Queen of the Darkness

wanted—to unleash just a little of the feelings that had been growing more virulent. She hated Hekatah, but she also needed the bitch. So she sat back and inflicted a wound that would hurt much deeper than any physical blow. "At least I still have all my hair. That bald patch is starting to ooze, dearest."
    Hekatah automatically lifted a hand to cover the spot. With effort, she lowered it before it reached her head.
    The impotent hatred in Hekatah's dull gold eyes scared Dorothea a little but also produced a sense of vicious satisfaction.
    "We can make do with sneaking through the other Gates," Hekatah said. "We have something better now."
    "And what is that?" Dorothea asked politely.
    "The excuse we needed to start the war." Hekatah's smile was pure malevolence.
    "I see," Dorothea said, returning the smile.
    "The immigrants we had picked to replace the villagers will go to Glacia—just as they would have if Hobart had given us that village as payment for our assistance. We'll also add a few immigrants from other Terreillean Territories. The escorts will be males who don't know where the original village was located. Only the Coach drivers will be told where to drop off the happy families—and that won't be anywhere near a settled area, so there won't be any chance of detection. The escorts will, of course, be dismayed to see no sign of a village waiting for inhabitants." A dreamy look filled Hekatah's eyes. "The company of Eyrien warriors who will be waiting for them will take care of things. The slaughter will be ... horrible. But there will be a couple of survivors who will manage to escape. They'll live long enough to get back to Little Terreille and tell a few people about how Terreilleans are being butchered in Kaeleer. And they'll live long enough to say that two men had been giving the orders—a Hayllian and an Eyrien."
    "No one in Terreille will think it's anyone but Sadi and Yaslana," Dorothea said gleefully. "They'll think the High Lord ordered the attack and sent his sons to oversee it."
    "Exactly."
    "Which will prove that all my warnings were justified. And once people start wondering why there has been no word from friends or loved ones..." Dorothea sank back in her chair with a sigh of pleasure. Then she straightened up reluctantly. "We still have to find a way to contain Jaenelle Angelline."
    "Oh, with the proper incentive, she'll willingly place herself in our hands."
    Dorothea snorted. "What kind of incentive would make her do that?"
    "Using someone she loves as bait."
----
    7 / Kaeleer
    Chilled to the bone, Saetan listened to Lucivar's and Daemon's reports. He would have liked to believe Lord Hobart had hired a company of Eyriens to help him seize control of Glacia, would have liked to believe Morton's death and the attack on Karla were strictly a Glacian concern. But he'd had other reports in the past twenty-four hours. Two District Queens in Dharo had been killed, along with their escorts. A mob of landens had attacked a kindred wolf pack that had recently formed around a young Queen. While the males were dealing with that threat, some Blood had outflanked them, killed the Queen, and vanished, leaving the landens behind to be slaughtered by the enraged males. In Scelt, a Warlord Prince, a youth still not quite old enough to make the Offering to the Darkness, had been found behind the tavern in his home village. His throat had been slit.
    Even more troubling, Kalush had been attacked while walking through a park in Tajrana, her own capital city. The only reason neither she nor her infant daughter had been harmed was because her attackers couldn't break through the protective shield around her—the Ebony shield that was in the ring Jaenelle had given her—and because Aaron, alerted by the link through the Ring of Honor he wore, had arrived riding the killing edge and had destroyed the attackers with a savagery that bordered on insanity.
    It didn't take any effort to see the pattern, especially since he recognized it. Fifty thousand years slipped away as if they had never existed. It might have been Andulvar and Mephis sitting there, voicing their concerns about swift, seemingly random attacks to a man who had insisted that, as a Guardian, he could no longer interfere with the affairs of the living. He was still a Guardian, but he was too entangled in the affairs of the living to obey the rules Guardians abided by.
    They were going to war.
    He wondered if Daemon and Lucivar realized it