The Crimson Queen

by Alec Hutson

  The approaching guardsman paused, as if distracted by something. He turned slightly just as Demian swelled behind him. Steel flashed in the light from his lantern, the assassin slicing his throat with a curved dagger. The guardsman’s knees buckled, and a wash of blackness flowed from the cut. Demian snatched the lantern from the guardsman’s slack hand before it could fall; at the same time, he gently guided the twitching body to the ground. He placed the lantern on one of the wall’s crenellations, as if it had been set there purposefully, and then dragged the guard outside of the circle of light it shed.

  A cold wave washed over Senacus. Was this what the Radiant Father wanted, murdering an innocent from the shadows? How could a paladin of Ama accept such a thing? Was he being tested again?

  “They will find him soon enough,” Demian hissed at him, “we cannot linger.” Then the shadowblade dashed to a set of stairs clinging to the side of the wall and hurried down toward the inner courtyard. Senacus followed, trying to keep his holy senses fixed on the distant spark of sorcery that was the boy Keilan. It flickered strangely, like a flame guttering in the wind. He half-thought the alarm would be raised before they reached the bottom, but soon they were standing on grass again. Senacus wondered how long their luck could hold.

  Keeping to the shadows he started towards a large door set into Saltstone’s inner walls, peering everywhere for signs of more guards. He couldn’t imagine that there were normally so few; the sorcerous explosion earlier must have pulled many from their duties. He glanced back when he reached the door, but Demian had not followed him; rather, the shadowblade had retreated deeper into the shadows, and as Senacus watched he pulled something from a hidden pocket and held it out in front of him.

  Now Senacus could feel the creeping tingle of sorcery. What was happening? Was Demian some kind of sorcerer? Did the High Seneschal know this? A circle of air near the shadowblade began to undulate like cloth caught in a strong breeze, until it had become a window to a very different place. Gone was the utter blackness of the stone wall, replaced by a tangle of tree limbs silhouetted against a sky dusted with distant stars. Shapes moved beyond this doorway to elsewhere, but Demian did not stay to see what came through. He turned and jogged to where Senacus waited, taking his arm. “My brethren are coming, and they will provide the distraction we need. Take me to the boy.”

  The black rocks were slippery today. A storm had flailed up from the south the night before, lashing the coast with rain and wind, churning the sea until waves smote the beach and washed over the ragged line of tumbled boulders that reached out into the bay.

  Sella seemed unaware of the danger, however, leaping like a mountain goat from rock to treacherous rock, pausing occasionally to examine what had collected in a tidal pool, or poke with a piece of driftwood at one of the large, blue jellyfish that had been stranded when the waters receded.

  “Kay! Kay, come look at this!” she called back to him, gesturing frantically for him to hurry. She was straddling a crevice where two of the rocks came together, staring down at something.

  Sighing, Keilan stretched out his leg, trying to find purchase on the closest boulder without falling into the water below. He threw himself forward, grimacing slightly as his hand closed around a jagged fin of rock, and he was forced to hold on tight so he wouldn’t slide into the frothing sea. Why had this seemed so much easier when he’d been younger?

  “Kay, you need to come right now! It’s gonna swim away real soon!”

  “I’m coming Sella, I’m right behind – ”

  Keilan’s foot skidded on the wet stone; his arms pinwheeled as he tried to catch his balance, but it was too late, and he toppled backward. Sharp pain bloomed in his back as he bounced off a rock, and his wrist twisted when he threw his arm out to stop his fall.

  Bracing cold enveloped him as he hit the water, his head striking a submerged stone. Numbness spread from his skull down his neck, to his arms, and though he struggled to swim he could only thrash weakly, a great weight pulling him down, down, down . . .

  Into the darkness. Into the Deep.

  There was light above, the bright sun dancing on the surface of the water, but it was receding quickly, fading into blackness . . . and then something grabbed his wrist. He screamed, sending up a stream of bubbles and flooding his mouth with seawater.

