For once, Millie Thatcher rode on horseback, instead of on the back of Hett’s wagon. It had been nearly a month since the battle the soldiers had come to refer to as the Day of Thunder and Mud, and they were finally approaching the City of Prophets. There had been no more encounters since the day the Battlemaster moved a river to defeat the Deskren, but The General had not allowed the convoy to slow their pace. Millie, once stuck at her tenth level for weeks, had more than made up for lost time under the training and discipline Jacob Ward demanded. Her skills had improved as well, and she had gained several new cadences -- which the Worldwalker had immediately put to use.

[Double Time] was the standing order each morning after the breakfast meal when the column first started moving, with Millie tapping the beats and relentlessly driving everyone onwards. At first she could only sustain the skill for a half a bell, but within a fortnight, her stamina had vastly improved. Now, she kept the fast march going almost until noon before exhaustion and strain laid her low in Hett’s wagon. After the noontime meal and water, though, the Battlemaster had her march on the ground without her drum to build her own strength. It was good training, she had to admit; with only one arm, she couldn’t perform the same drills and exercises as the other soldiers, but Jacob refused to let her fall behind.

The civilians complained about the pace, of course. It had only taken a handful of days without pursuit before they began voicing their displeasure, but the Battlemaster and his troops had simply continued to march. The stragglers always caught up by dusk, fearful of being left behind. They had lagged behind the banners for the first half of every day, until finally they reached a massive bridge spanning a glimmering river. Hett had told her it was the famed River Swift, and that there was a Guild that used magically powered ships to travel between the Sea of Possibility and the Western Sea. That was what gave High Bridge its name: its bed and arches were set high on ornate stone columns to give ships plenty of room to pass underneath. Once the gleaming white stone of the top of the structure began to peek visibly above the horizon, the refugees had needed far less prodding to keep up with the march: knowing they were close to their destination had renewed their vigor.

The surviving former Gendarmes, while they had had no such trouble keeping the Battlemaster’s pace, suffered their own challenges: tensions between them and some of the convoy had been high enough that they were almost palpable. The nobles and more fearful refugees had been understandably shy about travelling with the very same terrifying enemy that had once hunted them so relentlessly. That fear had been eased somewhat when Jacob had divided the Luparan beastkin into smaller pack units to augment his own scouts. Most of them now ran as advance pickets alongside their lighter horse, and having less of them loping alongside the column made the rest of the caravan much less nervous. 

The Beastfolk themselves had only a few discipline issues, falling into snarling fights for dominance within the first few days of being free from the collars. Millie had been afraid some of them would kill each other, but Hett and Jacob both reassured her that they were simply a different kind of people, and had to sort out things in a different kind of way. The Battlemaster let them sort out their own ranks, as long as they followed his orders. And follow they did, although several that Hett had called ‘alphas’ within her hearing did seem more aggressive than the others, especially towards their new human leader. Millie dreaded the eventual confrontation from that. She had seen Jacob Ward angry only the one time, and was not looking forward to seeing it again.

Normally, Millie rode on Hett’s wagon when she was not marching on foot. Now that they were approaching the city, however, Jacob had requested she ride in the lead wagon, along with himself, Miss Erin, and several others. Hett had protested leaving his wagon to the terrified teamster who had to dodge his mules to take the seat on the wagon to drive. The man grumbled quite loudly,  but a stern glance had quieted the man to infrequent mumblings about saddles and jewels. What saddles had to do with jewels, or why he would be angry about that, she did not know -- and as she had no voice to ask Miss Erin or Lady Jenna to explain, she resolved to write it down the next time the two women were overseeing her handwriting practice. She had been born left-handed, and learning to write with her remaining hand was as frustrating as the fact that The General insisted she do it in the first place. I’m a Soldier, not a scribe, she had protested. But, Soldiers followed orders, and the order had been given. So it was that she swallowed her indignation and obediently copied her letters after every evening meal, while Lady Jenna or Miss Erin oversaw one of the camp children in cleaning her gauntlet and chain mail. That particular task had simply proven impossible with one arm, although the [Hand of Solace] assured her that the General would see to getting her a new one at the first opportunity. She longed for that day, albeit less for the prospects of cleaning armor and more for keeping up with her fellow Soldiers without feeling more like a mascot than a military professional.

