The Dread Wyrm

by Miles Cameron

  Corcy leaned forward, and just for a moment, his eyes glittered. “Think the Queen’s brat is the King’s?” he asked.

  Gabriel was too tired for this. But it occurred to him, in that moment, that he had the Queen. In his possession.

  Possibilities unrolled like carpets. No—like a spider rapidly spinning out silk, the plots unwound. Structure after structure, faster than speech. It was, in every way, the opposite of the feeling of entanglement.

  The civil war starts right here, he thought. I’m a side. And Corcy could be won over.

  Is the baby in her womb the King’s?

  Does it matter? As plots and plans and counter plans exploded in all directions in his head, he realized that it was not whether the Queen’s baby was legitimate that mattered.

  It was what he decided.

  This is Mater’s doing. But the sense of power was heady—like the moment in which he’d first really worked in the aethereal, and made fire.

  If her child’s a bastard.

  Stillborn.

  Dead.

  Then I’m the King. Or at least, it’s mine for the taking.

  If the child is the King’s…

  … and I have the Queen—

  He allowed himself a brief smile, and all the realities and futures rattled around the hermetical multiverse for the time it took for a pretty girl to flash her eyes.

  “My lord, I believe the Queen’s child is the rightful King of this realm,” the captain said.

  He heard Gavin’s intake of breath. Tom wouldn’t know, yet, what that pronouncement meant. Michael would.

  Amicia would.

  Sometimes, the “right” thing is the Right thing. It’s beautiful when it works that way.

  Ah, Mater. You are about to be cruelly disappointed.

  I think.

  Michael had it immediately. “My Lord Corcy, Ser Gabriel today upheld the Queen’s right in the lists against the King’s Champion, and slew him.”

  “Christ, boy, you killed de Vrailly?” Corcy asked.

  “Only the Sieur de Rohan, I fear,” Gabriel said.

  The sheriff, silent until then, spoke up. “Trial by combat is barbaric,” he said. “And not recognized by law.”

  Gabriel had to laugh, and did. “I agree,” he said, and slapped his thigh a little too hard, so that he yelped in pain as his left hand reminded him that it was not healed.

  But he had Corcy’s eye.

  “I would bend my knee to the Queen,” Corcy said. “And though I am loath to offer you poor hospitality, I have a barn—a storage barn. It would hide you all.” He let his horse take another step forward, so that he and the captain were shoulder to shoulder—inside each other’s guards. “I will cover you for one night. God help me.”

  Gabriel’s smile was genuine. He reached out, right hand to right. “I’ll take you to the Queen. Immediately. How far to your barn?”

  “Less than a league.” Corcy looked at the sheriff.

  The sheriff reached out his hand. “I’m for the Queen,” he said impulsively.

  Gabriel backed his horse in the near darkness. “How about it, gentles?” he called to the spearmen. “Who among you will bow to the Queen like loyal Albans?”

  He turned to Corcy. “Which way?”

  “This side of the river—up the Morea Road.” Corcy nodded. “I’ll ride with you and be my own guide—and hostage.”

  Michael knew the game. His father had played it all his life. “I’ll just fetch the Queen back across, shall I?” he asked. “Gabriel? This is it? We’re now…?” He shook his head.

  Gabriel twitched his reins, and his eyes went from Bad Tom to Michael to Gavin. “For good or ill, we’re about to become the Queen’s men.”

  The Queen came back across the stream at a trot, and her pretty palfrey threw spray high into the red sunset air. She had knights all around her, and Amicia and Blanche attended her. Despite nine months of pregnancy and ten days of hell, her carriage was upright, her face was both beautiful and dignified, and her horsemanship, as always, was perfect.

  Every knight on the road dismounted.

  Gabriel joined them.

  All the spearmen pushed to be in front.

  Chris Foliak held the Queen’s horse and she dismounted.

  Then all the company knights were dismounting, and the squires and pages. By happenstance, she dismounted in front of a pair of wild rose bushes that bowed in early fulfilment of their blossom. Nell took the reins of her horse and knelt behind her.

