeer?"

The sisters fell silent. Slowly they turned around.

For an instant they both just stared, eyes wide.

Do they still recognize me? Koren thought, standing still. They had not seen him for a year, and he had changed. His beard had thickened. His frame had thinned. His eyes, whenever he gazed into a mirror, no longer gazed back with mirth but seemed sunken, too dark, too old.

The moment of stillness ended.

Both sisters ran toward him. With a cloud of flour and a clatter of rolling pins, they leaped onto him, squeezing him, nearly crushing him, pinching his cheeks and mussing his hair and hopping and laughing and dancing. He laughed with them. He grabbed Ofeer and lifted her into the air as she squealed. He tried to do the same to Atalia, only for her to slug his shoulder and shake him and shout at him for being a damn fool for ever leaving her at sea. They all laughed. They all embraced again. They all wept, shaking, speaking of those they lost.

Of Epher.

Of Maya.

Or little Mica.

Of Mother and Father.

Joy mingled with grief, laughter with tears, until Ofeer shrieked and smoke filled the bakery, and she rushed toward the oven and pulled out blackened rolls.

When the smoke cleared, and when fresh rolls were baking, they sat together for a long time, silent, leaning against one another, remembering their home.

ABISHAG

Abishag had always walked upon light. In rolling grasslands, in courtyards of worship, in houses of healing. She had always sought peace in labor, divinity in toil. Here across the sea, collared and branded, she found her gods in soil and vine, in grape and sunlight, in song and in memory.

The vineyard spread across the valley from sea to mountain, a day's walk from the city of Polonia south of Aelar. A handful of other slaves worked here with her, singing old songs of their homelands as they picked the grapes. As Abishag worked among them, moving between the rows of vines, she tried to think only of the grapes, the sunlight above, the crumbly soil between her toes, the song on her lips.

Yet sometimes, between songs, sudden pain flared, and she felt again the whips against her back.

Sometimes, filling her basket with grapes, she remembered filling her cart with soil and rocks, building a ramp in the desert.

Sometimes at night, as she slept in the wooden hall with the other slaves, she remembered weeks in the belly of a ship, chained and beaten, shivering and ill.

Sometimes, when she stomped on the grapes to make the wine, Abishag remembered standing in the slave market in Aelar, naked and collared, her feet white with chalk, as the auctioneer extolled her virtues.

At these times, she carefully pulled her awareness away from those memories. Gently, she returned her mind to the grapes, or to the straw bed beneath her, or simply to her slow breathing.

Let those memories fade from me, she thought. Let there be nothing but light on the vineyards, the whispering sea, and the piney mountains.

Through spring and autumn, Abishag spoke little, not socializing with the other slaves. Many labored here in the vineyard of their dominus, slaves from many lands. In the evenings, as they all sat in the big wooden house, eating fish and bread and cheese, they shared their stories. They came from around the world, captured in the endless expansion of the Empire, and they spoke varied tongues, able to communicate with one another only with a smattering of Aelarian. One man spoke of five years rowing a galley, finally sold for striking his master. A woman spoke of three years serving a cruel dominus, pouring his wine and warming his bed. Another woman, graying and weary, spoke of twenty years as a wet nurse, breastfeeding the babes of wealthy dominas in Leer; when finally her milk had dried up, they had sold her for a handful of denarii instead of finally granting her freedom. A somber child spoke of parents slain, of soldiers killing all the men in a village, capturing all the women and children.

Abishag always listened to those stories, but she could never tell her own. Whenever the slaves turned toward her, the pain seemed too great. She could bring none of it to her lips.

Winter came and the rains fell, and burlap covered the vines until spring. The slaves moved toward tasks in the villa of their dominus, building fires in the hearth, cooking, cleaning, and tending to the master's children.

One day, it began to snow, and all the slaves huddled in their house and gazed in wonder. Most had never seen snow before, and even the Aelarian masters marveled at it, for it had not snowed here by the Encircled Sea in two generations. As Abishag watched from the window, she realized that it was exactly a year to the day since she had met Maya outside Beth Eloh. That day too it had snowed, a rarity in Zohar. That day she had emerged from shadows.

