The Crimson Queen

by Alec Hutson

  “I . . . I don’t know,” Keilan stammered, shrugging helplessly. “She never spoke of her life before my father saved her.”

  “Magister,” said one of the rangers as he approached them carrying the rusted remains of a metal strongbox.

  With a final long look, Vhelan turned away from Keilan. “Yes?”

  The ranger set the box on the table and flipped open its lid. “We’ve gathered what we could salvage from the chests here.”

  Nel came around the edge of the table and peered into the box, her eyes widening when she saw the contents.

  “You can keep your scrolls, boss,” she said, pulling out a necklace of glittering purple stones, “it looks like there’s something here for everybody.”

  Quickly she spread the objects out on the table, pushing away the skeletal hand and its goblet to make room. Aside from the necklace, there were several other pieces of jewelry – a few gold and silver rings inset with colorful gems, a circlet of delicately wrought strands of silver studded with chips of lapis lazuli, and another necklace, a thin black thread from which dangled a huge smooth-cut blue stone with a white cross emblazoned in its center.

  “A star sapphire,” Nel breathed as she slipped the thread over her head, the stone settling just below her throat.

  There were also loose gems, both rough and cut; from their colors, Keilan could guess that there were diamonds and emeralds and opals, among many others he could not recognize. Nel scooped up a handful of these stones and gave them to the ranger. “Your reward, for following us down here. Share it with your fellows.”

  “Yes, Lady Nel! The blessing of the Ten be upon you!”

  As he hurried over to where the other rangers waited Nel continued pulling treasures from the box. A curved dagger with a faceted ebony handle quickly vanished into one of the numerous secret pockets that were sown into her leather tunic and leggings. More paper fragments that Vhelan stirred with his finger, looking for anything readable.

  “What is this?” Nel asked as she drew out a wadded pile of white cloth. “Looks like silk, but that would have rotted away a long time ago. Any ideas?” She tossed the fabric towards Keilan; it was so light that it caught the air and floated into his hands.

  Keilan unfolded the cloth, marveling at how slick and supple the material was, despite its incredible lightness. He recognized what it was almost immediately and slipped it on over his head. “It’s a shirt,” he said, smoothing the fabric against his chest, “though I don’t think it would be very warm. It hardly even feels like I’m wearing anything.”

  Vhelan stopped prodding the paper fragments and turned to rub the edge of the shirt between his fingers. “Remarkable. I’ve heard of something like this, one of the lost artifacts of the Imperium. Shirts made of spider silk, as smooth and light as the finest gossamer, yet as hard as steel.” The sorcerer drew forth a small dagger and gently pressed the tip into the shirt, which dimpled but did not tear. “A great treasure. If it’s as light as you say, I would wear it always.”

  A magic shirt! Keilan seemed to have somehow stumbled into one of his old daydreams; a wave of dizziness washed over him, and he reached out to the table to steady himself.

  He gasped and jerked his hand back – the stone was thrumming. Nel and Vhelan glanced at him sharply

  “Touch the table,” Keilan whispered.

  The sorcerer frowned and put his palm flat on the surface. “There’s some kind of vibration.”

  “It’s not the stone,” Nel said, pointing at the silvery strands sunk into the blackness. They were moving like the plucked strings on a lute.

  A thought came to Keilan, and cold fear settled in his chest. “Vhelan, Nel. Have you ever seen what happens when an insect blunders into a spider web?”

  “Of course,” Vhelan said with a hint of exasperation, “the creature is caught, and the spider wraps it up and drinks its blood.”

  Keilan swallowed hard. He could see realization slowly dawning in Nel’s face. “How does the spider know the prey is trapped? It lurks elsewhere, waiting to feel the thrashing in the web.”

  “It knows from the vibrations,” Nel murmured.

