Queen's Hunt

by Beth Bernobich

  Magic roused at her touch. She moved her palms to the walls. Here the magic beat a slower, deeper rhythm. Hush, she told it. Let me read the past, nothing more. Nothing more.

  She closed her eyes and focused on her hands. When her breathing had slowed, she narrowed the focus to her palms and then to the point where flesh met stone. The current welled up around her; she felt its electric presence rolling over her skin, rippling through her flesh, between her palms and the air—to the region between body and mind.

  Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane Lir. Ei rûf ane Toc. Komen mir de strôm.

  Her breathing slowed, her thoughts stilled to match the barely perceptible rhythm of the stone. Rock and mortar used no words, but human speech had echoed here in days and weeks and decades past. Where am I? she asked.

  Sunlight glinted from the faceted granules; a man’s voice echoed one word. Osterling.

  Yes. Osterling. The early kings of Fortezzien had built a series of castles along the coastline as watch points. The Erythandran emperors had taken over those castles and turned them into forts, manned by soldiers from the imperial army.

  Slowly, the rocks yielded their memories, and the trickle of words had become a flood of human speech. Fragments of conversation. Oaths and curses whose meaning had disappeared into time. Valara sank deeper into the past, to the first settlers. Digging. A castle built by common laborers overseen by mages. A remnant of that castle formed this prison. Slowly the voices faded into silence, and she heard only the gulls crying, the wind sifting through sand, and the distant surf, unimpeded by walls or towers or other works of mankind. She had come to the end, which was the beginning.

  She withdrew her hands. So she was in Veraene, not Károví. But still a prisoner, and half a world away from her kingdom. Karasek had left seventeen ships behind—nearly a thousand soldiers. Morennioù had only a small militia for each city. They had forgotten to guard against an enemy from outside.

  No, it was not them. I did this. I destroyed my homeland.

  She sank to the stone floor. Her eyes were dry of tears. She had foresworn grief to keep her strength in the face of an invasion. But now, in the quiet of this cell, memory recited a relentless litany of faults and errors and grave mistakes.

  Five years ago, she had thought nothing of breaking the conventions against exploring magic. Or rather, she had thought a great deal about it. Her life dreams had pressed upon her nights, then her waking world. Eventually, reluctantly, she had to accept that she was Leos Dzavek’s brother in a former life. She had helped him steal Lir’s jewels from the emperor. Later, in yet another life, she had stolen the jewels again, and hidden them in Autrevelye.

  It was a matter of curiosity, she told herself, unconnected with her life as a princess in Morennioù, the younger daughter, not even an heir. Then her mother and sister died in that shipwreck. Valara had become the heir. Whatever excuses she had made to herself before were worthless. She had sworn before her father’s council to obey Morennioù’s laws.

  And yet, she could not resist the pull of curiosity. So she had poked and prodded at her memories, had explored Autrevelye in flesh and spirit, until her life dreams finally yielded enough clues to help her find the first of Lir’s jewels.

  Only one. The oldest of the three, the first to speak as a separate creature after the emperor’s mage had divided the single jewel into three, many centuries ago. It was the emerald, of course. Daya was its name. She remembered reaching for it, her fingers digging into the dirt in some far corner of the magical plane, when a voice startled her. Leos Dzavek, conducting his own search.

  Shouts. Her own frightened response. Then Leos striking at her with fist and magic. She had fled, bleeding from a dozen wounds and fevered by her too-swift passage between worlds.

  Her own magic healed her wounds, but Valara had spent a terrified month convinced that Dzavek would follow her between worlds, or that her father’s council would strike her name from the rolls of nobility. As summer passed into autumn, she told herself that she had escaped discovery. She began to experiment with the jewel Daya. That had proved frustrating at first. Then, one night at the end of winter, as she worked alone in her rooms, the jewel had woken to her touch.

  It spoke. In colors and song, as though Autrevelye itself lived inside me.

  The next morning, Dzavek’s ships had broken through Luxa’s Hand to attack. An impossible deed, according to all her father’s mages. Well, they were probably dead, too, along with her father and his chief mage.

