Queen of Thorns

by Dave Gross

  "She's almost reached the plaza," said Fimbulthicket, hopping up to catch brief glimpses of her progress across the overgrown city.

  "Where were you before you stepped through the aiudara, Amarandlon?" asked Variel. I detected a sly undercurrent to his tone.

  The prince's face darkened. "My wizards will allow no one to pass."

  We all turned, the shadow of Zuldanavox's head shading us from the high sun. Oparal and the unicorn galloped toward the plaza. As Amarandlon predicted, his wizards stepped forward to block her path. Two of them conjured walls, one of ice, the other of stone, together forming a channel designed to force the unicorn into a dead end at the base of the nearest spire.

  The unicorn did not slow. Indeed, it increased its pace. Before it struck the barrier, it vanished along with Oparal.

  For an instant, steed and rider appeared together in the middle of the plaza. Then, just as when Caladrel had first performed the key gestures, the magic of the gate blazed white. Oparal and the unicorn vanished.

  Zuldanavox looked down on Amarandlon, who for all his titles and power appeared a small thing beneath her gaze.

  "No matter," he said. "My men hold the other side."

  "They appear to hold this side as well," said Zuldanavox. "Yet she eluded them."

  He turned to her and bowed. "You are right, of course, mighty wyrm."

  "I detest that phrase."

  "Great Zuldanavox, then. Or what honorific do you prefer?"

  The dragon turned her head, almost imperceptibly, but I knew she stared at me even as she answered the prince. "You may address me as the Queen of Thorns."

  ∗ ∗ ∗

  After Oparal's escape, Zuldanavox allowed Amarandlon to marshal his men in the temple of Desna. She warned him not to let his men stray from the roofless ruin. I suspected she had chosen the site so that she could look down upon the elves from her amphitheater lair, but also so that they could glimpse the treasures in her hoard. Her forbiddance was as much an enticement as a warning.

  Kemeili remained with her fellow Calistrians in Amarandlon's camp. Initially she protested, wishing to remain with me and Radovan. When a senior cleric reminded her of their relative status, she submitted with uncharacteristic meekness. Her absence left me and Radovan to stand beside Variel and Fimbulthicket as the dragon heard Amarandlon's petition.

  "For centuries, Queen Telandia has allowed the Witchbole to fester in the south. When the boil bursts, the putrescence must infect your city before it reaches Iadara. Today you saw the truth of it. And who but Telandia's paladin could have lowered your defenses? Where was she when the horde invaded your home?"

  "Yet you were poised to come to my rescue." Zuldanavox sat among her riches, watching to see which would capture the prince's attention. Amarandlon locked his gaze to the dragon's emerald eyes.

  "Someone had to be ready to offer assistance. My niece has the heart of a child, too frightened of the horde to oppose them, too intimidated by your power to approach you honestly. She has known of your existence for centuries, but she dared not seek you out herself. Instead she sent her old lover to learn your secrets and report to her."

  "Zuldana," Variel protested, "I've been completely honest with you about Telandia's intentions."

  "But not so honest as to tell me you were once her lover?"

  "That's overstating our relationship."

  "So it was a relationship?"

  Variel barely stifled his exasperation. "It was ages ago, and only for a summer. We were never really suited for each other." His cavalier dismissal of a tryst with the queen caused me to reevaluate his profession of love for my mother. Their romance had also lasted only a summer, and now I wondered whether he had feigned his fondness for her in an effort to soothe my ire.

  "She cherished you so little but considered you a fit gift for me?" said the dragon.

  "I didn't come here as a gift. I came as a friend."

  "Leave us," she said. "Take the gnome and your mongrel whelp as well."

  As Variel and Fimbulthicket returned to the manor, I led Radovan and Arnisant south toward the temple district. There Radovan fetched his clothing from the ruined temple of Calistria. He walked barefoot as we left the baths, his damp boots draped over one shoulder. His wet pants must have chafed, but at least his jacket remained dry. It fit as perfectly as before his latest transformation. No matter the physical differences between his previous and current "passengers," as I had begun to think of his possessing devils, it seemed to have no effect on his default anatomy.