  Keilan placed his hands again on the table. He slowed his breathing, reaching for the same sense of tranquility he needed before he used to attempt his dowsing aboard his father’s fishing boat; he felt the stone, cold and hard and smooth, and embedded within it the gleaming threads of silver, hard as braided steel but thrumming like catgut, running under the surface, down the table’s legs, into the floor, branching and spreading like a great tree through the stone, the walls, the ruin. Keilan flitted along the strands, and the ruins unfolded for him: it was so vast, tunnels and catacombs spiraling into the darkness, rooms stacked with pyramids of skulls, a great pool of glistening blackness, headless statues guarding something terrible he did not want to see, so he turned away as he flickered past . . . and movement. He felt movement in the great web, cold glimmering lights that were racing through the darkness, skittering towards . . .

  He gasped and reeled away from the table, his hand pulsing with coldness, as if he had been clutching ice.

  “We . . . we have to . . . to get out. Things are coming here, quickly.”

  “What?” Vhelan said, but Nel was already moving, pocketing more of the treasure and shoving the scroll towards the sorcerer.

  “Stow that somewhere, boss. I’ve got a bad feeling. You there,” she yelled at the rangers, who were crouched on the floor dividing up their spoils. “Prepare yourself for battle.”

  Sighing, Vhelan shoved the scroll into his belt and shook his hands free of his long sleeves. “To me, boy,” he said to Keilan, beckoning him closer.

  Nel slapped the ebony-handled dagger on the table and slid it across to Keilan. “Stab anything with more than two legs,” she said.

  “Where are they coming from?” one of the rangers asked. He was the only one who had brought his bow, and he had an arrow nocked.

  “There!” Nel cried, pointing with a dagger at the holes set high up on the walls. A black shape was creeping forth from one, long spindly legs emerging from the darkness.

  The ranger loosed his arrow, and it struck true, embedding in the bulbous center of the beast with a fleshy thunk. Silently, the shape detached from the wall, its legs folding up as it fell. The sound it made when it struck the stone floor was like the ice on a frozen pond fracturing.

  “By the mercy of the Silver Lady,” one of the ranger whispered, “is that a spider?”

  “A bolthole, he called it. A refuge,” Nel said sarcastically, daggers Keilan recognized as Chance and Fate glittering in her hands. “But a web? No.”

  Vhelan fluttered his fingers, and the wizardlight brightened, bathing the room in brilliant white radiance. “Sorry, my knife. Even I can be wrong once in a summer’s snow.”

  “Once in a summer’s snow,” Nel muttered to herself, leaping up onto the table and facing the hole from where the spider had emerged. “This could be the last ‘once in a summer’s snow’ I hear you ever say.”

  “How many of those things did you feel? Was it just the one?” Vhelan asked.

  Keilan shrugged. “No, not just one . . . I couldn’t count. There were so many.”

  “Then where are – ”

  Before the sorcerer could finish a torrent of black shapes exploded from several of the holes, not slowly creeping like the first spider but skittering at great speed down the walls, their obscene legs blurs of movement. The ranger fired as fast as he could; his first shaft struck the wall and went spinning away, but the second embedded itself in one of the spiders and the creature again dropped, while the third hit the edge of a bloated abdomen, and although ichor splashed out, the spider kept scrabbling down the stone.

  The leading spider touched the floor, took a few quick mincing steps as it gathered itself, and then leaped at Nel atop the table, mandibles sprea
d wide. The knife twisted from the path of the spider and lashed out with a dagger, and by the time the creature had struck the ground its legs had already folded up in death, its entrails bursting from a long gash in its side.

  “Gods,” he heard the sorcerer breathe, and then Keilan also gasped as he glanced away from the dead spider and back at the wall. It was a black waterfall of hard chitinous bodies, a horde of spiders the size of large dogs rushing downwards.

  Then the creatures were upon them. The sorcerer flung a bolt of red energy at the closest charging spider, and it jiggered and danced before collapsing. But the swarm behind it clambered over its body, eyes like black jewels glittering in the harsh wizardlight. Their front legs were upraised, covered in black fur and tipped with wicked, curving claws. The sorcerer sketched a shimmering blue shield in the air, and a spider slammed into it, threading the barrier with cracks. Vhelan grunted and speared the spider with another lance of red energy, bursting its abdomen and splattering the magical shield with lashings of black ichor.

