——— 1 ———

⁠—⁠—⁠— I ⁠—⁠—⁠—

The Marches sun rose high in the vault of the sky, its hard white light scorching the rocks of the Nospherus wildlands as if it meant to parch all things to dust.

In the shade of a jagged crag of sharp pale stone sat a wide tent of heavy cloth reinforced with leather⁠—the pavilion of the Mongauli archduke’s daughter, Amnelis. This was the center of a temporary base of operations for the Gohran knights that had crossed the Kes the night before.

From the spike at the pavilion’s top flew the black lion of Gohra and the golden scorpion of Mongaul. In their fluttering shadow two pages stood, guarding the entrance. The rest of the Mongauli host, five hundred strong, stood at ease with their horses beside them, arrayed in concentric circles around the pavilion. They were at ease but alert, waiting for the signal to ride.

Guin, Rinda, and Remus sat on the bare ground under the watchful eyes of several knights. The sun seared their skin, especially that of Guin, whose burns ached and festered in the heat.

The three companions had not been bound or fettered, but still Rinda complained of their treatment to any knight who would listen. The only answer she ever received was a reiterated order to wait in silence. It seemed that Amnelis was preparing to question her captives here in the wildlands, without first returning to the temporary fortification on the river.

“Well, if we must wait, how about giving us some water, at least? How much longer do you intend to have us sit here in the dust? Some knights you are!”

Guin’s injury, Istavan’s desertion, and worry over what happened to poor little Suni⁠—the weight of disaster was almost more than Rinda could bear. Yet no matter how much she pleaded with the knights, the answer was always the same, cold “Wait.”

“Curse Jarn a thousand times for granting Mongaul any kind of victory at all. Even if your reign shall be very, very short lived!” shouted Rinda, but even that failed to evoke a response from the stolid guards.

At last a sharp order came from the tent: “Bring in the captives!”

Guards dragged the three companions to their feet. Rinda scowled at the one who pushed her toward the entrance, but in truth she was glad to be finally getting out of the blazing heat.

The sudden darkness of the pavilion interior rendered Rinda nearly sightless. Remus was quick to catch her when she tripped on something and nearly fell headlong onto the sandy floor.

As they entered they heard a female voice exclaim in surprise: “Are there only three?” It was the voice of a woman well accustomed to having her questions answered and her orders followed. “Vlon! Lindrot! Have a small squad of knights search the area at once. There were two others on that raft, and I want them found.”

The two noblemen nodded and moved to give the orders. But after a moment’s hesitation the speaker⁠—Amnelis⁠—stopped them. “On second thought, we already seem to have gotten the ones I was most interested in. Send out the squad, but there is no need for them to stray far from the main forces. Tell them to find any who are near, but to withdraw immediately at any sign of danger.”

“As you command.” Vlon made a crisp bow.

The captives, their eyes finally accustomed to the gloom inside the pavilion, lifted their drooping heads and looked around. The first thing that Rinda was able to make out in the darkness was a long white cloak that framed a gleaming figure.

Rinda blinked. The woman had long legs clad in tall, comfortable-looking white leather boots with cuffs adorned with silver inlay. The boots were protected with greaves of white metal, and they fit the legs of their wearer like sheaths around swords. Above the greaves and thigh-mail, the white armor flowed into a breastplate molded to a slender shape which proclaimed that, man or woman, the wearer was gifted with a graceful form that could catch many eyes and stir as many hearts. On the breast was a beautiful rendering of the Mongauli crest, generously set with gold and precious gems. And above that…

Rinda heard her brother gasp beside her. Above the armor, snowy white and purest gold mingled their brightness like a beacon in the dim light, more beautiful than the fabled yellow ore of Alceis.

Amnelis sat before them, her hands in white chainmail gauntlets resting idly on the arms of her chair. Her helm was off and the hood of her cloak was pulled back to let her unbound hair flow freely around the delicate features of her face. On her forehead she wore a thin band of silver set with a single glittering diamond. The twins were dazzled. She was a shining statue, molded by some unearthly artisan, incandescent against the dark background of the pavilion. So elegant was she, and so beautiful were her features, that the twins hardly noticed the knights standing to either side of her like servants attending a demigoddess.

