The Hollow Queen

by Elizabeth Haydon

  It was, however, the only reassurance that ever seemed to work.

  Now, after a long period of silence while they were leading the combined regiments across the northern border of Sorbold on their way to the Bolg kingdom, Hrarfa tried once more to make contact with Faron.

  Faron—once we have the rib of the Earthchild, we will have the key to the Vault. And then our kind will be set free, after millennia in bondage.

  After a long and customary silence, she finally heard a response.

  And then?

  Hrarfa hesitated, recalling that the Faorina spirit was only half F’dor, that it had a sense of existence that the Older and Younger Pantheons had never embraced. The insistent, overarching need for sweet destruction, even unto that of the Earth, and Life itself, might terrify him. She took the equivalent of a breath, then made her thoughts as gentle as was possible to make them.

  And then, we will be free. All the souls, our family, that have been imprisoned unjustly from the beginning of Time, will move about the world, unfettered. And your father will be with you once again.

  There was silence within the vault of Living Stone, a tiny reflection of the one which held their race.

  Then, after a long absence, a thought made its way into Hrarfa’s awareness from the primitive mind of the being with whom she shared the stone body.

  I do not know if I believe you.

  Hrarfa’s consciousness lapsed into silence. Finally a question.

  Why?

  The Faorina spirit did not answer.

  Faron, Hrarfa thought desperately. Tell me what is troubling you. Please.

  She searched the blackness inside the titan’s body, but could not even feel the other consciousness.

  IN THE OPEN SEA

  In spite of being in the middle of the moving, evanescent water of the ocean, Ashe had the distinct feeling of standing above an open grave.

  The seafloor was littered with pieces of a broken ship, ancient but not rotten. The detritus was covered completely in barnacles and limpets, more than a millennium in residence on decking that had been built from trees of Living Stone in the shipyards of Serendair in the days preceding the great exodus long ago.

  The pieces of that ship had been lovingly gathered and lay, carefully positioned, in the approximate places they would have occupied in the time when that ship was whole. Ashe could feel its name reverberating in his head, as if the shipwreck was singing it.

  Lysandra, it sang.

  Though his body was largely vaporous, Ashe could feel the sensation of his throat constricting. It was a name from the annals of history, known to every Cymrian descendant.

  The name of the ship of Merithyn the Explorer.

  His great-grandfather, dead almost two thousand years.

  The leader of the First Fleet and the expedition of the Cymrian populace fleeing the Cataclysm to what was then the new world, the continent they now inhabited.

  The lover of the dragon Elynsynos.

  In his thoughts, he whispered the dragon’s name again.

  This time, a flicker against his barely corporeal cheek answered him.

  Quickly Ashe kicked down into the depths, holding the sword above him. Its blue blade cast ghostly shadows on the seafloor, bringing the shipwreck into better view. The parts of the Lysandra that remained in the ship’s grave were long boards of decking and rails, with a broken mast amidships, wedged at an angle in the sand. A few random items, metal plates, wooden barrels, and the lids of sea chests, lay amid the skeletal remains of the vessel, like an exhibit in an enormous underwater museum.

  Ashe willed his eyes to adjust in the darkness illuminated by the light from Kirsdarke.

  He thought he could make out a form wrapped around the base of the mast, even more vaporous than his own, the copper scales of the memory of its skin striped with black ash. His eyes followed the line of deep metaphysical burns farther out into the sand at the depths of the sea and found that some of what he had assumed were swales in the ocean floor was actually a partially buried wyrm form, entrenched in the center of the reassembled ship pieces.

  Elynsynos? he thought, fighting back the panic charged with hope that now was threatening to consume his mind.

  The drift pressed heavily around him, clogging his senses. He could catch no sign of life save for the infinitesimal song the ship was singing; there was no repeat of the flicker against his cheek.

  Elynsynos? he thought again. Please—is that you? Please, please let it be you.

  After an agonizing moment, he thought he saw a slight shifting of the sand. A few grains rose into the heavy drift.

