Publisher's Synopsis
Destiny is a blade, a streak of silver unbending in the unyielding dark. The warrior-queen treads in the snowy sand dunes of time, the ghost of her every movement following her close behind. She moves as the intangible blade moves, piercing a benumbing white horizon. The blade penetrates the dark of the unknown while she drifts along with the ghost of her previous steps. Her footprints instantly dissolve upon every succeeding step forward. Artemisia peers into the cold oblivion before her eyes. She marches on undaunted, untrammeled by the aimless white sea of euphoria. Then she hears her name being uttered slowly, the sweet enunciation of it scraping the bare bones of half-remembrance. Her father Lygdamis appears before her, but she drifts forward as before. A daughterly yet disobedient look crosses her eyes, and a part of her becomes stationary. She becomes as fixed as the spark of a flame that floods her mind with memories. Lygdamis raises a crown before her. Once he places the crown on her head, her monochrome surroundings fade. "You are now queen, my beloved daughter. You are Queen Artemisia I of Caria." At that moment, she feels that she is Athena freshly sprung from the brow of Zeus as she prepares to bestride mortal horizons. Lygdamis' gaze remains loving, as loving as she has always remembered him. Then the streak persists along the same spotless desert, allowing her to once again become immune to the perverse migrations of memory. She no longer feels her crown on her head. She feels another crown. The silver streak now becomes a blade fully whole, entering the king of Ephesus. Artemisia fully inhabits the present, fully savoring this moment in time. She has become an Amazon queen, observing the lavish interior of the palace that now belongs to her. All the palace guards have been slain at her hand. The king of the palace lays dead a few paces from her. Artemisia peers into the formless void, and the vast desert in her mind recedes. Now, she rises and steps beyond the pristine realm of royal security. At the corner of her eye, she nearly imagines Xerxes' imperious laughter drowning in the silences of his newly expired empire. She sees him vanish instantly. Artemisia steps outside the palace. She is a blade piercing the unknown, bending a blackness unknown to her in order to make it fully known to her. She walks.
