Queen of the Pale

by Sarah Hawke

  “In here!” Delaryn said, tugging him through the sitting room and adjoining library. Past the mostly empty shelves was a narrow side chamber with a hastily constructed wooden barricade blocking a trap door.

  Rohen swore under his breath. “It will take forever to hack through that. They’ll be here any second!”

  “I might be able to freeze it,” she told him, taking a deep breath and reaching out to the Aether. It was almost impossible to concentrate with the Wailing screaming into her mind and the aftershock of the Flensing still tingling through her arms…

  “Wait,” Rohen said, snatching her wrist. Once again, she saw the fear and confusion on his face as he looked at her. Now that he knew what she was—now that he knew what she was capable of—she couldn’t be sure how he would react to her magic.

  “I can do this,” she assured him. “I can—”

  “There’s another way,” he said, releasing his grip and glancing down at his wraithblade. “Hathal niveh!”

  The moonsilver sword shimmered as it partially dispersed into the Pale, and Rohen reared back and slashed through the barricade. The blue spectral blade scythed through the wood as effortlessly as if it were freshly fallen snow, and it seared long, thin black lines in its wake. Yet the wood didn’t ignite—the wraithblade shed no heat.

  Rohen repeated the Elvish phrase and returned the blade to the physical world. He reached out and pulled the barricade apart as if he had just sliced up a cake. Once the trap door on the other side had been cleared, he grabbed the handle and tugged it open. “Go on!”

  Delaryn peered into the opening and the narrow, winding stone staircase beyond. If not for the shrieks of the Chol storming through the Hold—or their maddened voices screaming into her mind—she never would have considered returning to this horrible place. The crypts would inevitably trigger a hundred horrifying memories of snickering soldiers holding her down and threatening to rape the wickedness out of her. Besides, if the mountain passage had somehow collapsed or been sealed, the crypts would also be a dead-end.

  But so was staying here. Literally.

  Go, my daughter! Escape while you still can!

  Grimacing, Delaryn tossed a final look back into the library as she reached out to the Aether. The Flensing gnawed at her arms as the magic flowed through her, but she forced herself to concentrate on the invisible, imperceptible vapor clinging to the cold air. She snap-froze the water just like back in the royal wing, instantly creating a thick wall of ice between this tiny side chamber and the library.

  “That should hold them off for a little while…I hope,” she said, releasing her hold on the Aether and clutching her throbbing forearms. Her veins had appeared beneath the surface of her skin again—if she pushed herself much harder, the pain would become unbearable.

  “Guardian protect us,” Rohen whispered, glancing between Delaryn and the wall. “And Watcher forgive me.”

  Delaryn turned and stared down the stairs, then reached back to take his hand. “Come on.”

  ***

  The Whitefeather crypts were every bit as cold, dark, and haunting as Rohen had feared, but at least the Chol were no longer breathing down their necks. His heart had finally stopped pounding in his ears, and the momentary pause had allowed him to catch his breath. The downside was that he finally had the opportunity to start reflecting on everything that had just happened.

  High King Thedric is dead. The Lord Protector is missing and probably dead, too. The Chol are on the loose much farther east than anyone realized, and, oh yeah, Delaryn is a sorceress.

  “I don’t remember the layout well,” she said, pulling her hood tight as they shuffled past another row of sarcophagi. “But the exit shouldn’t be hard to find.”

  Rohen withheld a snort. Allegedly, the crypt was relatively modest in size, but given that the Whitefeathers had been burying their dead here for thirty generations, “modest” could mean half the size of the damn Hold. Still, weaving through the tombs of the long dead was a hell of a lot better than walking over the bodies of the newly fallen.

  With his wraithblade as their only source of light, they couldn’t see much more than a few yards ahead of them. The crypt appeared to be a series of interlocking, mostly rectangular chambers grouped by generation and time period. Everything was in remarkably good shape, from the cobblestone floor to the tombs themselves. There weren’t even as many mice or rats as he had expected, though the seemingly endless network of spiderwebs was just as annoying.

