“Right, let’s go Mr.…” she said.
“Schiss, Your Majesty,” said Schiss, with a little smile that lit up his odd features. She saw his many pointy teeth and instantly knew who he was.
“You’re a Spider person,” she accused him, though her shock wasn’t as great as it would have been earlier this morning.
Schiss nodded and his sharp tongue poked out to lick his cracked lips. “Yes, but the Empress tried to kill me and then gave me to the Prince. I am free of any loyalty to her wickedness.”
“I will crush you if you are lying to me,” said Adele. “And I imagine you will take a lot less to kill than the Prince here.”
Schiss nodded and, strangely, smiled again. “Should you wish it, my Queen, I would put my own head under your foot.”
Adele nodded. “Good.”
“We should bring the boy too, my Queen,” suggested Schiss politely. “He is filled with The Blood of Marchants, I can smell it on him. If we are caught, we can offer him up to the Empress as tribute. She never misses a chance to taste The Blood.”
“Oi! I’m no Marchant...” Charlie protested, but it died when Adele’s eyes fell on him. What he saw there made him bite his lip and murmur an apology. “I’ll come with you if you need me, Your Majesty.”
Grotto made a noise of disgust, as he carried Rainere back to the couch to sit. “Look how she hypnotizes them to do her bidding, Master. Do you not now see what she is?” But his protest fell on deaf ears as Rainere had turned his focus to General Ohrig.
“General, surely you cannot allow your Queen to put herself in such danger. If she goes near the Nest she will die along with her daughter. You can’t let her do this. The future of Unisia depends on her,” Rainere’s voice pitched hysterically at the end as he begged for someone to see the sense of his words.
General Ohrig looked from the desperate Prince and back to his determined Queen. “If this Nest is as dangerous as the Prince says then it would be worse than foolish to go charging in there by yourself with only a traitor and a Marchant kiddling to help,” Ohrig said slowly. He looked at Adele and his light blue eyes were clear.
“Your Majesty, we are going to need a plan.”
Chapter Forty-Seven
“Deep and Dark is the Rage of Betrayal”
The War Room of the Grey Palace was an appropriate setting in which to hold their meeting. The room was not large, and the walls and ceiling had been covered in blood-red silk to match the scarlet carpet. That, coupled with the fact that there were no windows, gave the visitors the disturbing feeling of sitting inside a womb. There was a long table set in the middle of the room, surrounded by heavy oak chairs, on which a map of the Kingdom of Unisia had been carved into the wood itself and was still marked by the various miniature flags and figurines that had been required to plan the last Marchant war in Unisia.
Adele sat at the head of the table and looked at every one of the men in front of her, examining them with a critical eye for their strengths and weaknesses. For once in her life she couldn’t care less what they thought of her in turn.
Inside her the Chime Voices wanted Magic and they wanted blood and they sang this to Adele in a low chant that made her mind reel. A terrible thirst for revenge had dried up all the compassion and softness inside of her. A red tinge of rage colored the outside of her vision and throbbed along with the blood pounding through her head.
General Ohrig sat to her right and Charlie to her left with Schiss next to him. Captain Lucky, QGs Bear, Owens, Pepper and Leith were in a row next to their General. Prince Rainere sat at the end of the table, his back straight and his face expressionless. Grotto sat at his Master’s right hand, glaring savagely back at Adele.
“Rainere, you are the strongest here amongst us, why can’t you help us fight the Empress?” Adele demanded.
“Because of the vow I made to her when she caught me more than a hundred years ago,” he said and his voice was heavy with regret. “I have wanted to take it back a thousand times since, but I was young and thought I was dying at the time I made it. I had no idea what a lifetime of servitude would feel like.”
“What would happen to you specifically if you broke your vow?” asked Adele
“My Magic does not work against her,” said Rainere. “Anything I tried to attack her with would just backfire and hit me instead.”
