Keepers of the Crown

by Lydia Redwine

  “Wait!” Fiera shouted, risingto her feet. Her finger shook as she pointed to the queen. “You don’t recognize her, do you?” She whipped her head to Cam whose eyes had widened at the realization. Fiera stepped closer, her entire body shaking. Caleb was trying to hold her back. “You have no idea who Ilea even is, do you?” Fiera accused.

  “Because…” Fiera froze, her voice shaking. “You aren’t Silva.”

  The eyes of the woman flickered. She hadn’t a clue what to do. She had done her job so well until now. Fiera’s laugh was sharp and trembling. “You are a decoy!”

  Fiera didn’t see the dagger fly. She did not see the woman’s proper reaction or really register the gasps splitting the too warm air around them before a blade was embedded in the decoy’s chest.

  And then another one.

  The throwing of the blade so silent.

  Air moved around them. A wind coursing through the chamber.

  And then a figure unfolded itself from the air, from invisibility, the third blade in its hand. With a sneering smile, the woman who looked exactly as the dying decoy before her, drew the blade across the fake queen’s throat.

  Crimson blood spurted, and the real Silva Andel’s lips twisted into a smile. She did not look at Fiera or Adria or Mista or even Cam. But straight at Ilea. She hissed, “So the Scarlet Spy has returned, has she?”

  Silva’s voice was far colder, far more like steel scraping stone than the decoy’s had been. And for the first time that night Fiera felt hatred instead of pure fear. Because she hated the real Silva.

  “Ilea Sukarno may know my true last name, but it is little known that the legendary scholar…” Silva began as she thrust the body of her decoy from her to crash to the table. She rose on the table itself, her booted feet crushing glass as she walked. “That the infamous rogue of this world calling herselfthe Scarlet Spy is but a traitorous woman cursed forever.”

  Silva’s neck twisted, her tongue lashing out at Ilea who stood before her now. She had walked the entire length of the table in hardly any time, all attention gathered to her. She held their stares as though she were holding them in her palms.

  “Tell me,” she whispered in a way that Fiera could still hear. “Tell me, Ilea, what you did with that filth of aCrown when you left me for dead in this place?” The queen draped in black clothing without any embellishments gripped Ilea by the neck.

  Silva’s eyes snapped up to meet Cam’s. Her smile was sneeringandstainedin blood. “Iwillwin,Camaria.” Shesmirked and slipped into a mocking bow. “I will find that Crown whether you will it or not. Whether you know its whereabouts or not. I will be unchained from this placccccccce.”

  Her smile twisted and her eyes grew absent. Fiera could not move. Could barely think.

  “My decoy didn’t speak of death quite the way I like it. For death is but an art and weapon I have learned to wield. One which I will wield against you, Camaria, at any and every given second of the rest of your pitiful life.”

  And with these words, Silva Andel, Queen of Poison and Ruler of Mingroth vanished into thin air.

  “You were an anointed guardian son. I placed you; you were on the holy mountain of Elyon; in the midst of the stones of fire, you walked. You were blameless in your ways from the day you were created, until unrighteousness was found in you. In the abundance of your trade, you were filled with violence in your midst, and you sinned; so I cast you as a profane thing from the mountain of Elyon, and I destroyed you, O guardian son, from the midst of the stones of fire. Your heart was proud because of your beauty; you corrupted your wisdom for the sake of your splendor. I cast you to the ground; I exposed you before kings, to feast their eyes on you.”

  -Elyon’s words to Lucius

  Twenty-Three

  Arria did not return when she had told Riah she would. Not that

  Riah was disappointed. He liked that he could spend his days painting the dragons without interruption. He had completed two more. On a particularly cloudy day, when the rain eventually pattered onto the keep, Riah painted one of the largest dragons, an enormous gray creature, from a window in an excluded chamber. The dragon had stood on the ledge above the keep until it began raining. He had stood tall and proud on that ledge with keen eyes trained on the mountains beyond as if he had been monitoring them.

