The Born Queen

by Greg Keyes

  “I am Cladhen MaypCladhen de Planth Alnhir, steward of the house of Dunmrogh,” he said. “Whom do I have the honor of addressing?”

  “Cazio Pachiomadio da Chiovattio the very damn tired of waiting,” he replied.

  “I am sorry for that,” the man said. “I was not presentable when you arrived, and I thought I should muster the men. Considering all the trouble we had here last year, I don’t like to take chances. May I see the letter, please?”

  Cazio handed it over, and the steward examined it for a moment.

  “This all looks good,” he said. “I’m happy Her Majesty saw fit to reinforce us. There are all sorts of rumors about armies marching, although it’s been mercifully quiet here.” He handed the letter back. “Well, if you’ll just follow me, we’ll find you some quarters and you can start getting to know the place. I’m happy to pass on the responsibility.”

  “Why?”

  The steward paused, seemingly confused by the question.

  “I…I’m just not cut out for it, I suppose. I’m really more of a scholar. Not much of a politician or a soldier. But Her Majesty purged most everyone else because they were involved in that business in the forest.”

  He gestured. “Walk with me?”

  “What about my men?”

  “Yes, of course. We’re only half-garrisoned; plenty of room inside.”

  They followed him into the outer yard, a pleasant green lawn that obviously hadn’t seen any fighting in a long time. The flagstone path led to a rather long drawbridge whose lifting cables were affixed to the top of the inner wall some thirty feet up. The bridge did not also function as a door, as in some castles he had seen; the door was to the right of the bridge and was in fact a heavy-looking portcullis banded with iron.

  Cazio looked down into the green water of the moat as they thumped hollowly across the span, wondering if there were any dragons or nymphs swimming in its depths.

  As he stepped on stone again, he heard a peculiar sound, the hum of something going taut. Then, suddenly, Anne’s soldiers were shouting.

  He spun quickly, his hand going to the hilt of his sword. He saw that the bridge was lifting, stranding most of the men on the other side of the moat. Those still on the bridge were tumbling toward him or pitching off into the moat. Red-feathered shafts were hurling into them, and cries of surprise became screams of pain.

  Cazio drew Acredo but felt something suddenly close about his neck and cut off his wind. He lifted a hand, but it was seized, as was his sword arm. As black spots began dancing in front of his eyes, he felt his weapon stripped from his grasp.

  He tried to turn but found himself in the firm grip of three grim-looking men, all Mamres monks. One had some sort of rope snare tightened around Cazio’s neck. He couldn’t even shout as they dragged him, struggling, toward the portcullis. He saw Captain Esley hollering, running toward him with drawn broadsword, and then the poor fellow was headless.

  About then the sun went out.

  He came back to his senses, and the only thing he saw at first was a long rectangle of grayish brightness and a thousand tiny lazily drifting motes. It didn’t make sense at first, but then he gathered that the rectangle was light on a stone floor, thrown there by a shaft spearing through a window some four pareci above. He blinked, looking away from the light, but it took a few moments for his eyes to adjust. He tried to remember. He’d been ambushed…

  “Oh, I think he’s with us,” someone said. The language was Vitellian, but crefo was pronounced more like “crewo,” the telltale of the aristocratic accent from z’Irbina.

  “Wonderful,” another voice said. This was also in well-cultured Vitellian, but with a faint foreign lilt to it.

  “Let’s have a talk with him.”

  As his eyes adjusted, the faces came into focus, but they were faces he didn’t recognize any more than he did the voices. Their clothes, in contrast, he recognized very well. One was clad in the black gown and red mantle of a patir. The other was all in black, with a single red star at the collar. Only one man in the world was allowed to wear that habit.

  “Fratrex Prismo,” Cazio murmured.

  “Oh, a devout,” the fratrex said.

  “I’m only devout to the saints that love me,” Cazio said. “But I’m from Vitellio. Your portrait is everywhere. But it isn’t your portrait, is it? You aren’t Niro Lucio.”

  “You’re two nirii behind,” the man said. “I am Niro Marco.”