“Have you tested that theory?” asked Adele and didn’t even flinch as the hurt in Rainere’s gaze stabbed her through the heart. Her heart wouldn’t be worth much anyway if Natalie died tonight.
“Of course I have, many times” said Rainere quietly and unconsciously ran his fingers over the delicate web of scars on the backs of his hands.
“But could you still protect us from the Empress and the other Spiders?” Adele persisted. “Anything helpful that wouldn’t be the same as a direct attack on the Empress.”
Rainere frowned doubtfully. “Perhaps. But even if we can get to Natalie at the center of the Nest, the Empress will be alerted by our very presence. There are thousands of Spiders living in every tunnel of the Nest and any one of them could let the Empress know where we are.”
“Not while she sleeps they wouldn’t,” said Schiss nervously, speaking for the first time.
“Go on.” Adele gestured for him to speak up.
“Well, the Empress will rest before the big occasion tonight when the full moon rises. She will need to prepare herself to accept the new power when she eats… for your daughter.”
A fresh wave of panic swamped Adele. Her daughter was going to be eaten by a monster who thought she was Adele and they were all just sitting around talking about it.
Adele felt General Ohrig’s hand on her arm and realized she had risen out of her seat. “Calm yourself, Your Majesty,” he said. “We will move when the time comes.”
He was right of course. They had a way to get into the Nest with Schiss, but no way to fight the Empress or to get Natalie safely out again.
“How big is the Empress?” asked Adele. “Because as a Spider, Schiss is no bigger than my hand.”
“The Empress is enormous, my Queen,” answered Schiss. “She would fill half this room with her body alone.”
“She is as tall as me but ten times wider,” said Rainere, more accurately.
“That’s disgusting,” whispered QG Pepper and for the first time Adele could see just how pale and shaken her young QGs were. Pepper and Leith were barely out of their teens and had yet to see anything of their own world, and now she would ask them to face this monstrous foe. Maybe she should leave them in the Grey Palace rather than risk their cowardice when she needed them most…when Natalie needed them most?
“Can metal or glass weapons kill her?” asked Captain Lucky of the little man-Spider, but had trouble looking Schiss in the eye.
Rainere answered for Schiss. “Yes, if you can get past her hundred strong Royal Guards and ability to spit acid-poison, and if you could trap her somehow, then yes, your Human weapons would kill her.”
“And my Magic?” asked Adele.
“Your Magic works in close quarters, Adelena,” said Rainere, softening his tone for her. “You would have to be touching to do what you do, and by that time you’d be dead.”
There was a minute of silence as everyone stared at their hands and thought furiously.
“Your Majesty, there is one thing that would kill the Empress and indeed every Spider in the Nest,” said Charlie quietly. He pulled a scrap of cloth from his vest pocket and lay it on the table, then, with a nervous look at the Prince, he took out a small glass ball from inside his shirt and placed in on the cloth so it couldn’t roll. Captain Lucky and General Ohrig leaped back from the table at the sight of it, making everyone else jump or yelp in surprise. Everyone, except Rainere, who only gazed morosely at the small blue flame flickering inside the clear glass.
“Cunt of a cat, boy!” swore General Ohrig, clearly shaken beyond decorum by the appearance of the glass bauble. “Where in the name of the Godde
ss did you get that?”
“It’s mine,” sighed Rainere and Adele watched as a dark fatality suffused his beautiful face, rendering him old and sad.
“Is that really…?” whispered Lucky, pointing a shaking finger at the ball and staring at it in horrified fascination.
“Charlie,” said Adele sharply. “Tell me what it is.”
“It’s Dragon Fire, Your Majesty,” said Charlie, looking her straight in the eye. “One small flame of living Dragon Fire. It is the most dangerous weapon ever invented by the ancient Wizards.” Charlie cast his eyes down the table to Rainere. “It is one of only two ways that an Immortal can be killed,” he added.
