THE PALACE LAY crouched on its hilltop like a sphinx. Old by any reckoning, the first kings of Targoth had built it ten centuries earlier when the Sicaian plain was yet a lush grassland with ample tin mines. Wealth had poured into the city. They were a pious people, and far and wide Targoth became known as the City of Festivals. Over time, the Targothi’s particular favor of the gods had bred a deep animosity amongst its neighbors.

Why should one city have such splendor? The stories of their wealth spread around the world, and soon, armies marched against Targoth’s wide walls, eager to claim its brideprice. Neighboring kings from the northern grasslands, bandit chiefs, and barbarian hordes came in their turns to carve easy plunder from the soft city dwellers. And always, the high walls around the City of Festivals had held the dogs at bay.

For centuries, the silver-crowned kings had watched from their minarets as sieges collapsed upon themselves, eating one another as supplies ran thin and the plains burned under Targothi torches. Though they never struck a direct blow against the enemy, the City of Festivals won every war.

Richly carved reliefs in the wall beside the Great Stair told of the city’s glamorous inception and startling achievements. Ulrem ran his fingers over these sand-scarred masterpieces as they walked under broken arches, climbing the wide steps to the palace.

“Blood,” said Jakt, pointing to crimson blossoms that splattered across the cracked faces of the steps. They traced a path to the top. Ulrem remembered Laeila, princess of Targoth, and wondered whether she had passed this way on that fateful night.

“Wait,” Jakt panted. “Ulrem, hold.”

The fighter turned with a growl, brow arched dangerously. Though the Company had accustomed him to marching as a unit, he did not much like the pace of smaller men. He was a man of the west, tall and long of leg. When Ulrem had a mind to go somewhere, his stride devoured ground.

“What will you do when you get up there? What can you do against—against these ruins?”

“Targoth has made some claim on us. The dead are unsettled. We must guide them back over the threshold. Only then will they rest again.”

“How do you know that?”

“Do your people not care for their dead?” Ulrem snapped. “Do you abandon your ancestors so readily? The kings of the west did not. The dead mourn for life even as we grieve for them. In a place like this,” Ulrem added, glaring down over the ruins, “the grief lingers. This is a bad place, steeped in old magic. It is unlucky we ever ventured here, but luck is not for the choosing.”

“No,” Jakt said. “It isn’t.”

Below, Targoth was stirring again. Pale fires raged, and shadows were hurrying through the streets. Violence broke out as invaders poured in from the east, carving their way through the city. Balls of wicked fire arced through the night, lobbed from beyond the city’s walls, where the campfires of the enemy horde stretched wide like a reflection of the night sky. All this Ulrem saw, but could not hear, as if some vast distance lay between the palace hill and the city below.

The palace walls were abandoned. Lush gardens ran along their feet, but the wall had already been blasted to pieces in several sections. Ulrem leaped over one of these at a run, charging towards the side of the building. He could see dark forms retreating into the palace ahead.

Ulrem raced through the broad gardens. He felt a shift in the air, and huge globes of fire began to rain down around him: hateful stars cast by the enemy magi. Waves of heat and light crashed over him. He kept running, his head lowered like a bull’s, heedless. To acknowledge them would be to know fear. In that moment, he knew only the mad sprint, abandoning himself to fate.

A fireball struck the ground just before him. Ulrem was thrown to the side and showered with dirt and scree. He hit the ground rolling, threw himself to his feet, and was up again in an instant, making for the mouth of the great doors that hung open on ancient hinges.

He could hear Jakt shouting behind him, but could not make out the words. Ulrem did not look back at him. Visions of Targoth as it was blurred with those of its dead present, and he would not give it the chance to confuse him.

“Keep moving!” Ulrem roared, racing through the palace doors and into the brightly lit vestibule.

There was fighting in the palace, too. Men in leather vests clashed with guards in ornate bronze armor, each wearing a helm with a high plume of dyed horsehair. Even as Ulrem slid to a halt, his sword hanging in one hand, he saw the defenders buckling. Jakt stumbled through the doors behind him.

Ulrem decided to level the field. He bellowed like a bear and waded in amongst the invaders, slashing at their exposed backs and necks, felling two at a time until they turned to face him.

He kicked aside one’s shield and drove his blade into the invader’s throat, just below the mask. One of them clubbed him in the side, driving Ulrem back, crushing the wind out of his belly. Leaping in, Jakt buried his knife in the man’s eye. The corpse dragged him to the floor.

The invaders were on them in a moment, swarming around. Ulrem slashed and hacked, giving as good as he got. Without a shield, it was all he could do to stay on his feet. He caught a dozen cuts and slashes before the palace guards broke through, encircling the stinking, cursing invaders, and sending them to hell.

By the time it was done, Ulrem was leaning against a wall, breathing heavily. His arms were covered in blood, much of it his own. He’d been sliced badly over his brow, near the temple. A close one. Blood ran freely down his face.

Jakt was in worse shape. He sat on the ground, holding his left leg.

“How bad?” Ulrem asked, limping over to him.

“I don’t know if I can walk.”