  “You’re a long way from z’Irbina, your grace,” he observed. “I’m flattered you came so far to see me.”

  “Cover your teeth!” the patir shouted. “You’re speaking to the Voice of the Saints.”

  “Oh, let him talk,” the Fratrex Prismo said. “He seems an interesting fellow—a Vitellian dessrator sent to invest a castle with Crothenic troops? I can really think of only one person he is likely to be.”

  “Oh, it’s him,” another voice said from his right. Cazio turned toward the third man. “You I know,” he said. “Sir Roger, yes?”

  “Yes,” the fellow agreed. “I wonder what you’re doing here.”

  “I was just traveling with the soldiers,” Cazio lied. “Hoping for a free meal and a bed here tonight.”

  The highest man of the Church wagged a finger at him as if he were a little boy eating berries in the wrong garden. “Now, that’s clumsy. Have you forgotten you were carrying a letter from Anne?”

  Right.

  “No,” he said. “Just taking the chance that you can’t read.”

  The patir started forward, but the fratrex held up a hand, and he stopped in his tracks.

  “I really don’t understand your hostility,” he said.

  “Your men attacked me,” Cazio said.

  “Naturally. You were invading a castle we have occupied in the name of the saints. If you hadn’t had an army with you, we might have spoken first, but since you came on unfriendly terms—”

  “I offered no terms, unfriendly or otherwise.”

  “Where servants of the saints are concerned, Crotheny’s standard terms seem to be slaughter,” the fratrex said.

  “We have fought corrupt churchmen, if that is what you mean,” Cazio said. “Very near here, in fact.”

  “That? That was a handful, and that was before Anne Dare made claim to Crotheny. I’m talking about since she usurped her uncle’s throne: the military expeditions. I’m talking, for instance, about the butchering of five hundred men at Tarnshead.”

  “They meant to do the same to us,” Cazio said. “Ask Sir Roger there. They believed the odds were in their favor, and they were wrong.”

  “Their throats were cut as they slept,” Sir Roger exploded.

  “No, they weren’t,” Cazio said.

  Sir Roger’s brow wrinkled, then cleared.

  “Oh. You weren’t there, were you? You never saw what happened to them.”

  Cazio opened his mouth to retort, but he hadn’t been there. Anne’s Sefry guard had led that attack.

  He felt a nasty something in his belly. The Sefry had lost only two men. Maybe the Sefry had killed them in their sleep. Anne wouldn’t have known about it, but the Sefry might have done it.

  “He didn’t know,” the fratrex said. “I never thought a dessrator would be involved in such a despicable business, especially the son of the Mamercio.”

  The name struck through Cazio’s breast like a sword stroke. “My father? How do you know who my father was?”

  “The Church keeps records, you know. But beyond that, I met your father a long time ago. A man of honor.”

  “You met him? Not with a sword in hand, I suppose?”

  The fratrex smiled broadly. “I see. You want to avenge him?”

  Cazio felt suddenly very light-headed. “It was you? You killed my father?”

  The fratrex snorted. “No. I’m sure it would be convenient for you if I had. Give you good reason to murder me, eh?”

  “My father was a fool,” Cazio said. “I never pledged to avenge hi
m, only to live better and longer than he did.”

  “Really? Then I don’t understand. You seem to follow the way of the sword, just as he did.”

  “He fought for honor,” Cazio said. “He lost everything he owned and his life in a duel over a ridiculous notion. I fight for food and coin. I fight to survive, and I fight smart, for no other reason. I—”

  He stopped. It had been a long time since he had had this conversation with anyone, he realized.

  Why had he turned down the chance to walk the faneway of Mamres? Why had he been so disappointed when Acredo had been shot full of arrows?

  Ah, no, he thought. How did it happen?

  He tried to summon up the anger he’d once felt at his father, the outrage, the disdain.

  It was gone. When had he changed? How had it happened without his knowing it?

  The Fratrex Prismo was still regarding him, apparently waiting for him to go on. When he didn’t, the churchman leaned forward.