  "I know Zuldana sounded pretty hard on you back there, boss, but I think she still likes you. In fact, if I understand anything about women—and I think I do—I'd say she's got her eye on you."

  Grateful as I was for his return, I disliked Radovan's insinuation. "Do not suggest for a moment that I share Variel's proclivity for interspecies romance."

  "Hey, I'm the one who wanted to leave Kemeili back in Omesta. You're the one who said, 'Keep her happy.' Maybe it's time you took your own advice."

  "There is a vast difference between consorting with an elf and—"

  Radovan was barely containing his laughter, and I realized he was baiting me to lighten my mood. Yet it was not the time for levity.

  There was little doubt in my mind that Amarandlon stood before Zuldanavox and proposed treason against his own queen. As a guest of Queen Telandia and a man of honor, I was duty-bound to thwart his scheme.

  We gave Amarandlon's men a wide berth and came to the spot where I had first seen Kemeili fleeing the demons. I recognized the house where Caladrel had dropped from the roof to evade a flying demon. Nimble as the ranger was, his hasty drop had left a scattering of broken roof tiles upon the street.

  From there it was easy to trace the route of Kemeili's escape. In the street lay the corpses of the demons I had frozen and several more sprouting Caladrel's arrows. I searched the ground.

  "What are you looking for, boss?"

  "Something that is not here." As I uttered the words, I spotted the broken shaft of an arrow in the weeds near the body of a near-skeletal demon. I picked up the arrow and saw that it was broken a few inches above the tip. Poking through the weeds, I sought its arrowhead. Shrugging off his jacket, Radovan joined the search.

  Moaning a fiendish phrase, the demon I had presumed dead rolled over and reached for Radovan. Without thinking, I drew the Shadowless Sword and cut through its windpipe. As it died, the meaning of its words dawned on me: "The gate."

  I looked at Radovan. "It sensed you only after you removed the jacket."

  "Yeah, go figure."

  "The demons went straight for you the first few times we encountered them."

  He nodded, grimacing at the memory.

  "The first time you had set your jacket aside, but the second time you were wearing it."

  "Yeah. No, wait. The second time I had it off when they showed up. I pulled it on just as the fight started, before you came back."

  I should have examined his new jacket more thoroughly. The sorcerer in Goka had imbued it with far more magic than I had imagined. That explained one question that had troubled me over the past weeks, but not the ones whose answers I currently sought.

  "Yuck," said Radovan. He lifted a limp sac of vegetable matter from the weeds. He offered it to me. Covering my fingers with a handkerchief, I took it from him and sniffed the fibrous material. I recognized the smell.

  "This is where I saw Kemeili running from the temple. Caladrel and I came to her aid, but now I wonder...Did you notice where the demons first breached the dome wall?"

  "I was kind of occupied, getting cut up and turned inside out."

  "My apologies. I had not forgotten the torment you must—"

  "Forget it. It was over there somewhere." He pointed to the wall.

  I offered Arnisant the plant fiber. The hound dutifully sniffed and raised his snout to catch the scent on the breeze. "Arnisant, find!"

  We followed him to the dome wall. Demon bodies and the
splinters of the city's vegetable defenders littered the ground. The battle had despoiled the temple district more than many others. I recalled Variel's anecdote about his quarrel with Zuldanavox and wondered how many decades it would take to mend the damage from this battle. I hoped the dragon would not insist we remain to perform the repairs.

  Arnisant pointed at the spot where one of the original vine gates had stood. Now only the charred remains of the once-imposing barrier lay scattered on the sward. Arnisant led us out of the domed city.

  Within a hundred yards, Arnisant caught the scent again. We followed him in search of a third site, but there was none. Still, the trail of scent was strong enough and lay far enough from the city to lead the horde to the dome.

  Radovan scratched the back of his neck as he considered our findings. A glimmer of understanding appeared in his eyes. Although I repeat the phrase in jest, he truly is smarter than he looks. Even so, I am loath to spoil the suspense he claims to feel before the moment of truth.