Ulrem crouched to inspect the wound. It was deep, a vicious rent of the muscle over the blond man’s thigh. Dark blood seeped from it. Ulrem tore off a strip of his tunic and tied the wound off.

“It’s almost done,” he said.

Weakly, Jakt asked, “How do you know?”

“I can feel it. Not far now.”

Jakt leaned on Ulrem. They kept their blades out, but the phantoms had vanished again, leaving only the mausoleum of the palace around them, empty and dark. Thieves had stripped the halls of valuables long ago, and the floor was thick with fine sand deposited over the centuries. They staggered through the murk towards a great arch in the door. The columns were carved with the faces of men whose names and deeds were long lost to the great amnesia of the dimming past.

The room changed again as they limped beneath the broken arches. The dry tomb became magnificent, opulent in its finery. The marble floor was polished to a high sheen, and frescoes on the wall recalled the epics of Targoth’s gilded past. Nobles with loose togas cast hastily over their pale bodies huddled before the heaped splendor of their forefathers, whispering or crying amongst themselves. Gray-faced servants passed daggers out, and women wailed to see them. Some leaned drunkenly, and others merely sat with legs sprawled out before them like lost children.

A team of guardsmen worked around these useless wretches to reinforce the throne hall. They dragged benches towards the huge doors leading off the room and hauled at massive iron braziers. A few teams were even working to shift statues from their alcoves along the walls. Anything to brace the door.

Striding through the desperate preparations, Ulrem spied a raised platform at the head of the hall. A large golden chair stood at the top, and behind that were tall windows that looked out over the city itself. A slender form leaned against the sill of the huge windows, gazing out at the night. In all the room, she was perfectly still.

Ulrem felt the pull towards her as a man felt the current of a river: an insistent, ceaseless tugging. The echoes of his ring stirred, recognizing something of terrible power, warning him to be cautious. Where phantoms walked openly, the living should tread cautiously.

“Stay here!” Ulrem growled. He let Jakt go, giving him a half-crumbled pillar defaced by heavy scoring to lean on. He made for the dais, pushing through the crowd that surrounded it. The bleeding of past and present was heavy now: he seemed to flit between dream and waking with each step. In one instant, cold and shadows filled the chamber; in the next, guardsmen fought against invaders that had broken through as nobles pressed themselves against the walls. The blood ran as thick as the screams.

The air around Ulrem grew gelid and charged as he neared the foot of the dais. The unmistakable form of Laeila leaned by the window, heedless of the bedlam behind her. Then, the old, long-abandoned hall, with Jakt retching near the center of the room. He took another step, and the room was filled with chaos.

“Ulrem, stop!” Jakt shouted. “It’s coming apart!” But he couldn’t. As hard as Laeila’s strange power pushed against him, Ulrem was drawn ever closer. He pushed against the rising resistance, feeling the echoes of the ring seethe against the sorcery. The gold blazed, bright as sunlight on his hand. He drew on their fury and forced his way up onto the first step.

“Laeila!”

She turned and seemed to notice Ulrem for the first time. Her wide, gorgeous eyes took him in, full lips parting in surprise and pain. The fighting around him seemed to slow. Spears raised in deadly thrusts lingered, and swords cut to a halt. Arcs of blood hung in gouts and the tortured, helpless faces of nobles put to butcher like pigs screamed in frozen terror.

“You can’t be here,” she whispered. “This is my dream.”

“It’s not a dream,” Ulrem said, driving his way up to the second step. “It’s a ghost!”

Her lovely face drew down into a frown. “I need to see it.” She clutched a hand to her throat. “I need to know why.”

“See what?” Ulrem fought on, hammering through whatever aegis Laeila had placed over the dais. His breath puffed in icy clouds and his skin prickled with the weird effect of the magic.

Laeila turned back to the window, her eyes staring out over the city, searching.

“You’re dead, woman!” Ulrem said, holding a hand out to the other. “You need to let go!”

“Who are you to command me?” Thunder clapped in the throne hall like a great drum, and Ulrem was thrown backward. The melee resumed, men hacking at each other with no sense of direction or purpose. An invader set upon him, and Ulrem barely rolled out of the way of his cudgel. Ulrem sank his teeth into the man’s calf, and the invader went down with an animal scream. Ulrem delivered two swift blows with his fist, silencing him.

He surged to his feet and moved to stand over Jakt. Sword in hand, he cut down any man who dared draw near, including two guardsmen who tried their mettle against him. From these, he took a shield and kicked the other’s sword to Jakt. But the man was useless.

A hollow opened around him, though the guardsmen and invaders didn’t cease their fighting. Rather, they shifted aside, their deadly dances carrying them away from the center and towards the walls, where the nobles piled in terror.

In the open space stood Sergeant Lidtho and two other men in Company garb. They were wild-eyed, each clutching swords of ancient Targothi make. The men were in poor shape: battered and bleeding, their clothes little more than shreds. Of them, only Lidtho seemed to have weathered the nightmare well.

The sergeant was a stocky man with a shaved head and a red mustache. Slightly bowlegged, he moved with the confidence of an old veteran. A sinuous blue snake was tattooed around the sides and backs of his scalp, and several foreign marks were inked onto his cheeks.

