Queen of the Earth: Book V in the Elementals Series

by Marisol Logan

  Spine contorting against the hard wood of the pantry table, Veria bit her lip and threw her head back, panting heavily to fight against the screams that wanted to break from her throat and alert the world of her finish. With his fingers still clawing into the flesh of her backside, and himself still embedded deep inside her, Andon dropped his head down next to hers and started to twitch and convulse, a muffled roar rumbling through his chest, catching in his throat before it escaped. She grabbed his face and kissed him deeply as they reveled in their final throes, whimpering and moaning together with each oscillation, wishing she could call his name with the full strength of her voice.

  Slowly and with effort, they separated and regained their breath. Veria's heart immediately dropped. Now that they were finished, they would have to leave each other—he would go back to work, and she would wander around the castle like nothing happened until it was time to visit the children for lunch.

  Andon slid off the table, then helped her off, but before she could start replacing the articles of clothing that had been removed, he took her face into his rough hands.

  “I love you,” he said. “I have since the moment I met you, and I will never stop.”

  Veria nodded, a hot stone forming in her throat as he kissed her forehead.

  “I love you so much,” she whispered.

  “Elanza lis cabarus ali forgeo,” he said, sliding his hands down to her arms and squeezing them urgently.

  “That's a new one,” she purred.

  “A very, very, very old Esperan saying,” he murmured as his thumbs stroked her arms, thin, but still muscular from their period of intense training at Longberme months before. “Throw the bastards to the Fire.”

  He grinned and gave her arms one last squeeze, and pecked her lips a final time, then slid his pants on and left the kitchen without a goodbye.

  She was thankful for that, as she knew there was no way she could have heard him say it to her yet again.

  -VI-

  Many weeks went by, during which Veria tried to change her schedule as much as possible, since the day she had changed her routine had led to her chance meeting with Andon—a meeting that she replayed in her head quite often...

  She occasionally ate breakfast, if it was something that appealed to her, instead of always refusing it as she had been. She stopped going to the Regal Library altogether, instead using the time between breakfast in her room and lunch at the cottage to explore the castle and its grounds. She visited the kitchen many times, and helped the staff in their late morning chores—picking berries, pulling vegetables, gathering eggs, washing and chopping greens, or whatever they would allow her to do that day after Merrimiss, the head cook, would loudly protest that it was unseemly for the Queen to be doing any chores at all—but she never ran into Andon, which was always her hope.

  Her lunches at the gardener’s cottage were the only part of her day that never changed. Irea had let her tell a different story besides the Dragon Maiden on a few occasions, but not many. Aleon had started to pull himself up on every piece of furniture and walk along them. Veria knew it was only a matter of time before he decided to venture away from the security of something to hold onto and take his first steps...and she hoped that she would be there to witness it, and if not herself, than at least Andon, although Tanisca said he only made it to the cottage for dinner about two nights a week.

  Browan still had not provided any information at their dinners. His desires were always basic, or vague—lusting after her, or one of a handful of maidens he had taken up sleeping with which included the little red-headed seamstress, Jeyna; or sometimes it was wishing he didn't have to go to this event or that meeting, and occasionally the one she knew was about his plot but that gave her no details: 'I need this to go faster'.

  This day proved to be another out of the ordinary day when Veria was summoned to his library first thing in the morning. Confused, and dreading a private meeting with him as she usually did, she dressed quickly and skipped her breakfast, making her way through the castle in a cautious, hazy trudge.

  “Good morning,” Browan said when she arrived.

  She couldn't bring herself to greet him politely. After over three months, she still wanted to slam something into his face or spit in his eye every time she had to be near him. “Browan,” she managed to force out in a tone as cool as a winter pond.

  “A change of plans today,” he said plainly, gesturing that she should take a seat, which she did not. “I have a special luncheon with esteemed members of the Regalship this afternoon and the Queen is expected to attend. Please have your maids help you into the dress on the bed,” he motioned to his bed, where an exquisite ivory silk dress with a fur trimmed neck line and bronze accents in the bodice hung from the canopy. Veria had worn many fine dresses, but this one certainly looked the most like something only a queen would wear. “Meet me in the Dining Hall at eleven.”

  Veria opened her mouth to protest but before she could speak a word, Browan held up his hand to silence her and continued: “I realize this is taking away your scheduled family time, so I will allow you to change your visit to dinner this once.”

  Veria's heart leaped with excitement. If she went for dinner...Andon might be there.

  She knew the chance was small, but it was a chance nonetheless.

  “Thank you, Browan.”

  “You are welcome. You are dismissed. I shall see you at eleven. Hair up and modest makeup.”

  Veria nodded, though her insides tied themselves in an angry knot at being told how to do her own hair and makeup by a man. She strode across the room and pulled the dress down carefully and draped it over her forearm and left the library without a goodbye to Browan.

  Once in the hallway, she turned and walked toward the tapestry that Strelzar had gifted to the castle. She rarely came to the King's wing of the castle if she could avoid it, as she did not want to see him unless she had to, so she had not visited it in quite sometime.

