The Fiend Queen

by Barbara Ann Wright

  Katya and Dawnmother helped Redtrue to her feet. She grasped her side and bent double only to straighten and groan in pain.

  Dawnmother felt over her ribs and clucked her tongue. “No breaks that I can feel. Probably cracked or bruised. Princess, may I borrow your knife?”

  Redtrue shrank away. “What do you intend?”

  Dawnmother gripped Redtrue’s shirt and cut a strip from the end. “Hold still.” While Redtrue cursed and muttered, Dawnmother bound her ribs tightly. “There, that should help.”

  Redtrue shuddered. “We’re in a room, a room underground. How can this be?”

  The walls were pink in patches, once red, but the color had sloughed away. One wall held a rectangular opening, like a door, but it was jammed with rock and stone, and a window held the same, a small house buried in a landslide.

  “Over here.” Dawnmother knelt in a far corner, near a hole large enough for a person to crawl through. The room stood bare of all else, furniture or decoration, just rocks and stone that had leaked inside.

  “Could this be a very deep cellar?” Redtrue asked.

  Deep indeed. They were well under the palace. Redtrue lifted her pyramid high, scowling in pain as she did so. There was no way to climb up or dig through the hole that had sealed behind them. With only a few cracked ribs among them, Katya didn’t think they’d fallen from too great a height. Starbride and the others could be digging for them right now, or they might have had to flee the tunnel as it collapsed.

  Katya knelt in the rubble, searching for her rapier, but she must have dropped it as she fell. “Belt knife will have to do,” she muttered.

  “Come on,” Redtrue called. “There’s only one way to go.”

  “I’ll lead the way,” Katya said. “You keep the light behind me.”

  Katya knelt in front of the tunnel and crawled forward. Little pebbles cascaded around her, and she swallowed, trying not to notice. She emerged into a room similar to the first, though this had a connecting chamber. Katya thanked the spirits that she could stand again. A pile of wood lay in the corner, and these walls were muted blue instead of red.

  Redtrue grunted as she crawled out, muttering what sounded like curses in Allusian until even Dawnmother tsked. “Are you the child of fishermen? Where did you learn such language?”

  “Where did you, since you seem to know it?” Redtrue said.

  “Knowing and repeating are two different things.”

  “Neither matters right now,” Katya said. Both doors and windows in this room were packed with rubble, save the door to the adjoining room. If these were early cellars, what had made them such a shambles? Katya stretched, and the wound in her back ached, but she didn’t seem to have torn her stitches.

  “Here’s another tunnel,” Dawnmother said from the corner.

  “And another,” Redtrue said. “This one halfway up the wall, but it has collapsed.” She shined her light down the one Dawnmother had found.

  Katya hovered over her shoulder. “What do you see?”

  “This one goes on.” She grunted as she lowered herself to the floor. “My ribs say they are tired of going to all the trouble of standing if we just have to crawl again.”

  “Better get to it, then,” Katya said. Forward toward getting hopelessly lost. She took the lead again and tried to keep her mind off such thoughts. They were moving, which was much preferable to sitting still. What torture it would have been to be stuck in that first room with no way out and nothing to do but think.

  Ma would have kept going and gladly.

  They emerged into another room, similar to the first. “It’s a town or something,” Katya said, “a group of buildings that have been buried.” She pointed to the blocked windows. “I’m guessing these looked out on streets, but they must have all filled in when it was buried. These pockets remain because the rooms are made of stone.”

  “And these tunnels?” Redtrue asked. “They must be new. If they’d been built when the city was aboveground, they would have just been holes in the sides of houses.”

  Dawnmother turned a slow circle. “Someone has come down here since it was buried.”

  “No one that I heard about,” Katya said. Everything had been coated in grime, turning it all the same grayish brown. The walls must have been bright once, though the floors and ceilings seemed paler. “Lemon yellow,” Katya said, touching the dusty stone. Wooden doors and shutters had rotted away or been destroyed in whatever cataclysm had brought this place low. The bright mixed with the pale put Katya in mind of Newhope with its startling colors and dazzling whites.