  A spider skirted the edge of the barrier, coming close to Keilan. With a terrified cry he sliced down with his dagger, cutting into one of the monster’s legs. The spider danced sideways in pain, knocking over Keilan, who struck the back of his head hard against one of the legs of the granite throne. He tasted blood in his mouth and tried to stand, but the spider was looming over him, a great mass of hard black shell and flailing legs. Keilan screamed and closed his eyes, expecting to feel the spider’s mandibles at his throat, but when nothing happened he opened his eyes a crack . . . then had to cry out again as the spider’s horrific face was only a few span from his own. He saw clacking mandibles spread beneath rows of soulless, black eyes, each reflecting his own terrified face. Then the creature was gone, skittering away.

  Keilan scrambled to his feet, stumbling as the spiders surged around him. But they paid him no heed, intent on throwing themselves at the others. Was it the spider-silk shirt he wore? One of the rangers was down, clutching a ravaged leg, while his two companions stood over him, desperately hacking at the spiders with their stubby swords. Nel was still on the table, dancing back and forth, dodging the spiders as they leaped to grab her. Several of the monsters were curled near her, fluids leaking from their stabbed abdomens. Vhelan had backed himself into a corner, a few of his blue crackling shields just barely holding the mass of spiders at bay. And still the horde came on, spilling from the holes above. They would be overwhelmed in a matter of moments.

  Light flared in the chamber. Not the harsh wizardlight but a golden, blinding radiance that forced Keilan to cover his eyes. When he opened them, blinking away the burning spots in his vision, he saw the impossible.

  The rangers they’d left above were flooding the room, loosing arrows into the churning maelstrom of carapaces and legs. Most of the spiders had stopped, stunned by the golden light, and charging amongst them was the Pure, the silver-haired paladin who had first taken Keilan from his village. His white-metal sword flashed as he laid about, splitting open the spiders, the light in his eyes blazing with a golden fury. A few of the spiders turned to meet him, but his blade was a scythe, and soon the creatures were fleeing before the Pure, crawling over each other to escape.

  But still more were streaming from the holes in the walls, meeting the retreating tide and turning them back.

  “Flee!” the paladin cried as he skewered a spider. “Back to the surface!”

  Nel jumped off the table and hurled a dagger at the spiders pressing Vhelan. One of the monsters juddered and collapsed, the blade lodged in an eye. Then Nel was among them, ripping that dagger free and plunging it and its brother into the heads of two spiders heaving against the largest of Vhelan’s shields, which was so riddled with cracks that pieces of glowing blue glass had already flaked away. Red light stabbed out from the sorcerer, but Keilan thought it looked much reduced, and on a few spiders the energy simply coruscated along their carapaces and vanished with no other effect. But Nel was relentless, and soon she’d carved enough of a gap that Vhelan could drop his shields and follow her toward the doorway.

  The injured ranger and his companions who had followed the sorcerer below had been carried away by the others, and after Nel and Vhelan had passed through the door only a small force remained near the exit: a few rangers releasing arrows into the encroaching horde and the Pure standing before them, his sword a crescent of white light as he hewed through the spiders. Keilan paused briefly at the doorway, watching the tide break upon the paladin, but then one of the archers pushed him hard and yelled for him to go.

  Keilan scrambled back up the passageway in darkness, having left the wizardlight guttering in the chamber below. A square of light appeared ahead, the secret door, and then he was out, gasping as strong arms pulled him through. He found his footing and turned back to the hole. The panel that had once slid closed behind them was shattered, wisps of smoke still rising from the blackened shards of stone. He watched the darkness, panting hard, clutching the ebony dagger to his chest. Every ranger above ground had nocked their bow and trained it on the hole, waiting.

  Keilan found himself counting his breaths. Thirty. Seventy. One hundred. He felt hope begin to fade.

  Then a ragged cheer went up as the rangers who had stayed behind to cover their retreat tumbled through the hole and into the torchlight. Quickly they were pulled aside to safety, and then the watch on the door resumed.

  Nothing more came through. Keilan heard the captain of the rangers curse softly. “All right,” he said loudly, “I’m going back in to try and find that paladin. Who is with me?”