Remus stood stunned, staring. Even Guin seemed smitten. Although his leopard mask revealed no emotion, there was a spark of something akin to admiration shining in his mysterious yellow eyes.

The proud little princess of Parros shrank back. It occurred to her quite suddenly that since the battle in the crystal city she had not had a proper bath and that her clothes were caked with mud, sand, and worse⁠ ⁠… not to mention the beaten leather boots and jerkin she wore, which looked like they might have been stolen from some poor stable boy. Her platinum blond hair was tangled beyond hope of ever getting a comb to run through it. And were her arms and legs not covered with scratches and scars? It seemed she had been a fugitive for so long, she would soon forget what it was to be royalty.

“So these are the twins of Parros,” Amnelis’ spellbindingly clear voice sounded like the peal of a bell in the soft quiet of the pavilion.

Remus, seeing his sister shrinking away, stammered, “Y-yes, ma’am. And you might be…?”

“Ma’am,” Remus? Rinda thought. If you’re going to speak to the leader of the enemy at all, at least use the proper form of address!

The response came in a voice that was soft but commanding. “I am Amnelis, General of the Right, daughter and proxy to Archduke Vlad of Mongaul, and captain of our white knights.”

It was a bolt of lightning. The white knights were there at the fall of the crystal city! Together with the black they brought our spires to the ground… they killed my lord father and lady mother! Rinda closed her eyes and in the darkness beneath her eyelids she saw the black knights riding out from the rising smoke, and behind them the white knights, like horrid ghosts in their flowing white cloaks, cutting down the loyal and courageous of Parros.

“Wh-What does the Lady Amnelis want with us?” asked Remus, trying to sound brave though all he could think of was how imposing this woman was, and how he would never be as commanding as she.

He did not know that Amnelis, too, was rather out of sorts. As powerless as they looked, the bedraggled twins in their dirty leather garments had eyes that shone like stars. She could well see why they were called the “Pearls of Parros.” And the leopard-headed warrior that had been captured with them…

Amnelis’ deep green eyes shone with wonderment. She leaned forward, and the fascination in her gaze was plain to see. Only her famed self-control kept her from gaping like a child at a magicker’s show.

Gripping the arm of her chair, she muttered in a low voice, “What do we have here?”

Amnelis had seen warriors aplenty, though perhaps none as well muscled as Guin, whose build would have stirred envy in any man of the sword. She had, it was true, never seen one with a leopard head, but it was not this admittedly bizarre feature that sent a wave of unease through her. It was the eyes within the mask, yellow and bottomless, revealing nothing, the eyes of a cool predator. There was something about those eyes that she could not put a name to, something that made her swallow and set her heart beating faster.

To a duller, more superficial observer, those eyes might have seemed filled with simple violence⁠—a wild, animal desire to kill, the kind of gaze that triggers a primitive response to run. But to those with the ability to see the true nature of things, such as Amnelis and Rinda, Guin’s eyes held an unspeakable power, as terrifying to Amnelis as it was comforting to Rinda. To have called the force that burned in his eyes “ambition” would have been to understate it a thousandfold, to simplify its terrible complexity; it was a force that could change the world, a force vast and unnamable, yet not impersonal, a single-minded, unquenchable spirit that accepted no limits but those of its own⁠—immense⁠—strength.

Amnelis had a word for the life-energy that flowed from Guin’s eyes and radiated from his powerful body, the energy that set him apart from all around him as only something intrinsically noble could: it was destiny. Here was the physical embodiment of a great, stormy destiny, made manifest in a half-beast, or half-god, form. A fierce, chaotic destiny that could change everything including the warrior it held in its grasp.

Amnelis’ slender hand gripped the chair arm even tighter as she tried in vain to stop the trembling in her body. She swallowed again, this time noticing the perplexed look in the eyes of the captains around her⁠—Lindrot and Vlon of the white, Melem and Kayn of the red⁠—who rarely saw the general speechless. She had to begin the interrogation. She swallowed again.

“You.” Her voice had fallen from the lilting alto with which she had addressed the twins to a gravelly rasp. “Who are you?”