  Then he heard, or more correctly felt a thought, weak and distant, almost dreamlike, in reply.

  Begone.

  Ashe’s mind felt as if it had caught fire. He held the sword closer to the mast, taking care to maintain as respectful a distance as he could.

  Great-Grandmother? he thought, trying to keep the impact of the vibrations gentle. Are you there?

  Nearer to him than he imagined, the sand shifted again, and in the gauzy light from Kirsdarke he saw what appeared to be a vaporous eye, closed and wrinkled, reveal itself from a barrel-sized mound that a moment before had been covered with sand and open slowly before him.

  The filmy lid drew back, revealing a translucent blue iris scored with a vertical pupil.

  Much as his own irises were.

  A command, directly from the gaze of that eye, formed clearly in his mind.

  Go away.

  Ashe recognized the threat in the thought. He let the heavy drift carry him backward a few yards. Are you injured? he asked as quietly as he could make his thoughts. Tell me how I can help you.

  The lid of the filmy eye closed slowly, an extended blink. When it opened again, there was slightly more light and focus in it.

  You can do as I ask. Go away—you are interfering with the song.

  Ashe felt a sense of exhaustion wash over him when the command was completed.

  Do you remember me, Great-Grandmother? he asked.

  There was no reply.

  The eyelid closed once more.

  I am Gwydion, son of Llauron, Ashe thought desperately. Grandson of—

  He stopped short, remembering that his grandmother, her own child, Anwyn, who had attacked her with dragonfire, was dead.

  By his wife’s hand.

  Then an idea occurred to him.

  Pretty’s husband, he finished, naming himself with the title the dragon had referred to him by when Rhapsody had introduced him to her in the Cave of the Lost Sea, the wyrm’s lair in the forest of Gwynwood.

  The eyelid opened once more. The enormous pupil expanded noticeably.

  Pretty’s husband?

  Yes, thought Ashe eagerly. Yes.

  The seafloor shifted again, and the other eye and a large part of the dragon’s ethereal maw rose slowly from the seafloor, shedding sand.

  Is she here?

  Ashe’s throat tightened again.

  No, he thought, fighting back despair and focusing on the discovery.

  The eyes took on a fond glow.

  I am listening to the songs she found for me. The thrum echoed in Ashe’s brain. Merithyn’s songs.

  Ashe’s mind cleared. He recalled Rhapsody telling him, when he and Achmed had retrieved her from her imprisonment in a sea cave along the western coast of the continent, how, in her captivity, she had heard the songs that Merithyn had sung into the wind above the waves two millennia before, missives of love for the dragon to whom he had given his heart, who had invited the refugees of Serendair to take shelter in her primeval forest lands. The ancient sailor had left her reluctantly to return to the Island of Serendair and lead the Cymrians back to the Wyrmlands, only to have his ship sunder at the Prime Meridian in a great storm on the return voyage. Merithyn had apparently sent her love songs of farewell as he was dying.

  He looked at the pieces of the ship around him.

  Merithyn’s grave, he thought. This must be the
spot where he died. In all the vastness of the sea, she has located exactly where he met his end.

  Indeed, the dragon replied dreamily. Here is where I lost him forever.

  Ashe blinked in shock, having forgotten in the awe of the moment how thrum was carried in the drift.

  I am sorry, Great-Grandmother, he thought in the direction of the vaporous beast.

  Are you? said the thrum of the dragon. For the first time in ages, I am finally not sorry. Pretty was right; she told me the key to finding peace is not where your body rests, but where your heart remains. A rolling wave of bubbles washed over and through Ashe’s body as the ethereal wyrm sighed. In this place, both his body rests and his heart remains. And his songs—his songs are here as well.

  Are you injured? Ashe thought, trying not to disrupt her reverie.

  For a long time there was silence. Finally the gleaming eyes focused on him. Had his body not been composed largely of thickened water, the light from those eyes would have burned his flesh away.

