The Reluctant Queen

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Ven laid his sword into every spirit that came at him, hacking right and left, spinning and kicking. Around him, he saw the others do the same.

  “Ven, down!” Piriandra shouted.

  Ven dropped to the ground, and her knife sailed over his head and embedded itself in the wing of a spirit. He nodded thanks and then scrambled toward the throne, through the fighting. Champion Ambir had made it there first and thrown his body over the queen’s to protect her—and died there, his throat torn.

  Dropping beside the queen, Ven kept fighting with one arm and felt for a pulse in the queen’s neck with his other. He felt nothing. Her flesh felt soft and warm but it did not move.

  False death, or real death?

  He would only know when—and if—she woke.

  Until then . . . Ven somersaulted forward and then stabbed up, piercing a doll-like air spirit that had latched onto the ankle of Champion Tilden. Tilden nodded thanks and returned to methodically swatting smaller spirits out of the air with a mace.

  On the edges of the chamber, Sevrin was whirling nearly as fast as the spirits themselves. He held two knives, curved blades, and was slicing so fast that the silver blurred.

  The champions were trained not to kill the spirits, only hurt them enough so they fled, but these spirits didn’t flee. They bled red, silver, and blue blood on the polished wood, and they kept attacking.

  Ven noticed, though, that it was only air spirits attacking the champions. Where were the earth spirits, the fire, the water, the wood, the ice? Below us, he thought. In the palace. “Follow me!” he cried, and charged for the stairs.

  “But the queen!” Champion Gura cried.

  The spirits wouldn’t hurt Daleina. She was already dead. But there were plenty more in the palace who weren’t dead yet, and if—when, he corrected—Daleina woke, she’d want him to have saved as many as he could. As he ran down the spiral stairs, the air spirits attacked him from the sides, and the wood spirits reached out from the tree. They grabbed at his ankles and arms, pierced him from below and beside. He kept his blade swinging, slicing them away from him. He tried not to think what he’d find when he reached the bottom.

  Chapter 21

  Naelin lay on the floor of the late queen’s bedchambers in a puddle of muck. It was nice on the floor, without spirits around her. She breathed in and out and didn’t taste the odd mix of salt and pine and moss and ash. All of the spirits were outside, flitting around the palace. They’d stayed close but they weren’t right here, which was what made it nice.

  This isn’t working, she thought.

  She wasn’t used to them. She wasn’t less afraid of them. She wasn’t becoming inured to them. She was simply having more nightmares, including ones that sometimes hit when she was awake. Naelin hadn’t told Ven about those—about the moments when her rib cage felt tight, her lungs felt squeezed, her skin dampened with sweat, and her vision seemed to collapse to only what was right in front of her.

  The problem was she could sense them all. Every little last vicious one of them. She felt their antipathy like a sore on her skin, constantly raw. Before her training began, she’d no idea there were so many of them. They clogged the trees. They filled the air. They permeated the water, always near, always watching, always listening, always hating. Shutting down her mind, she tried not to sense them. All she wanted was a moment. Just one—

  A scream broke through her thoughts.

  She sat bolt upright. Outside. It was from beyond the room, the hallway, just outside. As Ven had taught her, she thrust her mind beyond herself, and she felt—a spirit? It seemed like a spirit, but one that had been torn apart or inside out. It writhed and twisted as if in pain, except it wasn’t pain, it was . . . ecstasy, brutal joy that poured out of it and flooded into Naelin. She felt as if she were choking on it. Stop! she thought at it.

  It didn’t hear her. She stumbled to her feet. Preparing to broadcast the command louder, she opened her mind wider, and from every direction, she felt spirits spinning wildly, as if they were about to explode in a thousand pieces.

  She couldn’t see. Everything dripped red in front of her, and the world tilted. Feeling her way across the room, she hit one of the posts of the bed. She clung to it, feeling the solid wood, trying to draw her mind back from the whirlpool.

  It would suck her in. It would drown her.

  Clinging to the post, she tried to pull out of the rush of pain-joy-need.

