The torches flanking the Dragon Gate came into view. Their light played over the reliefs that surrounded the monumental portal: the hero Volmunaard’s battle against the black dragon Vilesoot. The images seemed alive, moving and shifting in the orange glow.

The gate was open.

Tol pulled the horses to a stop. Both the entry gate-an opening large enough for two riders abreast-and the great ceremonial portal stood wide. The latter yawned like a primeval cavern, black and endless. Twenty horsemen riding boot to boot could fit through it. No guards were in sight.

“This isn’t right,” Kiya muttered.

“It’s perfect.” Tol snapped the reins, setting the horses in motion again.

They passed through the broad tunnel of the gatehouse and into the city proper. The streets were devoid of people. The windows of every house and business were shuttered. No light showed. Wind stirred along the stone canyons, pushing rubbish before it. Somewhere a dog barked.

Against the cloud-streaked night sky, the Tower of High Sorcery glowed like a pearlescent lamp. Its light gave the Inner City wall and palace towers a gray, insubstantial look, as though they were edifices of fog. Kiya recalled the cloud faces that had watched her from the summer sky. She lifted a hand and touched her burial beads, tied around her neck. If Tol noticed, he did not say anything.

Following the route he well remembered, Tol guided the creaking wagon through the empty streets.

At a square just outside the Inner City gate, they found two thousand Riders, bearing the standards of the Scarlet Dragon and Whirlwind hordes, waiting for them. The Riders sat in close ranks, their horses snorting and bobbing their heads in the humid night air.

Tol halted the wagon. Four men in officer’s garb left the front ranks and rode forward.

“My lord Tolandruth!” The one who hailed him was about Tol’s own age, with a close-cropped blond mustache and pale blue eyes. Tol didn’t know him. “I am Gonzakan, warlord of the Whirlwind Horde.”

“Ah. You have come to arrest me.”

The officer frowned and leaned forward in the saddle, as though trying to see better. “I did not picture you arriving by wagon, my lord. What cargo do you carry?”

“The Emperor’s Wolves.”

Astonished, the four warlords rode closer. They swore eloquently.

“The Wolves never looked better!”

“By Corij, he got Tathman! And Argon!”

“He got them all!”

The blond officer addressed Tol in an awed voice.

“We know your errand, my lord.”

“And you mean to stop me?” His fingers tightened on the sharkskin grip of Number Six.

“No, my lord.”

Tol’s eyes narrowed. He suspected a jest, but Gonzakan quickly explained. After the emperor’s execution of nine blameless commanders for failing to stop Tol earlier, the warlords of the Great Horde had come to a momentous decision:

they would no longer defend Ackal V. They were not acting to save the empire, but out of a sense of collective dishonor. For years Ackal V had tormented his people, from the highest priest to the poorest peasant, but Ergoth had known tyrannical rulers before. He had ordered his hordes to fight hopeless battles, but that was a Rider’s lot in life, willingly accepted. To fall in battle was expected, hoped for. However, a pointless, dishonorable death at the emperor’s own hands could not be tolerated. By unanimous assent, the Riders had abandoned the emperor to whatever fate Corij decreed for him-fate in the form of Tolandruth of Juramona.

Tol was stunned. What of the Household Guard? The Horse Guards? The imperial courtiers?

“Some have resisted,” said Gonzakan. “They are being dealt with. Since you’ve disposed of the Wolves, no one now stands between you and the emperor.”

Valaran is mine!

The thought made Tol shiver, in spite of the night’s heat.

Kiya leaned close. “Let’s go, before the dream ends and they change their minds!” she whispered.

Tol dropped the reins. Jumping down from the wagon, he told Kiya to wait there. Like a sleepwalker, he passed between the lines of mounted men, crossing the broad square under the eyes of two thousand warriors.

Iron scraped. A warrior in the front ranks drew his saber and raised it high.

“Tolandruth!” he shouted.

Two thousand sabers thrust up toward the starry sky. “Tolandruth! Tolandruth!”

The Inner City gate was open and unguarded, but the imperial plaza wasn’t empty. Dark stains covered the mosaic. Farther on were several bodies, shapeless mounds illuminated by the glow of the Tower of High Sorcery.

He found more broken weapons and blood on the palace steps. There’d been a brisk fight here, but the Householders had been swept aside.

Once Tol had seen Emperor Pakin III stand on these steps, bathed in the adoration of his loyal subjects, Tol included. Now there was only the sound of the night breeze and Tol’s own harsh breathing. Only one of the iron sconces by the palace doors held a lit torch, and the double doors themselves were ajar. A brass lamp, stamped flat by a heavy boot, lay in the doorway.

The imperial palace felt like a cemetery-potent with the feeling that people had once been here, but now were gone. Tol finally encountered living occupants, small knots of courtiers or servants hiding in alcoves and whispering. More than once he heard his name spoken with the sort of frightened reverence usually reserved for forces of nature. Fire. Flood. Plague. Tolandruth.

The audience hall was barred to him. Its floor-to-ceiling double doors did not yield when he leaned against them. Tol smote the panels with the pommel of his sword and shouted. Ruddy light bloomed in the thin gap between doors and floor. A heavy bolt clanked. The left door swung inward.

Tol lifted Number Six, prepared to face a reserve contingent of Wolves or even Ackal V himself. The face that greeted him was pale, hollow-eyed, and indescribably lovely.

“By all the gods,” Valaran breathed, lifting her oil lamp higher. “It is you!”

Tol’s breath caught and held. She was thinner than he remembered, her chin sharper, and her cheekbones more prominent, but her eyes were still the clear, bottomless green of fine emeralds and her hair a warm, deep chestnut. She was clothed in white, with a delicate tracery of crimson thread decorating her gown’s close-fitting bodice.

“Valaran.” How sweet it was to speak her name aloud! “Valaran,” he said again. “I have come for you.”

She moved back a step so he could enter. She swung the ponderous door shut and threw the bolt. Without warning, Tol suddenly found her in his arms, her face buried in his shoulder. She held him tightly, her body shaking.

“I have worked so long for this moment,” she said, lips close by his ear. “So long and so hard, and I thought many times I’d failed. Yet here you are!”

The catch in her voice touched him deeply. Her scent filled his head, making him dizzy with desire. He lifted his hand and carefully rested it on her shimmering hair.

“I swore I would return.”

A small laugh, faintly edged with hysteria. “I know.”

They kissed, tentatively at first, then with increasing fervor. He had nearly forgotten his rage and his mission, until Valaran drew back and said, “Come, my love.”

She took his hand and led him down the carpeted path that ran the length of the long, high-ceilinged audience hall. Only a few candles in the room’s numerous candelabra were lit. Most of the enormous iron racks were overthrown, candle wax spattered over the floor. Elegant chairs were overturned, tables smashed.

Valaran led him to the rotund body of a man, clad in fine burgundy velvet, lying facedown on the marble floor. A wide bloodstain spread out from the man’s head.

“One of his most loyal chamberlains-Lord Fedro,” she said. “He killed him himself.”

Tol wondered what had happened here, but was given no time to ask. Valaran drew him onward.