  “Ah,” she said. Her voice held unconcealed delight.

  “Your grace.” Gabriel spoke loudly. “Your grace, these loyal gentlemen seek only to bend their knees to you and offer their loyal service to you—and to your house.”

  She walked among them, putting her right hand on their heads—on the sheriff, and on Lord Corcy, and on Bob Twill the ploughman. Her smile was like the last light of the sun.

  “I honour every one of you for your daring and your loyalty,” she said. “I swear to you by my honour and by the Virgin and my immortal soul that the child in my womb—seeking to get out!—is my husband’s child and the rightful heir of Alba.” She walked back to her horse.

  “Lord Corcy has offered us lodging for the night,” Gabriel whispered.

  She dazzled him with her smile. “I accept,” she said.

  And then she folded in half and gave a great cry.

  “Birth pangs,” Blanche said. She caught the Queen and wrapped her in her arms, supporting her.

  The Queen caught herself and straightened. She looked at Ser Gabriel. “I’m sorry, my lord,” she said. “It is now.”

  Ghause had spent too much of her day watching her ancient crystal for news of the south. It was very difficult to hold the thing on one place for any length of time—the effort of will drained her, not of ops, but of the strength to manipulate it.

  But she had to know, and so she went back like a child picking a scab, even when her enemy’s infernal legions stormed the Saint George bastion’s gatehouse and she had to strengthen her barriers and throw fire on them until her bold husband could rally his knights and drive them out.

  Ser Henri died retaking the Saint George bastion. So did a dozen of her husband’s best knights, and the earl, who had gone unwounded in twenty fights, took a blow that robbed him forever of his left eye. But they drove the Gallish knights and their Outwaller allies back off the walls.

  And then Ghause had to heal the survivors. Another time, she would mourn Henri—the best chivalric lover any woman would ever want—brave, clever, handsome and hard and utterly silent.

  The earl woke under her healing and that of the other talents attending—the four witches, men called them. His good right eye opened.

  “One of the fuckers is wearing the Orley arms,” he spat. “I almost had him—I—” He closed his eye. “Oh, sweet. I lost Henri.”

  Suddenly, and for all too many reasons, Ghause felt her eyes fill with tears. Not just for Henri. But for him. For all of them. She motioned the other witches away.

  “We can hold this castle forever,” Ghause said.

  Her husband clasped her hand. “Just get me up and fighting,” he said. “Their Black Knight is—something.” He shook his head. “I couldn’t get past him.”

  “He’s thirty years younger than you, you old lecher.” Ghause hid her feeling behind her usual asperity.

  “I’ve killed a lot of men younger than me,” he said, a hint of anger in his good eye. “Christ, you’re hurting me.”

  She was trying to work on the eye, but its structures were too damned complicated, and she had to settle for killing infection and stopping any further damage. “I can’t save your eye,” she admitted.

  He sighed. “I can still see what you look like naked,” he said. “I may just be slower to catch you.”

  She smiled. “I’m no faster than you are, you old goat. It’s the maids that will breathe a sigh of relief.”

  She gave his hand a squeeze and then went and
found Aneas. He was unmarked, although he had fought almost without pause for two days. He had arrived with a dozen lances from Albinkirk just before the siege began and he’d become a pillar of defense—subtle, magical, and deadly.

  “I need you to prepare the sortie. Your father’s down for a day or two.” Ghause spoke with absolute command. She didn’t need the men trying to take control now. Even as she spoke, Thorn—or his dark master—tried her defences.

  And what was happening at Harndon?

  Aneas—ever the dutiful son—gave a tired salute. “Mother—”

  “Yes, my plum?” she asked.

  “Is anyone coming to rescue us? Where are Gavin and Gabriel?” He met her eye. “Mother—we can have the best hermetical defences in the known world and the highest walls, but we’re already running out of men.”

  “You’re not spreading this poison, my plum?” she asked lightly.

  Aneas gave her a lopsided grin—a grin that his brothers also had. “I am the soul of cheerful confidence,” he said. “Is anyone coming?”

  She nodded. “Ser John Crayford is bringing the northern army,” she said.