  “The Chol will follow eventually,” he said, chopping down another web with his blade as if he were pushing through the thickest part of the Moonweald with a machete. “They’re nothing if not persistent. I just hope we can—hrngh!”

  Rohen clutched at his leg and slouched against one of the sarcophagi. He knew he had just taken a bad step, but he could have sworn he had been stabbed again.

  “Maiden’s mercy,” Delaryn breathed, placing her hand on his chest. “You’ve lost a lot of blood…”

  “I’ll be fine,” he insisted even as his head started to spin. “I’ll worry about it once we get into the mountains.”

  He started to shuffle forward again, but his legs could no longer bear his weight. He stumbled to a knee, his sword clattering from his hand, as a wave of dizziness washed over him.

  “You won’t make it to the mountains,” Delaryn breathed. “Let me help you—”

  “No,” Rohen said, snatching her wrist as she reached out for him. He stared hard into her brilliant eyes, a thousand warnings about the power and danger of sorcery looping through his head.

  I’ve never been afraid to let Sehris tend to my wounds. Is this really so different?

  “I need to try to stop the bleeding,” Delaryn told him. “I know a little bit of healing magic.”

  Rohen maintained his grip on her wrist. “How do you know any magic?”

  “It’s…complicated,” she murmured. “I’ll explain everything later, I promise.”

  He looked down at her outstretched fingers—the same fingers that had just summoned enough Aetheric energy to freeze half a dozen Chol and then conjure a wall of ice. Sehris had been training at the Galespire for almost four years now, and she couldn’t muster anywhere near that kind of raw destructive power…not that her instructors would have dared teach her elemental magic in the first place. The sorcerers within the spire learned how to defend, enchant, and heal; none of them had been entrusted with the secrets of elemental channeling since the bygone days of the Seven.

  “Rohen, please,” Delaryn begged. “Let me help you.”

  He wavered for far too long before he released her wrist and slumped against the sarcophagus behind him. She promptly pushed aside his bloody clothes, but it wasn’t until he felt the warmth of her skin on his that he realized just how cold he had gotten. The sheer rush of adrenaline had carried him through the Hold, but now the reality of his condition was finally starting to set in. She was right: without aid, he was never going to leave this tomb.

  “Guardian’s grace, I hope this works,” Delaryn breathed. She closed her eyes, and Rohen immediately felt another, stronger rush of warmth cascade through his body. Her hand glowed faintly as she flooded him with restorative energy drawn and woven from the Aether.

  “That feels a little better,” he whispered.

  Delaryn’s eyes fluttered back open, and she let out a long, exhausted sigh. She curled and uncurled her fingers as if they were freezing, but Rohen knew it was the Flensing, not the cold, that was making them numb. After her awesome displays of power upstairs, she would probably need hours of rest before she could channel more than a spark of power without any backlash.

  “It hasn’t stopped bleeding,” she whispered. “I don’t understand why.”

  Rohen shivered involuntarily. “It’s the Godcursed steel. Without a tarnroot salve, the bleeding will never stop.”

  Her eyes shot open in horror. “What?”

  “We can’t afford to linger,” he said, bracing his ar
m against the sarcophagus. “If we push through the forest, we might still be able to reach Dorelas before—”

  Rohen winced and slumped back down when another wave of nausea and vertigo crashed over him. In its wake flowed a river of dread.

  Maiden’s mercy, I’m never getting out of here. I’ll bleed out on the floor as the Chol come for her. I’m going to fail in my duty to protect her yet again…

  “Are you sure?” Delaryn whispered, her eyes flicking off to the side as if she were speaking with someone else. She grimaced, then turned back to him and placed her hand on his side again. “Just hold still…”

  Rohen frowned, wondering if the blood loss was making him hallucinate, as an eerie green glow enveloped her hands—the same glow enveloping her mother in the painting back in the guest chambers.

  The Pale. Oh, gods, she’s rending the Pale!