  Riah painted the heavy sky beyond the dragon and the fingers of pine trees reaching to graze it. He sprayed shadows onto the canvas and then let it dry in that room. The following day, which had been warm and sunny, he followed the small redbrown one into a forest and had painted her beside a glen until it had become dark. He still hadn't finished but would on another day.

  He awoke one morning after these projects to a, particularly gray day. The sky had pulled on a woolen sweater. But it did not rain. Nevertheless, Riah decided to remain indoors and would not paint. He would explore.

  “If I am to live here, I will need to know where everything is. Corridors, passages, where all the doors lead.” Riah had spent a couple hours roaming the fortress before he found two enormous doors leading to a level lower than the first which he had found upon entering the fortress from the front.

  Riah hesitated at the landing of the staircase which spiraled into darkness. He found a torch nearby, lit it and with summoned courage, he placed one foot in front of the other and descended into the darkness. He stepped down, down, down for what seemed an eternity. A musty smell hit him as his foot slipped, and he found he was no longer standing on a stair but on hard stone. He halted and waved the torch to see what was before him. The passage forked in two directions. Not knowing which would be the better route, he chose the right-hand side and began walking between two walls which created a rather narrow space.

  Riah held the torch before him. He heard only the crunch of boots on the loose, stone floor and his own breathing. Then...the scene began to change. Or at least, the walls did.

  The stone surfaces surrounding him were no longer mere, dull stone but bore carvings. Both words and figures reached his eyes beneath the torchlight. Even the ceiling of stone was carved into. Riah halted and stepped forward so that he might run his fingertips over the carvings. They were of dragons. Six to be precise.

  The carvings had been made with precision. They were deep and displayed rows of tiny letters beneath each creature. “Infernal Speech,” Riah murmured. He had studied the tongue while he was still living in Gnosi at the beginning of his trials. The longer he stared the more he could...feel. Not read, for that's not how it often worked. But feel the words to understand them. “Names…” he breathed.

  Sure enough, Zoka’s name was carved under the depiction most faded. The white paint of the carving was chipped and graying. His fingers traced the next one. The gray one. “Ukkonen, thunder,” he murmured. And on down. A smear of red paint and, “Belle,” Riah said. The one he had painted most recently. But there only six, he remembered, when he had read all their names. The seventh, the great black dragon, did not have a carving or name. “Because his lord has not yet made one,” he said.

  Riah had forgotten completely that he was standing in a cold, desolate corridor with nothing but a lit torch for a weapon. “And I will beoneofthem,” hemurmured as he remembered the lines about the lords. “But I shall be…” he forced the word out, “A just commander.” Hehadmeant to say kind, but kindness did not seem a prestigious trait in a commander of a dragon army. “Well...not an army,” Riah mused. “There are only seven after all.”

  Riah’s eyes were ripped from the wall when his ears detected a small swishing sound like a brief wind barreling down the passage. He felt his hair ruffle just a bit. A soft hiss trembled towards him and into his bones. His eyes narrowed as he peered down the dark passageway. “This could either be a supremely stupid decision or...no it's just stupid.” But he did it anyway. He crept, one foot at a time, towards where the wind had come from. This was in the opposite direction from where he had entered the passage.

  He walked for several paces. His steps
were so many that he began to think he had imagined the sounds. But when he broke into a chamber so dark he could not distinguish its features, he ceased. The quietness was too quiet. A quiet that made you wish you could coil into its cold arms.

  His torch went out.

  Snuffed. Just like that, his light was gone.

  Riah’s eyes widened slightly when blue light from the

  middle of the room flashed. And then vanished. He took one step forward and halted, for the light was growing again. This time, its growth was gradual, and Riah saw that it was circular like a ball of blue light in midair. It was still in midair even when he saw the hand poised just beneath it.

  Riah instantly thought the hand to be female, for its nails were unusually long. Lethal nails, they were. As the light grew larger, so did Riah’s view of the creature sitting there in nothing but a long piece of cloth tied around its middle. The cloth hung past the creature’s thighs.