  Aneas paused a moment. Then he collected his gauntlets. “You’re lying, Mother,” he said quietly.

  He had never contradicted her before.

  She shrugged. “We’ll hold,” she said.

  Aneas pursed his lips and nodded. “Have you given thought to escape?” he asked. “The man who claims to be Kevin Orley has promised us all some spectacular tortures and humiliations.”

  “The Orleys were never worth a tinker’s curse,” she said, snapping her fingers. “And if I leave this rock, it will fall. You know that.”

  He frowned. “We have a bolt hole,” he reminded her.

  “I won’t be captured,” she said. “But I’m not going anywhere. Hold the walls, my last son. I’ll hold the sorcerer.”

  And when Aneas was gone back to his men, she all but flew up the steps to her solar. She gazed into the ball—

  Waved her hand, moving the scene this way and that, her whole intent concentrated on the crystal artifact.

  “Mary Magdelene,” Ghause swore. “He’s dead!”

  For too long—time she could not spare—she watched the catastrophe play out in the south. She had no idea how the tournament had played out, but the King—her brother—was dead, his corpse wrapped in linen. She was bonded with her brother in a very special way, and she found him easily, even in death. She watched the corpse, and the Galles and the Albans gather around it like the flies.

  The new archbishop was giving a speech. Over her brother’s corpse.

  She bit her lip.

  “Henri and you, in one day?” she asked the crystal. “Goodbye, brother.”

  Then she moved her hand and sent the scene spinning northward. After an agonized minute of scrolling she faced her fears. She unlaced the side of her kirtle with hurried fingers, and pulled both it and her shift over her head.

  Naked, she summoned her power, and cast.

  Thorn was in the midst of a complex summoning to support the siege—the parsing of two energies to augment a trebuchet. Covered by a nasty, rainy spring night, Ser Hartmut was moving his machines forward.

  But an alarm went off, and he dropped all the summoned power, so suddenly a trebuchet arm suddenly whipped back, killing two sailors.

  Thorn cared not, and in the twinkling of an insect’s multifaceted eye, he was gone.

  Instantly, Ghause had Gabriel in the stone. The summoning did her bidding. It was dangerous, given Thorn’s proximity, but she had to know.

  He was alive. Wounded—and tired.

  There was his little nun. Such a useless lover, that boy—he still hadn’t straddled the little twig, although she pined for it and Ghause had tried to put a geas on her.

  And the nun and a tall blonde woman were supporting…

  The so-called Queen.

  Ghause spat.

  “I didn’t want to have to do this,” she said to God and anyone else listening. “But—an eye for an eye.”

  In the fastness of her palace, she looked at the great working she’d designed and built for months.

  Desiderata was one of the best defended entities that Ghause had ever worked against. She’d watched the Queen struggle directly with Thorn’s dark master. She knew the woman’s calibre now.

  She knew a moment’s pity. If she knew how to kill the babe without killing the mother, she’d have done it. She honoured any woman as strong as Desiderata. And she knew Desiderata to be a true daughter of Tar.

  As Ghause was herself.

  Just for the space of a few heartbeats, Ghause considered relinquishing her revenge. Her brother was dead.

  But when she killed the babe, her son by her brother would be King. She didn’t pause to consider the obstacles, because she herself had never let obstacles like bastardy and incest stop her from anything.

  And besides—a small, ignoble portion of her just wanted to see if her great working was capable. Capable of breaching all that the dark master himself had failed to breach.

  She stared into the crystal, reached through—

  The moon had not risen a finger’s breadth before they rode into the yard of the great stone barn that towered like a cathedral of farming—wood and stone sixty feet high and a hundred feet long.

  Lord Corcy dismounted. Two young men ran out of the barn with spears—and halted, as the whole casa drew weapons.

  “They’re mine,” he said. “Haver—put that spear down and tell your brother to do the same before these gentlemen mistrust us all.” He turned to Gabriel. “My barn watch. Let me show you around.”

  Blanche pressed up close on her horse—his horse, in fact. “We need linen and hot water,” she said. “Please,” she added.

