crossbow he carried.
With the lightning reaction of a man half his years Brandin reflexively threw out his hand to cast a sorcerer's shield around the threatened singer.
Exactly as he was expected to, Dianora realized.
"Brandin, no!" she screamed. "It's you!"
And seizing the gape-mouthed Neso of Ygrath by the near shoulder she propelled herself and him both into the aisle.
The crossbow bolt, aimed meticulously to the left of Isolla on a line for Brandin's heart, buried itself instead in the shoulder of a stupefied Neso. He shrieked in pain and shock.
Her momentum drove Dianora stumbling to her knees beside Isolla. She looked up. And for the rest of her days never forgot the look she met in the singer's eyes.
She turned away from it. The emotion, the hatred was too raw. She felt physically ill, trembling with aftershock. She forced herself to stand; she looked at Brandin. He hadn't even lowered his hand. There was still the shimmer of a protective barrier around Isolla.
Who had never been in danger at all.
The guards had Camena by now. He'd been dragged to his feet. Dianora had never seen anyone look so white. Even his eyes were white, from the drug. For a moment she thought he was going to faint, but then Camena threw his head back as far as he could in the iron grip of the Ygrathen soldiers. He opened his mouth, as if in agony.
"Chiara!" he cried once, and then, "Freedom for Chiara!" before they silenced him, brutally.
The echoes rang for a long time. The room was large and the stillness was almost absolute. No one dared to move. Dianora had a sense that the court wasn't even breathing. No one wanted the slightest attention drawn to them.
On the mosaic-inlaid floor Neso moaned again in fear and pain, breaking the tableau. Two soldiers knelt to tend to him. Dianora was still afraid she was going to be sick; she couldn't make her hands stop trembling. Isolla of Ygrath had not moved.
She could not move, Dianora realized: Brandin was holding her in a mindlock like a flower pressed flat on a sheet. The soldiers lifted Neso and helped him from the room. Dianora stepped back herself, leaving Isolla alone before the King. Fifteen very proper paces away.
"Camena was a tool," Brandin said softly. "Chiara has virtually nothing to do with this. Do not think that I am unaware of that, I can offer you nothing now but an easier death. You must tell me why you did this." His voice was rigidly measured, careful and uninflected. Dianora had never heard such a tone from him. She looked at Rhun: the Fool was weeping, tears streaking his distorted features.
Brandin lowered his hand, freeing Isolla to move and speak.⑧本⑧作⑧品⑧由⑧⑧網⑧提⑧供⑧下⑧載⑧與⑧在⑧線⑧閱⑧讀⑧
The blazing flash of hatred left her features. In its place was a defiant pride. Dianora wondered if she had actually thought the deception would work. If after the King had been slain she had really expected to walk freely from this room. And if not, if she had not expected to do so, what did that mean?
Holding herself very straight, Isolla gave part of an answer. "I am dying," she said to Brandin. "The physicians have given me less than a season before the growth inside reaches my brain. Already there are songs I can no longer remember. Songs that have been mine for forty years."
"I am sorry to hear it," said Brandin formally, his courtesy so perfect it seemed a violation of human nature. He said, "All of us die, Isolla. Some very young. Not all of us plot the death of our King. You have more to tell me before I may grant you release from pain."
For the first time Isolla seemed to waver. She lowered her gaze from his eerily serene grey eyes. Only after a long moment did she say, "You had to have known that there would be a price for what you did."
"Exactly what is it that I did?"
Her head came up. "You exalted a dead child above the living one, and revenge above your wife. And more highly than your own land. Have you spared a thought, a fraction of a thought, for any of them while you pursued your unnatural ven