  Its body came into view first. A body with long, powerful legs which ended in feet with nails as long as Riah’s hand. Its abdomen was muscled with a strength he knew was not human. The arms of the creature were also corded in muscle. It shifted slightly, and under the very dim blue light, Riah glimpsed two slumped wings of raven colored feathers. Like rippling ash, they seemed. Finally, from the back, Riah saw its head. Two ears perked at the top like wolf ears but longer and more pointed.

  It turned.

  So swift were its movements that Riah stumbled back. He stumbled back as he became entranced by those two slits of ice blue eyes. The eyes were like two unblinking lights. No pupils. No irises.

  The creature stared him down. Those eyes were like fire. It did not move its head, but Riah felt its roving gaze stripping him bare despite this. He felt suddenly that this creature whom he had never met could read every fiber of his being. All of his secrets were no longer secrets. All of his desires were now known to this creature.

  Riah now saw that below the eyes was an elongated snout much likeawolf’s.Hewaswolflike.Andlikeamantoo. Butthose ears and eyes...they were positively feline. And those wings...they were not wings of a bird or dragon but of some...other being.

  And suddenly Riah knew.

  The crown on its head was twisted iron spikes.

  But he was rather perplexed. Why was the Fallen Prince of Caelae and ruler of the Between Realm wearing rags?

  Cam saw Joel jerk awake. His muscles were tense and brow

  sheened in sweat. All others were either asleep or dozing at their chosen spots of the lengthy cell they had been tossed into the day before. Cam had not slept.

  Her mind only buzzed with everything she had seen and smelled and heard and felt. And tasted. Blood was still on her tongue. From the massacre or from when Silva spit in her face, she did not know. Probably both.

  And Adria and Mista…

  All the hostages… Cam clenched her eyes against the memory. Those assassins had taken the new arrivals, costumes and all and had thrown them into cells far below the fortress. And the hostages had been taken elsewhere. Memories of Gnosi’s dungeons pummeled Cam as she paced the stone floors and glanced at the silent hooded Shadow Bearers through the bars. She knew that Peter was remembering something similar.

  Each of the prisoners dealt with what seemed to be the downfall of a carefully strategized yet poorly executed plan in their own way. The Silva came knew would have fallen for it. But this new Silva, this queen, was someone entirely different.

  Fiera grumbled and jostled her leg as she sat. Cam knew her mind was turning day and night with the attempt to find loopholes to climb through. Or perhaps Fiera was listing her own imaginings of how Silva would suffer. Caleb was unusually silent, and Cam was sure Joel’s anger at being dragged into this valley burned within him. Owen and Lia and the others were here too. Everyone but one person. Ilea.

  “The Scarlet Spy?” Cam whispered again, her hands clenching the bars of their prison. The revelation was still settling in. The Scarlet Spy had been but a figment of fiction, the name of a scholar whose true identity was shallow and dull. But no…

  The Scarlet Spy was truly a spy. “What else are you hiding, Ilea?” Another thought gripped Cam. The same thought that drifted between those of her sisters. The question of what Ilea would say, or would be forced to say about the Crown. “But she hates Silva. She won’t tell her anything…” And Ilea had not been placed in this cell with them. If had been escorted away with the hostages.

  Now, Joel had awoken from a nightmare and sat breathing heavily. Cam crossed the expanse between them, knelt before him, and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Nightmare?” Joel nodded slowly. Cam’s brows furrowed as she examined his harried expression. He ran a hand down his face and then raked it through his hair. “What did you see?” She whispered softly.

  It took a moment for Joel to collect himself. He opened his mouth in preparation to speak, but his expression held hesitancy. When he had leaned against the wall of their cell and closedhiseyes, hemurmured, “Lightsandpeople. Andtherewas a table set with a feast. Then there was screaming and a body on the table and…” His words faltered. “That is all. The rest was blurred.”

  “Was it but a memory of…” How long had it been? Cam counted. Four days perhaps since Silva had orchestrated a massacre of her own people by using a decoy so she herself wouldn’t be killed. Brilliant, really. The Queen of Mingroth was brilliant. Joel shook his head. Cam sank beside him, suddenly feeling a coiling sickness in the pit of her stomach. “I am sorry,” she whispered. “That you were dragged into this.”