  Small fingers clutched at him, pulling at his tunic, and there was Sella floating beside him, her long hair coiling in the water.

  He kicked his legs and pushed upwards. His lungs were burning, but the light was brightening above him as he surged towards the surface . . .

  He gasped, returning to himself. A hazy sun was set into the shadowy dimness above, turning slowly – no, not a sun, it was a cracked crystal sphere dangling from a golden thread, still faintly glowing with shreds of luminescent mist. Other threads hung down, but their globes were gone. They twisted in the wind like stalks of seaweed gently drifting on the ocean’s current.

  Wind?

  Keilan struggled to sit up, grimacing as waves of pain tried to force him back down. He moaned when he saw what surrounded him.

  The top of Ravenroost had been utterly destroyed. Much of the cupola that had crowned the tower had collapsed, and great chunks of stone now lay among the blackened tables that had once held the queen’s magical instruments. The cold breeze playing with the hanging threads came from gaping rents in the ceiling; the wind reached down from the now-visible night sky, stirring Keilan’s hair and fluttering the pages of an ancient tome that had fallen open near him. Another book beside that one was burning, slowly being devoured by ghostly green flames.

  All was silent, save for the wind’s moaning and the hiss and crackle of the still-smoldering pockets of fire.

  “Your Majesty,” Keilan cried, stumbling to his feet. Frantically, he cast about for the queen, and quickly found her body just paces away, splayed among the rubble. He staggered towards her and knelt down, clutching at her wrist.

  A pulse, faint but steady. Her beautiful pale face was smudged with dirt, and there was a red bump on her brow that was already starting to purple. Gently he squeezed her hand. “My Queen, wake up. Please wake up.” He searched her face, but saw no sign that she could hear him.

  What had happened? He had been there, inside Jan’s mind, watching his hidden memories unspool. Then there had been a flash . . . they had tripped something, down in the deepest recesses of his mind, triggered some fell sorcery. Power had erupted from Jan, and the last thing Keilan remembered was the queen lunging towards him and throwing up her hands, a blue barrier materializing in front of them just as waves of green fire had filled the chamber. For a moment the shield had held, but then it had threaded with cracks, and the queen had cried out as it shattered, sending them sprawling backward.

  Keilan touched his head, wincing from the pain. How long had he been lying here? Why had no one else come yet? Perhaps only moments had passed since the explosion of flames.

  He had to get help. Keilan stood, swaying slightly. He had to find the magisters and bring them up here. They could save the queen, surely.

  Magisters. Keilan’s eyes darted around the darkened room, searching for the others who had been assisting the queen. A shadow in the dimness. He took two stumbling steps towards it, then cried out in horror.

  Etched against the wall was the charred outline of a man, his arms upraised as if he was trying to ward away his onrushing doom.

  Keilan put his hand out to steady himself on the edge of a table, the blackened wood crumbling to soot beneath his touch. Was this . . . could this be Magister d’Terin? Memories of the old man’s kind smile and gentle voice brought stinging tears to his eyes. Why had this happened?

  The chamber tilted, righted itself. Darkness lurked at the edges of his vision, waiting patiently to drag him back again into oblivion. With a wrenching sob Keilan shook his head, trying to clear it, then stumbled toward the stairwell.<
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  He passed the man – the immortal, the queen had called him – lying motionless on the dais. The red cloth beneath him had been burnt to ashes; just a few ragged black scraps remained. His eyes were open, staring at nothing, and his bloodless lips were slightly parted. He looked dead. Keilan staggered past, not pausing to see if he was alive or not.

  With a pained grunt he squeezed past a huge chunk of the cupola that had fallen and now partially blocked the entrance to the stairs. One foot after another, both hands on the marble railing he descended step by shuffling step. Tremors coursed up his legs, causing him to nearly fall several times.

  A commotion from below. Several men, some in the robes of magisters, others wearing red cloaks, were hurrying up the stairs. They cried out when they saw him.