Guin calmly met her gaze.

“I am Guin.”

“Guin?”

“Yes.”

“That… is your name?”

“Yes… I think.”

“You think?”

Guin twitched his head like a lion trying to brush away a pesky fly, and spoke no further.

“You will answer the Lady’s question!” barked Captain Vlon, but Amnelis raised her hand to silence him. She was slowly coming out of the trance into which those yellow eyes had sent her.

“Explain your… unusual appearance.”

“I cannot.”

“Then you were born like that? Or you were cursed by some magic?”

“I do not know. I have been thus as long as I can remember, which is not long.” Guin fixed his yellow eyes on hers. “Can one not be if one cannot explain why?”

“Where are you from?”

“I do not know.”

“Why you⁠—” Vlon made a sign with his eyes at the knight standing guard behind the captives and stepped closer to the leopard warrior, impatient to regain control of the situation. “If you do not answer willingly, I will be happy to pry the answers from you! We are not like the weak knights of Parros, who are strangers to the proper use of pain!”

“Guin can’t remember anything that happened to him before he woke up in the Roodwood! It’s true!” Rinda burst out, unable to contain herself. “How can he tell you what he doesn’t know?”

Amnelis’ green eyes looked Rinda up and down disapprovingly, as if to ask what place the little girl had to speak out unbidden during her interrogation.

Rinda’s voice trailed off, the words growing smaller in her mouth, until she shrank back into silence. Yet, the rage inside her was growing.

“Is this true? You have lost your memory?” Amnelis’ gaze swung back to the leopard warrior.

Guin nodded slowly, as though he carried a great weight in his mind. “Try as I might, I can remember nothing.”

“There are ways of making people remember that which they have forgotten.” Amnelis turned to the diviner who hovered like a specter in the gloom behind her. “Gajus!”

“My Lady.”

“Bring your sphere and your board here, and look into this man’s soul.”

“As you wish.”

Rinda began to protest, but a single cold glare from Amnelis made her swallow her words and shrink back once again from the woman’s strength. The captain of the white knights was perhaps only four years her senior, yet Rinda felt herself an infant, powerless and miserable before this harsh, gorgeous enemy for whom an intense hatred now burned in her breast.

“That which you try to conceal will now be revealed. I advise you to forego any pretenses at once,” Amnelis warned. Guin stood perfectly still.

“Until Gajus is through with his divinations, I will take you for your word⁠—that you know not who you are, and have no memory of your past. If this is so, then, let me ask you: Why run from Mongaul? Why take the twins of Parros as your allies?”

Guin did not answer. Amnelis asked again, and still he remained silent.

“Speak! You made a choice, that is clear! If you have no ties to Parros, why side with them? Are you sympathetic to their cause after all? Answer me!” Amnelis roared, her face twisting in indignation. In a blur of movement she stood up from her chair, and stomped on the ground with her white and silver boots.

“Why are you in league with the orphans of Parros!”

“You will answer the Lady Amnelis!”

Amnelis and the captain shouted at the same time, her question and his command clashing in the air under the low pavilion roof.

Guin’s leopard head tilted slightly to one side. Then, much to the surprise of all, he began quietly to laugh.

“What’s so funny?” Amnelis slammed her boot into the hard-packed ground again.

“You are, lady.”

“What?!”

“Beautiful daughter of the Archduke, perhaps your milk-sop Gohran soldiers find you imposing. But spare a real warrior your antics, I say.”

Remus’ mouth gaped open.

Rinda’s head jerked upward, her eyes shining under falling silver locks of hair.

Amnelis was speechless.

“Fiend! Do not dare insult our Lady!” Vlon and Lindrot stepped up from both sides, hands on sword-hilts.

But Amnelis regained enough composure to raise her hand and wave them back.

All the captains present appreciated anew the general’s steel will. Only for an instant had rage and humiliation choked her. Now she pulled herself together and managed to form a wry smile on her pale lips.