  I had no bodily form for Anwyn to attack in the forest. The beast’s thoughts were stony. But even an ethereal form, which is the closest thing a dragon has to a soul, can be damaged by an elemental attack—and dragon’s breath can burn it. I was in agony when I fled Gwynwood, every nerve seared, on fire. All of my own child’s doing.

  Ashe closed his eyes, remembering the feeling of that kind of agony, having lived through it for twenty years himself.

  In the beginning, when those who traveled with Merithyn came to my lands, my invited guests, they sang stories of their homeland, and of the exodus. But later, I heard the tales they told of me—not about the love that Merithyn and I found together, nor of my generosity, my hospitality offered to them in their time of need. No—they sang songs of lies, The Rampage of the Wyrm, The Burning Fields, all the epic tales of my evil nature, my destructive actions, every one of which was untrue. I loved the Cyrmians, so I forgave them. I assumed they manufactured those lies because they never knew the truth.

  Pretty told me of the songs she heard that Merithyn had sent to me over the sea as he was dying. The people that landed on my shores had heard those songs too. They had sailed across the world with him, had been saved from death by him, heard him singing them as he was dying himself, and yet they still lied. The lore of my life is polluted by those lies.

  I came here in search of my lover, looking as I should have long ago. And I found what remained—a few fragments of his ship that had not washed up on shore or been ground to dust, the place where his bones had fallen to the ocean floor, and the songs. Here, finally, I have found comfort. I have found my love. I have found home.

  Ashe tried to keep the wildness out of his thrum.

  Elynsynos, he began quietly, on the continent, you are thought to be dead. The Shield of the Earth is compromised. The Wyrmril are struggling to keep the Unspoken at bay—the Great Forest is vulnerable. I have done my best to maintain the Shield while waging the war, but—

  The vaporous eyes narrowed menacingly.

  Be on your way, Pretty’s husband. Leave me in peace.

  Caught in the chasm between joy at the discovery that the wyrm was alive and desperation at her intransigence, Ashe fell silent.

  The ethereal beast stared at him a moment longer. Then the gleaming eyes closed, and the insubstantial form began to sink into the seafloor again.

  Please. The word rose, unbidden, from Ashe’s viscera. Elynsynos, please help me. My wife is in battle. My son—your great-great-grandson—is in the hands of strangers, being sought by those who would kill him. The entire coast is barricaded, on fire. Millions are at risk of dying an eternal death, the Afterlife itself in danger of extinction—

  Enough. The word was soft against the walls of his mind. Enough, son of Llauron. I am sorry for you, for Pretty, for your son, for the millions who are about to die. But I am finished with this life, with this world. Unlike them, unlike you, I am pure wyrm, formed from primal Living Earth, born without a soul. I will never see my love again in the Afterlife, where his soul waits, forever alone. Perhaps you and those you love will meet again one day beyond the Gate. But I am done with all of you. I remain here, in the arms of the sea, at the last place where I can remember the man I loved. Be on your way. You are out of place here.

  Ashe hovered in the heavy drift as the mounds of sea sand settled back into swales in the cold depths of the black ocean. The elemental sword of water trembled in his hand, its light diminished ever so slightly.

  Then, when the silence began to echo in his ears and the hollow of his heart, he closed his eyes and kicked up to the Sunlit Realm again.

  Leaving his forebear’s grave, and the dragon who guarded it, behind him.

  15

  THE ALTAR OF ULTIMATE SACRIFICE, THE CIRCLE, THE GREAT FOREST

  The end of spring moving to summer had filled the trees of Tyrian and the rest of the Great Forest with heavy leaf cover, the lacy patterns of newborn foliage that had shadowed the ground when winter had ended growing heavier with the increase in sunlight.

  Under normal circumstances, Rhapsody had always been wistful when the baby leaves matured, filling the Great Forest with shade, blotting out a clear view of the sky. As a Liringlas Singer, it was her custom and religious practice to salute the daybreak and the appearance of the first star at sunset with song, so being in the forest in summer was a complication to her morning aubades and her evening vespers. But now, with an occupying army encamped along the destroyed harbor of Port Tallono, just beyond the forest’s edge in the west, and a series of raids being undertaken from Sorbold in the southeast, the heavy foliage was a blessing, masking troop movement in the interior of Tyrian and serving as a detriment to their enemy’s intentions of sacking the forest.