Her musings were brought to a halt as they crested the highest point of the bridge, bringing the City of Prophets into view. Once, a fair while ago, she had travelled with her father and brothers to the city of South Hollows to sell grain and potatoes; she remembered thinking at the time that it was a large and wonderful city. When she looked at the vista before her, she realized how naive she had been; set against the brightly-decorated buildings stretching from the glimmering sea to the east and wrapping around gently sloping hills to the west, South Hollows may as well have been a dirt hovel. To the north, above the city, the Temple stood on the bluffs, overlooking both the waters and the section of the city with the largest buildings and paved streets. Millie focused on the far end of the bridge, where a man sat on horseback between the two far bridgetowers. He was waving a white cloth; clearly, the man they were to meet. Jacob raised his fist to call a halt over a dozen strides away from where the man sat, his own charger clopping forward a few more steps.

“Well met, Battlemaster,” he called, loud enough for all to hear, but not quite a shout. “I am Jargo, and the [Oracle] has witnessed your journey. She bids you welcome, and asks that you join her at the Gathering of Kings.”

“It would have been nice of her to send reinforcements while we were running,” Jacob Ward remarked neutrally.

Jargo shook his head. “She has no reinforcements to send; she does not rule, nor does she command. Her burden is to stand witness, save for the circumstances outlined in the Bargain of Kings. The price of knowledge is to be powerless to use it.”

The General sat silently on his horse for a long moment. “I have Soldiers sworn to my command. Will they be welcomed as well?”

Hett answered before Jargo could speak up, spitting off to the side of his own horse. “The Gathering of Kings is peacebound. No one will attack unprovoked, lest the [Oracle] yank the crowns from their heads and give their lands to their enemies.”

Millie could almost hear Jacob’s eyebrow raise. “So, not entirely powerless, is she?” he said.

“Not when people break the rules,” replied the grey-bearded old warrior. “Long as everyone plays nice, she can’t do a thing. We just have to make sure we all play nice.”

“I make no promises,” said Jacob, flicking the reins of his horse. “Lead on, Mister Jargo. The [Oracle] awaits.”

“As you desire, Battlemaster,” replied Jargo, turning his horse.

Thus did the Banner of the Black Lance march into the City of Prophets.

================================================

Rella stood next to Wyatt Reinholt, the Worldwalker who was not yet her Champion. It was not a thing she could demand, even if he were ready to be asked. Such a role could not be forced upon someone, and she would never have tolerated an unwilling protector in any case. Every future she had seen where she tried to impose the duty upon him had been disastrous, turning him against her personally, and by extension causing the Twins to dislike her severely. The possibilities as they stood seemed evenly split between him either becoming her Champion and not, and for the moment, she needed to be content with those odds.

What drove him was the desire to protect the Twins -- his sisters, Sophie and Sonya -- and he had followed when they joined the [Oracle] to receive training in their own divination talents. While younger even than Rella, they were perceptive and wise beyond their years, and had seen right through the fact that she barely knew any more than they did. In truth all three young women were learning more together than by her teaching the other two.

Today, however, was not a day for teaching. Rella, the Twins, and their ever-watchful protector stood on the dais in the center of the grand plaza outside the Temple of Remembrance. They were surrounded by more pageantry and pompous frivolity than had graced the City of Prophets in Rella’s entire lifetime, and it nearly made her sick. As perceptive as ever, Sonya spoke up when Rella’s own composure slipped.

“A sour stomach?” the girl asked. “This looks like one of those renaissance faires our mom liked to go to.”

“Yeah,” her sister interjected, wrinkling her nose, “but those didn’t smell like so much horse poop, and people actually took showers. This place smells like portapotties.” Sophie had proven of sharper tongue than her twin, although both could be acerbic to an alarming degree. “I get why rich people use so much incense in this world, now.”

