The Crimson Queen

by Alec Hutson

  “I applaud your bravery, but I don’t think you truly wish to do that.”

  The magics scattered, as if the voice had reached within him and brushed aside the forming spell. Jan turned to the bed. The dark-haired girl faced him now, and although he recognized her, he did not know her; as he went to grasp his elusive memories they squirmed away, vanishing into his mind’s still-shadowed recesses. But his emotions rose again, powerful and fraught, just as they had when he had first caught her sweet scent underneath the creature’s spoor and the stale smell of horseblood. He swallowed, cautiously fingering the edges of that feeling. Had he once cared deeply for this Alyanna?

  “Who are you?”

  The redhead giggled.

  “Behave, child,” admonished Alyanna.

  The blond-haired girl was staring at him fearfully, muttering under her breath, some repeated mantra in a language he did not know.

  “Hush,” Alyanna murmured, and the girl instantly quieted. Then she sat up. “Please excuse these two,” she said, addressing Jan again. “Bex has been my favorite for far too long. I spoil her, and this has fed the insolence you now see. I shall have to discipline her.” She reached back to cup the taller woman’s chin. “This one is new to the gardens. She can barely speak the common tongue, and for all my years I’ve never bothered to learn Skein. I believe she thinks you’re a demon. Certainly that’s what she imagines I am.” Alyanna laughed. “And perhaps she’s right. What do you think?”

  Jan turned from the chest and stood. “I don’t know.”

  Her hand slipped from the blonde girl’s face. “But you remember my name?”

  “Alyanna.”

  She closed her eyes, smiling. “It’s so good to hear you say my name again.” She rose and swayed towards him, eyes still shut.

  Jan instinctively took a step backward; she opened her eyes, laughing again. “The Bard, a high lord of Min-Ceruth, scared of me?” She clucked her tongue then drew closer, placing a tiny palm on his chest. She smelled of spices and lilacs, and something else, something almost animal in its muskiness. He felt himself stirring. Her breasts pressed against him; he could feel her own arousal through his thin linen tunic. “Kiss me, Jan duth Verala,” she whispered, her lips almost brushing his, “I’ve missed your taste.”

  “No,” he said, taking a few stumbling steps backward. She did not follow him – instead she shrugged, as if his rejection was of no importance to her, and then returned to the bed, reclining with a sigh.

  “Well, you remember something at least.”

  “My memories . . . are there. I can feel them,” he said shakily. “But when I try and hold them they slip away. I know things about the world, but no details of my own life, save my name and a few other fragments. Who was I?”

  “Your memories might be truly gone this time. Certainly they’ve seemed to fade the last few awakenings. I’ve wondered if even minds such as ours could overcome so many purgings.”

  “This has happened before?”

  She sank back onto the bed. “Every time you remember.”

  “Who does it to me? You?”

  She laughed, rolling onto her side and burying her face in the red-haired girl’s pale thigh. “No, foolish man,” she said, her voice muffled. “You do it to yourself.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  Alyanna sat up, serious again. “I don’t care if you believe me or not. But I like you better when you don’t remember. Watching you drag yourself around wallowing in guilt and self-pity is not becoming.”

  “I keep dreaming of a woman with golden hair and eyes like the ocean. Who is she?”

  Alyanna shook her head. “Poor Jan. We’ve danced this dance before, you know. And I shall tell you what I told you last time, in the coral temple of Lyr’s Oracle: knowledge is currency, and if you wish for me to reveal your truths you must do something in exchange. Secrets for a service rendered.”

  He found he was gripping Bright’s hilt with white-knuckled strength. “What would you have me do?”

  She waved away his words and patted the bed beside her. “In good time, Jan. Come sit with me.”

  “I will stand.”

  She shrugged again, then groped in the tangled sheets for something, eventually holding up a small silver bell. “Wine? Sweetmeats?”

  “Nothing.”

  She tossed the bell back among the blankets. “Don’t pout. If it wasn’t for me you’d still be covered in sheep-dung and sobbing over your dead wife.”