  When the air began to hiss and pop as if it were about to burst into flames, Rohen started to push her away…but then a warm surge of energy washed over him and swept the pain away. Even the fog clouding his head started to clear.

  “It’s working,” Delaryn said, a faint smile tugging at her lips. “The wound is closing.”

  Rohen glanced down at his leg. He could barely see what she was doing through the bloody scraps of his trousers, but he knew what the alchemists and healers had told him over and over again: the bite of a Godcursed blade could only be closed with a special salve. Magical healing could slow the bleeding but almost never stanch it. And yet…

  “Is that better?” Delaryn asked as she leaned back on her haunches. The glow slowly faded from her hands, and the strange hissing sound faded along with it.

  “How…?” he rasped, gingerly touching his mended flesh. “How did you do that?”

  “I wish I knew. I’m not even sure I could do it again.”

  Rohen frowned and shook his head. The Templar might not have been as averse to sorcery as the Keepers, but this wasn’t sorcery—it was something far, far darker. Only demons and mortals possessed by demons could reach into the spirit realm and call forth the corrupted power of the Pale. Yet Delaryn had clearly done it, just like her mother all those years ago. She wasn’t just as a sorceress—she was a witch capable of desecrating the very heavens.

  And that was something the Templar absolutely cared about.

  “Shit,” he hissed, his frozen breath billowing in front of him as he tried to refocus on the here and now. With his wraithblade on the ground, he could barely see anything besides Delaryn crouched next to him. She clutched her cloak more tightly around her body, and he knew that the Chol weren’t the only hourglass they were racing. The bitter cold of winter in Torisval would doom them as surely as Godcursed steel.

  “They’re here for me, aren’t they?” Delaryn whispered, her eyes flicking back to the darkness behind them. “My presence drew them here.”

  Rohen pursed his lips. He had been silently wondering about that this whole time. “An army of Chol wouldn’t usually break off from the horde just to follow one channeler.”

  She slowly swiveled her gaze back to him. “Not even the daughter of the Winter Witch?”

  He winced despite himself. “I don’t know, but we haven’t seen any Anointed, just Dretches. They’re too simpleminded to make any decisions. Besides, most of them went after Thedric, not you.”

  “Why?” she asked, her voice a brittle whisper.

  “I have no idea,” he admitted. “None of this makes sense. I don’t know how they got into the castle or past the gate. They’re vicious and relentless, but they’re not particularly clever.”

  Delaryn swallowed heavily. “How did the sentries not see them coming?”

  “I don’t know that, either,” Rohen admitted. “But this obviously isn’t the main horde. Watcher willing, Zin and Sehris have already made it to Dorelas.”

  A silence settled between them, as still and stale as the air in the crypt. The longer they sat here, the more the harrowing reality of everything that had just happened started to settle in. Rohen wasn’t ready to deal with that yet, and he was sure that Delaryn wasn’t, either.

  “We should keep moving,” he said, bracing himself again and trying to stand. Mercifully, the resulting wave of dizziness passed after just a few seconds, and he felt strong enough to walk, if not fight. He retrieved Varlothin and held it in front of them as they continued plodding through the crypt.

  They only got lost once on the way to the exit, which Rohen considered a minor miracle under the circumstances. A large slab of ancient stone blocked an archway that theoretically led into the mountains behind the castle, though he didn’t see any obvious way to open it.

  “There’s an enchantment in the stones,” she said, shivering and clutching her cloak even more tightly around her as she approached the slab. “My father said that only Whitefeather blood can open it.”

  When Rohen held his wraithblade a few inches from the slab, he noticed a vast, interconnected sequence of barely visible glyphs inscribed on the surface. “These inscriptions…they look Elvish.”

  “They are,” Delaryn said, placing her right hand flat against the stone. “The enchantment is hundreds and hundreds of years old. It was made back when the Whitefeathers ruled and Darenthi had an alliance with Nelu’Thalas.”

  “I really hope you can open it.”

  “So do I,” she breathed. “First, I need to borrow that dagger.”

