Tavi dismounted and strode forward to stand beside Varg. His hobnailed boots clicked on the stone of the wall and splashed through the water. He took back his helmet from Varg’s grasp, swept it through the watery heart of the image of the vord Queen, and drank deeply.

Steel rasped on steel as ten thousand swords sprang free of their sheaths. The sudden, furious roar of the Canim shook the air with such force that the water of the pools danced and jumped as if under a heavy rainstorm. The watersendings could not maintain their integrity in the face of that disruption, and they collapsed, splashing back down into the pools, shaken to bits by the enraged howls of Canim and Aleran alike.

Tavi joined them, shouting in wordless anger, and drew his sword, lifting it high.

The storm of approval from the Canim redoubled, making the plates of Tavi’s lorica vibrate and rattle against one another, resolving into a thundering chant of, “VARG! TAVAR! VARG! TAVAR!”

Tavi exchanged a Canim salute with Varg, then turned and went back to his horse. He mounted up on the dancing, nervous animal and beckoned Max and his second guard. As they rode from the Canim camp, the crowd, still howling his Canim name, parted before and around them in an armored sea of swords and fangs and wrath.

Tavi kicked his mount into a run and headed back to the First Aleran’s camp.

“What are we going to do?” Max called as they rode.

“What we always do when the enemy attacks us,” Tavi said. He bared his teeth in a wolfish smile. “We’re going to hit back.”

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 6

Invidia entered the massive, dome-shaped structure where the vord Queen took a daily meal and shuddered as she always did. The walls were made of faintly glowing green croach. There were swirls and mounds of it everywhere, splayed into abstract shapes that were both beautiful and revolting. The ceiling stretched fifty feet overhead, and Invidia could have used the massive space beneath it to teach a class in flying.

Spiderlike creatures, the keepers, swarmed over the croach, their many-legged, translucent bodies fading eerily into the ambient glow of the walls, floor, and ceiling. If a keeper wasn’t moving, one could all but stumble over it, so well did they blend with the massive construction. Hundreds of the creatures swarmed through the place, climbing smoothly up the walls and across the ceiling, a constant and irritating motion.

In the center of the dome was the high table from the banquet hall of the High Lord of Ceres along with its chairs. It was a gorgeously carved, massive construct of Rhodesian oak, a gift to the current High Lord’s great-grandfather. One could have seated half a cohort of legionares along its length without once hearing armored shoulder plates click together.