  Reaching out and running her fingers along the layered scales of the golden dragon. What was he doing right now? she wondered. What were they all doing? Strelzar, Virro, Sarco...

  She followed the orange arc of flame from its mouth with a lucid flash of the giant stone dragons cutting through the satiny black canvas of night with bright swords of fire. The echo of the screams filled her ears...there was something different about the screams of someone being burned to death, Veria thought with a shudder as her fingers traced the stitched outlines of the tapestry. It was panicked and desperate, which gave it a voluminous power and impressively high octave, but it was slowly strangled by the pain until it ended in a series of surrendering gurgles and sputters.

  She closed her eyes and swallowed against the rush of guilt, but continued to stroke the silky threads and velvety fabric. Her fingers grazed a cluster of stitching that interrupted the smooth, continuous arc outlining the flame as it transitioned to the tail of the fire bird. Her eyes popped open and she slid her fingers down to peer at the abnormality, realizing once she had brought her eyes within a few inches of the tapestry that they were words. With a flip of her stomach and hot blood flooding her veins, she ran her fingers under the miniscule stitched words, trying to make them out.

  Elanza lis cabarus ali forgeo.

  She gasped and backed away from the tapestry, her heart pounding and hands suddenly sweaty.

  Had Andon been in contact with Strelzar? she wondered as she turned and rushed to her room, not wanting to bring any attention to what she had just found, or the fact that she had found something at all.

  What were they doing? she thought again. Had they left her other messages? Other clues? Was this saying a directive for her...?

  Throw the bastards to the Fire.

  Once back in her room, two maids awaited her to help her dress, and she went about changing into the ivory and bronze dress, taking the simple violet one she wore off first. As the maids slipped the dress over her head, she slid her arms through the long, slender, st
ructured sleeves. Something grazed her skin, but she ignored it, figuring it was a stray cluster of threads. But once the maids had finished twisting her hair up into a bun and left her to apply her makeup, she found herself obsessing over it...

  A cluster of threads, she thought. That had meant something on the tapestry. She slid her fingers up the sleeve and grabbed at the little cluster of threads, easily pulling loose a small flap of fabric. She drew the scrap of silk out of the sleeve and flipped it over to see black ink scrawled across the creamy satin.

  Elanza lis cabarus ali forgeo.

  Her head spun and her heart boomed and thumped like a war drum in her chest.

  Jeyna had been making dresses for her since the wedding...and she had been sleeping with Browan.

  Veria remembered all of Strelzar's mentions of his spies in the castle back at Longberme before they were all captured. She always assumed they were just Elementals...Virro, Aslay...but she realized now that notion was naive. Jeyna was Strelzar's spy. This message was from him directly.

  What did he want her to do? she thought frantically, rubbing her temples as her brain whirred.

  The saying. The Fire. From Strelzar, those words carried a lot of importance. But what was he trying to tell her? On the tapestry, the saying was on the flame from the dragon's mouth to the tail of the bird. From the dragon's mouth...from Strelzar's mouth...

  But there was a reason that he chose that bird instead of another dragon. It wasn't just his pet name for her or a cute reminder of their friendship, she realized excitedly. He chose the bird because he knew it would stand out to her. The bird was the clue.

  She quickly applied the 'modest makeup' Browan had requested and jumped up from her seat at the vanity, rushing to the Regal Library. She figured she only had an hour before she needed to meet Browan for the luncheon. Her chest ached as she ran through the quiet halls until she reached the huge chamber, bright with the shafts of sun streaming in from its glass ceiling, the smell of dusty parchment and leather assaulting her as soon as she set foot inside.

  The librarian greeted her. “Good morning, Your Majesty,” Alliben said with a polite bow.

  She nodded to him but was too out of breath to speak, and too determined to find what she sought. Striding quickly back to the section she was most familiar with—the folk lore section where she had spent many hours finding new stories for Irea—she went straight for a book she had seen many times but not read yet.

  The Lore of Morenet.

  The gold leather cover glinted and shimmered in the bright yellow rays of sun pouring in from above her. Anxiously, she opened to the page that displayed a list of the stories in the volume and skimmed it.

  The Ruby Golem...

  Rabbit and Oxen...

  The Boy in the Cave...

  Tarddiad, the Bird of Resurrection.

  Her heart stopped for a brief moment and her stomach flipped. Then, she turned quickly to the page of the story of Tarddiad. Below the title was an illustration of a giant bird with a flame for a tail, carrying what looked to be two dozen people on its broad back and clutching a banner in its talons.

  At the top of the page, in Alliben's handwriting that had written many suggestions for children's tales for her in the recent past, was the saying. Again.

  Elanza lis cabarus ali forgeo.

  Strelzar's spies were everywhere. And this was the right story.

  Quickly, silently, with heart racing, Veria read.

  TARDDIAD, THE BIRD OF RESURRECTION

  Tarddiad, the beast of blue, bluer than the Water of the ocean that gave birth to her, bluer than the azure sky, a tail as white as the billowy clouds, as white as the snow that covered the distant mountains that she had seen, but no one else had.