  A few of the other rangers stepped forward, including one of the men who had just burst through the hole – his face was pale and his long red hair wild but there was a hard glint in his eyes as he nocked another arrow to his bow and stood.

  “Wait!” cried Nel. “Look!”

  A light was moving up the passage, getting brighter. Keilan glanced at Vhelan, but the sorcerer shook his head.

  “It’s not mine. I kept my wizardlight suspended in the chamber.”

  “It’s him,” said Nel, and it was. Golden light spilling from his eyes and a white glow burnishing his sword, the paladin walked calmly up the passage, stooping to pass through the shattered remnants of the secret panel.

  Another cheer went up, this time louder than the first. From his cuirass to his boots the Pure’s armor was stained black by the ichor of slain spiders, and there were long rents in his chain-mail leggings, parts of which hung in tatters, revealing deep cuts beneath. He took two steps towards the men saluting him with upraised bows and then collapsed, the white-metal sword slipping from his fingers to ring hollowly upon the stone.

  Somewhere within this silken labyrinth lurked a monster.

  Jan breathed deep, his fingers brushing Bright’s pommel. The garden’s air was redolent with the scent of perfume and flowers, but to him those smells were subsumed by the acrid foulness he had tracked here. The journey had been long, nearly a month, over the jagged spine of the Bones and across chalk-white plains, to the ancient city of Menekar and this sprawling palace. At times the trail he followed had faded, dwindled to nothingness, but inevitably there would be some thick accretion of the thing’s spoor clinging to the eviscerated corpse of a plains lion or bison, markers he understood to be signposts, leading him on. It wanted him here, in the pleasure gardens of the emperor.

  Iridescent silks whispered in the breeze. They hung from branches and filigreed copper poles sunk among the flower beds, soft shades of green, red, yellow, purple, as varied as the garden’s exotic blossoms. And within each pastel prison cell waited a young, beautiful girl. Some reclined on divans, while others sprawled on cushions or sucked on tubes that snaked into squat metal contraptions, eyes heavy-lidded, smoke leaking from the corners of their mouths. A few glanced at him incuriously as he passed. Jan did not worry that they would raise an alarm – he had watched enough minis
ters and servants enter these grounds to know that he, in his stolen Menekarian finery, would not seem out of place.

  He was more concerned about the Pure. Jan could sense them by their absences, holes cut into the fabric of the world, wandering points of nothingness. Could they feel him? At times it almost seemed so. The paladins of Ama would waver in their rounds, quest out with tendrils searching, and he would be forced to gather up his power and fold deep within himself – until, apparently satisfied, they moved on.

  How had the creature he tracked avoided their attention?

  A peach-colored pavilion rose before him, larger than any he had yet passed. The trail vanished inside. Shadowy shapes moved within, languid female forms; low voices and laughter spilled out.

  An image of those mutilated horses came to him, their heads wedged among the branches, lips curled back in rictal death-grimaces. He banished it and pulled aside the flap.

  Three young women lazed upon a rumpled bed, dressed in wisps of diaphanous cloth: a blonde giantess, slender as a sword, her long arms wrapped around the waist of a freckled, red-haired girl, who sat cross-legged. The dark head of the third was pillowed in her lap, turned away from Jan, her dusky hand reaching up to toy idly with the ringlets that lay upon the red-head’s pale skin. When Jan entered, the blonde woman gasped, but the red-haired girl only gave him a curious half-smile, and bent to whisper something in the ear of the third. The hand of the dark-haired girl released the red curls and moved to lovingly caress a freckled cheek.

  Jan’s eyes darted around the room. Where was the creature? There were just these three girls, the bed they sprawled on, some wrought-brass candelabras, and a rosewood chest carved with what looked like Shan symbols.

  The chest. Jan strode across the pavilion and knelt beside it, tracing the characters etched into the wood. There was a binding here, sorcerous filaments holding shut the lid, but the creature’s foul residue coated everything, and a whiff of the miasma he had followed for so many weeks trickled from within. His heart quickened as he set his hand upon the lid, a spell to shatter the invisible chains forming.