  Dawnmother picked up a bit of broken pottery. “Well, we know that whoever returned here wasn’t thorough in their cleaning. At least they pushed any trash they found into the corners.”

  Katya had to shake her head. Maybe this was the original settlement her ancestors had founded, and they’d built on top of it? Why would they just abandon it?

  Katya shivered and not just from the cool air in the subterranean room. Her ancestors weren’t the first people to occupy this land. They’d conquered it, and they’d used Yanchasa to do it. She turned another circle. It made sense. If the capstone was the top of a huge pyramid, Yanchasa’s prison, why wouldn’t the rest of the city be down here, too? Maybe Yanchasa had destroyed it by burying it in dirt and stone. “It’s the original city,” she said.

  “The conquered one?” Redtrue asked.

  “Conquered and mostly destroyed, and there was a flood, if I remember correctly.”

  “And the Fiend.” Dawnmother rubbed her arms.

  Katya racked her brain for what history she remembered. Marienne used to be in a valley, and for a few seasons they had terrible weather—torrential rains—and the Lavine River flooded the entire countryside. And for years after her people came, they were hounded by disaster, a fire that destroyed what they’d built, and earthquakes. She thought of Reinholt’s welcoming ball and the earthquakes caused by Roland trying to awaken the great Fiend.

  Katya remembered reading about the city quaking for years after the Umbriels took over. It could have been Yanchasa. Her ancestors hadn’t known what they’d have to do to keep the Fiend asleep. And maybe the shaking and flooding and fires had buried the original city far underground.

  But who had come there since?

  They continued through the tunnels, each leading to another room that sometimes held two or three tunnels branching off it. Some had caved in, but several times Katya and the others ran into a dead-end. That was the worst, backing through the dark with no way to turn around. Katya had to fight the urge to slide from the tunnels as quickly as she could. She’d only crash into those behind her, but the sight of a stone wall before her as well as all around her made her breath come quicker. The sweat that dripped from her forehead took on a cool, clammy feel.

  In one room they paused, staring at a swath of wall where the smooth stone was interrupted by brick, less ancient but still impassable. Katya touched it lightly and wondered if this was how the tunnel builders had first broken into the dead city.

  After the tenth room, the tunnels seemed to head in a straight line; their makers had finally gotten their bearings. Katya said a prayer to the spirits of luck for saving her from dead-ends.

  She spoke aloud only when they were out of the tunnels and upright. The underground city kept silent except for the sounds of their boots clomping over stone, the rattle of rocks and debris shifting out of their way, and the hiss of their knees dragging as they crept along. When they stopped, Katya felt the urge to fill the silence with something besides the sounds of breathing.

  “If floods and such buried this city,” Dawnmother asked, “why did your people not dig it out?”

  “Maybe it was easier to build anew,” Katya said.

  Dawnmother glanced around. “And they didn’t want to be reminded of what the Fiend had done.”

  “I can feel it,” Redtrue said softly. She gestured ahead. “It’s in that direction, same as these tunnels. Will you te
ll me the rest of the story? Do I want to know?”

  “Wise of you to ask,” Dawnmother said.

  “I’m not stupid,” Redtrue added. “If you’re thinking of lying to me.”

  “I wouldn’t dream of thinking that,” Katya said. “But do you want to hear it now?”

  She stared at the next tunnel before answering. “There’s no way to go but forward.”

  Katya didn’t know how to interpret that until Redtrue knelt in front of the next tunnel. Everyone heaved a sigh before they began to crawl again.

  Judging by the bricked-up passage and the fact that they had to fall to get down there, Katya imagined that even the tunnel-makers had stopped coming to this dead place. But Redtrue’s assertion that they headed toward Yanchasa’s prison gave her hope. If they could find the pyramid, they could climb it, maybe break out near the capstone.

  After two or three more tunnels, Redtrue slowed, lagging behind.

  “Are your ribs paining you?” Katya asked when they stopped.

