Sorcery of a Queen

by Brian Naslund

  “Kasamir?” she asked.

  The thin man’s right eye twitched. All the muscles in the giant’s right arm rippled in an involuntary tremor.

  “That is an old name. Do not use it.”

  So, it was him. Still alive, after all these years.

  “As you wish.” Ashlyn paused. Swallowed. She needed to change tactics—get some kind of leverage. “You mentioned Osyrus Ward. Did you know that he is still alive?”

  “That does not surprise me.”

  “He has continued the work that he began here. I’ve come to learn more about it, so that I can stop him.”

  “That is foolish. Osyrus is nothing more than a deranged creator of stunted nightmares. He twisted and tore the Ghost Moths. Tried to break them like horses.”

  “You can’t break a dragon. Same way you can’t scream at the rising tide and scare it off.”

  Kasamir laughed. “If you said that to Osyrus Ward, he would have built a screaming canal with automatic drainage just to prove you wrong. He might not have broken the Ghost Moths, but he still used them for his vile purposes.”

  “Maybe. But he never unlocked their true potential,” Ashlyn said. “I did.”

  Kasamir laughed—a wet and mocking rasp from damp lungs.

  “Boastful words are nothing but hot breath. I do not believe them.”

  “I’ll prove it.”

  Slowly, she rolled up her sleeve and unwound the black bandage, revealing the charred dragon thread. Ashlyn had kept it covered since they’d reached the island, but she’d felt its reach expanding across her arm with each passing day. Sinking deeper into her bones. She saw now that every vein in her forearm had turned black.

  “I have incinerated armies with this thread. Struck dragons from the sky.”

  Kasamir cocked his head, curious. A moment later, the giant’s had cocked, too. Interesting. The two shared some kind of connection, and Kasamir seemed to be the one in charge of it.

  “A clean application, but primitive.” Kasamir sniffed a few times, then sneered. “You have no governor. That is why you broke it.”

  “Governor,” Ashlyn repeated. “What do you mean?”

  He shook his head. “You say that you seek knowledge and understanding. But you lie. I know what you want.” He pointed at her wrist. “More of those.”

  “That’s right,” Ashlyn said. “I need a thread that Osyrus Ward never manipulated.”

  “Ward manipulated everything on this island. Everything. Stay long enough, and the remnants of his work will manipulate you, too.”

  “I am willing to accept that,” Ashlyn said.

  “You will regret that outlook in time. I certainly did.” He paused. “Do you plan to kill Osyrus Ward?”

  “If necessary.”

  Kasamir’s eyelid twitched while he considered this information.

  “Then I will help you. But you must pay for your passage.”

  “I have valuable alchemical ingredients,” Ashlyn offered. “Gods Moss.”

  “No. I trade in bone and flesh. Nothing else.”

  Kasamir turned to Wendell. The giant’s gaze followed.

  “The child is strong,” he said, studying Wendell with hungry eyes. “Born with the mother’s spores tucked gentle and quiet in his lungs. The crop will grow strong in his belly. Perhaps it is enough to finally repair what Osyrus Ward broke. After all these years.”

  Ashlyn saw where this was going, and she didn’t like the direction.

  “There must be another way. Kasamir—”

  “Do not use that name!” he snarled, eyes flashing wide with anger.

  The giant roared, guttural and wild. Muscles twitching with a potent and barely contained rage.

  Ashlyn took a small step back. Kasamir returned his cold gaze to Wendell.

  “You will give us the boy. In return, we will take you beyond the bones and let you walk amidst the nightmares that Osyrus has sown.”

  Vash stepped in front of his son. Drew his sword. “The fuck you will.”

  Ashlyn motioned for him to calm down. “The boy has no part in this. There must be another way.”

  “Our offer is made. It will not be changed. What is your answer?”

  “We will not give you the child,” Ashlyn said.

  Kasamir’s face darkened. “If you will not trade the boy willingly, then we will take him by force.”

  Ashlyn’s mind raced. Searching for some other way besides violence.

  “Take the kid and run,” Bershad growled to Vash.