  A single feather from her luxurious plumage measured taller than any of the humans that shared the island with her. She slept at its peak, covering the opening of the pit of molten rock that had spewed forth its bowels into the ocean and been cooled into the stone that formed her island home. When asked why she never left, never flew through the sky like a bird was meant to do, she answered:

  'I am protecting you from the Fire, my friends.'

  The people built a shrine to their lovely protector, they named the island after her, they brought her beautiful gifts of palma crowns and hunted for snakes and fish to feed her.

  One day, the ancient Trickster, Barobant, climbed the peak to pay a visit to Tarddiad, and play a trick on her.

  'Help! O Tarddiad! Beautiful, wise creature, only you can help!'

  'How may I help?'

  'A child hath been pulled away from the safety of the island shore, out to the ocean so deep it is the blue of your fair quills, O glorious beast!'

  Tarddiad hesitated to leave the perch she had occupied for over three hundred years; however, the boy would drown in the Water if she did not fly out to rescue him, and the peak had not erupted in all the time she had covered it.

  She rose into the sky, and the people all over the island gasped at the sight. The flap of her vast and powerful wings created the Wind as she soared majestically out over the Water, in search of the drowning boy. But there was no boy to be found, and Tarddiad realized Barobant had tricked her.

  When she returned to the island, the peak shot flames into the sky while molten rock poured over its stony lips. The sky was black with ash and clouds and filled with the screams of the people of her island. Without a second thought, Tarddiad swooped down into the erupting Fire, pressing it back down into the depths of the Earth from whence they came.

  As she fought the Fire, it burned it her. Her blue feathers turned the orange of the flames, then to the black of singed, charred death. The people watched as Tarddiad placed the Fire back in the Earth.

  The Fire was gone, but so was she.

  The people mourned their beautiful protector for many, many years, never forgetting her miraculous sacrifice for their safety.

  From the clouds of ash, an unending rain started. For years and years it never stopped, until the Water of the ocean rose and rose and the people of the island feared the flood would destroy their city and swallow them up.

  The day finally came when the people knew they must leave the island behind and find a new home. Just as they climbed into their boats, however, the ancient Trickster Barobant, who constantly changed his appearance, conjured a storm of Water and Wind. The boats tipped over and were destroyed and the people were thrown into the dark, deep ocean.

  Suddenly, the Earth shook, and the Fire shot straight into the sky.

  The people cried and wailed. Their home was flooding, and they would surely all drown, and now the Fire that had taken their beautiful Tarddiad had returned.

  But the Fire rose high into the sky, lifting away from the peak and taking flight—for it was not the Fire, it was Tarddiad herself. As they watched from the Water, the feathers of her body turned back to their brilliant blue, but the plumage of her tail stayed a bright orange flame.

  'Tarddiad!' the people cheered.

  'I have returned to protect you.'

  The beautiful bird rescued them all from the Water, carrying them on her giant back.

  'You will need a new home,' she told them. 'But not all of you may come to this new home. One of you has betrayed us. One of you is the evil Trickster, Barobant. One of you tricked me into leaving the Fire years ago. One of you conjured the storm that destroyed the boats today.'

  As she hovered in the air over the gaping mouth of the peak of Fire, she made each of them tell her if they were the Trickster Barobant or not.

  'Not I, Tarddiad,' they each said, one at a time.

  'Not I, Tarddiad,' said the last.

  'Barobant!' Tarddiad screeched.

  'How ever did you know?' the ancient Trickster roared.

  'I am Tarddiad, born of the Water, creator of the Wind, and I have slept in the Fire of the Earth. No man may lie to me.'

  Tarddiad swooped down to the mouth of the Fire, and the people grabbed Barobant an
d tossed him off her back, to meet his boiling, fiery end.

  The people cheered! Tarddiad had saved them and defeated Barobant.

  Through the blue sky they soared until Tarddiad found them a new home. It was a new peak, full of the Fire, surrounded by mountains covered in snow. She took them to the ground and they climbed off her back.

  'These mountains are full of treasures.'

  'But the peak is full of Fire!'

  'I will always protect you.'

  So Tarddiad slept over the mouth of the new peak, protecting them in their new home as she had in their old home, and since the Trickster Barobant was gone, they lived in peace and prosperity for many years to come.

  Veria took a deep breath when she finished the story and closed the book. She did not know what it meant, but she knew she was on the right track. This is where Strelzar had led her. This is the story he had wanted her to read.

  “May I borrow this book, Alliben?” she asked as she made to leave the library. She was running out of time before the luncheon.

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” he grinned. “All of these books belong to you. You are the Queen.”

  “Thank you,” she said.

  “You are quite welcome, Your Majesty,” he said, and as she turned and started to walk away, he added in a hushed, conspiratorial tone: “Elanza lis cabarus ali forgeo.”

  Shaken and confused, Veria rushed back to her room and slid the book into her bedside table drawer, then made her way to the dining hall.

  -VII-

  A regal feast covered the long table, delicious looking delicacies that tempted her with their savory aromas, but none of which she would be able to stomach after the events of the morning. She still felt anxious and distracted, a nervous pinch in her belly. Thinking about eating right now made her queasy, but she knew she'd have to eat something for Browan's precious luncheon, she thought with disdain.