  “So you’re just a mercenary, then? Honor means nothing to you?”

  “I—Never mind that,” Cazio said. “Do you know who killed my father?”

  “I’ve no idea,” the man said. “I knew him years before his death. He was on a pilgrimage to the shrine of Uni in Abrinio, and so was I. He saved our lives when bandits attacked.”

  For the first time in years, Cazio remembered his father’s face and his voice, talking about going to Abrinio on pilgrimage. It was shocking how clear his memory suddenly was, how suddenly full of tears his head seemed to be.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” he said. His voice felt wet and gritty.

  “What shall we talk about, then?” the fratrex asked. “What to do with you?”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s an interesting subject. And it depends so much, you know, on—well, you. I’m willing to imagine you’ve been guided up until now by a personal sense of loyalty to Anne rather than by honest opposition to the Church. But to maintain that viewpoint, I’m going to need some cooperation from you. I’m going to need your help with Anne.”

  “Suppose,” Cazio said after a moment, “I offer you a similar bargain? Just an arrow’s flight from here I witnessed men of the Church committing the foulest possible atrocities. At first I was willing to believe that the clergy involved were renegades, but we discovered that the praifec of Crotheny was involved and that the events I witnessed weren’t unique. It seems impossible that the rest of the Church fathers knew nothing of this, yet I am willing to imagine that you were unaware of these abominations. But to maintain that viewpoint, I’m going to need some cooperation from you. I’m going to need your holy kiss on my bare arse.”

  The patir was beet-red now, but the fratrex only smiled an odd little smile.

  “I see.” He leaned forward. “I’m going to give you a bit of time to think about this, my friend.” He nodded, and the patir clapped his hands. A door he hadn’t noticed opened, and five large monks entered.

  Cazio met the man’s gaze dead on. “I will tell you one thing: You shouldn’t go to Eslen. Anne will crush you.”

  The Fratrex Prismo shook his head. “No, she won’t. I know something she doesn’t. If you help me, she might live. Otherwise I fear for her.”

  “Fear for yourself,” Cazio snarled. “If you threaten Anne, I will have to kill you myself.”

  “Really?” the fratrex said. “Well, you might as well do it now.” He nodded at the guards. “Gentlemen, loan us a pair of swords, won’t you.”

  “Your grace,” one of the men said. He removed his heavy cut-and-thrust weapon and walked it over to the fratrex. Another man brought Cazio his own weapon, Acredo.

  Cazio took the hilt. Certainly it was a trick of some sort, but at least he would go down fighting, not tortured to death in some dungeon.

  He stood, not raising the sword until Niro Marco took the position of guard.

  With an amazing quickness that belied his earlier assertion, the man lunged at him. Cazio caught the blade in perto, bound it down to uhtave, and struck the Fratrex Prismo of the holy Church in the chest.

  Except that the point stopped as if he had hit a wall. For an instant he thought the fellow was wearing a breastplate, but then he saw the truth: His point wasn’t touching the man; it was stuck in something a fingers-breadth from Niro Marco’s chest.

  He tried to yank the weapon back for another blow, but all of a sudden his arms and legs went loose and he was on the floor.

  “Now,” he heard the fratrex say, “these men will take you to a place of contemplation, but I’m going to warn you: I can’t allow you to reflect for long. I’m here only for a short time, and then I must go to Eslen, with or without any help you may be able to give me. I would like to save you, but if you don’t have anything to tell me by tomorrow, I’m going to have to encourage you any way I can. If that’s no use, well, perhaps we can still lustrate your soul before it leaves this world. It’s the least I can do for your father.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THE WALK BEGINS

  WHEN THE WITCHLIGHTS went out, Stephen shouted and batted at the darkness. Adhrekh hollered orders, and Zemlé screamed. Then something rough struck him, and he heard a deep, ragged gasp of breath. His feet stood suddenly on nothing, and he heard a second shout, this one in that other voice.

  Do not trust…

  Then silence and wind and the wait for the stop at the end.