  Vash didn’t hesitate. He picked Wendell up by the waist and sprinted for the mushrooms they’d cut through to reach the wall.

  “You, too, Felgor!” Bershad said, then rushed toward Ashlyn. Felgor ran, but chose to hide behind a nearby rock rather than cross the long, open field.

  “Bring me the child,” Kasamir hissed. The giant hefted his enormous club and lumbered forward. His muscles twitched and heaved. Ashlyn noticed that there was machinery beneath the layer of fungus on his shoulders. Metal pipes that sank into his rotten flesh.

  “I’ll deal with this,” Bershad said, reaching into Ashlyn’s satchel and coming up with a pinch of Gods Moss that he promptly ate.

  Then he raised his sword and charged the giant.

  When he was five strides away, the giant swiped at him with the bone club. Bershad leapt into the air, kicked off the top of the club as it came tearing toward him, and jettisoned himself forward. He jammed his sword hilt-deep into the giant’s neck. Twisted. Ashlyn saw flesh and tendons and blood vessels tear away from the wound.

  But instead of falling or screaming or registering the injury at all, the giant smiled. His teeth were festooned with orange tendrils of fungus.

  Bershad dug his sword deeper into the giant’s neck and twisted even further, churning up a mess of fungal tubes and swollen, infected flesh, but causing no discernible pain in the giant.

  “Oh shit.”

  The giant clamped an enormous hand around Bershad’s thigh and squeezed. Ashlyn heard the bone pop from ten strides away. He cast Bershad across the field with the lazy indifference of a farmer scattering seeds. Silas hit the ground with a thump and tumbled to a muddy, battered stop.

  Despite the broken leg, Silas was on his feet moments later, but the giant ripped the sword from his own throat—green bile spraying from the wound—and threw it at him. The sword whipped end-over-end, caught Bershad in the stomach, rammed him back to the ground, and pinned him there like a trapped insect. Bershad tried to pull himself free, but couldn’t. Half the blade was buried in the ground.

  The giant kept moving. Ashlyn went down on one knee, grabbed a paring knife from the satchel, and sliced her palm open. She ripped her hand across the charred thread, desperately trying to produce a charge. Nothing happened.

  The giant reached her. Raised his club. But before he could slam it down on her, Goll’s war axe sliced into the side of the giant’s skull, knocking him off balance just enough for the club to smash cold mud instead of Ashlyn’s body.

  Goll sprinted toward the giant, yelling something in Lysterian. The giant yanked the axe out of his skull, revealing a gash that was bursting with severed tendrils and tubers, and tossed the weapon aside. If it hurt the giant to pull an axe out of his own head, the creature didn’t show it. He took a vicious hack at the charging Lysterian with his club, but Goll slid beneath the killing stroke, grabbed Ashlyn by the waist, and kept running, putting a good thirty strides between them and the giant.

  “Do not worry, Queen, I will get you to safe—”

  Kasamir darted across the field with surprising speed and cracked Goll in the temple with a bony hand, knocking him unconscious.

  Kasamir turned to the giant. “Get. The. Boy.”

  As the giant lumbered after Vash—who had almost made it back to the mushroom swamp—Kasamir grabbed Ashlyn by the wrist and lifted her up, bringing the thread closer to his face.

  “Osyrus would have envied the strength you coaxed from this. But he also
would have mocked you for your inability to harness it. That is his true genius. Controlling the chaos of this world.”

  “Get back!” Vash shouted from across the field. He’d squared off against the giant once he saw that he’d never outrun the hulking creature.

  Kasamir’s cloaked arm jerked and moved. The giant backhanded Vash with a lazy swing, which sent him flying into the black mushrooms.

  Kasamir was controlling that creature with his hidden arm. On impulse, Ashlyn pulled his cloak away.

  The sight beneath was horrifying.

  His hidden arm had no skin—just exposed muscle. There were dozens of thin dragon threads wrapped around his fingers that cascaded up his arm and around his back where they were connected to open nerve endings along his spine. The threads were coated with Kasamir’s blood, which was a bile-infected yellow instead of healthy red. In his hand, he had a palmful of black stones the size of acorns, each one connected to a thread.