And finally Abishag spoke.

But she did not speak of herself. She did not speak of a shepherd's daughter in the hills of Zohar. She did not speak of a consecrated sister worshipping in dust outside a temple of gold and marble. She did not speak of a woman chained, beaten, sold.

She spoke of an ancient city of stone and light and copper and gold.

She spoke of rams' horns and the song of lyres.

She spoke of the war of the princes, of the love between Prince Yohanan and Ishay, and of the cowardly King Shefael who had hidden within his city.

She spoke of a cruel prince sailing from the sea, of a vicious princess invading from the northern hills.

She spoke of war, bloodshed, and courage. Of brave Jerael, fighting on the walls of Gefen. Of wise Shiloh, holding her kingdom together even in its darkest hour. Of mighty Atalia, who fought with a horde of barbarians and vanquished all her enemies in the arena. Of broken, haunted Ofeer, who betrayed her homeland and family, who found light in the greatest darkness. Of Koren, who had always loved joy and laughter, forced to shed blood, saving his humanity in the face of devastation. Of Epher, last king of Zohar, who fought and died with nine hundred lions.

And she spoke of Maya.

She spoke of Maya traveling across the desert, finding sanctuary in an oasis, and healing the king of Sekadia. She spoke of Maya facing the adversary in the desert and casting back the dragons of sand. She spoke of Maya transcribing the Luminous Writ by the eastern sea and defeating the priests of Dagon.

Tears filled her eyes when she spoke of finding the Gate of Tears, of Maya returning into the city with hope, with healing. Her voice dropped to a whisper when she spoke of Maya dying on the cross, of the city falling, of light dimming.

"She is gone," Abishag whispered, tears flowing. "But I will always carry her wisdom with me."

The other slaves gathered around her, eyes damp, listening to her speak.

Abishag continued in a shaky voice. "Every light casts a shadow. But we can meet every shadow with more light. Maya taught me that the world is balanced. We can only face harm with healing. We can only face destruction with labor. We can only face hatred with love. We can only face darkness with light. It is our task, we who follow Maya, to repair a broken world. Not with swords. Not with hatred or fear or devastation. The world is broken. The world is full of evil and chaos. With love, compassion, healing, art, wisdom—we will face destruction. We will mend. And we will remember her."

It was several days later, as Abishag was picking mushrooms in the grove behind the vineyard, that her master's son approached her.

Abishag dropped her basket, spilling her mushrooms. She stood between the pines, torn between kneeling and fleeing. The master's son was a man in his twenties, his hair curly and brown. She had served him wine at his table before, and she had washed his togas and linens, but she had never spoken to him. He walked closer to her, not seeming to mind the mud that clung to his sandals and the hem of his toga.

"Your name is Abishag?" he said.

She nodded. "Yes, dominus."

He knelt in the mud—even with his costly toga—and helped her lift the fallen mushrooms. "For days now, the fellow slaves won't stop babbling. As they pour my wine, shave my face, cut my hair, serve my meals—I hear them mumbling about battling princes, about a last stand on a desert mountain, about an ancient city of light, and of a teacher who died on a cross." He tilted his head, a small smile on his lips. "You wouldn't happen to know how they heard such a story, would you?"

Abishag trembled, fearful that he would beat her. She lowered her head. "I'm sorry, dominus. Please forgive me. I told them this tale. Please punish me, not them."

His eyes softened. He returned her basket to her. "Is that what you think of me?" He sighed. "I suppose you would. I suppose that is who we are." He placed a finger under her chin and raised her head, so that she stared into his eyes. "Nobody will hurt you again, Abishag. You're safe here. And in a few years, if you work well and earn it, we will grant you your freedom. My father frees a new slave every year to motivate those who remain."

Abishag felt hope flow through her like mulled wine in winter. "If I had my freedom," she said, "I would travel the world, and I would share this tale with all who would hear."

"Then we'll need to write it down." The master's son nodded.

"I don't know how to write, dominus."