“I would have thought you’d be used to it by now,” said Rella, grateful for the distraction so that she could turn away from the assembled nobility milling in the courtyard in order to rub at her right eye. She still wasn’t used to the itchy covering, but the eye she had gained in the dreamworld was very unsettling to look at, in addition to being hypersensitive to light. “And I take a bath at least twice a week!”

“It’s nearly noon,” said Sophie. “And it’s getting hotter. What is everyone waiting for?”

“Don’t you remember all the stuff from the faires?” Sonya answered the question with a question. “There’s all sorts of tradition and etiquette to any meeting of nobility.”

“She’s right,” said Rella. “The last Gathering happened over fifty years ago, and they’ll use this as an opportunity for the crowns to meet under enforced peace. War or not, while they are here, Kings and Queens can talk without the worry of messengers or anyone else getting in the way and causing problems. Most of them have never met their fellows.”

“One of them keeps looking at us,” Sophie said. “The woman with the shiny armor that matches her crown.” She stared back, with the defiance only a teenager could muster.

“That would be Mette Weldt, the Warrior Queen of Weldtir,” Rella answered. “She’s angry, and has every right to be. The southern half of her home has been overrun and now parts of it flooded, and she resents the obligation of the Gathering. Her duty demanded she come here instead of defending her own lands.”

“I thought The General was coming here. Are they going to fight since he broke the levee you told us about?” Sonya’s eyes shone, and she seemed almost eager to see confrontation.

“They might,” shrugged Rella. “But I don’t think either of them want to, and it did break the Deskren incursion into the south. She understands pragmatism, even if she doesn’t like it. A bigger problem is King Aomhar Valence of Forvale. He’s upset The General crossed his border with what amounts to his own private army.”

“And he couldn’t do anything about it because he had to come here?” Sophie was as curious about the politics as her sister was enamored of fighting.

Rella shook her head. “None of them could. The Bargain of Kings means they all had to come here, by today, or I would be freed from neutrality. None of them want me telling the future to the others.” She gave a wan smile. “No ruler misses a Gathering and keeps their crown for very long.”

As if the thought of The General pulled on her mind, she could suddenly sense the people approaching the city. Jargo was now escorting the General and a small group through the city, down the main avenue. The bulk of the troops following the banner had halted neatly outside the city, and she had already dispatched requests for aid and supplies to be provided to the weary refugees. While the futures of those accompanying him were relatively simple to predict -- at least in a broad sense -- thanks to her eye, that of the man himself remained infuriatingly difficult. 

It wasn’t that Jacob was indecisive or confused in his thoughts, as she might find with the insane, or those plagued with self-doubt. He simply held so many possibilities in his mind at once that only the vaguest outcomes, the broadest strokes, were visible to her Sight no matter how she focused. When the Battlemaster gave an order or committed to a plan, the futures quickly solidified, but until then, he remained opaque -- most of the time.

In this moment he stood out to her mind’s eye, a nexus of grim potential. He had paused on the main boulevard, near the center of the city. Rella felt the futures shift as the man dismounted, halting the entire procession of horses in the middle of the street to approach a figure in a black coat with a white collar. The man -- the worldwalker known as The Preacher -- had spent most of his time on Anfealt tending to the poorer neighborhoods and helping to feed the impoverished. The entire docks district had been put to flame by the Deskren on Purple Night, so there had been no shortage of homeless and hungry and children to feed.

The odds of two Worldwalkers that did not arrive together actually knowing each other previously were infinitesimally small, but Rella couldn’t think of any other reason for the shock of recognition that had crossed Jacob Ward’s face. Father Albert, as Albert Magnus had insisted she call him upon their one meeting, was an unassuming and kindly man who had been more interested in helping the needy than most people she had ever turned her Sight upon. Even in her deepest meditations, no dire fates or crises had appeared that involved the man, so she had left him to his own devices out of respect for his age and the shock he had endured upon finding himself in a world other than his own.

Something started to hum in the back of her mind, millions of possibilities rushing past her, glittering flashes of possibility washing her vision away as the Sight took over. Yet, The General stood in perfect clarity, even as everyone else save The Preacher faded to grey and were lost to her. As the two nexuses of potential drew together, their words came at once blurred and crystal-clear, shouted through rushing water and right next to her ears.

