The Unchosen: Book One of The Queen Beyond

by Simon Markusson

  “Tim?” he asked again, stepping closer. The pebbles shifted as if under rapidly moving feet — behind the stone now. “Tim...?” He walked up to the stone, put a hand on its rough and icy surface — and then another sound came from its shadow.

  Conrad pulled away at once at the low chittering that rose from behind it, like the noisy excitement of rats, hectic peals that rang through the night. He almost stumbled over a stone on the ground when he backed away, and cold fire seemed to shoot through his spine. The eyes were everywhere now, and he knew that if he fell, they would no longer just be watching.

  He turned in a circle, and he did have his hand on the sword now. The chittering rose from other stones as well, low and faint, like crickets upon the cliffs and among the dark crevices. Memories went at once to the alley in Richard’s Defense and the sound he’d heard there.

  Suddenly, yellow eyes flashed in one of the shadows up a slope and then again in another place. Pale, yellow. Dead.

  Not cats.

  He drew his sword and backed away, careful not to turn his back to these things, whatever they were. He threw looks over his shoulder. It was a long way back to camp, and a dark way. If he screamed, they’d hear him, of course, but it was a rare thing to hear him scream. And others might pick it up as well. He cursed again and continued to move backward while the excited chittering followed him all around. Then he saw movement on one of the ledges, something alabaster white pulling away as soon as he spotted it. Gods, what are these things?

  As he slowly retreated, they began to reveal themselves more. He spotted arms, heads, long fingers, all less and less carefully hidden. He knew how to read his enemies, to evaluate them rapidly when his life was threatened, always looking to see their weaknesses. He hoped he did it correctly now. With a snarl, he brandished his sword and charged forward.

  The chittering rose in panic, and he heard scrambling sounds everywhere, rocks falling and raining down the slopes as quick feet and hands took hasty flight. The creatures disappeared, vanishing into the shadows, and he saw the things when they climbed away over the rocks and through the darkness: scrawny shapes that looked like...like men, or...lepers. Lepers of some sort. Are they others like Haeigwyn, who have never left the Hills? They didn’t look like him, though. His old friend had been falling apart, while these scurried swiftly away, agile like monkeys.

  He didn’t sheath his sword when he turned back, but he tried to walk with an easy confidence, hoping these wretches preferred their prey weak. They didn’t come for him again, their chittering dying away as they hid. But he could still feel their eyes on him as he left them to the shadows.

  When he climbed the slope to the campsite, he was possessed by one thought only. Tim. If the fool boy had walked down there... He blinked suddenly when he discovered his squire was sitting with Nightshadow and the others. Did he walk past me?

  “Why have you drawn your sword, sir?” Arisfae asked excitedly as he approached, eager to hear of some danger. Conrad sheathed it at once and wondered if he should tell them of the...of the lepers he’d seen. They were men, only men. Diseased, perhaps, but no more. The memory of them made his skin crawl, as did the thought of sleeping in the darkness with those creatures waiting.

  “Make a fire,” he said quietly. They all frowned at him, but he cared not to answer their questions. “Tim, do it. And tell me where the hell you’ve been, boy.”

  The squire looked confused. “I...I was taking care of the horses.”

  What? Conrad thought, completely bewildered. Did the dwarf lie to me?

  He glared at the moinguir, but the dwarf only smiled like an idiot and nodded. Gods, he thought. I have gone insane, and so has everyone else.

  30

  Hell Doesn’t Wait

  Alwarul was awake to see the first bleak light of the new morrow. A thinning gap in the clouds let through a reddish glow that spread over the sky and painted the Savage Hills of Rurhav in blood and long shadows. The chill winds of autumn swept through the landscape and pulled at the stunted things that grew in its meager soil. His thoughts had been as restless, and they were still, for he knew how the world was changing.

