Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  Another shaft slammed into him a second later, forcing out a small cry that had me trying to surge to my feet, forgetting that I couldn’t. I collapsed back against the raft, and almost fell out. Only my unwounded hand caught me.

  “This is the great warrior we’ve been told so much about?” A fey appeared on the river banks, flanked by several others. One of them had a bow in his hand with another arrow already nocked, but the leader put out an arm, stopping him. “I have to say, I’m disappointed.”

  I didn’t bother replying. It had been years since a taunt had been able to anger me, and certainly not one from a murderous thug. My eyes scanned the banks, only to see more and more fey revealing themselves. I could not count them all; the tree line hid them too well, with only flickers of silver among the sun dappled leaves. But the ones I could see—

  Were too many.

  Had I been home, on familiar ground; had I been well, and properly equipped; had I been rested—perhaps. But here . . . no. I could not take so many, if I could take any at all. I needed another solution.

  I threw my consciousness outward, as far as it would go, searching for any possible advantage.

  I had not tried summoning our little capsule before, as the fey knew where it was and might be watching it. It would have been useful, without my legs, but I had been afraid that it might lead them right to us. But now that they were already here, I found that I could not reach it, after all, the little frisson I remembered completely absent.

  Perhaps the fey had damaged it, or perhaps it was too far away to hear my call. I tried to contact one of their vessels instead, but the same thing happened. I could not reach them. I could not reach . . .

  Anything.

  “Nothing to say?” the fey tried again. He was tall as they all were, and dressed in the same silver-gray tunic and leggings as the rest. He had the same long, silver-white hair, too, unbound and blowing slightly in a fair breeze. It seemed to be a hallmark of the Svarestri, making them look like brothers or clones. At this distance, it was difficult to see much variation.

  “I will talk, then,” he informed me, sitting on a large rock and resting his bow on his knee. “I was sent to retrieve you—alive. I find myself suddenly less interested in doing so.”

  “Then why not . . . kill me already?” I panted. “You had . . . the opportunity.”

  “Ah, so it can talk.” He smiled. “I wanted you awake for this. Not an easy death, not a quick slipping away into darkness—no. This will not be easy, and I assure you, that it will take a very long time.”

  I ripped open my tunic, spilling out my breasts—and the handprint between them. It was a burn, one Dory had long concealed with a glamourie, lest her lover go mad and try to hunt down a fey prince. But I had no such ruse, and no need for it here.

  Quite the contrary, in fact.

  “Your prince marked me . . . as his prey, and his only. You cannot touch me.”

  The leader smiled again. “Ah, yes. I seem to recall something of the kind.” He looked around at the river and spread a hand. “But as you can see, he is not here.”

  “You would fail in your mission then . . . to return with me?”

  “It is a dilemma,” he agreed. “Succeed, and win myself rewards and accolades. Fail, and suffer a harsh punishment. It would seem an easy choice.”

  “But you do not find it so.”

  “I did, until you killed eight of my men during your escape, and mutilated their corpses. I did, until you burned thirty more in those caves, turning our own weapons against us. I did, until you murdered my cousin, ripping his head from his shoulders and tossing his body away like filth, oh yes, I did.

  “I find myself of a different mind now.”

  He raised his own weapon, and levelled it on me. To my surprise, a fey beside him knocked his arm down, and began arguing sharply with him. I did not know their language, but judging by the gestures the other fey made at me and the heat in his voices, he was not so sure about disregarding his prince’s orders.

  I expanded my call, put everything I had left into it, searching through heaven and earth for anything, anything that might serve. Not as a weapon; I did not know this world well enough for that. But as a distraction, something to allow us at least the chance of escape.

  In my desperation, I even called on Nimue, my consciousness running through the deep caverns and liquid arteries of her lands. It boomed down tunnels, rippled over streams, echoed off ancient cavern walls, all the way to the very heart of the earth. But she did not answer. She had wanted to see what I could do, and I had shown her.

  And as Ray had said, the gods had no reward for the weak.

  “You aren’t weak!”

  Ray hadn’t spoken aloud, possibly because I would not have heard. Our raft had hung up on some rocks, and the crash of the churning waters were loud in my ears. But more likely because he could not. The last arrow had taken him through the throat, and probably severed his vocal cords.

  But then, vampires do not have to speak to communicate.

  “Run,” he urged me, the thought echoing loudly in my mind. “Dive off and swim for the next vortex. The current will help carry you—”

  “No.”

  “—and you can hide in the caves. They’re so vast that—”

  “No.”

  “—the fey might never find you!”

  “They would find me. And I would not face my end that way.”

  “Why?” the voice in my head raged. “You have to try! You know you can’t win if you stay—”

  “This isn’t about winning.”

  “Then what the hell is it about?”

  I cupped his cheek, and felt his blood slide under my fingers, warm and wet and precious. “Pain.”

  He looked at me, uncomprehendingly. But something else heard, and finally understood. From somewhere, far underground, there came a distant rumble.

  My calls had not raised the goddess I’d sought, and they had been ignored by the only other ears there were to hear. Something in the caverns had listened, but not comprehended. What did they care for honor, a concept both foreign and trivial? What did they need of revenge? These were not words they knew, or cries they answered.