  “Then you were the one who awakened me.”

  Alyanna rolled her eyes. “Of course I did. This age is ending, Jan. The world’s twilight draws to a close. Will a new dawn follow, or endless night? I could not let you sleep through such happenings.”

  “Those murders . . . just to jolt me awake?”

  Her gaze drifted to the rosewood chest. “My new servants are enthusiastic, I know. They succeeded in their task, as here you are. But the means were not as subtle as I would have liked. I’m sure that more attention was drawn than just your own.”

  “Your servants mutilated three innocent men. I came here to destroy whatever did that.”

  “And I would suggest you put such thoughts out of your head, as I won’t allow it. For my part I will keep them on a tighter leash, though not for any reason as paltry as a few mortal lives.”

  “What are they? My memory is riddled with holes, but I know I’ve never sensed anything like them before.”

  Alyanna wagged a finger at him. “Again – secrets. However, as we will soon be working together I will satisfy a little of your curiosity. You are right, incidentally, though they are at least as old as us this land is very new to them. They have spent the last thousand years imprisoned, and I gather that they are quite excited to taste freedom again, even if I still hold their chains.” Alyanna gestured towards the chest. “They arrived after the cataclysms and the Cleansing.”

  “They are Shan.”

  “Are, or were, or perhaps they are something else entirely that the Shan encountered in their long wanderings before they arrived at our shores.”

  “Isn’t it dangerous to employ such servants? If you do not know what they are, how can you understand their strength?” Jan eyed the chest warily.

  “If you remembered more you’d know I’ve always been a gambler. And since here I still am, one of the few of us not dead or broken,” she raised her eyebrows pointedly at him, “you must realize that the risks I take are well considered. I’ve kept the same spells in place that have bound these creatures for centuries – I’ve merely allowed a bit more slack, so that they can be of some use.”

  He considered what she had said. He had come here to destroy whatever had murdered the men of his village . . . but Alyanna claimed she could control them. How could he trust her not to loose them again? She would have no qualms about murdering other innocents if such actions benefited her, he was sure. And yet despite this, he could not think of her as evil, at least as most might conceive of the term. She seemed beyond the boundaries of morality. Or was that the very definition of evil? Had he once been like her? The thought disquieted him.

  “Put them out of your mind,” she urged. “Let me tell you why I called you here.”

  “You said this age is ending.”

  “Indeed. Here, look at this.” Alyanna rummaged in the blankets again and drew forth what looked to be a small, metal bird inlaid with jewels and colored glass. She twisted a key set in its back and it shivered to life, turning its head from side to side as its wings slowly flapped. Jan heard tinny birdsong as its beak open and closed.

  “What is it?”

  “A toy. A metaphor. A harbinger.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  The bird’s movements slowed, the noise it made becoming stretched out, attenuated. “You see? Imagine this clockwork toy is this world. In the dim time
s long ago some entity cracked open the doors within us to the Void – a god, a demon, perhaps even Ama himself, so that his followers would have someone to persecute. And for thousands of years the pulse of magic thrummed in our world . . . yet since the cataclysms destroyed Min-Ceruth and the Imperium it has grown fainter and fainter, like the slowing of this clockwork bird, or a dying man’s heartbeat. No sorcerer of real power has been birthed for five hundred years. Until now, perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  A troubled look passed over Alyanna’s face. “Perhaps. I don’t understand – I thought I did. I was certain magic was leaching from this world, never to return, that the stream feeding us power from the Void was slowly drying up. And yet the pulse has suddenly strengthened. Great powers are stirring again; in the north I can sense the White Worm edging toward wakefulness, and in the seas, only a month past, one of the other Ancients briefly surfaced from its dreams before subsiding again. My spies tell me that in the black pyramids of Xi the spawn of Rho-goreth are again thrashing in their fetid pools, and in the Shan’s Empire of Swords and Flowers the cult of the Raveling has returned. In the far west a new sorceress has arisen: Cein d’Kara, the Crimson Queen of Dymoria. My attempts to discover information about her – whether she is a fresh incarnation of an old wizard, perhaps even one of us, or a new power – have been rebuffed. Is she the cause of sorcery returning to the world, or merely one of its products? Is she a threat or an opportunity? Will she be a piece or a player in this game?”

