by Alec Hutson
Contents
Title Page
Map of Araen
Copyright
Dedication
Prologue
1: Keilan
2: Keilan
3: Keilan
4: The Emperor
5: Jan
6: Keilan
7: Keilan
8: Keilan
9: Keilan
10: Jan
11: Keilan
12: Keilan
13: Keilan
14: Xin
15: Keilan
16: Alyanna
17: Keilan
18: Alyanna
19: Keilan
20: Jan
21: Senacus
22: Keilan
23: The Black Vizier
24: Alyanna
25: Keilan
26: Jan
27: Senacus
28: Keilan
29: Jan
30: Keilan
31: Keilan
32: Keilan
33: Alyanna
34: Keilan
35: Senacus
36: Keilan
37: Alyanna
38: Xin
39: Alyanna
40: Xin
41: Alyanna
42: Senacus
43: Keilan
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
The Crimson Queen © 2016 by Alec Hutson
Published by Alec Hutson
Cover art by Jeff Brown
Cover design by Jeff Brown
Map by Sebastian Breit
Proofed by Jessica Parker
Interior layout and design by Colleen Sheehan
All rights reserved
First Edition
ISBN: 978-0-9982276-0-3 (print)
978-0-9982276-1-0 (e-book)
Please visit Alec’s website at
http://www. authoralechutson. com
For my mother, who read to me
The old man waited, shrouded in darkness, alone in a room carved from the mountain’s heart.
How long had he been waiting? He knew, and yet he did not know. Time bled differently down here, so far removed from the sky and sea; usually it became thinner, more attenuated, moments stretching into eternities. But on rare occasion it seemed to bunch and swell, thundering through these passageways like a mighty river seeking the ocean after the spring floods, sweeping them all along whether they wished it to or not.
That is the danger, he mused, of living in such an immutable place. Change, when it did come, seemed too hurried, too discourteous.
And a great change was coming; he could feel it thrumming in the rock around him. They had a bond, he and the mountain. For one hundred and seventy-six years he had lived almost every waking moment within, one hundred and twenty of those as the daymo of the kith’ketan. The slightest disturbance reverberated through the halls to him like a great drum beating deep down among the mountain’s roots.
So he was aware, even before his steward told him, that the Undying One was coming to see him.
The air in his room eddied, ever so slightly, and he knew he was no longer alone. The old man closed his eyes, embracing the shadow, and in his mind the contours of his sanctum materialized. He sat cross-legged atop a dais carved from a giant femur – not a dragon’s, as his old master had once told him, since such remains held queer properties, but another beast from lost antiquity, one whose bones had turned smooth and hard with the turning of the ages. Five walls enclosed him, perfectly symmetrical, curving to come together far above, where a great iron bell was suspended. A silken cord dangled down, almost brushing his hand. A single tolling and his steward would appear. Two and any kith’ketan in the mountain of high enough rank to bear a shadowblade would hurry to attend him. Three and a dozen of his followers would burst through the chamber’s entrance and slay whoever had displeased him.
He kept his hands in his lap, perfectly still.
The presence in his sanctum did not speak. The silence stretched between them for a time – A moment? An eternity? – and then the daymo pulled from his voluminous sleeves a long, thin object, something he had sent his steward searching for as soon as he had felt this one approaching.
“May I?” he asked, and at another time he would have choked on such a request. The thought that the daymo of the kith’ketan, within his own sacred mountain, would ask permission to do anything was galling – but, he chided himself, remembering his own teachings, pride was an illusion, an artifice that could be set aside when circumstances warranted.
And conversing with their most honored guest was just such a circumstance.
“Yes.” The Undying One spoke softly, without inflection or accent. An unmemorable voice. Yet there was power behind it – the old man felt the reverberations.
Light flared in the darkness. Not a warm, golden glow, but a harsh, pale flickering that painted the room in shades of charcoal and bone.
The daymo set the corpsetallow candle in a twisted black-metal stand. The white flame writhed and danced like a creature in pain – which, in a way, he supposed it was. Could a soul feel pain even when ripped from its body? A philosophical question, and one he suspected no man living could answer.
The old man studied his guest. Tall, with pallid, unlined skin. Black ringlets that fell to his shoulders. Large, dark eyes and a thin mouth. The man was dressed in the traditional garb of their order, even though he was not truly a part of it – a black tunic lacking any design or symbol, loose black trousers cinched by a wire that could be used as a means to kill, a cloak and cowl. And it was as he suspected: the man matched perfectly with the image he still held in his memory from well over a century ago, when he had attended his own master in this very chamber as that ancient daymo had met with the Undying One to discuss the murder of a padarasha.
“You are leaving us,” the old man said, passing his hand over the candle. The flame shied away from him, as if afraid.
The Undying One nodded. “I have been summoned.”
That surprised the old man, but he did not let it show. “A man cannot serve two masters.”
“I have no master,” murmured the Undying One. Then his thin mouth quirked slightly. “And who said I was a man?”