  “Boy!” said the first Scarlet Guardsman to reach him, a Shan with jet-black hair and uptilted eyes. “What has happened? Where is the queen?”

  Keilan swallowed and shook his head, pointing with a wavering hand back towards the highest floor. “Sorcery . . . an explosion. The roof came down – ”

  The Shan warrior grabbed him by his shoulders. “The queen!”

  “Alive,” Keilan gasped, “but hurt.”

  A moment later the warrior was gone, bounding up the stairs. Keilan could only clutch at the railing as the others pushed past him.

  He pressed his brow against the cold stone of the balustrade, feeling his strength seep away. The pain in the back of his head was sharpening, an incessant pulsing that blotted his vision with floating spots of color. He doubled over, retching up the supper he had eaten hours ago

  His friends. He had to find his friends. Nel and Vhelan would know what to do.

  Keilan pushed himself away from the marble baluster and started down again. He reached the bottom, passing from Ravenroost and back into the lower reaches of Saltstone. The corridors of the great fortress blurred together as he stumbled down them, leaning heavily against the walls; occasionally others would rush past, boots pounding the floor, but they paid him no heed. Horns sounded in the distance.

  Finally he could not hold back the darkness anymore. “Nel . . .” he whispered, sliding to his knees. The Deep rushed up to claim him once again.

  A funeral shroud of silence draped the gardens this night. No animals rustled the underbrush, no birds called out their songs, no laughter or the plucked strings of keppas issued forth from the pavilions of the emperor’s concubines. Even the wind seemed to be holding its breath, the chimes hanging like silver fruit among the branches.

  A new presence had invaded the imperial pleasure gardens, something not entirely of this world. She had invited it; she knew the source of this unease. But to the others who shared these grounds with her – the beasts and the birds and the flawless courtesans – it must be terrifying. They could only huddle together and stare out into the night and imagine what moved in the darkness.

  A tremor from the riftstone, tingling numbness spreading from where she clutched it tight in her palm. Her heart quickened – it was almost time. Between two of the soaring quartz monoliths the air began to ripple and twist. Glimmering points of fire appeared, slowly resolving into torches, the light they cast puddling on the dark stone of some distant fortress.

  Saltstone.

  A man in black stood just on the other side of the rift, looking out at her. Demian. He said nothing, only nodded slightly and turned away, quickly vanishing beyond the edge of the floating portal.

  Alyanna swallowed. She had told Demian, months ago, that without taking risks the world could not be seized. This was one of those risks, where her fate and the fate of all Araen hung in the balance. Either she would emerge triumphant, a sorceress without peer once again, or she would be destroyed, her thousand years of glittering life finally snuffed out.

  “Are you ready?” she spoke into the night. There was no sound or movement, but she knew that they had heard.

  “I know you are here. I can feel you.”

  A presence emerged from the deeper shadows pooled beside one of the monoliths. Alyanna summoned a faint ball of wizardlight and the darkness around her fled, painting the grass silver and making the quartz sculptures shine like they were the great bones of giants sunk into the earth.

  As the night melted away they were revealed. Two-dozen warriors garbed in black, veils drawn across their faces. The one who had stepped forward first addressed her in a voice soft and cold.

  “Greetings from the daymo. We have come to uphold his part of the bargain you struck.” The eyes of this shadowblade were uptilted – he must be Shan.

  Alyanna allowed her wizardlight to float closer to the assassins. The black cloth they had wound around their bodies seemed to drink the light, but it was the swords at their sides that interested her. The blades appeared to be carved from the night itself, gleaming fragments of darkness, each surrounded by a penumbra that her sorcerous light could not penetrate. So these were shadowblades, the famed weapons of the kith’ketan. Alyanna had glimpsed the Void before, had stared out into that terrible emptiness where great beings surged and contested in the endless dark, and these swords gave her the same creeping chill she had felt then. They were not forged on this world.