  “You want me to find out what she is.”

  “Go there. Hide your Talent, if you can. Sing your songs and dazzle the court. Even if she pierces whatever glamour you weave I doubt she could destroy you, and even if she can I imagine she would be too intrigued to try. But be wary, she does have power. She has devised some method of hiding other sorcerers, not just herself, from the gaze of the Pure – she successfully concealed a wizard in this very palace, a dozen paces from an entire cohort of Ama’s paladins. I had to compel a heron to fly through the window of the imperial audience chamber just to alert the light-addled fools.”

  Jan idly smoothed out the bed’s wrinkles as he pretended to consider. In truth he had already decided – the answers Alyanna dangled were reason enough to do what she asked. He desperately wanted to bridge the vast chasms between his few scattered memories. If Alyanna could do that, he would perform this task for her.

  He also found the mystery of this Crimson Queen more than a little tantalizing. Even the sheep farmer Janus Balensorn had heard stories of the young, beautiful monarch who was carving an empire out of the western reaches, and almost every wine sink and inn he had passed though on his way to Menekar had been abuzz with strange rumors. She was planning a great expeditionary fleet to the Sunset Lands; she had forged alliances with the Skein thanes to invade the Gilded Cities; her consort was an exiled Shan princeling, and she had born him a demon child.

  Jan nodded towards the red-haired girl, who now rested her head on Alyanna’s shoulder. “She’s Dymorian?”

  The immortal sorceress twisted her neck so she could kiss the girl’s forehead. “Yes, though unfortunately Bex was born in the slave pits of Gryx, and has no knowledge of the queen. I’ve found that my . . . interests . . . tend to find reflections in my personal desires.” She suddenly laughed, high and sweet. “You know, I first came here to unravel fully the mysteries of the Pure, and I ended up seducing more than a few of them into breaking their precious vows before I realized that none of them had any real insight into what they truly are. Boring creatures, really. Bex is far more entertaining.”

  “Is that why you’ve stayed?”

  “I stay here because I control an empire through the fool that sits the alabaster throne. If you return telling me that this Cein d’Kara is a threat – or do not return at all – I assure you that the Menekarian legions will march over the Bones for the first time in centuries.”

  Her chin resting on laced fingers, deep in thought, Alyanna continued to stare at the pavilion’s flaps long after Jan had passed through them. She felt him move through the garden, then the palace, his power shining bright among the dull, untalented servants and the few searing points of emptiness that were the Pure. The lips of her Dymorian courtesan nuzzled her neck as she considered what had just transpired.

  “Your thoughts?” she said, not addressing the two imperial concubines.

  The air seemed to shiver as a man stepped out from the impossibly thin shadow cast by one of the candelabras. The Skein girl shrieked and cowered, and even Bex’s arm around her waist tightened. The man was tall and pale, with curly, dark hair that touched his shoulders, attired all in black.

  He watched her without expression for a long moment, then spoke. “You play a dangerous game, Weaver. The Bard cannot be controlled, nor can his actions be predicted. You inject unnecessary risk by placing his piece upon the board.”

  “You cannot win the world without taking risks, Demian. We’ve proven that before, and we might have to yet again. Besides, you two and I are the last, that I know. I lost track of the others centuries ago. How could I let him sleep through the ending of the age we created?” Alyanna stroked Bex’s hand, and felt her flinch away at the touch. She sighed. “You’ve disquieted them.” Alyanna unhooked the Dymorian girl’s arm from her waist. “Both of you,” she said, speaking to the two concubines, “leave us.”

  Bex and the Skein girl stood and hurriedly left the pavilion. Alyanna leaned back, reclining on her elbows in the now-empty bed. She watched the man in black carefully. “You’ve changed. And it’s not just these interesting new powers you’re flaunting. Your time under the mountain has altered something within you profoundly.”