“Whoever breaks the Sticking Glass and has enough power to direct the flame can be its Master,” explained Rainere to her inquiring look. “It will then burn eternally, obliterating the fuel it has been commanded to consume. It is powerful enough to destroy any Magic it touches, including God-given curses.” Rainere gave her one of his sweet half-smiles. “It was given to me by someone who knew from experience just how painful Immortality could be.”
“So, we have our way into the Nest, a weapon to destroy the Spiders, and now we only need a way out,” said Adele, not allowing herself to be drawn in by Rainere’s smile. But her heart cracked a little under the pressure.
“I imagine that’s when we pick up our arses and run as fast as we can to escape the tunnels once the fire is released,” said Ohrig, gingerly sitting back down as far from the delicate glass ball of Dragon Fire as he could and still be at the table.
Schiss looked to Adele. “I will hold them off until you escape, I promise,” said the little man-Spider bravely.
“But the Dragon Fire will destroy you, too, won’t it?” asked Captain Lucky. “You won’t have much of a chance to help if you get incinerated.” And he gave Schiss a sympathetic look, finally meeting his eye.
Captain Lucky turned to Adele and she knew what he would say before he said it, she could see the goodness of his soul as it shone out at her from the depths of his sky-blue eyes.
“Your Majesty, have we considered that there will be females and infants down in that Nest? What if not all the creatures are evil? Surely there will more Spider…err…people like Schiss who would be willing to help us. They are an ancient race of beings, Your Majesty, to kill them out of hand for the actions of their Empress, well, it wouldn’t be…”
“It wouldn’t be right,” agreed the General and he turned to Adele too, beseeching her to reconsider using the devastating Dragon Fire. “Maybe the Empress acts alone, Your Majesty? The Rules of Combat state that the enemy must be given mercy and the right to surrender before being engaged in battle. Dragon Fire will show no mercy, Your Majesty.”
Adele took a deep breath and placed both hands on the table in front of her. She stared down at the whorls in the wood grain and could see the scratches that had been etched and covered with polish for who knew how many times in this palace, in this nation, in this alien world… in this part of the Universe. She stood up and looked at each man in turn as she spoke.
“I think that there is something you all need to remember. My children and I, we were brought here to your world against our will. Since we arrived six weeks ago, I have been terrified out of my wits, crowned Queen by Wizards, and forced to deal with Magic and power that I have no comprehension of.” Adele paused to take a breath and stop her voice from shaking. “I have killed a man and destroyed the life of another to protect myself and my children from the scheming of the Wizards of the Golden Palace. And now… now I find out that the only man I thought I could trust, the man who claimed to love me has betrayed me and given my daughter up to be eaten by a monster!” Adele’s voice broke on the last word, but it was anger and not fear that choked her. She glared about the table and saw the shock on all the faces of the men before her at her revelation of murder. Ohren, a frown on his pale face, opened his mouth to question her but she raised her hand for silence. She was not cowed by his authority anymore.
“Please listen, as I’m going to make this very clear: I DON’T CARE about your Prophecy, or your Rules of Combat! There will be no mercy for the nightmarish creatures who have my daughter.” She pointed down the table at Rainere. “And there will be no mercy for the man who took her from me.”
Adele could feel her eyes flashing as the rage pulsed around her in a cloud, and her Magic surged within her, moving with the chanting of the Chime Voices.
“But I will tell you what there will be. There will be blood and there will be dead Spiders everywhere! I will not rest until every last one of them dies for what they have done to Natalie. If you don’t have the stomach for genocide then I command you to stand down before we go any further, but if anyone so much as suggests the word mercy to me again then your corpse can join the thousands of monsters that will soon stain the earth with their blood.”
There was complete silence, until:
“Hell, yes!”
The exhortation was so unexpected that Adele didn’t even recognize the voice that shouted it.
“Hell yes, Your Majesty,” QG Bear corrected himself. “Let’s kill all those demon pricks and save the Princess from being eaten.” He gave Adele a nod of respect and a wide smile.