  "I get it," he said. "I get some of it, anyway. I'm just not sure what we do about it."

  "We report our findings and offer our counsel," I said. "After that, the decision must rest with the queen."

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Hoard

  Radovan

  Zuldanavox lay curled around a fountain. In the middle of the water stood a bronze monument of elves lifting each other up in laced hands. The tall ones on the bottom were gaunt like the old elves I'd seen. Standing on their hands and shoulders were young adults who lifted teenagers above their heads. On top was a young elven girl, her own hand reaching up to the sun. At night I guess that meant the moon, maybe the stars.

  Desna smile on us. We're going to need it.

  Across the fountain from the dragon's head, Amarandlon stood with that easy confidence you see in guys who've just won a fight. He'd left his antlered helmet somewhere else, but his curveblade lay in its half-sheath across his back.

  Caladrel stood on Amarandlon's right, holding his bow like a staff. His quiver was still empty except for that one big arrow clinging to the outside. He didn't look so cocky as his boss. In fact, he looked a little nervous, I guess on account of the dragon.

  A Calistrian cleric stood on Amarandlon's left, his hand on Kemeili's shoulder. From her scrunched nose, I could tell she didn't like that one bit. What I couldn't tell was whether she was in trouble or ready to make some.

  Apart from them stood Variel with Fimbulthicket at his side. The boss and I went to stand with them, Arnisant between us. As we took our spot, Caladrel shot me a questioning look, like he wanted to know why we hadn't stood with him.

  Zuldanavox sat there looking down on us while we looked at each other, waiting for somebody else to speak. Variel broke the silence.

  "Prince Amarandlon does not speak for Kyonin," he said. "Only Telandia can do so."

  "Then why has she not come?" asked the dragon.

  "She is timid," said Amarandlon. "And subtle."

  "She is cautious," said Variel. "And she is wise in her caution. Only a fool would attempt to deceive you, Zuldana. Whoever led those demons to your home is standing right here."

  "The Forlorn paladin is your betrayer," said Amarandlon, "and she has already escaped. But if you return with me to Iadara, you will have the vengeance you deserve. I swear it."

  Variel gritted his teeth, but the boss spoke up. "Then you are forsworn, Prince Amarandlon, for you have pledged fealty to Telandia."

  "My loyalty is to Kyonin. Telandia's timorous approach to the adversary has endangered us all. But if we join forces, with the combined forces of the City of Mists and the City of Thorns, we can take the battle to the Witchbole and end this threat once and for all."

  "That is a question for the queens to decide."

  "Then we need a new monarch in Iadara, a strong king to treat with the strong queen of this City of Thorns."

  "So there it is at last," Variel said. "Open treason."

  "And why not? Telandia has failed us. She has failed all her people."

  "You have betrayed one queen. Why should Zuldana trust you to keep faith with her?"

  "Because like all strong rulers, Queen Zuldanavox knows when the weak must be swept away. She knows that I respect her strength too much to dare betray her."

  I looked up, but I couldn't read a thing on the dragon's face. She might as well have been carved out of jade.

  "And yet you have already deceived her," said the boss. "Just as you manipulated me even before we met at the Midsummer Masque."

  "Here it comes." I leaned down to whisper to Fimbulthicket. "This is my favorite part."

  "What are you talking about?" he whispered back.

  "You'll see."

  "Telandia entrusted you with the knowledge that she had dispatched Variel Morgethai on a diplomatic embassy, yet she did not tell you where. You suspected he had discovered this hidden city, but you could not yourself find it."

  "No one could find it," said Amarandlon.

  "And you of all people could not risk seeming to search for it, not without causing Telandia to doubt your loyalty. So when I came to Kyonin—unaware that Variel Morgethai was in fact my father—you saw an opportunity to find him without appearing to search for him yourself. All you had to do was counsel the queen to permit my search—after you assured yourself of my disdain for the demonic horde. Then it was a simple matter to send your master of the hunt to accompany me, reporting our progress through the aiudara."