  Demian inclined his head in agreement. “It has.”

  Alyanna waited, but he did not elaborate further. Finally she snorted and stood. “The Undying One, ha. So dramatic. Fine, keep your secrets, swordsinger – or should I say shadowblade? Have you become one of them fully, or just enough of a disciple to walk between the darknesses?”

  He paused before answering. “I have come to appreciate their beliefs. I do not embrace every aspect of their faith. But you cannot trick me into revealing any of their secrets, Weaver, so this questioning is futile.” He crossed his arms. “I am not the only one – how did you say it – ‘flaunting’new powers. You dreamsent to me, a technique I thought lost long ago.”

  The ghost of a satisfied smile touched Alyanna’s lips. “I’ve had centuries to develop my strength while you were meditating under a mountain. I’m stronger even than I was before the sundering of the world.”

  The once-swordsinger of the Imperium glanced at the rosewood chest. “And these thralls of yours . . . are you sure you can control them? I’ve never felt creatures like them before.”

  “As I told Jan, they are from Shan. I heard them crying out from half a world away, begging for release from their prison. So I traveled to the bone-shard warlock towers of Tsai Yin to free them.”

  “You claimed that they are being pursued?”

  Alyanna waved away his words, as if they were of no consequence. “Do not concern yourself. Demon-hunters from Shan search for traces of the creatures, but I have set my pet genthyaki on their trails.”

  “The shape-changer? I did not know it still survived.”

  Alyanna grinned wickedly. “It survives, and hates me as much as ever. But it cannot slip its leash – and that should answer your question about whether I can control these Shan demons. Do you honestly believe I would employ them if I could not?”

  His gaze held hers. “No, but your weakness is your arrogance. Be careful, Weaver.”

  “How can I not be arrogant?” she said, smiling innocently. “I whistled, and you came.”

  Finally she saw some emotion in his blank face, a hint of amusement. “I am curious about that. Why with your new-found pets would you need my help?”

  “Oh, D
emian,” Alyanna purred, fluttering her long lashes, “a girl can never have too many friends. And I’d like to meet a few of yours.”

  He frowned. “The kith’ketan? You must know how dangerous they are. What would drive you to seek their aid?”

  Alyanna let her carefully maintained mask slip. She leaned towards Demian and placed her finger on the corner of her eye, squinting as she traced the creases she felt emerge.

  “Look,” she hissed fiercely.

  “A very minor blemish,” he said, but she heard the uncertainty in his voice, and she even thought he drew back a little.

  “A wrinkle, Demian. Do you realize what that means?”

  He said nothing, but from his eyes she saw that he did.

  “I am aging again. We are no longer immortal.”

  “Most important is how you stand. Don’t favor either leg; keep yourself balanced. And stay up on the balls of your feet, so you can move and react quicker.”

  Keilan tried to imitate Nel’s stance, bending his knees slightly and leaning forward. She studied him critically for a moment, and then nodded.

  “Good. Now, there are a few important rules about knife-fighting. The first is: if they have a sword, you run. A knife is no protection against a warrior with a blade.”

  “Have you ever run from a fight?”

  Nel snorted a laugh, quieting the chirping of the birds in the gilded cages hanging from the branches above them. “I’ve run from more fights than I’ve fought. It’s why I’m still alive. Men who carry weapons tend to have a strange belief that it is better to die honorably than live to fight another day. Foolish. If the odds are against me I flee – and I’ve never felt any shame doing just that. Now, stay still.”

  Nel circled behind him and put her hand on his left elbow, raising his arm. Keilan tensed and tried to swallow away the little surge of excitement he felt at her touch. If Nel noticed, she didn’t let it show. “You want to keep your off-hand up and extended. Knife-fights can be bloody affairs, and really the only way to avoid getting cut is to control your opponent’s weapon. When they go for a strike push away their arm with this hand, but you must be careful about their counter.”