"I do. I think your time laboring in the vineyards, garden, and groves has ended. I would like you to serve in the villa. During the days, you will clean, cook, and tend to the children. And every evening, I'd like us to write another chapter in this story. Zohar is gone. Its fall will forever be a stain upon my people." He lowered his head. "I am Aelarian, and your story shames me. But if I could help you write this story . . . perhaps I can find some comfort for my soul. I cannot resurrect Zohar, but perhaps we can still tell her tale, still keep her name alive."

That evening, after Abishag's duties were done, she stepped into the chamber of the master's son. He sat at a desk, a quill in hand, blank parchment before him. Abishag placed two mugs of mulled wine on the table and sat beside him. As she spoke, he wrote the first words in a long tale.

The dog came to her from the hills.

OFEER

Often in her dreams, Ofeer found herself again on the hills outside her old home. She walked there in a simlah, the simple cotton dress of Zohar, wandering between twisting pines, gnarled carob trees, and ancient olive trees as old as the kingdom itself. A figure ran before her, flitting from tree to tree, always just out of view, just out of reach.

"Maya!" Ofeer called out, chasing her, knowing she had to find her, had to save her.

Yet the figure remained always in the distance, disappearing into valleys and reappearing on hills, racing behind boulders and trees, appearing again on rocky paths.

"Maya, please!" Ofeer shouted. She had to tell her she was sorry. That she loved her. That danger waited ahead.

She looked up, and she saw it in the distance. A cross in a valley, rising from ashes, illuminated by a sunbeam. Waiting for Maya.

"Maya!"

Her younger sister vanished from view. Ofeer slowed down and walked the pebbly path between mint bushes. Movement caught her eye, and she looked up to see a dog limping across the hills. Mange had claimed its fur, leaving weeping sores. The animal's back leg was twisted, and its bones were visible, pressing against what remained of its skin. It was hard to believe that a creature so ravaged could still live. Ofeer lifted a rock, knowing she had to kill it, to end its pain.

The dog limped toward her and collapsed at her feet, and when Ofeer knelt above it, she saw that it wasn't a dog at all. It was Maya, removed from the cross, holes in her hands.

"You did this," Maya whispered.

Ofeer sat up in bed, drenched in sweat. She tossed off her blankets, feeling hot, struggling to breathe. For long moments, Ofeer didn't remember where she was. She thought she was back in the villa on Pine Hill, or in the palace of Aelar, or perhaps in the Lunapar or bakery. As the dream faded, as her breathing slowed, her new life came back to her.

I'm home.

She rose from bed, poured a cup of water, and walked through the dark house. It was smaller than the villa on Pine Hill. Three bedrooms. A dining room. A pantry. Ofeer walked out onto the patio, and she stood under the moonlight, gazing at the Aelarian countryside. Cypresses rose around a farm and vineyard, shielding the delicate plants from the wind. Between them, in the distance, Ofeer could just make out the black sea. In the darkness, she could almost imagine that she was back in Zohar. Back on Pine Hill. She could almost imagine that when dawn rose, her mother would come to work on her garden, and Epher would tend to the horses, and Maya would approach to tell Ofeer the latest tale she had read in a scroll.

Ofeer lowered her head.

But that home is gone.

She stepped off the porch, and she walked in the darkness. She passed through the farms and vineyard and between the cypresses, the land Empress Valentina had given Ofeer and her family. Past the border of their homestead, she walked through wild fields of swaying grass. Ofeer remembered a day two years ago, fleeing from her mother, from her home, racing to the sea—to sail away with Seneca, to find a different world. Here in the darkness, Ofeer ran again, ran with tears on her cheeks, ran until dawn rose and she reached a different shore.

The sea spread before her, gray-blue tipped with white, gurgling, whispering, washing over her feet. Ofeer stood in the sand and gazed across the water. Somewhere in the east, so many leagues away, her home now lay in ruins. For but a day, Zohar had been free. For but a day, Seneca had given her this gift, had died for this gift.

Seneca was dead now, and in the east, once more, awaited only Aelaria Orientalis—once called Zohar, now ruins swarming with the legions. As Ofeer looked across the water, she tried to remember. The villa on Pine Hill. The towers and domes of Beth Eloh. The rolling dunes. Her parents. Epher. Maya.

Gone.