True enough, thought the daymo. Considerations of who or what this creature was had consumed more of his time than he would ever admit. His master, the previous daymo, had confided in him once that he thought the Undying One to be an avatar of shadow, a physical manifestation of the philosophy that guided the kith’ketan. Brought into being, perhaps, by the intense devotion of those that lived under the mountain.
But the old man did not believe that. He now thought the Undying One was merely a visitor to their home, though his purpose for living amongst them for so many centuries remained inscrutable.
“Before you go . . . I wish to see your blade. I have heard many stories.”
Did the Undying One hesitate? Had the old man said something unexpected, deviated from whatever scripted dance they were engaged in?
Then he stepped forward and drew his weapon. There was no sound, no rasping of metal like accompanied the drawing of traditional swords. Nor was there the faint whisper of silk, as when a shadowblade was flourished. The sword slid out as silent as a grave and the corpsetallow candle quailed in its presence, guttering.
The Undying One held out his sword so that the old man could study its curved blade. It looked like normal steel, notched in places, with a few faint cracks threading the metal. But the hair on his arm lifted when he reached out to touch the weapon, and the Undying One shook his head firmly.
“Do not touch. You are strong, but I cannot guarantee that it will not take you.”
The daymo withdrew his hand, and the Undying One sheathed the sword.
Surprisingly, he found his mouth was dry. He swallowed. “Will you return to us?”
“I do not know. The world above is changing – surely you have felt the tremors. And now an old . . . friend asks for my counsel and help. She would not do this unless great events were unfolding. Perhaps the kith’ketan will be drawn into what is coming.”
“We do not wish to guide the course of history. That has never been our purpose.”
The Undying One shook his head slightly. “No, you would rather be the tools of those who would change the world. But perhaps you should consider another role for your order. Perhaps it does not conflict with your . . . philosophy as much as you believe. A new age is dawning, and the bold will shape it to their desires.”
Those last words echoed in the old man’s thoughts long after the Undying One had turned and departed, leaving after many years the darkness under the mountain and emerging again into the world of light and life.
Keilan leaned over the side of the small fishing boat and dipped his fingers into the dark water as his father pulled hard again on the oars. They slid forward through the swells that were trying to push them back toward land, his father grunting curses with each strong stroke.
“Can I help?” Keilan asked, settling onto one of the boat’s seat-planks. Across from him his father grimaced a smile through his beard.
“The day I can’t row out against the breakers,” he said, his face flushed, “is the day I hang up my nets and give this old tub to you.”
Keilan nodded. The same answer, returned every day to the same question. Endless identical days, it seemed, different only in the size of their catch, his father’s mood, and the vagaries of wind and water.
Keilan glanced at the southern horizon, that thin seam where sea joined with sky. Wind and water. He didn’t share his father’s old fisherman sense of the changing weather, but still he could tell that this day would not be exactly like most others.
“Aye, you can feel it too, then,” his father said as Keilan continued to stare off into the distance. “A storm’s brewing out there. Something’s maddened one of the Shael, t’be sure. They’ll be lancing the sea before nightfall, looking to spear a serpent or two.”
Keilan saw it, a faint bruising in the hard blue sky that warned of distant storm clouds massing. He turned back to his father and was surprised to catch something glinting in his slate-gray eyes.
“Your father’s not so old yet, boy. The rowing’s hard because the sea’s starting to work its way into a fury. You’ll have to wait a few more years yet before you can call yourself the captain of this ship.”
“How long until the storm comes?”
His father squinted, lines scored by years of sun and salt cracking his face. “We should be all right if we get back around the late tide, but I also don’t want to tempt Ghelu. So we best start filling this boat with fish.” He paused his rowing, holding the oars suspended over the waves; water streamed from the blades, drops glittering like jewels in the sunlight as they fell. “You best do your dowsing trick.”
My dowsing trick, Keilan thought, rolling his sleeve up. His father likened what he did to a man finding water . . . though of course, out here, water was easy enough to find. Other things were more difficult.
He leaned again over the side of the rocking boat, this time farther out, and plunged his arm into the water up to his elbow. It was cold, but not bracingly so. Behind him he heard his father set down the oars with a clatter, and then a moment later the susurrus of nets being pulled from beneath the seat-planks.
Keilan stared into the shifting blackness. The sounds of his father dwindled as he concentrated on the sea and the feel of his hand drifting in the gentle current. Gradually the sun on his neck and the wind tugging at his hair also faded away. He dissolved into the water, spreading out into the yawning abyss below.
He was there. Under the water, floating, coddled by the freezing darkness. In the Deep. As always, the immensity beneath him was briefly, terrifyingly overwhelming, and he had to tamp down the panicked desire to kick for the surface and sunlight.
Keilan mastered himself. He was not alone; down here, he was never truly alone, if he looked long enough. He felt them then, surprisingly close, pinpricks of warmth skittering through the dark, rising from the depths . . . stars falling up. They were close, but not quite close enough.
With a gasp he returned to the boat, pulling his arm from the water. Below his elbow the skin had turned ashen.
“Well?” his father asked. “Is this a good spot?”
