The Lost Queen

by Frewin Jones

  The night was starless and the clouds glowed darkly from the sleepless lights of the city. She paused at the brink of the patio, suddenly aware of an odd smell. She sniffed. It made her think of thunderstorms although she could not have said why. She shivered, intending to go back into the house.

  Then a wind came out of nowhere, a cold, biting wind that whipped her hair about her face and clamped her clothes fiercely onto the contours of her body. She stepped back, the freezing air stinging her eyes. She tasted iron in her mouth and heard a noise over the serpentine hiss of the wind.

  Neighing. A wild, fierce neighing that seemed to fill the air all around her.

  A moment later she heard the clatter of hooves. The carton fell from her hands, bouncing on the stones, spraying milk.

  In an explosion of noise and movement a horse and rider leaped the fence at the bottom of her garden and came thudding down into the flowerbed.

  The horse was gray and shone like moonlight but the animal’s eyes were red and filled with madness. The hooves stamped down the flowers and plants, the head lifting, another terrifying neigh coming from the gaping mouth.

  It kicked and snorted as the rider tugged on the reins. Then it moved forward up the garden, a sickly white glow all around it as its black hooves trod the lawn.

  Tania’s horror-struck eyes were drawn to the figure on the horse’s back. He was wearing a heavy black cloak that cracked in the eddying wind.

  As he approached, his silver eyes were fixed on Tania and his pale, handsome face was twisted by a smile of malevolent triumph. She stared up at him, unable to move, as if her body had been turned to stone. The air froze in her lungs and all hope died in her pounding heart.

  The rider drew a white sword and pointed it toward her.

  “Well met, my lady,” said Gabriel Drake as the huge horse bore down on Tania. “Well met indeed, my beauteous bride!”

  XV

  Tania stared stupefied as the great horse drew steadily nearer to her, the silver-gray eyes of Gabriel Drake transfixing her like a butterfly on a pin. She couldn’t move a finger, she couldn’t blink, she couldn’t even give voice to the scream of fear that swelled in her throat and threatened to choke her.

  The night wheeled around her, and at the pivot of the racing madness were those two deadly, exultant eyes and that terrible smile.

  Then, when the ghastly horse was only a couple of yards away from her and Tania felt sure she would be trampled under those massive hammering hooves, Gabriel pulled back on the reins and the horse came to a halt, gray mist billowing from its nostrils, red madness flickering in its eyes.

  Gabriel threw back his head and let out a ringing shout of command in a harsh, brittle language.

  She heard from a distance a howling chorus of response from voices that sounded only half human. Moments later the night was torn apart from end to end as a host of gray horsemen came plunging over the garden fence like a wave of poisoned water.

  There were six of them in all. Six Gray Knights on six gray horses, and the red light in the eyes of the men echoed the wild ruby that burned in the eyes of the horses. The knights of Lyonesse were skeletal thin, their faces ash pale, their gaunt features frozen in lunatic smiles, long white hair like cobwebs over their shoulders. Each wore a thin headband and at the center of each forehead lay a jewel as black as a hole in the night. Their narrow bodies and limbs were wrapped in gray material that shimmered dully like fish scales, and across their shoulders stretched billowing cloaks of gray leather that gave off an unhealthy worm-skin shine.

  “You will never be free of me, my lady,” Gabriel whispered, his eyes boring into her. “Did you not know? We are bonded for all time!”

  Then he laughed and drew back and the horse reared on its hind legs, neighing wildly, huge and dreadful as a mountain, the hooves beating the air above her head.

  Tania saw her death in those hooves but she could do nothing to prevent it.

  But then something caught her around the waist and she was dragged backward across the patio and into the kitchen. A hand reached out past her head and flung the door closed—and the moment that she lost sight of Gabriel, all her senses came back to her and her body came alive and her brain unfroze.

  “Get out through the front.” Edric’s voice was frantic in her ear. “I’ll get the princesses.”

  “No! I’ll come with you; we have to stay together.”