“Last thing I thought I’d see here, Father, is that collar.” She could hear the smile on his face, even though she couldn’t see it.

The Preacher blinked, straightening. “You are one of the flock, then? From Earth?” His voice swelled with growing excitement.

“Yes, Father,” the General replied. “I grew up in the Church...but this is a long way from St. Peter’s in Nebraska.”

The words made no sense. She didn’t know what a St. Peter’s was, nor a Nebraska, and she couldn’t spare a single thought about their meaning as the rush of possibilities grew more tumultuous until, suddenly, they stopped short as if scythed off with an abruptness that clutched at her heart and quickened her breath as the Preacher spoke.

“Have you come to spread the Word, my son?” A dreadful spark burned to life behind The Preacher’s eyes, and in that moment, Rella’s world fell away.

A rush of blood washed over the future, over all of the futures around her. First, the Deskren, and then the rest of the nations of Anfealt, vanished in a crimson tide so thick she could taste it – and then, faintly, she realized she had bitten through her tongue. She choked on not only her own blood, but the blood of the future as she saw The General raise a new banner, a terrible banner, his lance motif crossed with a spar of brilliant vermilion.

One by one, the futures around her vanished, burned away from Fate’s tapestry. Lives ended in numbers beyond counting, their phantom screams echoing back across space and time. She saw massive ships raised, setting sail under that new banner for lands unseen, beyond even her Sight. She saw temples razed, gods torn from slumber and put to the sword, and new churches raised in their place, all to a single deity. Her Sight twisted, and she saw the world fall into centuries of chaos under a new, terrible lash.

The pressure of Fate’s warping closed in on her mind, and she could feel the [Oracles] within the mantle weeping in abject horror as the weight of this new, terrible future bore down on them all. As if from miles away, she dimly recognized that even those others in the plaza around her could feel it. The Twins moaned as one, clutching their heads, and The Fortress moved to stand before them, raising his shield against an unseen, unseeable foe. Servants collapsed to the stonework, and even Kings and Queens found themselves submitting.

Rella felt a True Vision rising, as fearsome and implacable as the fate she foresaw. Unbidden, her body drew breath to Speak--

“No.”

Suddenly, with that single word, Rella could breathe again. He carried on his conversation with the Preacher, ignorant of the horrible fate that that single syllable had spared the entire world. Their words faded into incomprehensibility as her attention returned to her body.

No, Rella thought with sudden realization. Jacob Ward knew better than anyone just what sort of weight sat behind such a question. He had shouldered its full weight in the span of a heartbeat -- and shrugged it away. That any man could so casually consider and then utterly dismiss such terrible glory without even reacting left her utterly stunned. 

“My Lady,” spoke a rough but feminine voice. Mette, the warrior queen, had crossed the plaza while Rella was indisposed. “I can’t help but feel something dire just almost happened -- oh, and you are bleeding.”

Rella dismissed Mette with an annoyed wave of her hand, letting her mind go back to Jacob after wiping the blood from her mouth with a cloth one of the Twins offered her. Something had most definitely almost happened, and she would have to make up for her rudeness later -- but she had to return to the two Worldwalkers.

“Perhaps that is best,” the priest was saying with a gentle smile. “There’s been enough blood shed back home over such things to sate a hundred worlds.”

“Truer words,” replied Jacob, closing his hand around the other man’s upper arm. “I do have one thing I hope to discuss with you, though.”

“Really?” the Preacher asked, cocking his head. “I thought the [Oracle] would be waiting for you with all the other pompous fools calling themselves noble.”

“Aye, the [Oracle] can wait. I’d like to take confession, if you have a moment.” Jacob’s expression grew serious serious, and the Preacher nodded as he stepped away from the children to whom he had been handing out bread. He passed the basket to an older street urchin before turning and gesturing for Jacob to continue. “Forgive me Father, for I have sinned. It has been…” Jacob trailed off, confusion writing itself across his face.