  It was, perhaps, the only advantage the kingdom had.

  Now, having said goodbye to her viceroy, Rial, her friends, her commanders, and her people, and having left her contingent, her guards, her mount, and every weapon she had save for Daystar Clarion, the elemental sword of starlight and fire that was affixed by a simple belt of leather to her waist, she stopped in front of the Altar of Ultimate Sacrifice, a relic of great significance to the Filidic religion, waiting. She was attired in the simple, undyed robes of the nature priests, with a hood covering her gleaming golden hair, which now reached only to the base of her neck.

  The new-summer wind rustled the leaves around her, billowing through the silent glen.

  The Lady Cymrian and Lirin queen closed her eyes, breathing in the rich green scent of the trees mixed with a tinge of smoke. She felt no longing for the time of lacier foliage, both for the practical purposes of the heavier cover and the fact that the part of her that would miss it was far away, in the Deep Kingdom of the Nain.

  The Great Forest was the massive woodland area that covered all but the seaside fringe of the western coast of the Middle Continent. In the north above the Tar’afel River and a bit south of it the area was known as Gwynwood, a pristine white wood, as its name implied, that was largely uninhabited and often considered sacred lands. It was known to be the home of the dragon Elynsynos, the ancient wyrm that had allowed the original Cymrian settlers refuge and sanctuary in her previously unsettled lands.

  Before she disappeared.

  South of Gwynwood in the center of the western coastal region was the Circle and its surrounding towns and villages, the holy lands of the religion of the nature priests known as the Filids, as well as the place where the Great White Tree stood. This area was the most densely populated part of the Great Forest, home to nearly half a million people.

  Finally, the southern half of the Great Forest encompassed the realm of Tyrian, known in the ancient language of the Lirin that lived there as Realmalir. Almost twice as many Lirin occupied Tyrian than lived in the Circle lands, but the enormous size of the southern part of the forest made the settlement sparser. It was this land over which Rhapsody had been invested as queen, and where she felt most at home on the continent.
r />   A land to which she had said goodbye with great reluctance.

  There was a soft rustling in the trees, an intentionally made sound.

  Rhapsody turned and looked behind her.

  A figure appeared, a tall man in a forest-green cloak and forester apparel, holding a whitewood staff topped with a golden oak leaf. He came forward and bowed politely.

  “Your Majesty.”

  She suppressed a smile and took down her hood. “Your Grace.”

  Gavin, the Invoker of the Filids, grimaced.

  “You’re right. Formal address in the mouth of a friend does sound awful, doesn’t it?”

  “No worse than ‘Your Majesty.’ How are you, Gavin? How are Gwynwood and the northern forest faring?”

  “Thus far there has been no real incursion, just skirmishes in the thinner forest lands to the west. Most of those inhabitants have taken refuge at the Circle. The invading forces have set up barricades between the forest edge lands and the sea. The barriers are movable, so I suspect the plan is to continue to creep forward until siege can be undertaken.”

  Rhapsody nodded. “We are seeing the same tactics. It’s most likely going to be a coordinated attack. If it is, though we have some advantages, our forces will be outnumbered eight to one or more. The slaughter will be immense.”

  The Invoker shook his head.

  “I never would have believed a few short years ago that we would be in this place, defending the Great Forest from attack from Sorbold and its allies. It seems inconceivable.”

  “Well, King Achmed and Anborn have always expressed a common contention that there is no such thing as peace, merely episodes of calm between outbreaks of war.” She smiled slightly. “And then, of course, there is Grunthor. He calls those episodes of calm ‘the Boring-as-Hrekin Times.’ ”

  “Hrekin?”

  “In the human tongue, uhm—‘shit.’ ”

  Gavin’s smile, spare and considered, matched hers. “Well, with any luck, at least he is entertained by what is going on now.”