  Her eyes shifted across the floor. “Yes.”

  “If it’s the Fiend that you’re worried about, it can’t hurt you. And its prison might be our only way out of here.”

  “I gathered that you think so.”

  “We have to try,” Dawnmother said.

  “You don’t know what it’s like. I can feel it in a way you never could.”

  “You won’t have to commune with Yanchasa,” Katya said. “It’ll just be giving us a boost out of this place.”

  “I didn’t know the creature had a name.” She shook her head. “I want nothing from it.”

  “Horsestrong preserve us,” Dawnmother said. “The ‘boost’ part is only a metaphor.”

  Redtrue shrugged but kept up with them. At the first two-story building they reached, they paused again, Dawnmother sharing around a skin of water. They trooped up the stairs to explore, anything to put off crawling again.

  The upper level was a round room, dominated by ten columns. A wash of stone had caved in half of the ceiling, and unlike the bare rooms they’d seen, these walls were carved with letters Katya didn’t recognize.

  Dawnmother traced them with her finger. “It seems Allusian.”

  “Impossible,” Redtrue said. “Unless the Farradains have imprisoned Allusians down here before.”

  “Well, we turn them into Fiends first,” Katya drawled. “That’s before we make them fight to the death for our amusement, enslave their children, and feast on their dead.”

  Redtrue simply sniffed.

  Starbride had showed Katya Allusian writing, but this seemed different. “Maybe the original inhabitants of this land used to have contact with the ancient Allusians.”

  “Before Farradains killed them all?” Redtrue asked.

  “Not all of them, I think.” Katya hadn’t paid much attention in history. She’d memorized the stories of heroes, like Vestra and her husband, both of whom had fought Yanchasa and won by taking some of its essence into themselves.

  “Shouldn’t you know?” Redtrue asked.

  “Those in charge never memorize the history,” Dawnmother said. “It’s always the servants who remember.”

  Redtrue sneered at her. “Everyone should be responsible for his or herself.”

  “True,” Dawnmother countered, “but some of us like to share in that responsibility. Star has never argued that I am responsible for her, but I enjoy being so, nonetheless.”

  “She always struck me as fairly responsible for herself,” Katya said.

  “We share that burden.”

  “She must be sick with worry.” Katya hoped Starbride wasn’t on her knees overhead, scrabbling through broken rocks. Well, better to hope for that than imagining her being torn apart by Roland. Maybe she could defeat him, and Katya would emerge to find him already dead. She just wanted it over with, wanted all those he’d killed to be peaceful in death. Nothing sounded as good as sleeping and grieving and then sleeping again, except for maybe…

  “When all this is over,” Katya said, “I’m going to have a bath.”

  “Not alone, I bet,” Dawnmother said.

  Katya barked a laugh. “I hope not.”

  “When all this is over, your leaders and mine will need to speak of a great many things,” Redtrue said.

  “I’m sure they wouldn’t mind a bath,” Katya answered. “Sounds good, no? A little food, some time alone with Castelle.”

  “Castelle, is it?” Dawnmother asked. “Not too proud to take a Farradain lover, Redtrue?”

  Redtrue turned her back on them and studied the walls again.

  “If you’re feeling better,” Katya said, “let’s get moving.”

  As they entered the tunnels once more, Katya tried to focus on the future, how good it would feel to hold Starbride again, but after hours of nothing but crawling and worrying, the dead stone walls reflected her darker thoughts back on her. She couldn’t stop herself from seeing Averie’s final shudder or the blood pouring from her mother’s throat.

  Katya bit her lip. No, she would not think about that.

  Focusing on her surroundings wasn’t much better. Deserted and quiet, the underground city felt like it was waiting. Shadows made by Redtrue’s pyramid seemed to move of their own accord, just at the edge of the light. Katya’s thoughts turned to Yanchasa, trapped for hundreds of years, waiting for anyone to come looking for it.

  She told herself not to be silly. If the great Fiend could grab people, it would have eaten anyone who’d ever come to Waltz in the capstone chamber.