  Her eyes burned with unshed tears.

  No. Not yet. She could not afford the luxury of grief. She had to escape this prison and fly homeward. She knew her father’s council too well. They would quarrel—even the best of them—while Dzavek’s soldiers plunder the islands and made them helpless against a second attack.

  And he will attack a second time. I know it. I must go back.

  Propelled by desperation, she stood and shouted. “Help. Anyone. Can you hear me?”

  She called out in Károvín and Veraenen, until the other prisoners shouted at her to shut her mouth and die. She didn’t care. She had to get word to Veraene’s king. She needed an ally.

  One of the guards flung the outer doors open and stalked down the corridor, cursing. “What do you want?” he said in stilted Károvín.

  “Send for your king,” Valara said in his language. “I can tell him about the Károvín ships.”

  His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You tell me this news first.”

  Three hundred years in hiding. It took an effort to break such a long and perfect silence.

  “The Károvín,” she said after a brief inward struggle. “The Károvín have a new enemy. The enemy could be a friend to you. To Veraene.”

  “Might?”

  “I’m sorry. I don’t know the words.”

  “You know enough,” he said. “Why aren’t you sure about this friend?”

  Careful now. She had to satisfy his curiosity without giving too much away. Her awkwardness with the language helped her there. She made a show of searching for the words, and when she answered, she let herself stumble over the pronunciation. “I didn’t—don’t. I’m not certain because I do not know your king. Does he want a friend? Does he need one?”

  The guard studied her thoughtfully. She wasn’t entirely sure if he believed her.

  “If you’re lying, I could lose my position,” he said. “The captain doesn’t like tricks.”

  Valara shook her head. “I’m not lying. Please, tell him. Blame me if you like. Anything. But the king must hear what I have to say.”

  She held his gaze with hers, willing him to believe her, until the man sighed and tapped his fingers against the bars. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell the captain. It’s up to him whether he passes the word higher. I can’t promise more than that.”

  “I understand. Thank you.”

  Valara watched him walk back through the corridor, his shadow fluttering in the torchlight. The other prisoners flung questions and demands at him, in both Veraenen and their own tongue. He ignored them and slammed the outer door shut.

  An uproar broke out. Prisoners cursing their interrupted sleep. Prisoners demanding to speak with the officers, to have word taken to their king. Valara covered her ears and sank to the floor. Even if Veraene’s king listened to her, then what? Would he grant her passage home? Would he agree to ally his kingdom with hers?

  Hers. Not her father’s. He was dead, murdered by the Károvín invaders.

  Grief pressed like a fist against her throat. She resisted a moment, then let the tears break free.

  * * *

  ON A BARE ridge, miles away from Osterling Keep, Miro Karasek dropped to his knees. He could almost taste his desire for sleep, stronger than his craving for water. From below came the hiss and roar of surf against the rocky shore.

  You will suffer great weariness, King Leos had warned him. You will live each week twice over. That should inspire you to haste.

 
He’d left the coastal highway within a mile of Osterling and its fort, scrambling up the hillside, into the pine-forested ridge that ran the length of the peninsula. Luck was with him so far. No pursuit. There were a few fishing villages on the coast below, but the hills and ridges themselves were bare of population. If he could find some shelter, he could risk a few hours of sleep, then take off once the moon rose.

  The swiftest passage home lay on the roads between worlds. But he was too weary to risk that. And the king had warned him against such measures. They will watch all the borders for any sign of the jewels. Including those of Vnejšek.

  He sucked in the dust-filled air and pushed himself to standing. It was the time between sunset and twilight. The sky had turned dark blue, and a few stars glimmered overhead. Far to the west, a wine-red ribbon marked the line between sea and sky. Already the ground lay in shadows. Risky, to keep walking over rough terrain. He could stumble and fall to his death on the rocks below. Or lie wounded, unable to escape, when the patrols finally tracked him down.

  A thousand ways to die, he thought, moving cautiously forward through the tide of dusk. He had tried most of them in this mission.