"I'm sorry," she whispered. "I miss you."

She fell to her knees in the sand, and such pain gripped her heart that Ofeer wanted to enter the sea. To let the waves claim her. To sink forever into the hidden worlds underwater. But as the waves washed around her knees, Ofeer remembered a time when she had lain near death. Bleeding. Fading away, the life in her belly fading with her. And she remembered light, the grace of Luminosity, and the voice of Eloh in her mind. She remembered feeling loved.

"I am loved," she whispered, trembling. "I sinned. I hurt my family. I parted from them with hatred. I spit on them, betrayed them, and now they're gone. But I am loved." She wept. "I am loved. I am loved."

The dawn danced over the waves, and Ofeer rose to her feet. She turned away. And she ran.

She ran back through the fields, through the vineyard and farm, and back into the small home Valentina had given them. She entered Ariel's bedroom. The toddler was sleeping calmly, so beautiful. His hair and skin were dark like hers. His little fists were curled up. Tears still on her cheeks, Ofeer lifted him and hugged him close, never wanting to let go.

"Mother?" he mumbled, waking up.

She rocked him against her, her tears in his hair. "I love you, Ariel. Do you know that? I love you forever."

He wriggled free from her grip, stuck his tongue out at her, and darted out of the chamber. Soon she heard his laughter and the clatter of dishes in the kitchen.

Ofeer followed him into the kitchen, where she found Koren too. Her brother was busy juggling rolls of bread while balancing on one foot. When one roll fell, Ariel grabbed it before it could hit the floor and bit into it, releasing a wisp of steam.

"The little devil of yours stole my bread!" Koren said, looking at Ofeer.

Ofeer grabbed another one of the rolls he was juggling, leaving him with only two. "Just because you hog it all." She bit into the bread. It was soft and fluffy, flavored with honey.

Atalia shuffled into the kitchen, rubbing her eyes. She yawned gloriously, stretching her arms so wide they knocked into hanging sausages and nearly toppled a shelf.

"Food," she said, grabbing another roll from Koren.

He hefted his last roll and sighed. "The curse of siblings."

Yet as soon as Koren had spoken those words, Ofeer glimpsed his sudden, brief wince, the flash of pain, and she knew he was thinking of Maya and Epher, and silence fell across the kitchen.

Ofeer broke the silence. "Now to the garden with us! There are weeds to yank out, and there's a fence to fix, and the sheep won't milk themselves."

They toiled throughout the day, and Ofeer found comfort in the soil under her fingernails, the weariness to her back, the dryness on her hands after she washed the laundry and pots. As a youth, she had sought her escape in cups of wine, hookahs of spice, beds of sailors, and dreams of princes, but here she found a different peace, a busyness to banish her grief, her memories.

Yet sometimes still, as she worked in the vineyard or garden, a sudden memory would fill Ofeer. The dead in Gefen. Jerael on the cross. The men assaulting her in the alleyway. Tirus grabbing her son, preparing to bash Ariel's head against the wall. And at those moments, Ofeer knew that the grief, the pain, the horror—those would never leave her. Even should she grow old and gray, the nightmares would fill her. Even should years of peace pass, the war would forever rage inside her.

I died in Gefen, she thought. I died long ago, a girl by the sea. I died with Zohar. All I am is this empty shell.

And when the pain filled her, when the horror constricted her, when the dead still danced, she turned to her son, and she hugged him close, and she kissed his cheek. Sometimes at night, when he slept, Ofeer walked into his room, and she simply sat beside him, stroking his hair.

"May you never know grief," she would whisper to him. "May you never know war. May you never know loss. May you never have to run from pain, hide from pain, hurt others for your pain. May we build a better world for you, my son. May you know nothing but love, nothing but joy, nothing but light."

It was on a winter evening that Koren returned home from the nearby town, carrying a box of candles. He placed the candles on the table, and Atalia and Ofeer approached. Normally in their home, they simply lit wicks in clay lanterns, for candles were costly.

"It's Lel Urim," Koren said. "Do you remember how we used to light the candles back home?"