  Rohen frowned and glanced down at the wraithblade dagger he had taken from the battle upstairs. “Why?”

  “I need Whitefeather blood,” she said, holding out her hand.

  He grimaced. The thought of blood sorcery probably shouldn’t have turned his stomach as badly as it did, given all the other sacrilege he had seen and participated in today, but libraries across Darenthi were filled with literature on the perils of elven channeling techniques. Blood had been everything to the Avetharri—legacy, status, and most importantly of all, power.

  But whether he liked it or not, this passage was their only way out of here. Once again, the questions would just have to wait.

  “Maiden’s mercy,” Rohen whispered as he pulled the dagger from his belt and handed it to her. The small blade was glowing just as brightly as his sword.

  Delaryn gently nicked the inside of her palm, then pressed her hand against the slab again. When nothing happened, Rohen feared they may have unwittingly entombed themselves down here after all…but then one by one the glyphs flared to life. The slab rumbled like an ancient hibernating beast before it began sliding out of their way.

  “The path outside should run north along the cliffs for half a mile before it slopes back down,” Delaryn said. A blast of bitter cold air punctuated her words, and Rohen whispered a prayer to the gods. Without divine intervention, he wasn’t sure how they would avoid freezing to death on the way to Dorelas.

  “The Chol will break through that wall soon if they haven’t already,” Rohen said, tossing one final glance behind him into the crypt.

  Nodding, Delaryn gently removed the tiara in her hair and set it down upon the nearest sarcophagus. She stared hard at the silver band, a dozen different emotions flickering across her face.

  “Then let’s go,” she said, turning and starting through the dark passage.

  She did not look back.

  6

  Keeping Secrets

  Long before the fishing village of Dorelas rolled into view on the dark, storm-shrouded horizon, Sehris had begun to worry that many of the Pact soldiers accompanying them would not survive the trip. The winter wind was so bitter and so brutal that she and Zin would have surely frozen to death if not for her magic. She had been able to shield them and their horse in a thin, invisible barrier despite her restraints, but the rest of their unit had no such option.

  And yet somehow, they didn’t lose a single man or mount along the way.

  “I’ll say one thing about these northerners,” Zin muttered as they approached a pair of fur-covered sentries waiting outsid
e the village. “They’re as tough as steel and half as flexible.”

  Sehris mumbled into her leather gag and glanced behind her. Almost every member of this battalion was a Torisval native; they were all the surviving tharns up here in the north had been willing to contribute to the Pact Army. They should have sent more men, given that the Chol were threatening their homeland, but she could hardly blame them for not trusting the man who had led his conquering forces up here just three short years ago. Every family in Torisval had likely lost a son or two in the civil war. The fact the locals had sent any soldiers at all was something of a minor miracle.

  “Looks like a greeting party,” Zin called out over the wind. “I’ll go ahead and speak with them while you organize the men and do a headcount.”

  “As you wish, Sir Keeper,” Major Thorne replied with only the faintest trace of annoyance.

  “And to think I almost missed spending time with regular soldiers,” Zin muttered as he nudged their horse forward.

  Sehris pushed herself up against his back as tightly as she could, knowing the less threatening she made herself appear, the better.

  “Guardian guide you, Sir Keeper,” one of the sentries shouted over the wind, bow in hand. He had the grizzled look of man who enjoyed wrestling bears. “We’ve done all we could to prepare a camp.”

  “Thank you, we appreciate it,” Zin said, nodding and pulling back his hood enough to show his face. “I’m sorry we’re so late. The roads weren’t very cooperative.”

  “Why didn’t you wait until tomorrow?” the other sentry, a woman, chimed in. “The sun would have saved you a lot of misery.”

  “General Galavir wanted us here as soon as possible just in case the horde circled around the lake,” Zin told them.

  “We’re very grateful,” the male sentry said with a bow. “One of the hunters spotted a few of those monsters out near the forest a few hours ago.”

  Zin glanced back over his shoulder, though between the darkness and the snow, there was no way he could possibly see the forest from here. “Really? That’s surprising…”