“Perhaps you have some secret from which you hope to divert my attention by provoking me, Guin?” she sneered, her voice gone cold. “Fine. I will explore that matter in the dungeons under Alvon Keep slowly, on the torturing table, perhaps. But let me ask one question now. From the cliffs near Alvon, I saw you floating down the Kes, but I am sure you were not three in number then. What happened to the other two? One of them, certainly, wore the black armor of Stafolos, and another one, strangely enough, seemed like one of the Nospherus Sem.”

“I know nothing,” replied Guin.

Amnelis looked as though she would lose her temper again, but she quickly forced down her wrath.

“Gajus, are you done yet?”

“My Lady,” came the diviner’s melancholy reply, “the divining sphere has shown this man.”

“And?”

“Well, if I may⁠—”

“Be brief. I have no need for theatrics, Gajus.”

“Ah, so.”

Uneasy wrinkles of consternation creased Gajus’ withered and ugly face. He raised his hands, dry as fallen leaves, and placed them atop the cool surface of the divination sphere, but quickly pulled them back as if he had been burnt.

“I placed the divination sphere atop the divination board,” stammered Gajus, “and I performed the reading by speaking the correct runewords to obtain the true sight of things; however…” he paused for effect.

Amnelis awaited his conclusion in silence.

“What was shown in the water mirror was nothing but a single, giant leopard.”

“A leopard?” Amnelis furrowed her brow. “What is that supposed to mean? I did not ask for symbols, Gajus! Dispense with your usual mincing of words, or I will have you punished.”

“I am sorry, but a leopard is only a leopard. It has no other meaning,” came Gajus’ reluctant answer. “I must conclude that this man’s soul is that of a giant leopard. All else is vexingly blank, a white void. It seems less that he has lost his memory than that he never had such a thing to begin with… All earthly folk are born with the accumulated memories of their race, held within them underneath their conscious selves. Even had I scryed a newborn infant, the waterboard would have shown more than it has for him! The board sees through any mask, my Lady, yet his true face is hidden still! I cannot see it… I cannot.” Gaius fell silent.

Amnelis waited yet.

“This is my first experience with a being so unknowable,” the wizened diviner added at last, looking as though he had suddenly aged another hundred years.

“Fool!” Amnelis spat out. She narrowed her eyes and dismissed the runecaster with a wave of her hand and a “You may go.”

Then, sounding intensely irritated, she said, Very well, let us say that this man is in fact a giant leopard that was set loose in Gohra, Perhaps the hands of some power from beyond the bounds of our knowledge and civilization set him down. Perhaps we behold nothing more than the unclean magic of Nospherus. If the demon Doal that rules Nospherus wishes to toy with us, there is a simple solution. Vlon!”

“My Lady!”

“Lindrot!”

“Here!”

“Give the order to return home. We will leave as soon as the searching party returns. Send a swift horse to Alvon to prepare them for our arrival. And these captives…”

A look of gratification tinged with cruelty crept across Amnelis’ icy features as she gazed at her uncooperative captives. Gradually, a derisive smile came to her cool, shining lips.

“They will not need mounts. Tie their hands and feet with leather straps, and let them be dragged along the ground behind the rearmost horses. If this one is truly a beast-man, it suits him well.”

Lindrot paused, glancing furtively over at the twins and their slender arms and legs.

Before he even had time to reply, Guin spoke in a voice approaching a roar. “The treatment I receive matters nothing to me, but let the children ride. One horse will suffice. They are young and exhausted. And they are highborn⁠—the last remaining heirs of the holy royal line of Aldross. I am sure that conceding these barest of kindnesses would do no discredit to Gohra.”

“General…” began Lindrot, looking up at Amnelis. Her face stiffened.

“Silence! You would have the Lady of Mongaul give the same order twice?”

“N-No, my Lady.”

“Lady?” roared Guin. “You call yourself ‘Lady’? Then you would at least give the children water and food. They are ready to collapse.”

But then Guin felt a small, cold hand touch his arm, and he turned to look, his yellow eyes narrowing.

“As the princess of Parros, Rinda Farseer, I say to you: withdraw your request.” Rinda’s voice was uncannily calm.

Everyone stared, a strange feeling churning their stomachs, at the frail little girl sitting on the floor like a slave that had been dragged in for punishment.