Ofeer remembered. "We would each hold one, and Father would douse all the lamps in the house. We would walk through the darkness, carrying our candles, singing to banish the darkness." She lowered her head. "It seems wrong to do the same here. So far from Zohar. Without them."

Atalia reached for the tinderbox on the shelf. "Even if we don't walk through the house, we can still light the candles." She stared at Ofeer. "For them."

They stood in the kitchen, and they lit candles in the gathering darkness. Two candles for Jerael and Shiloh. Three candles for Epher, Maya, and Mica. And a sixth candle—for Zohar and all her lost children.

The three siblings stood in silence for a long time, staring at the lights. The candles flickered on the table until all the world became their glow and memory.

Then, slowly, Ofeer lifted one of the candles, and she began to sing. She did not march through the house, chin raised, casting back darkness. She did not sing with a loud, proud voice. She sang softly, the same old song from home, but here it became a song of mourning. Of loss. Of remembrance.

Koren and Atalia raised their own candles, and they sang with her. Like the candlelight, their voices were warm, comforting in the night. Three voices, weaving together. Three siblings, grieving and lost. Three broken souls, seeking healing. Their song filled the house, rising stronger—a song to banish shadows, to remember a lost home, and to always find light.

The End

AFTERWORD

Thank you for reading Echoes of Light, the sixth and final Kingdoms of Sand novel. Our journey began on a hill by the sea. It has now ended. Thank you, dear reader, for taking this journey with me.

Kingdoms of Sand is completed, but I've written many other novels.

If you want to read more of my epic fantasy, try my series Moth: DanielArenson.com/Moth

If you you love dragons, try reading Requiem: DanielArenson.com/Requiem

If you feel like science fiction, try my series Earthrise: DanielArenson.com/Earthrise

I'm writing new books all the time. Want to stay updated?

Join my mailing list (and receive three free ebooks) at: DanielArenson.com/MailingList

Thank you again, dear reader, and I hope we meet again between the pages of another book.

Daniel

NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

KINGDOMS OF SAND

- Kings of Ruin

- Crowns of Rust

- Thrones of Ash

- Temples of Dust

- Halls of Shadows

- Echoes of Light

THE MOTH SAGA

- Moth

- Empires of Moth

- Secrets of Moth

- Daughter of Moth

- Shadows of Moth

- Legacy of Moth

REQUIEM

- Dawn of Dragons

- Requiem's Song

- Requiem's Hope

- Requiem's Prayer

- The Complete Trilogy

- Song of Dragons

- Blood of Requiem

- Tears of Requiem

- Light of Requiem

- The Complete Trilogy

- Dragonlore

- A Dawn of Dragonfire

- A Day of Dragon Blood

- A Night of Dragon Wings

- The Complete Trilogy

- The Dragon War

- A Legacy of Light

- A Birthright of Blood

- A Memory of Fire

- The Complete Trilogy

- Requiem for Dragons

- Dragons Lost

- Dragons Reborn

- Dragons Rising

- The Complete Trilogy

- Flame for Requiem

- Forged in Dragonfire

- Crown of Dragonfire

- Pillars of Dragonfire

- The Complete Trilogy

ALIEN HUNTERS

- Alien Hunters

- Alien Sky

- Alien Shadows

OTHER WORLDS

- Eye of the Wizard

- Wand of the Witch

- Firefly Island

- The Gods of Dream

- Flaming Dove

KEEP IN TOUCH

www.DanielArenson.com

Daniel@DanielArenson.com

Facebook.com/DanielArenson

Twitter.com/DanielArenson

Table of Contents

MAP

ATALIA

EPHER

ABISHAG

CLAUDIA

ABISHAG

EPHER

SENECA

EPHER

TIRUS

OLIVE

KOREN

ATALIA

OFEER

SENECA

OFEER

ATALIA

OFEER

CLAUDIA

EPHER

ATALIA

OFEER

SENECA

ABISHAG

EPHER

SENECA

EPHER

VALENTINA

EPHER

CLAUDIA

IMANI

KOREN

SENECA

VALENTINA

KOREN

ABISHAG

OFEER

AFTERWORD

NOVELS BY DANIEL ARENSON

KEEP IN TOUCH