The Crimson Queen

by Alec Hutson

  “Boy, do you have prisoners here? Ones you planned to sell as slaves across the spine?”

  The boy swallowed, nodding.

  “Go bring them out.”

  Still sobbing, the bandit scrambled away and entered another of the collapsing buildings. Soon he returned herding three dirty children in ripped clothes that might once have been of fine make, their hands bound together. Bruises stained their pale skin. They blinked, wide-eyed at the carnage before them; the eldest girl looked at Senacus and Demian with hope.

  “Cut their bonds,” Senacus said to the bandit. Demian busied himself wiping his sword clean with a piece of cloth torn from a dead man’s tunic.

  The boy took a knife from his belt and slashed the ropes, then dropped the blade, as if afraid by merely holding it the paladin would have an excuse to kill him. The children rubbed their wrists, still unable to stop staring at the scene laid out before them.

  “You’re free,” Senacus said in his most comforting voice. “I’m sorry for what has happened to you and your family, but these men have been punished for their sins.”

  “Who are you?” the smallest child asked, a tow-haired boy with large dark eyes.

  “Warriors of good who do not like bad men,” Senacus said, bowing his head slightly to the boy.

  “He should die too,” the eldest girl suddenly interrupted, pointing at the last bandit. “He hurt me. He . . . did things to me.”

  “I agree,” Demian said, moving toward the boy, who shrieked and shrank away.

  Senacus caught his arm. “Wait. He is barely more than a child himself. Surely there is mercy for one so young.”

  Demian shook off his hand. “He is old enough to understand what he has done. All free men must accept the responsibility of their actions. The boy was no slave.” His blade lashed out again and the bandit tumbled back, clutching at his cut neck. As he writhed on the ground, blood seeping from between his fingers, the girl stepped over him and spat in his face.

  Senacus frowned, then sheathed his own sword. “Come. We will take you to the nearest town.”

  The girl went over to the other children and gathered them into an embrace. She spoke to Senacus from over the boy’s shoulder. “These men have some money hidden here. My father was a rich man, and he was not the first they robbed.”

  “Then we will take it with us, and you may use it to start a new life for you and your siblings. We have no need for riches.”

  The girl pursed her lips, watching them. “Thank you. I prayed to Ama to be saved, and he sent you. You are truly blessed.”

  Senacus smiled. “You are more right than you know, child.”

  Demian snorted and kicked at the Skein’s severed head.

  “Writing, contends the great sage Jeniphus, is the most arrogant of all the solitary arts. This statement resonated with me, for some strange reason, when I first encountered it as a young student while exploring the textual borders of the saffron crèche. Certainly the old master dispensed far more enigmatic platitudes – this one, by contrast, required only a moment’s reflection to draw forth its meaning: a book is the pinnacle of arrogance for it demands to be heard, but it cannot listen. It desires to communicate, yet it refuses conversation. I thought that was the extent of its profundity.

  “Now, as I write this volume, a book that will either be kept under lock and key forever, never to be read by any except the greatest of our Orders, or simply destroyed, I have another interpretation. A slight reformulation, perhaps, but as I sit here laboring to recount what has happened, how the world has changed, my new understanding of the old master’s words has affected me deeply. The arrogance of writing comes not from the finished creation, but from the very act itself. What hubris is required for a single mind to believe that its thoughts should populate the world? What unbridled arrogance is it to disperse ideas like the petals of a dandelion in the wind, allowing them to float free, to germinate in the minds of others like an invasive weed?

  “Accordingly, I do not consider my writing of this book to be an act of arrogance, as only a handful of people, if any, will ever read it. And I accept this. It is the way it must be. For if the truth was known among the great, giftless masses – the truth that I am about to lay before you – the very fabric of our society might tear under the immense strain.

  “Could you imagine how quickly terror would spread if the common people knew that until recently they were feed animals for another, more powerful species? And that this species could mimic our own form with such uncanny precision that even friends and husbands and mothers could be fooled?