  Everywhere, he could feel it, the hopeless sigh that crept into the very forces of nature. Such seemed the influence of the abyss, and it was constantly there. This would become a lost world, a damned world where life wept over its imprisonment. And then the fiends would come, the creatures of the depths that always roamed the sunken worlds that had drifted and fallen and become new domains of the abyss.

  He knew little of fiends, for unlike Rotofos, he had never ventured into the dark and twisting nether. He had never wandered upon those corpses of worlds that had become the prey of demons. Rotofos had never been able to ward his mind against the impressions there. His mind had become a ruin, full only of specters and terrors, and after he had scribbled down all his knowledge and command over the abyss, he had, in the end, slain himself.

  Yet there had been a time in which fiends had come to visit this world, heaving themselves up from the dark abyss to reach for one of the heavenly bodies not yet belonging to them. Yes, the War had brought them once, when the arcane had made their world shine like the brightest star over the black ocean that was the nether, awakening things with appetite and drawing them to its lure. He had seen demons then, and he knew to fear them.

  The Barizych had trembled as much as the Rizych in that time: indeed, only one such as Rotofos could be safe before the creatures that had found a grip on their world. The fiends, it had seemed, had varied in all respects except for the fact that they were all wicked. They had varied in potency and in cunning: some had carried names, and others had not, and their appearances had matched their victims’ fears in ways that had made weak minds break. Alwarul had seen fiends, had even aided in battles against such creatures, yet to this day, those memories were hazy with fright, chaotic and unreal. A nightmare forever burnt into his memory.

  He had been made to understand that those had not been the great things of the depths, that they were only, perhaps, the liveliest, those that slept the most shallowly and with the most easily attractable attentions. The most terrible things were different. Sometimes, the plunge of a new world into the waters would disturb their deep slumber, and when they opened their eyes, the lesser fiends fled like vultures before the lion. Alwarul could not fathom how horrifying they must be, and yet now he caught himself attempting it. He attempted it because he knew that one day soon, such a creature might wish to devour their world. He imagined the being spreading mighty wings, perhaps, to cover the sky like the clouds did now, and roaring a hellish roar that would make every living heart realize its doom. Yet the blood would not be on any demon’s hands. It would be on his, for he had released the ancient creature that drove their world into the depths. Whatever the Queen Beyond did, the guilt would always be his. There was no escape for any life unless she was stopped, and they were ever closer to falling into the abyss.

  Hyahiera was dying, she who had been the Great Mother and the protector of the world, and her corpse would swiftly be joined by countless others. Alwarul could not afford being delayed by the clansmen. But to pass safely through their territories, he would need to use the Art. There was worry and doubt in that, for he knew not if he dared or could command his power now. The amount of strength that it had taken to banish the Queen Beyond’s specter had left him drained and weak, and he remembered little of it save that he had been successful in driving her back for a time.

  His use of the arcane had been necessary then, yet the magnitude of the force that he had called upon had been terrifying in many ways, and the risk of again attracting fiends to their world, now so much closer to the abyss, had been dire. To employ the Art in order to secure free passage through Rurhav... He could only do it if there was no other way.

  Sir Conrad frowned at him from his blankets. “You are up, old man? I thought you had taken a liking to late mornings.” The knight looked about. “Didn’t I tell Tim to keep
watch in the early hours?”

  “I told him that he could sleep,” Alwarul said, “for I would not.”

  “Damn you, old man, you don’t tell my squire what to do.” Conrad fished his sword belt up and got to his feet. “And you would just make a wonderful watch with your seizures.”

  Seizures. Alwarul had refrained from telling anyone about the Queen Beyond’s attacks upon his mind, even Nathelion. It was a grimmer truth than the one they were convinced of, and he could not burden the Chosen One with anything more. If Nightshadow knew that their enemy was already beginning to defeat his guide... The man must not lose hope.

  Sir Conrad roused everyone, not taking particular care to do it mildly. His boot served readily where his voice was not enough, and the singer got a kick in the ribs when he only turned over in his blankets. Then the knight took the time to berate his squire for disobedience, which Alwarul, unfortunately, could not seem to help.