  A flicker of movement at his feet sent him leaping back. He caught himself before he fell, then laughed a wheezing laugh. Just a mouse. The creature darted through the weeds and vanished into the shadows underneath a large boulder.

  And if a mouse, why not a man?

  Karasek eased himself into a crouch—his knees cracked and protested—and discovered a man-sized opening, choked with rubble. He cleared away the debris and peered inside. The air smelled rank, as though a wild dog had denned there recently. Nothing stirred inside now, however.

  He unbuckled his sword from his belt and lay down on his back. The gap was narrow, but the rocky floor gave him enough purchase. He grabbed on to a handhold and shoved himself through. Dirt and grit showered his face. He coughed, wriggled deeper into the opening until he reached the farther wall.

  Here the niche widened, and its ceiling angled upward. He had enough room to crouch, so he twisted around and slid the knife from his boot sheath. His shirt and jacket made a pillow. The pouch containing Lir’s emerald, the reason for his mission, he tucked underneath. As he laid knife and sword within easy reach, it came to him that he was like the renegade warriors of old Károví.

  As many brigands as nobles, his father had commented, in an unguarded moment.

  His mother had glanced up with a frightened angry look. Karasek had expected another quarrel, but her mouth had inexplicably softened, and she’d murmured, “Be careful, love.”

  He recalled the moment vividly, though he’d been only seven. One rare gesture of tenderness between his parents—the last one.

  Karasek shook away those memories. His father was dead, secure from accusations, and his mother had deserted Taboresk for her homeland. Only the present concerned him.

  Yes, the present. He smothered a painful laugh. He had no gear, no water. Only ten or twelve miles separated him from the garrison city. Disaster had carried him long past Dzavek’s original schemes, past the fallback plans the king had devised, and the ones Karasek had decided on himself. Now he was running on instinct alone. Like the old warriors from Károví’s founding, he would have to flit like a shadow, using magic and cleverness to regain his homeland.

  Brigands and nobles. Which am I? He yawned, curled up on the hard ground, and within a heartbeat, slept.

  He woke to the thick dark of full night. Karasek rubbed the sleep from his eyes. His throat felt clogged with thirst, and his stomach had squeezed into an empty knot. Live and you will eat and drink, he told his body. One by one, he gathered up his possessions. The pouch he tied around his neck. He covered the sword and its sheath with his jacket, but kept his knives handy. First to check for patrols.

  “Ei rûf ane Lir unde Toc,” he said. “Ei rûf ane gôtter.”

  The dusty air stirred into life, brushing against his cheek like a lover’s breath. A wisp of current, its scent like pine trees in winter, revived him, and for one exquisite moment, he could forget his weariness and a thirst so profound that his throat felt like sand. It was a risk, using magic, but less of a risk than stumbling into a pack of Veraenen soldiers. He would make a brief reconnaissance and then be gone.

  “Komen mir de strôm unde kreft. Komen mir de zoubernisse.”

  The magic current flickered stronger then weaker as his concentration wavered. Magic was like the ocean’s currents. Like the inexorable rhythm of life and death. Magic was Lir’s sweet exhalation, as she lay with Toc. Magic was completion.

  “Lâzen mir de sûle. Vliugen himelûf. Ougen mir.”

  The magic current spun through the narrow opening. A thread of perception connected magic with its wielder, and as the current rose toward the sky, Karasek saw the black expanse of night, a brilliant spangle of stars, a raptor floating high overhead. Higher yet, and he could pick out the buildings and walls of the garrison city, now washed in moonlight. Within, the souls of the inhabitants glowed. A few bright points, like suns among the stars, caught his attention. He recognized Valara Baussay’s magical signature.

  I knew her before, in lives past.

  The knowledge had come to him like a shock when his soldiers first brought the Morennioùen queen before him as a prisoner. She had been queen in that previous life, and he, he had been a representative of the empire.

  The memories served no purpose, he told himself. He turned away from Osterling and commanded the magic to lift him away.