  “What is this?” Ashlyn whispered.

  Kasamir dropped her on the ground. Put a foot on her neck.

  “Prying eyes,” he hissed. “You do not deserve to behold my work.”

  “Dad!” Wendell screamed. He’d gone over to his unconscious father and was shaking him.

  Kasamir’s fingers started working again beneath his cloak. The giant scooped the boy up and turned around, carrying Wendell back toward the wall under one arm like a sack of wheat.

  Kasamir took his foot off Ashlyn’s throat and followed the giant toward the gate.

  “We are not thieves,” Kasamir called over his shoulder. “You have paid for your lives with the child. Keep them, but leave this place. You do not belong here.”

  The dragon-bone fence spread open for the two men when they approached—bones once again yawning open like a beast’s mouth, edges rimmed with packed fungus. It closed behind them, seams reconnecting to form an impassable barrier.

  The field was silent. Ashlyn’s pulse hammered. Goll stirred from his spot on the earth, rubbing his head. Vash was struggling to his feet, too. Felgor was peeking out from around the side of the boulder he’d taken cover behind once the fighting started.

  “Hey, Ashe,” came Bershad’s voice. He was still pinned to the ground by his sword. “Need some help here.”

  19

  BERSHAD

  Ghost Moth Island, Central Wilderness

  “Do you believe in demons now?” Goll asked.

  They were all huddled around a small fire that Ashlyn had started. Bershad could still feel a few final strands of his ruined guts pulling themselves back together. The healing burned up the last scrap of Gods Moss in his system. Vash had spent half an hour banging his sword against the dragon-bone wall, sweating and grunting and cursing with each powerful blow. All he’d managed to do was chip his blade in a few places.

  “Those weren’t demons,” Ashlyn said.

  “No?” Goll asked. “Flawless and I both laid killing blows upon that giant, yet he did not die. If that is not demonic behavior, what is it?”

  “Those were men who have had their body chemistry altered by teleomorph-stage Cordata fungus.”

  “I speak your language,” Goll said. “But understood very little of what you just said.”

  “Osyrus was sent here to perfect a method for preserving dragon bones, which he obviously succeeded in doing.” She motioned to the wall. “But when he was done, he veered into some wild tangent of experimentation. He spoke of ending decay, freeing people from their meat sacks.”

  “Doesn’t look like he was as successful on that front,” Bershad said. “That giant was just one massive decaying meat sack.”

  “Osyrus said the process would be messy. That many would die.” Ashlyn chewed her lip. “He might have begun using the Cordata mushrooms to alter people’s biology. Turn them into … I don’t know what, exactly.”

  “How could a mushroom do that?”

  “Cordatas all follow the same behavior—they invade their host, and replace its tissue with their own. Eventually the fungus can even impact the host’s actions in simple ways. Send an infected mantis into an ant’s nest. Or bring an ant to the top of a grass shoot or small bush. But all known species of Cordata function at the insect level—they attach to ants, grasshoppers, mantis. They’re actually quite common in the Dainwood, and—”

  “Ashe,” said Bershad. “Simple answers for us simple folk, yeah?”

  “Sorry,” Ashlyn said. She paused. Started again. “Judging from that giant’s body, either Kasamir or Osyrus found a way to bind Cordata fungus with human flesh. That’s why the giant didn’t die from the wounds you incurred—you were just hacking at fungal growth, not organs. I’m not sure the giant has any organs left. But Kasamir was also controlling him with his right hand. The one he kept hidden.”

  “What, like a puppet?” Felgor asked.

  Ashlyn shrugged. “Sort of. I only caught a glimpse of the mechanism—there were a few dozen dragon threads fused to his muscle and nerves. His biology is definitely bound to the mushrooms, too, but in a different way. He’s using them, not the other way around. And he had these stones, too. Small black stones. I think they were powering or controlling the mechanism … but how would that work?”

  Ashlyn trailed off. Lost in thought.

  “Well, regardless of the particulars, these mushroom demons hit very hard,” Goll said. The entire right side of his face was swollen and purple from the blow he’d taken from Kasamir.