  Unless it couldn’t reach them. It might be able to now, when they walked where Yanchasa was the only living thing, alone in a sea of stone.

  Katya told herself to focus on the rock, watching the cracks and lumps, the lines in the ceiling, the smooth stone of the rooms. Tons of dirt and rock, packed above her head, and the palace sitting on top of that. It was a marvel that this place had been able to survive this long. It all wanted to come down on top of her, to finish what it had started—the natural order of things. Just as it leaked through doors and windows, so it would through nostrils and throats. It wanted to crush and kill and be rid of the fact that there had ever been life here.

  Katya clenched her fists. Since when had she been afraid of rocks or her own thoughts, for spirits’ sake?

  But she’d never been trapped far belowground with a monster for company and pain and misery waiting above.

  She tried to focus on Roland, who was a far greater threat than Yanchasa or a bunch of stone. She tried to summon her anger, but fear wasn’t so easily banished in this foul, dead place.

  Maybe that was Yanchasa’s doing, too; maybe the Fiend was affecting her the same way it seemed to be affecting Redtrue. “Dawnmother, are you feeling strange?”

  “How?”

  “Well, Redtrue’s clearly uneasy being so near Yanchasa’s prison.”

  “A wise reaction,” Redtrue said.

  “And I’m feeling…” Katya couldn’t finish, ashamed. Some leader she’d become.

  Dawnmother tsked. “You’d have to be made of stone to be able to relax in this place. The living were banished from here long ago. I would place a wager that even the famously rude Lord Vincent would break a sweat down here.”

  Katya had to grin. Sweat he might, but he’d never let anyone see it.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Starbride

  Starbride sank through the void, her spirit towed down as if through quicksand. The white faded to swirls of gray, and among them she saw a vague collection of shapes: a huge arm, the curve of a wing and a horn, the sharp glint of a fang. A slit of light tracked her spirit as it slowed to a halt, and she looked on an enormous, half-closed eye.

  “I am not your daughter.” Energy pulsed around Starbride’s spirit, the dark power of the Fiends, but as with the pyramid that passed the Fiend from one person to another, she found beauty here. She sensed strength and hunger for battle, but there was also cunning and a protective urge that appealed to her
. The scent of intrigue brought her closer. Here was a puzzle even Crowe didn’t know, one that would be the instrument for her revenge.

  The whispering voices chuckled, and images formed in Starbride’s eyes: mountains, tall peaks tearing holes in the clouds and then jutting beyond. A snow-covered valley lay between those peaks as if nestled in a giant bowl. A city filled the valley from end-to-end, yet it seemed to float above the snow it rested upon.

  Towers rose up from the jumble like fingers, spare minarets, intricately carved, almost too delicate to stand on their own. Five stood taller than the rest and were spread through the city in a rough circle.

  “Belshreth,” the two voices whispered in her ear. “Filled with inquisitive people who could do wonders.”

  Starbride gasped as she sped through the city. Each building bore the same sort of intricate carvings as the minarets, and all of them gleamed. Though snow blanketed the streets, the inhabitants wore thin coats that hung to their knees, brightly colored and standing out sharply against walls that shone like pearls. Their skin was dark like hers, and their hair black, but their features were a little different, broader faces and smaller noses, and each carried crystal pyramids at their belts.

  Children used magic to light their rooms, to make their dolls dance. Adults used it to build, coaxing crystal from the ground, large groups meditating together upon a single pyramid to raise a tree from a seedling to a towering giant.

  “How is this possible?” she asked.

  “We were the people of the crystal. Born among it and so raised.”

  “You are not a person.”

  The whispering voices chuckled. “There was a time.”

  She soared among the five great towers and saw three women and two men, each with a tower to her or himself. They met in each other’s homes or strolled among the streets to the adulation of the people. They talked and laughed and loved.

  “Close as fingers on a hand,” the whispers said. “The council of five: Layess the Wise, Fionette the Skilled, Edette the Beautiful, Daronee the Lucky, Yanchasa the Mighty. We ruled and led and transcended.”