“I’m with you too, Your Majesty,” agreed QG Owens and sat up taller in his chair, exchanging a grin with QG Bear. “Killing mythical creatures is something I joined the Queen’s Guard to do.”
QG Owens turned to General Ohrig. “It is in our Oath, Sir.”
“… to protect our Queen from the Dark Entities and the Deeper Mysteries found between the Known and the Unknown of this World,” murmured Ohrig, acknowledging that their archaic oath was now curiously relevant on this dark day. He gave Adele a firm nod. “Your Majesty, we will join you and we will lay down our lives for you. We will follow you into Hell if you should ask it of us, just please, don’t waste our sacrifice.”
The red haze slowly dissipated from the edges of Adele’s vision. General Ohrig was intelligent, brave and strong. He was also incredibly loyal to the men under him and she would be wise right now to listen to him.
“I will not ask any of you to go where I will not,” said Adele. “And when we find Natalie, we will either leave with her or die trying. If anything should happen down in the Spiders Nest, you are not to come back for me. Natalie is the only person who matters. That is an order.” She looked heavily around the table at the men, avoiding Rainere’s eye at the last moment. “We have only a little time left, so let’s get started on a real plan.”
Chapter Forty-Eight
“Down We Go Into the Darkness Below”
The journey through the portal had shaken everybody up. Rainere had taken the party through in pairs, as they each had to hold his arm to make it through the long green void without getting lost.
Rainere had brought them deep into the Dark Forest, far from the main entrance to the Nest, but close to a little-used waste channel that Schiss had claimed would be a discreet entry point. Their party now had time to rest and survey their surroundings, while Rainere closed the portal from the Grey Palace and opened another one, which would lead them to the border of the Belvoir Estate. It was their escape route when, or if, they made it out of this nightmare alive.
Adele stood apart from the others and watched Rainere work. She couldn’t help it. As if from nowhere, a swirling matrix of particles and clusters of green dust appeared before him as he swept his arms in small circles and formed the portal. She could feel him pulling Magic out of the air and mixing it with the power within himself, as green sparkles of energy flowed from his elegant hands and coalesced in an oval shape big enough to fit a Human-form. It was beautiful. He was beautiful. As if she had spoken aloud, Rainere turned to look over his shoulder at her, catching her gaze and holding it for a moment. Her eyes ran over the planes of his face, those fine cheekbones she had held between her hands, and the perfectly-formed mouth that fit so well against her own, and tried to deny the urge to thro
w herself into his arms. Her anger toward him had been eclipsed by a nearly petrifying fear of walking into a cave of giant Spiders, and finding her daughter dead.
A cold breeze blew into the forest glade, swaying branches and rustling the dead leaves at their feet. Adele shivered and pulled up the collar of her riding jacket, dragging her gaze away from Rainere. Schiss shuffled over and gave her a welcome distraction.
“I never got to thank you, m’Queen.” Schiss smiled shyly. “You saved me from that horrible Mage in Sandar. I would have died in that little box if you hadn’t set me free.”
Adele nodded. That was a week ago, when she’d had mercy for Spiders. “Who did this to you?” she asked, gesturing at his injuries.
“The Empress, my mother,” whispered Schiss and a bleak look passed over his face. “She never liked me, I think, or any of her children who walk in the Above Lands. Though I would have kissed her foot for a kind word I know I am dead to her now. Should she see me again she will eat me, or feed me to her new Hatchlings.” He looked closely at Adele, his big eyes bulging even wider. “I do not think, m’Queen, that you would ever eat your children?”
Adele shook her head, no, but couldn’t say another word. What madness she had been caught up in? Mothers eating children, monsters eating her daughter. Wizards who could love you and turn on you in a heartbeat. Adele wanted to scream in fear and frustration. This wasn’t what her life was meant to be like!
“Your Majesty, we are all as ready as we’ll ever be,” whispered Ohrig close to her shoulder. Adele took a deep breath and struggled to bring her hysteria under control. Natalie needed to be rescued and that was what she had to focus on.
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