  Blood, the taste of blood. She tasted coppery saltiness on her tongue and realized she’d bitten through her lip.

  Stop.

  This time the command was to herself.

  She was human, not spirit. She could control her emotions. Drawing in tight to herself, Naelin concentrated on her own breath, feeling it enter her lungs and fill her. She focused on her skin, the limits of where her body was—she was here in the room, not split and sprawled across the palace.

  Another scream, and more. Naelin ran across the room to the balcony doors and threw them open. Outside, it was as if a storm had hit the palace. The bodies of spirits darkened the sky, blocking the sun. They were twisting and cackling.

  Below, she saw people running as the spirits dove for them.

  They’re attacking! Why are they attacking?

  The spirits couldn’t attack here, not in the presence of the queen. The palace should be the safest place in all Aratay. “Erian. Llor.” She spoke their names out loud as if that would work as a talisman, and then she ran for the door to the bedchambers. She had to reach them. She had to—

  There was blood in the hallway, streaked down the wall.

  A woman was huddled on the side. Her head was bent to her chest, and she was motionless. One arm was wrapped in vines that grew from the wall. The other arm had been shredded, and the bone gleamed through the red of her muscles. Blood pooled around her, seeping into the carpet. Naelin ran to her and then stopped. The woman was dead, no question.

  A spirit had killed her. Here, in the palace.

  This can’t be happening! This shouldn’t be possible!

  And then something worse hit her:

  What did I do . . . ?

  She’d summoned the spirits here. What if . . .

  She heard more screams ahead of her, from the stairwell. Erian and Llor were five flights down. Naelin ran toward the stairs. She thrust her mind ahead of her and felt a knot of spirits. They were caught in the same frenzied whirlwind of joy and pain. One, a water spirit, was causing water to spill through a window and cascade down the stairs in a waterfall. An ice spirit followed in its wake, freezing the water, while a tree spirit caused the ceiling of the stairwell to sprout thorns.

  She plowed her mind into them. STOP!

  For an instant, they paused, but they were vibrating, as if she were holding them steady through sheer force of will, and she was certain that if she stopped broadcasting the command, they’d break free. She wasn’t going to let them. I drew them all here; this is my fault. She broadcast the command as she ran down the stairs and through a pack of three fire spirits. Past them, she released them and threw her mind to the next spirit.

  She was too slow. Erian and Llor were too far away. And there were too many spirits between her and them. In the middle of the stairwell, a fire spirit blazed. Sparks landed on the wood and lit into fires. The spirit cackled.

  Naelin didn’t think about whether she could do it. She had to do it.

  Opening her mind, she felt the spirits again, their wild fury. She let it wash into her, and then she grabbed it firmly, as if it were the arm of an unruly child. She held it steady and then reached farther out. She grabbed more spirits and held them.

  She felt as if she were splintering, but she kept a tight grip on her thoughts of Erian and Llor. The spirits had to obey her, because she had to keep her children safe. There was no other option. I caused this. I must fix this.

  Thrusting her hands into the water that flowed down the stairs, Naelin plunged her mind into the water, into the walls, into the
fire, and into the air. Out, farther, until she’d embraced the entire palace. She felt the earth spirits in the gardens, the fire spirits raging in the stairwells, the air spirits at the top of the spire . . . Do no harm!

  She felt as if every spirit suddenly turned its focus to her. Her heart began to pound, and she again heard her mother’s screams, but she held the image of Erian and Llor firmly in her mind. She felt the spirits converging on her. Coming from every corner of the palace . . . just like she’d commanded them to come during her training, but this time, she felt their hatred. They wanted her blood. They wanted to squeeze the air from her body, to crush her bones, to burn her flesh . . .

  Do! No! Harm!

  She burned the words into them, driving them deep inside.

  The spirits pressed closer, wanting, needing her pain, her blood, her death.

  And she held them still.

  Queen Daleina felt a weight on her. She opened her eyes. Her eyelids felt stiff, as if they’d been stuck shut for hours, and she looked up at the blue sky above, framed by a circle of trees. Turning her head, she saw Champion Ambir, lying across her.