  They ran through the kitchen and into the hall. Behind them she could hear a pounding like hammers on the garden door. The smash of glass.

  They raced up the stairs.

  Cordelia stood at the head of the stairs, the bundle of swords in her arms, her eyes gleaming. “So they are come!” she called down. “Do we stand and fight?”

  “No!” Edric shouted. “Where are the others?”

  “They are here,” Cordelia said. A moment later Sancha and Zara appeared behind her, Sancha pulling on the backpack that contained the queen’s crown.

  Tania and Edric ran back down the stairs with the three princesses on their heels. As they scrambled into the hall there came the sound of splintering wood and shattering glass from the kitchen.

  Tania glanced over her shoulder. Through the kitchen doorway she saw one of the Gray Knights forcing his way in through the shards of the back door. The macabre smile was still on his face and a crystal sword jutted from his bony fist. His burning red eyes locked onto hers and his narrow jaws opened in a shout that was like the clashing of knives.

  Edric reached the front door and wrenched it open.

  Cordelia was suddenly at Tania’s side, shouting loudly, calling out strange high-pitched words that sounded as if they were in the language of something not human.

  A second knight shouldered his way into the kitchen and the two of them began to stalk forward, their glistening cloaks skimming the ground, their faces grinning, their eyes aflame.

  Tania became aware of a strident, trilling noise that grew rapidly behind her. She heard Edric give a surprised cry and a second later she was almost knocked off her feet as a whole flock of small dark birds came spiraling along the hallway, giving shrill voice as they funneled through the kitchen doorway like a dark rushing cloud. Now she understood the purpose of Cordelia’s cries. She had been calling the birds to her.

  The birds wheeled around the two knights, blotting them out with wing and feather, harrying them, pecking and clawing at them.

  “The starlings will give them pause!” Cordelia shouted to Tania, grabbing her wrist. “We must go!”

  Tania saw the crystal sword blades cutting through the birds like lightning in a black whirlwind. Torn and twisted bodies began to fall, littering the floor, but still the birds kept up their attack.

  Cordelia pulled her along the hallway and out into the night. Sancha was running down the front steps to the pavement; Zara was already in the road. Edric was on the threshold waiting for Tania and Cordelia. They sprang past him and he brought the door crashing closed at their backs.

  “Where to?” he panted.

  “Jade’s house,” Tania said, gasping. “It’s too early but we can hide till they go.”

  “Yes.”

  Tania plunged down the steps with Edric on her right and Cordelia on her left, and even in her fear and panic she knew that Cordelia was weeping as she ran, weeping for the birds that were giving their lives so that they could escape.

  They came tumbling onto the pavement. The night was still and quiet, the streets empty.

  “This way!” said Edric, pointing to the left.

  “Where is Zara?” Sancha panted.

  Tania saw a flash of movement under a streetlight, a glimpse of a blue skirt between parked cars on the far side of the road, heading to the right.

  “Zara!” she shouted.

  “She’s going the wrong way,” Edric said. “Tania, lead the others to safety. I’ll get her.”

  “No!” Tania said. “I will!” She didn’t give him the chance to argue as she sprinted across the ro
ad in pursuit of her fleeing sister.

  “Meet us there!” Edric called after her.

  Zara was twenty or thirty yards ahead of her, running like the wind, her golden hair streaming out behind her.

  Tania was about to call out to her when she heard the clatter of hooves on tarmac behind her. She darted a quick look over her shoulder. Two mounted knights were in the street in front of her house; she could see them staring around, the horses twisting and turning, shedding their misty gray light.

  Tania ducked down, crouching low behind parked cars as she ran along. Zara had disappeared around the long curve of the street.

  Tania kept low until she, too, was beyond the bend, then she straightened up and redoubled her efforts to catch up with her sister. She didn’t dare call out to Zara in case the knights heard her. The pavement was hard and painful under her bare feet; there had been no time to put on shoes.