  "What of it? Naturally I could not let a half-breed Chel roam freely through our land."

  "If the safety of Kyonin was your concern, why did you permit me to continue after the debacle of the Walking Man? Fortunately, if I had not made that error, I would not have understood enough of elven arcana to raise the deactivated spires. I certainly would not have deduced the existence of the aiudara hidden between them. But someone else knew there was an aiudara in this city."

  "Of course there is an aiudara here," said Amarandlon. "There is one in every major elven city in Kyonin."

  "Yet the instant we activated the aiudara, Caladrel was able to open it. The keys to the aiudara are among Kyonin's most closely held secrets, are they not?"

  "As my master of the hunt, Caladrel knows the keys to all of the aiudara."

  "Even the ones in cities that no one remembers?"

  Amarandlon was getting a little color in his cheeks, but he kept his temper down. "There are far more aiudara than there are keys. Caladrel made an educated guess."

  "And you just happened to be prepared to step through the gate with a legion of rangers at your back."

  "Of course not. Caladrel apprised me of the situation, and I marshaled my men."

  "When did he apprise you? And how?"

  "I am a prince of Kyonin. I will not be questioned by some inquisitive—"

  "Was it on your order or his own initiative that Caladrel lured the demons to this city?"

  "That's ridiculous."

  I nudged Fimbulthicket. "That's it. It's over."

  "How do you know?"

  "They always start saying things like 'That's ridiculous' just before it's over."

  The boss pulled his handkerchief from his pocket. "I have here several of Caladrel's scent arrows. He demonstrated their effect shortly after we left Omesta. They drove the vermlek demons into a frenzy."

  "It wasn't my arrows but your own man who attracted the demons," said Caladrel. "We all saw how they ran straight for him every time we fought. You're the one who brought the horde to this city."

  "No," said the boss. "The demons could track Radovan only when he was not wearing his jacket, although we did not understand its warding powers until today. And considering the power of the city's wards, I doubt the horde could sense him here until you lured them to the gate with these scent arrows and lowered the spires."

  "I'm no wizard. How could I lower the spires?"

  "When Variel showed them to me last night, you had already left your audience wi
th Zuldanavox. I have never known anyone so fleet or silent as you. I think you were already near the spire chambers when Variel and I visited them. You overheard our speculation on their function and watched as he showed me how to raise and lower them."

  "You have known how to raise the missing spires?" Zuldanavox rumbled.

  Variel winced, but he had the good sense to let the boss answer.

  "Variel could not have activated the aiudara without experimenting further at the Walking Man, as I did. My blunder there allowed me to deduce the operation of the aiudara here."

  "So Variel is more like Telandia: cautious but ineffective. And you are more like Amarandlon, reckless but capable."

  The boss hesitated. "Yes and no."

  "Explain the 'yes' part."

  "My people—that is, my mother's people, humans—do not enjoy such long lives as elves or dragons. We take more risks, and often we make mistakes as I did at the Walking Man. But by taking those risks, sometimes we learn more quickly than those who are more cautious. In this case, the organs I found within the Walking Man functioned in a manner similar to the controls in the vaults containing your city's spires. Yet the cost of the knowledge that helped us here was harm to the previous site."

  "And explain the 'no' part."

  "Unlike Prince Amarandlon, I never betray a queen."

  I thought it was a great line, but I couldn't tell what Zuldanavox thought. She turned her head to look straight down at Amarandlon. "I could crush you now."

  Amarandlon's lips twitched. He wanted to say something tough—and I don't think anybody had forgotten about the men he had waiting over at the temple—but like any smart man, he knew better than to threaten a dragon.

  A deep vibration filled the city. We all turned at the same time to see the plaza—the aiudara—flash with light from all six spires. A hundred mounted elves appeared. In the middle of them all sat Queen Telandia. I'd never got a good look at her before, but standing there in her stirrups, I could have mistaken her for one of the elven goddesses.

  Two riders broke from the group and came toward us. One held a banner with the image of a briar-wrapped gem above a white flag of truce. The other was Oparal riding the unicorn.