“This one will. She has no allegiance except to Siddonie.” He smiled coldly. “This is the role Siddonie meant for you: to betray and destroy your own people.” He looked deeply at her. “This is not just a war tactic, Melissa. This plan is Siddonie’s final revenge for the fall of Xendenton. Ever since she was a child she has prepared for this.”
He put his arm around her, drawing her close, his touch too soft. She shivered, drew away. He said, “Only you can stop her.”
She felt cold, sick. She could not believe him, yet she felt the truth in his words.
“And,” he said, “what about the old woman you lived with?”
“What about her?”
“Siddonie has imprisoned her in the palace dungeons.”
“You’re lying. That is a lie.”
His look said it was not.
“Where is Mag now?”
“I told you. In the cellars.”
But his eyes had changed. Now he was lying. She could sense his lie clearly, as if her inner vision, like her feline eyesight, had suddenly grown more intense. “Where is she, Efil?”
“They…someone freed her.”
“Who freed her?”
“I don’t know. She vanished from the cell.”
“And this story about a false queen…That, too, is a lie?”
“No, that is not a lie.”
She saw that it was not. Her increased perception was startling. She pressed her back against the protruding cats’ faces, wondering if they were responsible for her sudden insight. Efil was watching her differently, almost fearfully. She pushed him aside, and swung the door open.
“Go back, Efil. Go back to the Netherworld. I am not part of your war.”
He looked at her silently. He didn’t touch her again. She saw his sudden distaste for her, as if, because he could no longer deceive her, she was of no use to him.
When he finally moved past her into the tool room he went quickly, his face impassive, turned away. Stepping in behind him, she listened to his spell and watched the wall swing away with a small suck of air.
He went through. She heard the little huff of air as the wall swung closed again. She stared around the homely tool room then went out, drew the Catswold Portal closed, and turned away.
Chapter 43
It was dawn. The dark green of night had hardly faded when three battalions of mounted Affandar soldiers rode out through the palace gates led by Siddonie on the tall, black stallion she favored. She had dreamed all night of slaughtering the Lettlehem peasants. She had dreamed for three nights running of the image doll some Lettlehem child had made of her, which had been hung at night in her own palace courtyard, and she lusted for revenge. Three battalions of foot soldiers followed her horse soldiers—the foot soldiers wearing heavy, curved swords and leading supply ponies.
They reached the mountains above Lettlehem near midnight. They struck the five villages one after another, routing out screaming peasants, burning their cottages and crops, driving off the sheep and pigs or slaughtering them. She had gone to war under justifiable duress, and she liked killing under that shield. Her soldiers herded together the best of the village horses for their own use, and destroyed the rest. Once the fields were blackened, they destroyed all tools so the Lettlehem peasants couldn’t farm. Though Siddonie expected few of the peasants to survive their attack.
The slaughter lasted until dawn. The smell of blood and the cries of the maimed filled the burned out villages, and left Siddonie hungry for further war, lusting to attack every country in the Netherworld with full force. War was far more satisfying than winning a country by intrigue; war sharpened her senses and gave life meaning. Certainly Lettlehem had learned quickly this night, that no one made images of the queen of Affandar.
She watched the last of the peasants driven from hiding and herded across the hills and into the last village square. And there, in retribution for the incident of the image doll, she watched twenty-five Lettlehem children hanged from a gallows made of felled cedar trees.
The image doll had appeared in the courtyard of Affandar Palace three nights before, hanging from a pole driven into the earth. It was undeniably a Lettlehem doll, woven in the same style as the Lettlehem rooftops and baskets, made of the coarse flax grown only in Lettlehem. She did not know who had brought the image to Affandar, but she would find out. She did not admit to anyone the power the doll had had to weaken her magic. For a full day after the thing was torn down and burned, she had been unable even to cast a simple spell-light. She could not influence the minds of her staff; she could not manage her horse except with brute force; she could not bring down game. The atrocity had left her sick with certainty that the doll had indeed possessed a portion of her soul.
Chapter 44