The priest chuckled. “We’ve been here in this world for nearly ten months by my best reckoning,” he said softly.

“It has been some time before that since I last…”

Their words faded as the priest made the same gesture Rella had seen him perform quite often, touching his forehead, then his chest, then each shoulder. She pushed harder with her Sight, feeling whatever was being spoken was of great import, and then--

The Preacher halted, his shoulders stiffening up as if he knew he were being observed. He seemed to step out of himself, and turned towards Rella, his imperious gaze freezing her in place. The rest of the world, too, seemed to still, leaving The Preacher and Rella alone.

Through her Sight, he looked her directly in the eye, golden flames dancing behind his irises as he Spoke:

“The sanctity of the Confession is absolute.”

Despite the distance between them, those Words came as clearly as if they’d been spoken directly into Rella’s ears, for her and her alone. As The Preacher returned to The General, Rella felt her Sight turned aside with a feeling of near contempt. She gasped, thrown back into her own body, and her shock rippled through the souls residing in the mantle. Places like the Wildlands or the Elemental Desert could obscure or confuse her Sight, but never before had anything simply denied the gaze of the [Oracle].

The sound of boots on stone brought her back to her senses, The Fortress having stepped around her to raise his shield against Queen Mette’s closer approach. The queen raised a placating hand before saying, “Peace, protector; I mean your Lady no harm. Is everything alright?”

“I...don’t know…” Rella’s voice trailed off as she considered the consequences of what had just happened, although she smiled with the realization that the Queen’s word had struck a chord in the mind of Wyatt Reinholt. The possible futures where he didn’t become her champion had just dwindled to a narrow few when she called him her protector. It was a balm to soothe the nervousness she felt at someone being able to so completely block her Sight.

==================================================

Millie didn’t understand what was so important about the strange man in the black coat with his white collar. Taller than Miss Erin, and thin, but with a kind face, he had been handing out food to children even younger than herself. Millie certainly approved of anyone who fed hungry brats; after all, she had been able to count herself among their number until she became a Soldier. He was not as tall as the Battlemaster, barely coming up to the commander’s armored shoulder plates, yet Jacob held obvious respect for the stranger. He had removed his helmet and greeted the man like a friend, and Miss Erin had even bowed slightly! The General’s Wife didn’t even bow for Lord Davin from South Hollows, the highest-ranked noble in the caravan.

She didn’t need to understand whatever had just happened. Both Jacob and Erin Ward had spoken quietly with the funny looking priest, and both Worldwalkers seemed much calmer and more relaxed the rest of the trip to the large pavilion where the [Oracle] waited with the Kings and Queens of Anfealt. Much of the weariness and exhaustion seemed to have been lifted from their shoulders, and they both smiled more. At least, they did until they passed a large field where many fancily-dressed people were drinking and shouting and playing games. Jacob’s smile melted back to the familiar scowl that usually meant people were about to die. Millie hoped not; she didn’t like not having her drum when fighting happened.

The man leading them -- Jargo, she remembered -- led them the rest of the way through the sprawling city. There were many piles of rubble and burned-out buildings, though those blocks were outnumbered by the new construction. The City of Prophets had not sat idle since the Deskren attack, and Millie was reminded that more than just the caravan had suffered. Her belly growled at the scent of sweet breads and pastries. Over their long march, the food stores they started out with had dwindled to austere rations of plain dried meat and biscuits, washed down with water, and the pleasant aromas from the city proved very distracting.

They halted before a series of broad stone steps that led up the bluffs overlooking the city. She could see flags at the top, most of them bright and colorful. None were as grim as the Black Lance, the flag carried by Mister Davin, Miss Jenna’s husband. Jacob sat still as everyone else dismounted, looking up at the flamboyant display. A cool breeze from the sea made the flags and banners dance, but the Battlemaster’s banner hung unmoving, weighed down by the black collars sewn into the bottom like so many tassels. Hett sighed loudly with relief at being back on the ground, shrugging his shoulders to settle the axe on his back.