Despite extreme fatigue, she kept her back straight as a rod and held her head high and proud. With a steady gaze she fixed the dazzling general. Anger, and unbendable royal pride, had released the fire that was her birth heritage into her veins. Her eyes shone like stars. She bit her lip, and her cheeks flushed a bright.

Then a smile rose on her tense lips, the kind of smile that could not be sullied by the shame that had been laid upon her. She now remembered who she was. I am the princess of Parros, the only girl child of the Holy Aldross the Third; I am Rinda Farseer, Jewel of the Crystal Palace. Why, even the noblest of Mongauli are but descendants of my family’s servants⁠—or pretenders at that! Be proud, Princess Rinda, raise your head high. If you lower your head, so does Parros!

Rinda felt the fear, the sinking inferiority, and the shame at being captured that had weighed within her dissipate entirely. In their place now was an imperishable, cold flame and a rage so powerful she dared not unleash it. She may not have realized it fully herself, but the dirty, mud-stained child that had been shoved into the pavilion had been replaced by a princess. Her willowy beauty was a slender moon to the radiance of the sun that was Amnelis, yet her youthful form shone with a white and silver that enraptured all the men in the pavilion, including Guin.

Amnelis, too, perceived the change in her adversary and was not pleased. The Lady of Mongaul’s green eyes were severe, her lips taut. She made the air bristle with her cold fury⁠—a mixture of vexation, disdain, and above all an urge to utterly dominate the waif-princess who had insolently challenged her queenship in the pavilion.

Amnelis glared at Rinda, and the princess of Parros returned her gaze without the slightest hint of fear. Rinda faced the one who had brought death to her mother and father, who had driven her and her brother from their kingdom home.

This was the hated enemy who had given them nothing but hardship, an eternal enemy who could not be allowed to walk under the same sky.

Their eyes met, wild furious green and wrathful shining violet, and their gazes clashed almost audibly, striking sparks of pure emotion. It was a meeting of goddesses, each a proud mistress of her own domain. This, then, was the first time that the seer-princess of Parros and the warrior-lady of Mongaul stared each other down as sworn enemies⁠—as captive and captor, as one whose father had been slain and one who had done the slaying. But there was more than this enmity between them, though it was likely they did not realize it. For in the moment their eyes met, there also flashed between them the mutual envy and hate of two beautiful women meeting for the first time; each found in the wholly different beauty of the other a deadly challenge to her own perfection.

Amnelis looked disapprovingly at the captive princess, Rinda’s murderous gaze was unflinching. Amnelis’ well-formed lips curled.

“My Lady, the red squad has just returned.”

The flap covering the entrance to the pavilion lifted, diffusing the tension none of the men inside the tent could or would, and the unsuspecting red knight decorated with the plume-insignia of a squad captain came in to deliver his report.

“My apologies, General, the fugitives were not⁠—”

“Very well!” Amnelis replied before he had finished. She suddenly rapped her gauntlets on her armored thighs, then swept back her heavy locks of hair. Her voice rang out high and clear.

“Give the order to march!”

The knights behind her, the diviner and messengers, all rose to their feet at once. Amnelis stalked back to the camp table to pick up her helm, then moved towards the exit. Passing Guin, she pointedly ignored him, as though she feared what would come should she acknowledge her burning fascination for the leopard-headed warrior. But as she passed Rinda, she paused, ostentatiously waving her rich golden hair, and cast a cold look downwards.

She was a head taller than the young girl. Where it was not covered by her fair armor, Amnelis’ nearly mature skin⁠—the general was only eighteen⁠—glowed a milky hue tinted with rose. She carried with her an aura of utter confidence in her beauty and her power, and in her knowledge of the effect they had on men and women alike.

Rinda lifted her head, unyielding, and though she was no runt, now face-to-face with Amnelis it was emphatically clear she was the less stately of the two. Rinda’s violet eyes smoldered with rage.

Amnelis sneered.

“Wretched orphan.”

The lady-general walked out of the pavilion without looking back. Her knights followed.

Rinda bit her lip so hard she nearly drew blood. Remus cast a worried look in her direction, but she did not notice. He did not know what she was feeling. He did not know she had decided to hate the Lady Amnelis of Mongaul for the rest of her living days.