Keilan swallowed and shook his head, massaging his numb arm. “No . . . but not far. There’s a fair-sized school coming, a bit more that way.” He waved vaguely to the east, where a rocky spur thrust out into the bay.
His father grunted and dropped the net he’d been baiting, picking up his oars again. “Ironheads, are they? Must be chasing the minnows round the rocks.”
Keilan shrugged and shivered, reaching for the sealskin blanket his father now kept for him in the boat. They lurched forward as his father pulled hard at the oars, straining to get them positioned quick enough. Keilan kept his eyes fixed on the bottom of the boat, but he could feel his father watching him with concern.
“You all right, boy? You don’t feel the falling sickness coming on again, do ya?”
Keilan shook his head. “I’m fine.”
And he would be. This was normal, a momentary weakness. Nothing like what had happened a fortnight before. When he’d almost died.
He put the thought of that awful day out of his head – otherwise, he’d be too scared to even accompany his father out here, let alone attempt his . . . dowsing.
His father rowed in silence, the rocks swelling larger behind him. They were black and jagged and veined by red strands of seaweed. When Keilan was a bit younger, before he had started coming out with his father almost every day, he and Sella would sometimes carefully pick their way along those same rocks, collecting fresh seaweed for Mam Ru to put in her soups. And there’d be other treasures, too, if they were lucky. Blue-shelled crabs tossed up by the waves and caught in the small pools that sometimes formed where the rocks came together, pale luminous sea-glass of different colors, and driftwood that must have come from one of the many ships that foundered on the treacherous rocks hidden farther out at the mouth of the bay. Every time he’d found one of those chunks of wood Keilan had wondered if it had been torn from his mother’s ship, perhaps even if she’d clung to it before his father had pulled her from the churning waters.
“Da, where did you find her?” The words slipped out, unexpected, and immediately Keilan regretted his question. There was an unspoken rule between them, never to talk about her.
His father’s face slackened in surprise, then grew dark. He didn’t respond for a long moment, studying Keilan with eyes that almost looked reproachful. Finally, he sighed and gestured with one of the oars out beyond the end of the jumbled rocks.
“There. Clinging to that damned chest so hard I wasn’t sure which was keeping the other afloat.” His eyes passed beyond Keilan, looking at something else. “Lightning was rippling the sky, an’ I saw her in the flash, bone white like some wraith come to drag those poor sailors down under. The waves carried me closer, and then there was another big strike, and I could see that she’d seen me, and that she wasn’t no ghost, just a girl, and that she was scared. Scared and beautiful and fierce to keep on living. She was refusing to let these waters drag her down.” His father cleared his throat and spat over the side. “I reached my hand out, and she took it, and I pulled her up and into this very boat, but with her other hand she stayed holding on to that chest, and she didn’t let go until I hauled it out of the water as well. What foolishness; almost caps
ized us bringing it aboard. Then I put my back into the oars and rowed for shore like the Deep Ones themselves were tickling at my hull. Your Ma stayed huddled at my feet watching behind us as the Shael kept lancing the water, giving us these glimpses of her ship as it finished breaking up on the rocks, and then one time it was just gone, like it had never been.”
“Did the rest of them die?”
His father nodded. “Best we in the village could tell. There were a few bodies that washed up the next day, along with some things from the ship, shards of wood and shreds of sail, a crate of broken pottery. Old Tannin found a silver bracelet studded with green stones big as walnuts. Thought he was rich as a prince, but a passing peddler later told him they was just colored bits of glass.”
Keilan smiled, imagining Tannin strutting around town, proud as a rooster, and what his face must have looked like after the peddler had dashed his hopes. Knowing the old fool he had probably had the bracelet appraised in front of as large a crowd as possible, just so everyone could envy his good fortune.
His father stopped rowing. “About here, boy?”
Keilan glanced around, trying to estimate where the school he had sensed would be by now. “This should be a good spot,” he said, with only a trace of uncertainty.
His father might have noticed his tone, but still he grunted agreement and bent to his nets. Keilan helped him thread a few more pieces of bait into the mesh, then took the far end of the net and brought it to the back of the boat. At the count of three father and son tossed the weighted corners out into the ocean and watched them sink, fastening the other ends of the nets onto iron hooks driven into the side of the boat, while also holding tight to the lines that ran down to the weights suspended in the deepness. Now they just had to wait.
Sometimes it could take an hour before they caught anything, or his father grudgingly gave up, but today Elara’s bounty was swift, and almost immediately they felt the lines begin to thrum with the feeling of thrashing fish.
“Up boy, pull it up!” his father cried, hauling on the line that ran down to the net’s weights. Keilan did the same, and slowly the net cinched closed, rising toward the surface. His father let out a whoop when he saw how many squirming, silver bodies they had snared, and with a great heave father and son dumped the wriggling fish into the ship. Each was about as long as Keilan’s arm, and his father’s guess had been right, as their heads were large and black and bony, almost as if they were wearing helmets. Keilan jumped back a step, wary of their snapping jaws. He’d watched his father’s cousin lose a finger to one of these fish before.