  “Have you ever stopped outside a pen and stared into the great, wet eyes of a cow and wondered if the poor beast had any slight premonition as to what fate lay in store for it? No simple animal could, of course, and for many thousands of years – our race’s entire history, even? – humans were no better. We were livestock in our pens, oblivious.

  “But then we woke up.

  “This book is a telling of the war against the hidden ones, the genthyaki, a war that was conducted in the shadows by the united sorcerers of the Star Towers of the Mosaic Cities and the holdfasts of Min-Ceruth, a war that has resulted in our liberation after millennia of secret enslavement.

  “This book may never be read, but it must nevertheless be written. It is better, certainly, if all memory of these creatures is expunged. Yet something drives my hand along. Perhaps, someday, you will know what that is.”

  Bleary-eyed, Keilan forced himself to look away from the cracked and yellowing pages. The flow of the writing was almost hypnotic, burrowing into his brain as he worked to parse meaning from what he had read. Many times he had found the words washing over him without truly understanding what he had just finished – that was the true challenge of High Kalyuni, and he suspected the reason why there were only a few scholars who could still read the language. Learning the fifty-eight letter alphabet was easy enough, but unlike Menekarian, which had seemingly been designed for clarity, passages in High Kalyuni often resembled an intricate puzzle, full of word games and linguistical feints that all had to be understood for the final meaning to become apparent.

  It was like the very act of writing was a competition, and the sorcerers of the Star Towers demonstrated their intelligence by fashioning nearly impenetrable tracts. The author of this book, Alyanna ne Verell, wrote with a level of complexity far beyond the two books from which he had learned to read High Kalyuni. He could sense the vast intelligence looming behind the words, and found it daunting – he wished his mother were here to help him pick apart Alyanna’s tangled knots of meaning. Trying to understand what she had written on his own was exhausting, and left his head tingling.

  “Keilan! How goes it, lad? Uncover any ancient secrets yet?”

  Garmond and Vhelan also looked like their heads were tingling, but for a different reason. The magister and the seeker were huddled like a pair of thieves at Garmond’s desk, ostensibly searching through a few of the old books Vhelan had found in the Barrow . . . but the near-empty bottle of scholar’s milk between them suggested that they had instead spent the evening pursuing a less productive venture.

  “Did you hear me, lad? Uncover any ancient – ‘hic’ – secrets?”

  Keilan shook his head at Vhelan to forestall hearing the question a third time. He pushed himself away from the small table where he sat, and as he did this a thought struck him. This is where I taught Xin to read. This is the very place where Xin last saw one of his brothers alive. Keilan felt a pang of sorrow in his chest as he considered that.

  No wonder the Fist warrior had chosen to ride by himself during the day as they traveled, and laid out his bedroll far away from the campfire when they halted for the night.

  He can’t escape the ghosts of his brothers. They call to him still.

  “I’m tired. I’m going to find my bed.”

  Vhelan lurched fr
om his chair, steadying himself with a hand on the desk. Garmond made a clucking sound as the magister knocked over the bottle, but righted it before the silty dregs at the bottom could manage a sluggish escape.

  “Wait, Keilan. I’ll go with you.”

  The seeker made a shooing motion with his hand. “Fine, then, run away young magister. I suppose we have an answer to our little wager, and it is the Reliquary that wins, as I knew it would.”

  Vhelan snatched his hand from the desk, affronted, and stood there swaying. “Nonsense. You’ve just developed a tolerance for that devil water. Next time we’ll see who can polish off more bottles of firewine.”

  Garmond winked slyly at Keilan. “I await the chance.”

  Vhelan snorted and turned away from the scholar, staggering slightly. Keilan rushed forward and grabbed the magister’s arm.