  Lord Corcy nodded. “There’s an office with a bed. And a fireplace.” He pointed. To the two young men, he said, “Torches and lights. These folk need to be put up inside.” He turned back to Gabriel. “Sometimes we have militia musters here—I’ve bedding for fifty.”

  “No more servants,” Gabriel said. “I’m sorry, my lord, but I can’t let you send to your castle.”

  “There won’t be much for linens here,” Corcy said.

  Gabriel snapped his fingers and pointed and Toby appeared. “Clean linen. Get every clean shirt in the casa if you must.”

  Toby bowed and vanished like a conjuror’s trick.

  “You are well served, my lord,” Corcy said.

  “We’ve been through a fair amount.” Gabriel bowed and followed Blanche. He got an arm under the Queen’s shoulder and together with the strong blonde woman they got the Queen up the ramp of the barn and onto the threshing floor, and then through a big door to the right. There was a small panelled room.

  Lord Corcy displaced Blanche and helped carry the Queen, whose legs suddenly stopped working altogether.

  “Bed,” Corcy said. He pointed with his chin. Up against the end stalls, where two very curious donkeys enjoyed the warmth of the barn’s one warm room, there was a bed.

  Blanche got the Queen’s feet. Amicia had one of her hands and was singing a prayer.

  Blanche’s eyes met Gabriel’s for a moment. “A stable?” she asked.

  “There wasn’t any room at the inn,” Gabriel snapped.

  Amicia’s eye met his in intense disapproval, but Blanche laughed.

  “You’re a card,” she said. “My lord.”

  Ghause felt the birth pangs as if they were her own.

  If the babe was born, her spell was lost. In the aethereal, mother and child were one bond until birth. The aethereal cared nothing for nature and everything for association. Separate was separate. Together was the bond.

  Outside, thunder rolled. The heavens protested her decision—lightning flashed, and she regretted nothing.

  “Brother,” she called. “I will make it as if you had never been.”

  Thorn materialized hard by Ser Hartmut. They were so close to Ticondaga’s walls t
hat the run-off of the rain falling on the castle’s roofs hundreds of feet above them fell on their heads.

  Hartmut was leading his own mining team. He never seemed to tire, or relent.

  He started—the only sign of surprise Thorn had ever seen—and half drew the hermetical artifact he called a sword. Thorn had learned by his arts that it was much more than a sword. It was more like a gate.

  “You would do well not to surprise me,” Ser Hartmut growled.

  Kevin Orley flipped his visor open.

  Thorn ignored him. “It is now. Prepare the assault.”

  Hartmut glared. “Now? In darkness, in the rain?” He was not afraid of Thorn, and he shrugged. “Eight days of your empty promises and our blood—”

  “Rain will not stop us,” Thorn said.

  “Soldiers like to be warm and to eat,” Hartmut said. “Mastery of this simple concept has won many battles, and forgetting it lost more.”

  Thorn simply turned. “Now,” he said.

  Ser Hartmut growled. Then he turned and, loaded with armour as he was, began to run back from the exposed post to which he’d crawled, towards his camp, where despite the rain, fires flickered.

  Gabriel watched Amicia comfort the Queen. Most of her grave dignity was gone with the birth pangs—her face was furrowed in pain.

  Blanche smiled at him. “Best be gone, my lord. Men have no stomach for this sort o’ thing, being the weaker sex, as it were.”

  Gabriel had to return her smile—mostly because she had humour, and that was what he needed, just then.

  “You might find out where yer squire has got to with all the linens,” she added.

  Lord Corcy himself was heating water in the fireplace. But before Gabriel could even pretend to be useful, Toby entered with an armload of linen sheets, shifts, and shirts. Nell came in behind him with a pair of pretty satin pillows, a woman’s gown in brown velvet, and a nested set of copper kettles.

  “Which,” Nell said, with a curtsey to all present, “Ser Christopher says as he happens to have this gown and these pillows—”

  “Only Foliak goes on campaign with a dress to put on his conquests,” Gavin said from the huge doorway.