  The current whirled him back toward the hills where his body lay. A blink, a shudder, and spirit rejoined flesh. Karasek drew a last breath of the magic current and savored its taste and smell. Then he spoke the words to wipe the surrounding area clean of his signature.

  So. There were no patrols yet. Would there ever be? He had killed the only witness to his escape. Or so he had thought. He remembered throwing the girl to the ground, her head striking a stone. She lay so still, he thought she must be dead. But he had killed so many in the past few days, he might have misremembered. A careful soldier would have run her through with a sword. He used to be careful, before this mission.

  Karasek rubbed his eyes with the back of his hand. A month of dangerous travel stood between him and the border. From there, it would take him another ten days of hard riding to reach Rastov. Was that fast enough to satisfy the king?

  You must make haste, Leos Dzavek had commanded.

  He had, sailing three hundred leagues in twelve days using magic. Time spinning backward through the barrier, then leaping forward on the return trip. It was as if his time in Morennioù existed in a bubble, like a soul’s multiple lives, compressed into a single short month.

  The king is a thorough man, his father once told him. Karasek had seen the proof—the months of planning and maneuvers, all for an unknown enemy, in an unknown land.

  It had started last summer. The king had summoned Miro Karasek to his private interview hall. Karasek had found him immersed in reading.

  “You have new orders, your majesty?”

  Dzavek looked up from his stacks of books. His gaze was diffuse, as though he saw images beyond Zalinenka’s white rooms. “I found him. I found my brother, Andrej.”

  Karasek felt a river of cold pass over his skin, as though Károví’s brief summer had vanished into winter. Andrej Dzavek had died centuries ago, in the wars between Károví and the empire. Apparently that did not matter. Perhaps that was the key to understanding Leos Dzavek. All moments, past or future, were equal. All lives were now. It would be, he thought, like swimming in time.

  The king explained. Andrej had returned to another life as a woman. His brother—this woman—was searching for the jewels in the magical plane of Vnejšek, just as Dzavek himself was.

  What followed anyone might have predicted. The two brothers, no longer brothers, quarreled again. Andrej escaped before Dzavek could do anything more than injure him. In the aftermath, Dzavek had discovered mo
re clues, which led him to the second of Lir’s jewels, the ruby.

  But he was not satisfied with one. He required all three. His health had ebbed in the past ten years. It was a sign that, even with the greatest magic, he could not evade death much longer.

  And so, in meetings with Karasek, Markov, and Černosek, Dzavek set out detailed plans for an undiscovered destination, an unknown enemy. Duke Miro Karasek would lead the invasion, Dzavek said, while Duke Markov would take temporary command of all the armies.

  Drills and preparations followed throughout that summer. Karasek had thought their plans would come to nothing, when Dzavek summoned him a second time. Andrej had proved careless, had woken the jewel. Emerald had spoken to ruby, one magical creature to its other self. Through their speech, Dzavek discovered where his once-brother now lived.

  More preparations and meetings followed. The final week passed in a blur of lists and reports and maps. Letters dispatched to his home in Taboresk. The ships stocked. The final troop selections. Weapons and supplies and gear. Dzavek wanted no blunders with this undertaking. He would not be denied again, he said. That explained several points in retrospect, Karasek thought. The contradiction between Dzavek’s meticulous plans and his extraordinary decree that Karasek should return the same day he located the emerald. It also explained the inclusion of Anastazia Vaček.

  The last day at sunrise. They were on the point of launching the ships when Dzavek appeared with Anastazia Vaček at his side. “Your second in command,” he’d said.

  Vaček had smiled and bowed. “My lord, I look forward to serving you and our king. We have the most satisfying orders.”

  Two commanders. Two sets of orders. What promises had Dzavek extended to Anastazia Vaček that gave her such an expression of hungry delight?

  Dzavek’s shuttered face had yielded no clues. After dismissing Vaček, he took Karasek to one side. “Remember the spells I gave you for launching the ships through the barrier. Do not discuss them with anyone. Not even Anastazia Vaček.”