  They ate a quick breakfast, extinguished the remnants of their fire, and then continued a journey that he hoped would be more direct than it had become. They had turned away much from their course, but now Sir Conrad led them again on a straighter path towards the distant Martyr’s Passage that would take them back into the lands of Undran.

  The dead landscape was very silent in the morning, though it seemed always silent now except for the few odd sounds that belonged to no usual inhabitant of the Hills. The sound of Arisfae’s voice followed them incessantly as they rode past the rock formations and the cliffs, the singer still pestering Nathelion with his conviction that Nightshadow was some imposter. The Chosen One wisely refused to take the bait, and he left the bard to discuss the matter with himself. Neither would Alwarul waste time on the fool’s chatter. Instead, he rode up to Sir Conrad, who did not at all make as much sound.

  “You seem very on guard, sir,” Alwarul noted. “Do you fear that the clansmen may be close?”

  “The barbarians can always be close in the Hills,” Conrad said, giving him a short, annoyed look. “They are very capable of setting ambushes.” Yet that did not seem to be the knight’s concern. Alwarul had come to wonder.

  “Would not a fire be likely to alert them to our presence?” he asked, turning an eye to the man’s stiff expression. “What did you see in the night, sir? Tell me what has you unsettled.”

  The man did not answer, but that told Alwarul enough. What made this man arm himself? “Perhaps I could be able to provide an answer if you told me what...creature? What creature you saw.”

  The knight’s face turned into a grimace. “Spare me, old man. I’ve had enough of it already. I know the dangers of the Hills, and neither ogres nor trolls number among them. And you better not get it into your head to convince Tim of these fables.”

  The squire was riding right along with them, but the knight spoke as if he wasn’t there. Timothy hunched down at the mention of his name, looking uncomfortably at the ground as the knight’s tirade continued. “He’s still fool enough to mistake you for wise, but damn you if you tutor him. If you claim to be a wizard, then you are very welcome to prove it right now. Grow wings, why don’t you, and you won’t have to ride.”

  His tone was sharp with derision, but Alwarul was hardly offended. Soon enough, his powers would be called upon. Perhaps all too soon. “Do not take the Art too lightly, Sir Hardae,” he said, his weariness of the subject entering his voice. “There is much danger there for all.”

  “Do you see, Tim?” Conrad turned sternly to his charge. “This man doesn’t do any bloody magic. The sorcerers and fortune tellers never do magic. It’s always solemn language and useless incantations. Do you understand?”

  “Yes, sir,” the boy muttered to his saddle. When Conrad turned ahead with a grunt, however, the squire gave Alwarul a quick look that said something different.

  “If you will not tell a wizard what you have seen, then perhaps you will still tell an old man who shares in the peril?” Alwarul asked.

  “An old man in the Hills will trust my judgment,” he said, “and not fret over what fighting men may have to deal with.”

  “As you would have it,” Alwarul granted in a dry voice. “For now, you will—”

  Laughter cut him short, yet it had not come from any of them. It echoed down a passage, made it seem as if the Hills themselves reveled. Voices. Distant, but coming closer.

  Conrad snarled at once, his voice gone hoarse with urgency. “Savages in the passage. We must hide.” He reined in his destrier and then turned the horse to follow another thin path that branched off up one of the hills, snaking around it. “After me. Hurry. But be silent.”

  The laughter was growing louder. They could hear that it came from many throats, coarse and dark voices that seemed undaunted by any dangers of the Hills. Alwarul followed along with the others, riding in among the rocks and stones that would conceal them. The bard dismounted to lead his horse carefully over the debris, and Conrad cursed silently, growling at the man that he’d throw him down a cliff if he didn’t hurry. Arisfae came among them in time, and they all saw the laughing men appear below them from the passage they had just been heading towards.