  Joel shook his head. “I chose this.” Cam did not ask why he had chosen this. It seemed to close to his heart for her to ask now.

  “TheQueen requests your presence,” the towering Shadow

  Bearer whispered. The hissing sound was barely audible. Cam could not see his face or feet or anything of flesh. She could only feel his cold breath.

  "Demands. She demands her presence," Fiera corrected from her position in a corner beside Caleb.

  Cam shifted, the breath of the Shadow Bearer prickling her skin which was still covered in the gown she had worn to Silva’s ball.

  Though the guard gripped her arm in an iron hold, she did not struggle. She cast a glance at Peter over her shoulder before the cell doors clanged shut. He swallowed, returning her gaze.

  Cam attempted to place in her memory objects marking the way to wherever the guards were leading her. After they had exited from the dungeons, one of her escorts clamped a pair of chains upon her wrists.

  With one grasping each of her arms, she was marched up numerous flights of stairs. She had lost count of the flights when they reached the main hall, and she was able to peer into the throne room. She glanced towards the small windows near the high-reaching ceilings. "No sunlight," she mused. "But then when does the sun ever shine in this wretched valley?" The only light within the room was from a grand fireplace which had appeared at one end.

  And there was no more blood. Even the table had vanished. No bodies. No sign that a ceremony of blood spilling had taken place.

  Cam found she wasn't alone, though, the room was nearly vacant.

  Silva turned, her form-fitting green skirt flaring at the bottom. "Ah, Camaria.” Thequeen’s eyes were keen andsharp even while her body seemed to move with a casual elegance that exempted no fear.

  Cam could see the differences now. The slight changes between the real Queen of Poison and her decoy. There was a flare of fury in the real Silva’s eyes. Something more alive while simultaneously decaying. The decoy had been putting on a show, had been wearing a mask. And she had worn the mask well. But Silva’s mask was something else. It hid not an identity but a shred of remaining humanity.

  Cam moved two or three paces before slowing her steps to observe the room. There was indeed no one else besides the two of them.

  "You requested to speak with me," Cam said cooly.

  Silva nodded as her hands moved to pour wine into two glasses. She offered one t
o Cam.

  Cam only stared.

  Silva shrugged, "For the sake of my dead father I didn't poison the wine! It is quite safe to drink." At this, she rose her glass to Cam and sipped it slowly. Cam’s throat was indeed parched, but she had no desire to indulge in any of Silva's gifts. “Dead father…” Cam echoed. And then she remembered the story Erland and Joel had told her of the Queen of Mingroth keeping her own father alive in a tortuous existence.

  "No, no I do not wish to have your corpse hanging up on my wall just yet," Silva added, setting her glass down and clasping her hands.

  “Where is Ilea?” Cam asked, her voice as steady as she could manage.

  Silva’s lips curled into a sneering smile. Ilea was theedge the queen held over them. Besides the fact that she had them locked up in dungeons like those found in Gnosi. Former Gnosi. “Ilea,” Silva began, spitting the name, “is exactly where I want her right now. In theclutches ofmy vengeance.” Silvahissedthat now familiar fury igniting in her too beautiful features.

  Everything inside Cam coiled. “As for the Crown,” Silva continued, “When I spoke to Ilea regarding the matter, she was unsurprisingly quiet. Not that it has anything to do with her loyalty to you and your company. Rather, I believe her distaste is directed at myself. No matter. I will find it eventually. In the meantime, Camaria, I must applaud you for being so daring as to enter Mingroth, my queendom, itself.”

  Silva leaned back in her throne, her expression the definition of antagonizing. “I have a proposal for you and your people, one which could possibly garner you freedom from this land. We will play a series of games in which the winner receives what they wish. For you, the hostages and free to exit from Mingroth. And for myself...I get to keep Ilea here with me.”

  Cam jerked against the chains holding her hands together behind her. “But Ilea is a part of my company. We go, she comes too.” Cam gritted her teeth, her eyes flashing. “Even if I don’t entirely trust her.”