  But, by chance, I had stumbled across one they did.

  The cry of my heart had reached them as the call of my mind had not. Because yes, pain was a concept they knew. They had felt the red burn of it in the flesh—their own or a mate’s or a child’s taken too young; they had heard the sweet sound of it in an enemy’s cry, savaged in tender places, never to threaten them again; they had tasted it, thick and warm and meaty in their throats.

  Yes, they understood pain, in all its permutations, as I did.

  And now, they listened.

  Come to me, I whispered, my mental voice fading along with my strength, but still echoing in the vast chambers below. Come to me and I will give you all that you seek, and more.

  Come to me . . .

  The argument on shore was a short one. The leader knocked the argumentative fey to the ground, who swept his feet out from under him and pulled a knife. But two more fey stepped forward before he could use it, holding him at spearpoint. And another kicked him savagely in the head, bouncing it off the large rock.

  It seemed that the leader’s take on events was popular.

  But I needed more time.

  “Let the vampire go, and I will come with you,” I offered. “Quietly.”

  “The time for negotiation is past!” the leader snarled, jumping back to his feet. “The only thing I want from you is blood!”

  The rumble was louder now, enough that several of the fey had noticed. They turned their heads toward the skies, as if they thought a thundercloud approached. Not quite, I thought, and strengthened my call, putting every ounce of my energy I had left into it as the leader raised his weapon again.

  The fey on the ground was now either unconscious or dead, unable to help. And none of the others seemed remotely interested. But something else wasn�
��t under the leader’s command, and it had heard me.

  And it had decided.

  Only no, I thought, as the ground shook and the fey stared about and some of the smaller rocks on the hillside tumbled down toward the water, that wasn’t exactly right. Not ‘it’. They.

  And as in the case of the small, furry things, where my power had cascaded across the entire group, giving me a hundred eyes at once, it overflowed this time as well. Only this time, there weren’t hundreds. There weren’t even thousands. This time . . . there were millions.

  A living, breathing cloud of blackness that burst out of caves in the banks, out of tunnels in the rocks, and from crevasses so small that you would not have thought an insect could have fit through them, much less an army. Yet an army is what came forth.

  They erupted like black geysers all along the riverbank: bats of every type and description, from tiny things barely the size of my hand, to huge, fanged beasts half as big as me, with wing spans that looked more like a pterodactyl’s than anything from the modern world. And everything in between. Whole colonies of them had answered my call. I had always had trouble holding a single animal on Earth. But here—

  It was different.

  I could not fight, could barely even remain upright. My legs did not work, my shoulder throbbed and bled, my hand had already swollen to twice its normal size, beaten almost as badly as the fey it had pulverized. No, I could not fight at all.

  But they could fight for me.

  And fight they did.

  Some late arriving Svarestri broke through the water, looking a little disoriented after the rage of the vortex, and never had a chance to adjust. The humongous cloud descended on them as soon as they breeched the water, pelting them like missiles, ripping at them with feet and claws and teeth, and screeching so loudly that the echoes alone were pain. They drowned out the river and bounced off the thick packed trees, almost as well as they had off the cave walls below.

  The echoes were awful.

  Someone screamed at the reverberation of all those screeches against the great wooden walls, piling up on each other, higher and higher and over and over, until it felt like being in hell’s kettle drum. I thought my ear drums would burst. I thought I might go mad. And then the almost machine gun sound of all those tiny bodies hitting the water, the screams of the fey as they were ripped apart, and Ray’s curses were added to the mix, and I knew I was.

  I started laughing, possibly hysterically, but I didn’t know because I couldn’t hear it. I couldn’t hear anything. I couldn’t see anything but fluttering, half crazed bodies. I couldn’t smell or taste or feel anything but water and the ammonia reek of bats and the coppery tang of blood, although whose I didn’t know.

  And then the wave parted, as if unzipping down the middle, leaving the stream almost clear as they rose up in the air. The great plume wasn’t all of them; I could see the trees rustling, could see bright flashes of red when another fey was torn apart, could hear voices screaming at each other, and then being suddenly silenced. But it was enough.

  Then they dove, spearing down toward the small group around the leader, like the fist I could no longer wield. He saw it coming, saw death in flight, and to give him credit, when he ran, it was not away. It was toward me, taking off across the water along with three of his men, who must have had a little Green Fey blood in their veins.

  Because they were not swimming.

  They ran instead, their feet barely denting the waves, their swords out and slashing, battling to reach me through a thickness of fur and teeth and fangs. The leader was the quickest, surging across the stream with great strokes, crossing the churning waves in seconds, his eyes burning, his face terrible.

  He almost made it.

  “Fuck me,” Ray’s mental voice said quietly.

  The bats must have been the flesh-eating variety, because the fey were eaten alive while still moving, stripped of every ounce of flesh on their bones as quickly as if they had swum into a group of piranhas. But piranhas don’t levitate their prey into the air, don’t eat the face of their victims while it is still screaming, don’t drench bystanders in a wash of blood that had Ray cursing in my head and me just lying there, watching bones splash down into the current and be swept away.