“A lot of pompous jack-assery up there, for a bunch of kingdoms facing invasion,” said Jacob, before finally dismounting from his massive charger. The horse stamped one foot and simply looked at the stable-boy who tried to take the reins “He won’t move until I tell him,” said the General to the boy. “Leave him be, I doubt we’ll be here long. At least, not if I have any say.”

“Easy, lad,” Jargo told the boy, flipping him a copper coin. “The lady up top told me this would probably happen, just have some water and feed brought up here for the horses.”

Erin helped Millie dismount, the horse being slightly too tall for the girl to easily manage on her own with one arm. Hett and Davin likewise helped the last of their party to the ground. Calvin Descroix had been pulled from the mud, caught in the top of a tree by the floodwaters before his shield had collapsed. Bound, but not mistreated, Jacob had ordered the prisoner brought along. He kept his head up, however, captured but not cowed or cowardly, and Millie could respect that even though she didn’t really like him. Jacob pulled a small brown satchel out of a saddlebag, tucking it into his sword belt, and with that they began to ascend the steps without fanfare or announcement.

===============================================

Mette Weldt, Queen of Weldtir, eyed her royal counterparts warily as the sun neared its zenith, all of them waiting for the [Oracle] to officially convene the Gathering. She had little respect for most of them, and Aomhar of Forvale least of all. Tensions had been growing between their nations ever since the odious man had claimed his father’s throne, two centuries of peaceful trade and history cast aside when the new king repeatedly raised transport fees at several river crossings. Her spies could never prove it, but a drastic increase in river piracy and banditry had the scent of privateering. 

As angry as she was at this Worldwalker General for destroying the northernmost levee and flooding several towns and a vast tract of farmland, she had to admit that the new position of the river would, in time, be a boon to Weldtir and her family’s ancient holdings -- as soon as the floodwaters receded, and the river became passable once more. As much as she hated being obliged to ride north while the southern half of her homeland was under attack, the Gathering had not been entirely useless: she had in her belt pouch a sealed agreement from King Lamon Dale of Meadowspire. Grain from the Golden Meadows meant her people would not starve before the land recovered, and with the river now bordered on both sides by Weldt lands, she could repay the debt far more quickly than before. Aomhar was incensed at the loss of crossing tariffs and shipping fees, and that loss was Weldtir’s gain.

Nine small shaded pavilions encircled the ancient courtyard: one for each Crown, and one, in the middle, for the Oracle. The courtyard itself was vast enough that one could have raised a small village within its expanse, if one would have dared entertain the thought. Not all of the pavilions were occupied; these were set more for tradition’s sake than anything else. Arctern, the northernmost kingdom, had had no ruler for centuries, and Glenhollow, the southernmost, had collapsed into a squabbling, infighting mass of lordlings and aspirants following the first Deskren War. It had never recovered, or remained conquered for long enough for one dynasty to cement its rule, which Mette found profoundly sad. The forests and hills of the Glens had once provided rich and profitable trade, but South Hollows had been its last true city. There wouldn’t be much left once the Empire was driven out.

Desena Kos, the queen of the far eastern monarchy of Kosala, was an enigma. Extremely reclusive, the Kosalans traded mostly with the Dwarves of Thun’Kadrass: dwarven cannon and military support in exchange for the bounty of the eastern seas brought in by Eastharbor’s massive fishing fleets and mercantile reach. They had barely a token ground force of their own beyond the various city guards, but they rarely suffered Deskren raids simply by dint of geography and the Empire’s utter lack of any real naval presence. The Gathering was probably the first time the diminutive and quiet Queen had ever left her own capital, and would probably be the only time she did so.

One ruler she did respect nodded back at her from across the pavilion when his eyes met hers. Hanz Geremas of Drakenth was by far the oldest and most grizzled of the assembled monarchs. The Drakengard Sky-Knights had once been known across the breadth of Anfealt before the bulk of their order had been wiped out in the disaster that had been the Battle of Oasa. It had taken three centuries for their numbers to recover after losing so many breeding pairs of Drakes, only to be brought to the brink of extinction once again during the Steel Crusade. What few they had left now never left the high reaches of Drakenth’s mountain ranges, save for risky patrols a few times a year across the Wildwall, to make observations near the Silent City. This was more to discourage would-be adventurers than anything else; the golems of the Ruined Kingdom stayed in their city unless disturbed, and no one sane would risk provoking them ever again.