  “Champion Ambir?” Her throat felt stiff, and her mouth was dry. Worse, her thoughts felt as if they were swimming in muck. She couldn’t piece together why she was here, why he was here, or what had happened.

  “Your Majesty!” a woman’s voice cried. Looking beyond Ambir, Daleina saw Champion Piriandra leap from arch to arch around the circle of the chamber. Piriandra’s knives were drawn and slick with blood. She had a cut that ran down her thigh, dripping with red raindrops. Daleina stiffened—if Alet’s suspicions were right, either Piriandra or Ambir wanted her dead . . .

  “Move yourself, Champion Ambir,” Daleina instructed, and pushed as she sat up. The body slid onto the ground with a thump. Only then did she realize that’s what it was: a body. The old champion was dead. His back had been shredded, and his throat had been pierced by a thick thorn.

  She felt a whoosh inside her mind as her thoughts at last coalesced in a coherent order. False Death. Struggling to her feet, Daleina reached her mind out, feeling for the spirits. They were congregating several floors down, squeezed into a single stairwell. Why— Why doesn’t matter, she told herself. Champion Ambir doesn’t matter. Piriandra doesn’t matter. She had to stop any more deaths. That’s all that mattered.

  She forced her mind at the spirits, broadcasting the core command: Do no harm. She felt it reverberate inside them, catching an echo and bouncing back. Do. No. Harm. She reached out beyond the palace, touching the spirits in the forest beyond. But the frenzy hadn’t spread. It had been contained here, somehow.

  She had to reach them, to see, to know why or who . . . She walked two paces and then sagged as her legs wobbled under her. She caught herself on one of the champions’ chairs. Before she could regain her strength, Champion Piriandra rushed toward her. “You live!”

  Daleina reached for the spirits, trying to call one to her, to defend her if necessary, but the spirits were still held tight in a ball in the stairwell. “Tell me what happened.”

  “You did this,” Piriandra said. “Your weakness. Your failure. You brought this on yourself and on all of us.”

  She refused to be baited into arguing. Putting the chair between herself and the champion, she demanded, “How many died?” Arin! she thought. Her sister was in the palace. She should have sent her farther away. Home. Farther. Beyond Aratay into Chell or even Elhim.

  A man’s voice—Champion Havtru—answered, “We don’t know.”

  “How long was I . . .”—her throat clogged on the word “dead”—“. . . gone?”

  Piriandra pulled a rust-colored cloth from her pocket and wiped her blades before sliding them into sheaths. “Too long.” She won’t kill me while Havtru is here, Daleina thought wildly. She won’t want a witness. Her poisoner had picked an unknown poison, one that mimicked a disease, rather than a blade through the ribs. It stood to reason that he or she wouldn’t want to be caught. If Daleina was careful to never be alone with her . . .

  “Where’s Ven?” Daleina asked. He should be here, defending her. She then squashed that thought. He’d know she was safe while dead. He must have gone to defend those who weren’t safe. Like Arin. “I must know what’s happened. Help me.”

  Hurrying to her side, Havtru supported her. More slowly, Piriandra helped her on the other side. Daleina felt as if her bones had been softened into churned butter. Her knees buckled, and she leaned heavily on the two champions.

  She made it three steps before she stopped. “This is too slow. Go, both of you. Find out what has happened. Help who you can. I’ll regain my strength here.”

  Piriandra released her, and Daleina sagged half onto the floor until Havtru shifted his weight to support her against his side. “We won’t leave you, Your Majesty,” he said.

  She hesitated for a moment. She didn’t want to be alone with anyone, but Havtru was a new champion. He couldn’t yet despise her, could he? He could. Any of them could want her dead. Or none of them. Or . . . She couldn’t think straight. She felt as if the spirits were shrieking inside her head loud and high enough to shatter her skull. “That’s an order.”

  “Forgive me, Your Majesty. Your safety overrides your orders,” Havtru said. “Champion Ven was very clear on that, when he recruited me. You had a brush with death. We will not leave you alone until you are fully well.”