  “Thank you, lad,” Vhelan slurred, patting Keilan’s hand. “You’re a fine friend. And let me tell you, you’re going to be a great sorcerer some day. I’m sure of it. The queen, she’s been waiting for one like you. Someone to challenge her. Someone to delve into the true mysteries with . . . I wish we could, the other magisters. But we don’t have the gift like she does. Like you do. Aye, keep hold of me lad and get me to my bedroll.”

  “Of course.” Keilan gently guided Vhelan through the flap that now hung in the entrance to the seeker’s wagon. The dark fabric, embroidered with the white candle of the Reliquary, was the replacement for the door that had been ripped from its hinges by the wraith during the ambush. Keilan couldn’t hold back a shudder at the memory of that terrible night.

  They had circled their wagons in a shallow bowl clear of trees, just off the Way, a place that from the charred patches of grass had served as a waystop for caravans before. The shadowy bulk of hills rose up around their camp, rippling into the blanket of stars spread across the sky. It had been a night very similar to this when the last attack had come, but Keilan was not worried now. An entire cohort of heavily armored Visani royal cavalry was spread out in the woods, keeping watch with the few Dymorian rangers who had survived the wraiths. Among them was Captain d’Taran – Keilan had felt a rush of relief when he had met him again before they had departed the Poet’s City. The ranger had been bedridden for the weeks they were in Vis, recovering from a wound in his side, but he had been well enough to ride by the time they had bid farewell to Prince Lys.

  Keilan led Vhelan down the wagon’s steps and toward the camp’s central fire. There were a few knots of people sitting together and talking quietly, but most of the travelers accompanying them to Herath – the rangers, the few merchants who still lived, and a delegation from Vis – had already retired, their bedrolls forming concentric circles radiating out from the fire. He was surprised to see that Nel’s sleeping spot was empty, despite the lateness of the hour; usually she was snoring away by now, an arm’s length from Vhelan’s bedroll.

  “I can’t see Nel,” Keilan said as they approached.

  Vhelan stopped for a moment, blinking. He furrowed his brow, as if trying to work through some intractable problem. Then a slow smile spread across his face.

  “Ah. I don’t think we should worry about it, lad.”

  “Do you know where she is?”

  Vhelan cleared his throat. “Perhaps. Tell me lad, can you see the Fist’s bedroll?”

  Keilan scanned the camp site, looking for Xin’s distinctive red rucksack. “Yes, I see it.”

  “Tell me please, my eyes are bad: is the Fist there?”

  “No . . .”

  Vhelan patted his arm again. “Then don’t worry about Nel, lad. I think she may be trying to convince our Fist friend that he has a reason to live.”

  “Oh.”

  They arrived where they’d laid out their bedrolls earlier, and the magister flopped down, not even bothering to disrobe or work his way under the blankets. His breathing softened almost immediately, and he murmured something unintelligible.

  Keilan watched him for a moment, lost in his own thoughts. The idea of Nel and Xin together . . . it did make him happy, certainly, as they were both his good friends. But even still there was a niggling sliver of envy when he thought about it, about the way Nel had looked at Xin when they had gone together to visit him in his room back in Vis.

  Of course she had every reason to care for the First warrior in that way: Xin was handsome, and confident, and a skilled warrior. He had shown patience and kindness when they had trained together in the evenings before the ambush, and his dry humor had left them with aching sides many times. But still it hurt, thinking of Nel’s impish smile and sparkling eyes, and the effortless grace with which she did everything, from riding a horse to spinning her daggers.

  Keilan sighed and slipped out of his tunic. He kept his spidersilk shirt on – he almost never took it off now, except for his infrequent baths when their camp was pitched near a stream wide and deep enough for swimming. It was so light that he hardly noticed its weight, and the spidersilk was cool and smooth against his skin.

  He wriggled inside the bedroll’s seam and pulled the cloth up until he was virtually cocooned within. Nel. He had to stop thinking of her that way. She was older, and far more worldly than him. To her he must be just a fisherman’s son, a simple peasant who for some unknown reason had been given a great gift by the gods. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing himself to sleep. But it didn’t come easily, and after a little while he opened them again.

