The Born Queen

"Majesty?"

She closed her eyes. Nothing; just another stupid thing I've done. Cazio, be as smart as I think you are.

"The Hellrune can't help those in the south. I'll see what my visions can tell me about what the Church is up to. Is there anything else?"

"Not that I know of, Majesty."

"Thank you, Duke. I'd better rest now."

She met her arilac on a heather-covered down overlooking an azure sea. The air was warm and wet and a little dirty-feeling.

The arilac seemed more human each time they met, although she still shone u

"You were outmaneuvered," the woman said. "With the law of death broken, the Hellrune is stronger than even I suspected."

"You should have warned me," A

The arilac raised a fiery eyebrow. "That would have been an insult to your intelligence. If you could see the results of what he saw, how could you not imagine it wasn't possible for him to do the same?"

"But when does it end?" A

"Yes and no. As you've learned, the future isn't a fixed thing if you can see it. But it has a path and momentum. When the Hellrune saw that your army would march the way it did, and you saw that he had seen that, you might have done a number of things. You might have decided not to go that way, or not march at all, or bring thousands more with you-or what you did: try to turn the trap against itself. The Hellrune would have been shown all these paths, but dimly, and one would have seemed infinitesimally brighter. In turn, his possible reactions-abandon the plan, send more men, and so forth-would be even more contingent, first because your choice was one of dozens, then because his was. That's why you didn't see the reversal of the trap: It was a wispy thing, u

"Then I must guess, you are saying, where Hansa is concerned."

"No, no," the arilac said. "He can't know you've seen something unless you react to it."

"Then what use to see it?"

"It can inform your strategy."

A

"You will find you can rarely see more than a nineday or so when specifics are involved. Visions of the far future are usually vague as to when and how they will happen. The Hellrune's is limited in the same way, and he is not here, A

A

"I'm not afraid of you," she told the arilac.

"I never said you were."

"Oh, I was," she admitted. "But no longer. From now on I expect you to tell me everything I need to know. Do you understand? I don't want to be hit from behind again."

"Very well, A

"Call me 'Majesty.'"

"When you are my queen, I shall. But that time is not come. And I'm not afraid of you, either."

She watched the titanic stones of the citadel crack and felt herself like fingers wedged there, tearing at it. The doors were like burning brands, but she pulled, and everything in her seemed next to snapping. In an instant she brimmed with the most profound happiness she had ever known as everything slowed to almost stopping, and the magicked metal rang as it tore, and the power of chaos collapsed before her. She felt the slow burning fire of ten thousand lives bent against her-creatures so much of the master's that even now, when their liberation was at hand, they still fought to remain slaves.

But now they cringed as the citadel lay open and the powers that kept her at bay disintegrated.

She had known the power before, but never like this. Gone were her reservations, gone her fears. She was pure and simple, an arrow already loosed from its string, a storm striking a port, unstoppable, not in need of stopping.

Every weakness purged.

She laughed, and they died, either quenched by her will or gutted by her warriors, her beautiful, lovely warriors. And everything they were and might have been flowed from them and came back, and she knew she finally sat the sedos throne…

"It was worse this time, wasn't it?" Emily asked.

A

"Is there anything I can do, Majesty?"

Yes, jump out the window, A

"Hush, Emily," she said instead. "I'm not myself."

But maybe she was exactly herself. They had wanted her to take on the responsibility? Fine, she had. Now that she was queen, she would be queen, the queen they all deserved.

Emily backed away and didn't say anything.

A bell later A

"It's getting so easy," she told Nerenai. "I think of what I want to see, and I see it, or something to do with it. But then, the dreams. The clearer my visions come, the worse my Black Marys are. Is that the way it's supposed to be?"

"I think it must just be the price," the Sefry said. "You've separated the visions from the dreams, but they flow from the same source."

"I have to be able to tell them apart."

"True, for now. But when you are strong enough, you won't have to keep them apart. It will all be one."

A

"I hope so," she sighed. "Send Emily back in, will you? I want to apologize to her."

"She's just outside," Nerenai said. "With her brother. He's come to see you."

"All right," A

The earl stepped through a moment later, Emily tugging at his hand. He was in a new-looking deep red doublet and black hose.

"Good of you to come, Cape Chavel," she said.

"Majesty," he said, bowing.

"Emily, my apologies for earlier. "

"It's nothing, Majesty," Emily said. "It's your dreams, I know. I'm just here to serve you."

A

"I'm glad you haven't," he replied. "It would only embarrass me. Especially as it was your saint gifts that got most of us out of there alive."

"Well, you'll have to be embarrassed. Thank you."

He actually blushed. He was a fu

Cazio. She had seen him free, with z'Acatto, but Dunmrogh fallen. And Hespero-but that part had been unclear. In fact, any vision concerning the praifec was unclear.

"How are you feeling?" the earl asked.

"Better. The leic will let me walk in a day or two. Nothing too badly hurt inside, I suppose."

"I'm relieved," the young man said. "Very relieved, in fact. I've seen such wounds before, and they are usually, ah, worse."

That gave her a bit of a pause. It had been rather bad, hadn't it? The shaft had been half in her. She had seen bodies cut open before. How could it have missed all of that? She should have died, shouldn't she?

She remembered the knight who wouldn't die, the one Cazio had been able to stop only by hacking the body into individual pieces. She remembered the other one in the wood near Dunmrogh.