  “You are the dagger with which I will cut out the heart of Dymoria,” she said, loud enough that all the gathered assassins could hear her. “The queen and her senior magisters must not survive this night. When they are dead, return to your master and tell him that he will have what was promised. Keilan will be given up to him, after the boy assists me in one great act of sorcery.”

  The shadowblade began to turn away, but then hesitated. “What is that?” he asked, pointing beside her. There was a strange edge to his voice, an emotion she could not place.

  Alyanna glanced down. One of the Chosen crouched in the grass, its head lowered so that its snarled black hair obscured its face. This one was a girl, she thought.

  Alyanna smiled affectionately and reached down so that her fingers rested lightly on its bony shoulder. “My beautiful child.”

  The assassin’s gaze lingered on the Chosen for a moment longer. “That thing does not belong here, sorceress.”

  Alyanna quirked an eyebrow. “She and her brothers are coming with us tonight. They have special talents that could prove useful.”

  “Keep it by your side,” the assassin spat, “and away from us.” Then with preternatural grace he moved quickly toward the floating rift and passed through it. Without the slightest noise the others followed, a stream of dark shapes that soon vanished, leaving Alyanna alone in the garden.

  “I do not think he likes you,” she said to the ragged creature hunkered beside her.

  we know the one he serves. Their echoing whispers seemed to come from everywhere and nowhere.

  “The daymo?”

  Dry, rasping chuckles. No, the one that dwells farther beneath the mountain, the one whose black tears now hang at their sides.

  Alyanna tamped down her surge of curiosity. Another time she would investigate what her new servants knew about the kith’ketan and their mysterious dark lord. She could afford no distractions tonight. If the queen had survived the trap she had laid within Jan’s mind then she must be prepared for a contest of equals. Surely her own sorcery was the greater, nurtured and refined over a thousand years, but she would be confronting her rival in her own fortress, in her sanctum, and who knew what spells the queen had woven into the fabric of Saltstone and could call upon for aid.

  Enough. No more hesitating. Had she become craven, after so many creeping centuries? She had stolen the Chosen from the warlocks of Shan. She had bound the soul of the last genthyaki to her own. She had descended into the dark and taken the eye of the mountain from the hall of the wraith king. She had dueled with a dozen Talents over her endless wheeling years and bested them all.

  She had conquered death itself.

  For
a time, at least. Alyanna restrained herself from touching the wrinkles that had appeared at the corners of her eyes. With Keilan and Demian beside her she could recreate the ancient ceremony, she was sure of it. She could make herself immortal again. She just needed to arrange another cataclysm.

  Alyanna stepped through the hanging portal and into a courtyard somewhere within the walls of Saltstone.

  The coldness of the flagstones seeped through her thin, silken slippers. Demian had vanished, presumably along with the paladin. It had been a risk, she knew, appearing in the High Mendicant’s dreams and compelling him to dispatch the disgraced Pure with the swordsinger. The paladins of Ama commanded great powers – powers that despite her best efforts she had not fully plumbed. But she needed this new Talent, the boy Keilan, and the Pure could follow his magical scent in this fortress like a bloodhound, despite the miasma of sorcery that hung heavy and thick over everything here.

  She glanced about. A door, slightly ajar. She passed into the fortress proper, and followed twisting corridors until she came upon two guards in the livery of House d’Kara.

  “Where are the queen’s quarters?” she asked the two stunned warriors.

  The older guard regarded her brazenly, no doubt taking in her apparent youth and simple shift of diaphanous green cloth.

  “Who sent you, girl? Are you one of Chastian’s playthings?”

  Alyanna sighed. “I don’t have time for this, fool. Tell me where your mistress conducts her sorcery.”

  The guard stepped forward, looming over her. “Look here, wench – ”

  Alyanna gestured and an avalanche of force slammed into the guard, smashing him against the wall. Blood erupted from his mouth, and his face crumpled under the tremendous pressure, his scream trailing off into gibberish.