  “You’re still here,” Vash said. “Don’t complain.”

  Vash poked the fire with his sword, sending coals flying.

  “I’ll get your son back,” Bershad said to him.

  “He never would have been taken if it weren’t for you,” Vash said, without looking up from the fire.

  “I know. That’s why I’m going to make it right.” Bershad thought of all the innocent people he’d gotten killed at Glenlock Canyon. Then he thought of Rowan and Alfonso. There were so many mistakes he could never take back. But this wasn’t one of them. Yet. “I promise.”

  “Hollow words.” Vash spat into the fire. “He might already be down the river.”

  “I don’t think so,” Ashlyn said, stopping her work. She had been mixing some kind of dragon-oil concoction ever since she got the fire started. “They clearly wanted Wendell alive for some reason.”

  “So they can fucking eat him,” Vash hissed.

  “No,” Ashlyn said. “It sounded like Kasamir wants to use him as a host.”

  “That’s worse.”

  “It’s slower,” Ashlyn pressed. “A lot slower. We have time to stop them.”

  Vash glared at Ashlyn for a moment, but said nothing.

  Goll peered at Bershad’s stomach wound, which was almost gone. “You are not dead yet. Why is that?”

  “That’s nothing,” Felgor said. “I watched him regrow both his legs before.”

  Goll frowned at Bershad. “Really? Do you also have these mushrooms inside of you?”

  “No,” Bershad said. “I have something else.”

  “What?”

  “It doesn’t matter right now,” Bershad said.

  “Nothing matters except finding a way through there.” Vash motioned to the wall.

  “I’m working on that, but this mixture has to be precise if it’s going to explode with the proper force,” Ashlyn said.

  She had a flask of dragon oil in front of her, and had been carefully measuring different ingredients and placing them in a stone mold. The last thing she added was a finger of Gods Moss before putting it into the fire. Everyone crowded around to watch.

  “The last time I did this, I had a queen’s fortune of equipment and a room with no wind and zero humidity,” she said. Then looked up at everyone. “The least you all can give me is a bit of space.”

  They all leaned back.

  “How is such a small mixture going to destroy the massive wall?” Goll asked, puzzled.

  Ashlyn didn’t respond. Only twisted the stone mold
in the fire so it heated evenly.

  Goll sighed. “The giant threw your own sword straight through your belly,” he said. “And I threw my axe directly into that giant’s skull. Yet both of you are still alive and potentially taking orders from mushrooms. Now she intends to destroy dragon bones with a pint of lantern oil.” He seemed to weigh these facts. “The rules of the world seem to have gone for a very long fucking walk.”

  “The rules haven’t gone anywhere,” Ashlyn said, taking the mold out of the fire and carefully pouring the contents into the flask of dragon oil. The orange goo of the melted concoction mixed with the oil in a strange way—almost like two living things intertwining. “There are just more rules than you realized.”

  She looked up at everyone.

  “You should all step back.”

  With that, Ashlyn stood up, taking a stick from the fire, and walked toward the wall. She used her boot to kick a depression into the dirt directly in front of where the bones met the earth, then placed the flask inside of it and covered it with dirt again. When that was done, she put the glowing stick on top of the disrupted earth and returned to the others.

  They all stared at the stick for a few moments. Bershad cleared his throat.

  “You sure the stick’ll light it through the—”

  The explosion sounded like the roar of a thousand Red Skulls ready to massacre a city. A heap of earth blasted into the sky, and then rained down a shower of dirt and grass and splintered bones. When the detonation had cleared, there was a gaping hole in the wall wide enough to ride a dragon through.

  “I’m sure,” Ashlyn said.

  20

  BERSHAD

  Ghost Moth Island, Beyond the Bone Wall

  The land beyond the bone wall wasn’t a swamp, exactly. Bershad didn’t know what to call it. The air was thick with a foul moisture. There were more of the massive, crooked mushrooms, but these grew from dirty puddles of green sludge. It was a rotten place.

  Bershad found the giant’s tracks easily enough. Nothing else was cutting such large footprints through the corrupted country. They followed.