  “Fine. Go, Piriandra. Havtru will prove his worth.” She kept her eyes on Havtru, hoping this wasn’t a mistake she’d regret, hoping she hadn’t misjudged him, hoping Ven hadn’t. If she couldn’t trust her own judgment, she thought she could trust Ven’s.

  Champion Piriandra sprinted for the stairs and was running down the steps without a sound. Daleina was alone with Havtru. There wasn’t even a breeze. No spirits were nearby.

  She went for blunt. “If you kill me when there is no heir, all of Aratay will suffer.”

  His eyes widened. “Your Majesty!”

  Either he was an excellent actor, or he was innocent. She chose to believe the latter. Closing her eyes, she reached out her mind toward the knot in the stairs. The hostility had drained out of them, and the fire spirits spread back into the lanterns. She guided the water spirits toward the fires that had started throughout the palace. She set the earth spirits to soothing the fault lines beneath the city. She instructed the tree spirits to regrow the palace, healing the places that had been torn apart, withering the branches that had been grown where they shouldn’t. She couldn’t sense humans, but she could feel where the spirits had been—the damage they had caused, and she felt her stomach knot. So much damage.

  Please, don’t let this cause another false death. She had to gain control . . . but gaining it meant risking losing it again. Still, she had no choice.

  After she had distributed the spirits, she opened her eyes. Havtru was watching the sky, his back was to her, and he had a staff held ready in his hands. The air spirits filled the sky again, flitting from cloud to cloud, as if they hadn’t just tried to kill everyone.

  She felt stronger, somewhat. “I need to see.”

  Putting down his staff, Havtru crossed to her and without a word scooped her up in his arms. She wanted to object, but she knew she didn’t have the strength for the stairs. And who will I impress? By now, everyone must have lost faith in me.

  He carried her down the stairs. She saw the cracks in the steps, which looked as if someone had tried to tear the staircase away from the wall of the tree. Cracks snaked up the wall, and the railing was strangled with vines. Farther down, she saw vines ran all along the outside of the palace, as if they had wanted to squeeze the walls until they split.

  At the base of the stairs, she saw the first bodies: caretakers, two of them, their arms wrapped around each other as if they’d tried to comfort each other. One was young, barely a woman, and her hair was streaked red with her own blood. The man’s leg was burned.

  The next, farther down the hallway, was un
recognizable, a mass of blackened flesh. “Don’t look, Your Majesty,” Havtru said.

  “I must. This was my fault.”

  “It was your illness. You cannot blame yourself.”

  She did blame herself, for not finding the poisoner, for allowing herself to be poisoned, for not pushing the champions harder to find an heir. “Take me to the east staircase.”

  She passed others who were still alive, but wounded and stunned. They stared at her as she passed. One leapt to his feet and kissed her hand. “You live!” he cried.

  “Help them,” she told Havtru, pointing to the wounded. “Wrap this around their wounds.” She wormed her fingers into one of the holes of her skirt and tore the fabric. Setting her down, Havtru helped her slice off bandage-size strips.

  “But your dress . . .” the caretaker sputtered.

  “Wrap it tight above their wounds, as tight as you can. Stanch the flow.” She remembered Hamon doing that for other wounded. “Stop the blood loss. Tell them to lift the injured limb up. Prop it up. Healers will be here soon.” She hoped.

  Half the eyes she passed looked at her with gratitude—she saw their relief etched into many of their faces. Their queen was alive. The spirits were subdued. But others looked at her with stares that felt like daggers. She flinched each time but forced herself to meet their eyes. They thought she’d abandoned them, that she deliberately let the spirits attack.

  I have to tell them the truth. Soon. Speculation would be running wild. But if she told them she was dying before she had an heir, there would be panic in the city, across all of Aratay. “How ready is your candidate, Champion Havtru?” Daleina asked quietly.

  “Frankly, she isn’t. She can boss around one at a time very well. Have it going up, down, sideways, acrobatics, you name it. But she can’t stretch herself to command more than one. We’re working on it. She’ll get there. She’s a good girl. Tries hard. You’ll like her.”