  Something hit him again and knocked all the air out of him. The pain was blinding, but he still could feel, so he figured he wasn’t dead.

  That wasn’t so bad, he thought. The floor mustn’t have been as far as I thought.

  But as he hiccupped air into his lungs, Stephen understood that something had him gripped tightly around the torso, and they were still hurling through the darkness. Was it one of the Aitivar, diving in a vain attempt to save him?

  But they weren’t moving so much down as forward. Whatever had him was flying.

  What could fly that was large enough to carry a man? Only something from legend and likely something nasty: a wyver, a dragon…

  He cried for help but had the feeling the sounds were dying just past his lips. He couldn’t struggle. Even if he could, and succeeded, it would mean a long fall.

  The smell hit him again, and the creeping sensation of something infinitely malevolent surrounding him, and he suddenly felt stone smack against his feet. Whatever had gripped him had released him, and he fell on his bottom.

  He scuttled back, crablike, in terror to escape from the thing. A hard stone wall stopped his retreat.

  The darkness remained elementally absolute.

  “What do you want?” Stephen gasped. “I—what do you want of me?”

  He was answered by a thunder of incomprehensible words that seemed to roll around him, a gibbering no human throat could make. Part of him was fascinated despite the horror. Was this the language of demons?

  “I can’t—”

  “Hush.”

  It went in his head like a pin through an insect. His mouth froze open.

  “Is this the one?” the thing went on. “Are you the one? Are you shadow or substance?”

  The voice was burring right in his ear—in both ears, in fact, as if whoever it was somehow was whispering in them both. It didn’t sound like a human voice, but he couldn’t say exactly why.

  Stephen still couldn’t move his mouth, so he couldn’t answer.

  “The smell of you,” the voice continued. “Revolting. I don’t understand how you don’t take your own lives from that alone.”

  It paused, and Stephen had the sense of something immense slithering around him. But when it spoke again, its voice was still right in his ears.

  “You smell of other things, too. You stink of the sedoi. It all rots in you, mayfly. All comes to you to rot. Or will.”

  Stephen was shivering uncontrollably. He still could move his limbs, and he did—to roll up into a ball.

  “Hold still,” the voice commanded.
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  Then he couldn’t move at all, although the trembling in his limbs continued.

  Suddenly the needle through his mind began to wiggle, and he was standing in front of the fane of Saint Ciesel in the King’s Forest. The forest rose up around him like columns supporting the cloudy sky. The fane was a tidy little structure of gray stone with a low-vaulted roof.

  He blinked. He was staring at a different fane, that of Saint Woth.

  And then he didn’t have time to blink as he flashed from place to place and from time to time. He was nine, looking off the cliffs behind his house and smelling the sea. He was watching Zemlé pull off her shirt. He was relieving himself behind a bush off the Old King’s Road. He was watching Aspar kiss Winna.

  Part of him understood that these were memories, but it all felt absolutely real: The weight of himself on his feet shifted—sometimes he wasn’t on his feet—the scents, the temperature of the air, and it all went faster and faster until his thinking mind suddenly stepped away from it all, watched it flow like a river. Not trying to recognize anything but just watching it ripple and move.

  And after a moment he noticed another stream, deep and dark, running alongside him, almost touching, then joining and broadening the river.

  What’s this?

  But then even his ability to form questions disintegrated.

  It took him a long time to understand when it was over, that he was back in one place and time, still shivering in the dark and paralyzed. He realized that the thing was talking to him again, and probably had been for some time.

  “…going through it? Nonsense. I feel the bones. The bones are there. And blood in them, yes? In them. Ah, you’re back. Listen, mayfly. He doesn’t know me, not for sure. I like it that way. I think you will, too. So helpful, isn’t he? Do you ever wonder why he wants you to walk the faneway? Do you ever wonder that?”

  Yes, Stephen tried to answer.

  “Come, tell—ah, wait. I see. It’s already working. You may speak in response to my questions.”

  He felt something like a knot untying in his throat, and he gagged and then vomited. He kept heaving long after there was nothing left in his stomach.