The queen turned her attention to the central pavilion and its four occupants. She thought the new [Oracle] showed signs of promise, and resolved to watch her closely. Close-shorn tawny hair and an eyepatch contributed to her mystique; while Mette was curious about its necessity, to pry would have been unseemly. She certainly didn’t lack for the requisite boldness, having claimed a Worldwalker as bodyguard, and two more as personal attendants. Or, perhaps, as apprentices; Mette’s own eyes and ears had found precious little information in that regard. As always, the [Oracle] was impossible to track when she chose to be, and this Rella with no family name had vanished from the temple during the Purple Night only to reappear in Brackholt over a month later. She had promptly snatched up the Fortress and the Twins and vanished with several more of the town’s guardsmen, and no one knew for sure where they had travelled before showing back up at the Temple of Possibility just in time for the Gathering of Kings.

The Fortress and his sisters were a bit easier to understand in some ways, Worldwalkers or not. Teenage girls were teenage girls regardless of origin, and they seemed to be making the best of being in a new world. It was just as well, Mette considered, that the [Oracle] had found them first. Much could be gleaned of new magics and technologies just from what such people knew of their homelands, and not all peoples of Anfealt would have been kind in the asking. 

The boy was certainly impressive, though. Tall and not done growing, he stood in his armor as if he had been born wearing it. A crooked nose and scarred face sat below eyes that never stopped moving; he’d never be pretty, but he had his charm, and the queen had noticed the way Rella glanced at him when she thought no one was paying attention. The girl would have been hard-pressed to find a more suitable protector, abilities with the Sight notwithstanding.

Her thoughts had been confirmed when the [Oracle] had suddenly gasped and rose up on the balls of her feet as if entranced. The young man had stepped between Rella and the crowd to interpose his shield between them, and the movement had been as natural and fluid as it had been preternaturally quick. He had the makings of a born defender the likes of which Mette had rarely seen, and, though young, he already had a solidity of presence to rival veterans of a shield wall. You’ll need that strength, she thought, especially with another Deskren War on the horizon.

A clamor by the steps leading down to the city distracted her, Aomhar and his guards protesting as one of the [Oracle]’s guardsmen led a group of newcomers onto the pavillion. Mette feared the whisper of steel being drawn, as a man in black armor nearly as tall as an Ursaran strode between the columns at the entrance despite the protests of the Forvalen King. He was followed by a brown-haired woman, much shorter of stature, and a grizzled old man with an axe strapped to his back. The figure tugged at her memory, but Mette had no time to linger on the thought. On the warrior’s other side walked a girl with one arm, little more than a child. She had black hair cut almost as short as a boy’s, and her single arm was encased in a gauntlet of exquisite workmanship matching the chain mail over her plain brown breeches and polished boots. A red chevron decorated the shoulder plate where her gauntlet was secured to the rings of the mail. As disturbing as the tall warrior, the girl’s red eyes bespoke a terrible capacity for violence, chained by absolute discipline. I know a Soldier when I see one.

Behind the man whom she realized -- with a flicker of impotent rage at the destruction he caused -- could be none other than The General walked another couple. Of middle age they seemed, both weary from the road and wary of their surroundings. They seemed especially wary of the man they led between them, hands bound in front with rope. This man she knew very well, at least by description, and Mette’s hand drifted towards the blade at her side. Calvin Descroix, under close guard or not, was hardly a welcome guest at the Gathering. Is The General insane?! she raged internally. Bringing one of the heirs to the enemy throne was almost certain to end in bloodied steel, Gathering or not.

Before the grumblings could turn into something more physical, the sun reached its highest point overhead to cast perfectly-aligned shadows from the pillars around the circle. Then, the [Oracle] Spoke.

“By the ancient Bargain of Kings, this Gathering is convened.”