“The Lady says you must leave!” Sergeant Lidtho said, raising his voice to be heard over the din of battle. “You poison her dream with your presence, savage!”

Ulrem pointed with his sword. “Wake up, Lidtho, and you may escape this hell!”

“You give me orders, cut-throat? I have pledged my service to the Lady! She’ll make us barons of Targoth. Us! Barons!” He laughed gustily, but it had a manic edge, the keen of a starved man speaking of food.

“Targoth is dead, fool! No one rules these ruins!”

Madness gleamed in Lidtho’s eyes. “I’ve seen my reward, you butcher!” With a howl he leaped to, slicing at Ulrem with his short Tarogthi blade.

The others fanned out, moving to encircle Ulrem.

He flew to action. Ducking under the sergeant’s strike, Ulrem feinted at the left-hand man, making him flinch back, and whirled back under Lidtho’s backslash. The man was slow, sloppy, and too eager. Ulrem grabbed the sergeant by the back of the neck and hurled him into the right-hand man.

They crashed to the sandy floor of the throne hall, cast out of the past, leaving Ulrem to deal with a single opponent. The ragged man stood little chance against the lion’s fury. Ulrem made short work of him and turned his attention back to Laeila. She was watching him with cat’s eyes.

“What would you have done?” she asked him, coming forward to the edge of the dais.

Before Ulrem could answer, Jakt shouted a warning. He turned in time to catch a spear point in the side. Sergeant Lidtho’s blood-mad eyes were shedding huge, crazed tears. The room shimmered behind him, at once filled with death, and again vacant, dusty, forgotten: an echo eating itself, shivering as it collapsed towards the inevitable. Lidtho quivered with rage, lips drooling as he drove the spear deep. The pain of it, unspeakable agony, wound through Ulrem’s mind, a white rage beyond words, or feeling. Twisting, roaring with the pain, he cut the sergeant’s head off with a furious slash, feeling the blade part flesh, bone, and sinew.

Lidtho’s body fell forward onto Ulrem and dragged the big man to his knees.

“Damn,” he growled. Braveblade clattered to the ground. “Akale’s ashes!”

The spear had missed his vitals, he marked, but already he was beginning to feel cold. He tore it free with a cry of outrage and anguish that was hardly human.

Get up! There’s a third man! The echoes of his ring raved. They forced him back to his feet, one hand clamped against his side. Can’t die here, not now!

“I don’t die here,” Ulrem muttered, looking at the bright blood on his fingers. “I die by fire.” He turned with a groan, searching the hall for the third man. Found him lying under Jakt, who was stabbing over and over again with Ulrem’s knife.

“Lionborn,” said a soft voice from behind him. “Ulrem, what has happened?”

The room shifted again, but this time, he found he was on his back. Laeila knelt beside him, a vision of heartbroken beauty. She reached out to him, but her hands were frigid. Ignoring the bite, Ulrem took them in his own. The ring was blazing now, the ghosts he carried demanded he stand, fight, resist. But there was no resisting this. He was a sword, an instrument. He had no magic to combat such pain, no succor to give a queen’s haunted memory. He was bleeding to death on the floor of her throne hall, a thousand years too late.

“Targoth fell,” Ulrem said. “You couldn’t save it. I couldn’t save it.”

She stared at him, aghast. “It was the Raaesha, the festival of the Great Sun. The auspices were pure. How could it have happened?”

“It was your uncle, Laeila. Do you remember?” Ulrem’s eyes gleamed, unpolished chips of granite in a face chiseled by a lifetime of war. Her beauty and pain softened him only a little. As gently as he could, he explained. “Your guardsman came for you when the traitors seized the gates. His treachery erased all this in a single night.”

Laeila wailed, and the force of it shook the room. “No! I won’t allow it!” she cried, banshee scream cracking the stones around them. One of the pillars crashed to the ground, raining from the ceiling. “I can stop it!”

“It’s already done. A thousand years ago, more. There’s nothing left,” he said, raising a bloody hand to her cheek. Her eyes went to his wound, grew wide. He took her chin in his free hand, bringing her eyes back to his. “Let it go,” he said.

“Then you must save Targoth,” she said, clinging to him desperately. Tears flowed from her eyes. “I saw the lion in your shadow when you danced! I know the ring upon your finger, Inheritor! Please, Imaahis, Lion Lord, spare my home!”

“That is not my name,” Ulrem said sadly. He held her close. The truth burned him more deeply than the magi’s fire. “I cannot do what you ask. Even the stars must die.”

The room was coming down around them. Another pillar collapsed, and one of the walls came down, as huge balls of fire blasted the palace from afar. More invaders were piling through the doors and into the throne hall. The past was seething again, lashing at the present. Targoth’s doom had come. No gentle death, but the savage fury of the frontier unleashed like a dam breaking.

“Death grinned at you,” Ulrem said, pulling her face to his for a final, lasting kiss. Her lips were warm, alive with memory.

“We could have danced and loved until dawn,” she whispered into his neck.

“Perhaps we will, in another life. Now it’s time for you to grin back, Queen of Targoth.”