  Twenty, they were, clad in heavy furs and the skins of animals, some with fearsome cloaks of bear and wolfskin. All were armed, carrying axes, hammers, and spears, some made of steel but most made of bronze, and he knew that each of the clansmen could make use of them. They were broad men of thick builds, tall and bearded more often than not, and the harshness in their voices was in their faces as well: weather-bitten faces with sharp angles and brows that easily frowned.

  “Marvelous,” Arisfae whispered excitedly, but both Conrad and Nightshadow gave him angry glares. The singer did not seem to care about them, continuing to look down eagerly with a broad smile on his face. “Look at how beastly they appear. More animals than men.” The singer did not seem very intimidated at all — which, no doubt, was due to his failure to realize the danger to his own person. “This is perfect. Reclaimer, will you not taunt them and battle them on the slope? What a song that would make!”

  Conrad’s expression did not reveal any enthusiasm. It seemed more likely that he would strike the singer down.

  “Look, they have those teeth necklaces and claws and... Is that a skull?”

  Alwarul saw that it was. A human cranium hung at a clansman’s belt, fastened with leather cords through an ugly hole in the top of the skull. A filthy cloak that was not of fur peeked through beneath the man’s wolfskin mantle, a fiery cloak much more common in Richard’s Defense.

  “Gruesome,” Arisfae commented. “You can exact vengeance, sir! Quickly, before they leave—” Conrad put a hand over the singer’s mouth and held the other around his throat, quenching the words.

  The clansmen below them laughed and jested with each other, their voices booming among the rocks. As the last of them disappeared into another passage and the sounds grew distant, Conrad released the bard again, letting him draw breath. “One more time, singer, and you’ll be alone in the Hills,” the knight said, and then he called for them to pick another path. “There seem to be many of the savages here; they act very confidently. We must try to go around.”

  “Are ye sure?” Molgrimin asked. “Otherwise, we could be plowing our way through them.” The moinguir gave a look to the singer as if seeking approval, but Arisfae was still trying to regain his breath.

  “Not even the Lions of the Pass could if their numbers are near as great as we’ve heard. I’m afraid it looks as if they are in our way.” Conrad paused, but then he shook his head. “Perhaps we will be able to edge around them. Come, we continue.”

  They followed the knight’s lead, again leaving their most direct route, and Alwarul grew increasingly restless. We try to avoid them, he thought, yet there was another consideration that was stronger: But we cannot delay.

  31

  One Must Not Hesitate

  Nathelion had been terrified when the barbarians had passed by below them. They had looked like wild cr
eatures, men who lived every day with battle until they grew to revel in it. At once upon seeing them and hearing their coarse voices, he had understood exactly how fatal it would be to be detected. Yet the bard had kept babbling. Gods, how he hated the man.

  Every day, they saw more and more distant fires, until the fires were not distant anymore. They were in their path and suddenly behind them — around them — and Nathelion came to fear the moment when they found themselves somehow in the middle of it all. Arisfae was quite ecstatic, and when they needed silence the most, the bloody singer went on with his comments. Twice after their first sighting of barbarians, they spotted other groups, each greater in number than the one before. Conrad grew tenser, yet he kept insisting on making fires now, every night, saying that it didn’t matter anymore since the savages would think it one of their own. Meanwhile, Alwarul seemed to grow anxious every time the knight decided that they’d ride around an area that appeared full of barbarians. Nathelion began to worry that the old man’s convictions might drive him to carelessness, as he insisted on cutting straight through to the Martyr’s Passage. Conrad would never listen to such madness, of course, yet if Alwarul’s lunacy suddenly took a grim turn, then perhaps he was a greater liability than the singer — and Nathelion the greater fool.

  You could see clearly on Conrad’s face that they were in trouble, with far more pillars of smoke rising over the heights now than he had expected. He talked to Tim often whenever they made camp, and the squire was pale and wide-eyed while the knight gave him instructions on how to fight if it came to that. Nathelion could never bear listening to it. He’d roll himself up in his fine mantle by the fire and imagine that he was somewhere else instead. Maybe even back in Widowswood.