  The leader was left until last. I did not consciously request it, but perhaps subconsciously, I had wanted this. The only thing I want from you is blood!

  Yes, that sounded right.

  What was left of him finally slipped below the waves, all of a yard from his goal. There was blood, enough to turn the waves pink and frothy as they carried him downstream. I stared at it as if entranced, marking his journey by the color he left behind, and only realized how exhausted I was when my eyes started to lose focus.

  There were still bats above us, as well as all along the river, a great mass of them turning and twisting and battering each other as they fought over scraps of flesh. But I could barely see them. The world went dim and swimmy, and I would have slipped off the raft had Ray not caught me.

  “Dorina! Dorina!”

  He was somehow still functional, in spite of everything. I did not understand how. But I understood one thing.

  “Get us out of here,” I slurred. “I can’t . . . hold them . . .”

  Ray said something back, but I did not hear it. Blood was rushing in my ears, my vision was blurring, and my heart was threatening to pound out of my chest. I had only ever held one animal at a time before, and had found that to be difficult. I did not know how I was doing this at all, and was desperately afraid that I wouldn’t be for much longer.

  And when I wasn’t, would they turn on us?

  Would they do to us what they had just done to the fey?

  “Hold on,” Ray said, as water splashed us and the rain of blood from above doused us, and the remains of countless fey went rushing downstream pursued by screeching black clouds, still feeding. I watched them, feeling my control slipping away.

  Then it snapped, my hold over the murderous colony above us completely gone. I watched them through bleary eyes as they spiraled up into the sky, almost as one, just as I had seen them do right before they attacked the fey. And then they dove—

  Straight for the caves and crevasses from which they’d come, desperate to get away from this awful, lighted world and back into the cool dampness of home.

  I watched them go, half disbelieving. And then exhaled a shaky breath, and sagged against Ray. He sagged back, having freed the raft but being too exhausted to paddle.

  We let the river carry us downstream.

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Dory, Hong Kong

  “What the—where are we?” Louis-Cesare asked, his voice strained.

  I flipped the light switch, showing the bare cement blocks and shiny weapons of my armory. He stared around for a second, his eyes wide, a pulse pounding madly in his throat. As if he’d expected a very different view, like maybe of the afterlife.

  Finally, he looked at me. “You brought us back here?”

  “Was there a choice?”

  I sat down in the chair, feeling a little dizzy. The squashy old thing had come from a thrift shop, bought because it was the right size and shape to fit the space I had left, and because it was comfortable. I hadn’t actually noticed until this moment that it had a print on it, composed mainly of pastel yellow pineapples on a faded pink background. I looked away.

  I did not want my last glimpse of the world to be polyester kitsch.

  Unfortunately, that left me looking at my captives, some of whom were awake and unhappy. They were going to be a lot unhappier if this didn’t work. Or possibly even if it did, since we’d been over the dead zones when we fell.

  But I didn’t have to think up a speech, because Louis-Cesare grabbed me. “We are falling to our deaths!”

  And, okay, if I’d wanted a phrase to get everyone’s attention, I couldn’t have done any better. Eyes widened, breaths caught, and yet nobody spoke. They just looked at me.

&nb
sp; I didn’t respond or explain, because I didn’t know what you said to that. And because it didn’t matter anymore. I just pulled my husband’s face close and kissed him, because that was what I wanted my last sight to be.

  For a moment, it was perfect: the slight scrape of bristles along his jaw, the warm fullness of his lips, the silk of his hair falling all around us, and the hardness of the chest under my hand—

  Until he pulled back and shook me, which, yeah.

  Not really part of the fantasy.

  “Did you hear me?” His face was wild and his hair was everywhere, probably because I’d forgotten to put the clip back in place earlier. I absently looked around for it, and the shaking recommenced. “Dory!”

  “I heard you. But it’s kind of taking a long time, don’t you think?”

  Louis-Cesare stared at me some more. Then he did exactly what I should have expected from my impetuous husband and threw open the door, poking his head out of the portal. That wasn’t exactly recommended operating procedure, and on a regular portal would have had the effect of sending his head somewhere very far from the rest of his body, while spaghettifying his neck.

  However, this was a fixed portal, so he came back in after a moment, looking shaken and deathly pale, but otherwise fine.

  “Is there a problem?” I asked.

  He nodded.

  Together, we looked back outside, which . . . yeah. Still not recommended, I thought, as it left us sticking out of the top of my wide-mouthed purse like two disembodied heads. That was bad, but charging down a foggy street at about fifty miles an hour was worse. Not as worse as it could have been, but still . . .

  I didn’t understand what had happened until I looked up. And then I still didn’t, although there was a large, golden horn sticking through the purse’s handles. We’d obviously gotten snagged on something when we fell, but what, I wasn’t sure.

  Then the bag shifted a little as we skidded around a corner, showing me a brief glimpse of a wall eye, a large rump and a sparkly mane. There were cartoon flowers in the mane, and also on the body that I saw when I turned around. It looked like Rambo’s daughter had designed a unicorn: white body, pink flowers, golden hooves, and big, butch muscles.