  His breath caught in his throat. Nel and Xin were emerging together from the trees. They were just two shapes, but nevertheless he could tell it was them: the distinctive broad shoulders of the Fist warrior loomed beside the knife’s lithe shadow. They weren’t touching, but it looked to Keilan like she was leaning in toward him.

  They separated, Xin moving to where he had made camp. Keilan squeezed his eyes shut, feigning sleep as Nel approached. He heard her light footsteps coming closer, then some rustling, and finally a hissing sound as she dragged her bedroll away through the grass.

  He cracked his eyes, watching Nel as she pulled her bedroll over to beside Xin and laid it out. Then the Fist warrior and the magister’s knife sat facing each other, crosslegged, talking softly until a brief peal of laughter burst from Nel. Keilan noticed Xin’s hand was on her leg.

  He was happy for them. Truly, he was. He closed his eyes again and wished for sleep.

  Jan’s first audience with the queen had not gone quite as expected, and he found that he was eagerly anticipating the second. Two days passed while he waited patiently for the summons to come.

  It was the castellan who finally came to fetch him in his new suite of rooms in the palace, knocking deferentially and then ducking his head when Jan opened the door. Jan couldn’t hold back a grin when he saw the head servant’s embarrassed flush.

  “My lord,” the castellan said, “the queen wishes for you to attend her.”

  “Me?” Jan said in mock surprise, “I’m honored.”

  The castellan cleared his throat and shuffled his feet. “Yes, my lord. Will you please follow me?”

  “Of course. But wait.” Hanging in his chamber was a large gilt mirror, and Jan spent a moment making sure he looked presentable. He wore a doublet of pale blue silk embroidered with twining flowers and a pair of what he assumed were fashionable black breeches, one of the many outfits that fit him well enough that he had found hanging in his bedchamber’s large armoire. He leaned in closer to the glass, checking to see that his face was clean and nothing was in his teeth. Sandy-blonde hair, lightly tousled. Dark blue eyes the color of the northern sky. If it weren’t for the crow’s feet around those eyes, he thought he could still pass for not having yet seen thirty winters.

  “All right. Lead on.”

  Jan had assumed that the castellan would bring him to an audience chamber, either the small one in the royal apartments where he had last seen the queen, or perhaps to wha
tever more formal chamber she used when she received large delegations. Instead, the servant led him outside and onto the grounds of a sprawling garden – not nearly so grand or elaborate as the imperial pleasure gardens of Menekar, but still impressive.

  The emphasis here seemed not to be on wild profusions of dazzling blossoms, or showcasing exotic creatures culled from far away lands, but rather on carefully-cultivated beds of flowers, many of which Jan had in fact noticed while traveling through the hills outside of Herath. The garden was almost geometric in its design, and he guessed that it was a reflection of the queen’s ordered, practical mind. There were also elaborate stone fountains scattered about, lions and pachyderms and leaping fish carved from granite or pink marble.

  He found the queen sitting on the edge of a pool beside one of these fountains. It was shaped into a rearing dragon with wings outstretched, but instead of fire spewing from the beast’s roaring mouth a stream of water splashed into the basin. The queen was staring at something in the pool, a slight smile on her lips. Beside her the Shan warrior from the feast hall stood motionless with his hand on the hilt of his sword, watching Jan approach without expression.

  When they had come within a dozen paces the castellan dropped to one knee and bent his head, and after a moment’s hesitation Jan did the same.

  “Your Highness,” the castellan said, his voice sounding slightly strained, as if he did not introduce visitors to the queen very often, “may I present Jan Balensorn, of the Shattered Kingdoms.”

  The queen did not look up from the pool, but her smile deepened. “Of the Shattered Kingdoms. It is a necessary fiction, I suppose – such panic the truth would create.” She sighed. “Geramin, my thanks. Now leave us. And Jan, you may rise and approach.”