  As Tania ran determinedly after her Zara came to a side road. She bounded across but her foot must have caught on the far curb, because suddenly she was sprawling on the pavement. It gave Tania the chance to catch up with her.

  “Zara, stop!”

  Zara’s panic-stricken face turned to her, her blue eyes circled with white. “Tania!”

  “We have to…get off the…street.” Tania panted. She pointed to a narrow sunken front yard behind black railings. Stone steps led to the door of a basement flat. “Down there!”

  The two sisters dived in through the open gate and came to a halt at the foot of the steps, their backs to the high wall. It was a while before either of them had breath enough to speak.

  “Sancha?” Zara gasped at last, her eyes filled with fear. “Cordelia?”

  “Safe, I think,” Tania said. “Edric’s with them. You went the wrong way!”

  Zara put her hands up to her face. “I saw them,” she said. “I looked out of the window and saw them in the garden and I was so frightened, Tania. I have only heard the Gray Knights of Lyonesse spoken of in tales of horror from times long ago. I had never seen them before. Their faces!” she said. “Did you see their faces?”

  Tania nodded; she wouldn’t quickly forget those haggard faces with their red eyes and their fixed grins. “Gabriel was there,” she said. “I think he was leading them.”

  “Then the question of whether Rathina got her reward from the Sorcerer King is answered,” Zara said. “The great traitor has been brought back from exile and has been made captain of the Gray Knights. These are ill tidings!”

  “Tell me about it.”

  “Do we go back?” Zara’s voice was calmer now.

  “I don’t think so,” Tania said, picturing the neighborhood in her mind. Trying to work out a safe route to the Andersons’ house.

  “Did Sancha take the crown with her?” Zara asked.

  “Yes, and Cordelia has the swords. We’re to meet them at my friend’s house. I haven’t got my watch on but it’s probably close to two. Which means there are still a couple of hours before Jade and her parents leave and we can get into their house.”

  “Do we remain here until then?”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a great idea,” Tania said. “The knights are going to be looking for us and we’re not far enough away from my house yet. But I have an idea. There’s safety in numbers, and there’s an old saying: The best place to hide is in plain sight.”

  Tania looked appraisingly at her sister, raising a hand to lift an errant lock of hair off her face, brushing some flecks of dirt from the front of her blouse. “You’ll do just fine,” she said with a grim smile.

  “Explain, please,” Zara said.

  Tania crept back up the steps, reaching down to grasp Zara’s hand. “Let’s put it this way,” she said. “Have you ever been to a nightclub?”

  “Your age, ladies?” The doorman stood across the entrance to the nightclub, his massive shoulders straining the seams of his suit, his shaved head gleaming from the blue neon sign that hung above the door. STRANGEWAYS: BOOGIE TILL BREAKFAST!

  He was young and good-looking, and the biceps of the arms that were folded over his chest were as thick as Tania’s thighs.

  “Eighteen,” Tania said, looking calmly into his eyes. “Both of us.”

  A wide smile split his face and he stepped aside. “If you say so, ladies,” he said. “In you go. There’s always room for two more beautiful women. Have a good time, and watch out for the wolves.”

  Tania mounted the stone steps, keeping a firm hold of Zara’s hand as she squeezed past the doorman and towed her over the threshold and down the dimlit red velvet stairs. In the darkness he hadn’t even noticed that neither of them was wearing shoes.

  “Wolves?” Zara said. “There are wolves here?”

  “Yes and no,” Tania said. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll explain later. But we got in, that’s the main thing. Now all we have to do is pay the entrance fee and disappear into the crowds. Let’s see those gray gargoyles follow us in here!”

  Tania was becoming increasingly anxious. She had seen nothing of the Gray Knights as she had led the way to the nightclub, but she had the uneasy feeling that they were being followed, as if one or more of the knights were tracking them at a distance, shadowing their progress through the Camden night.

  “What manner of place is this?” Zara asked. “And what is that noise?”

  “It’s a place for people who like to party all night long. It’s a bit like the Festival of the Traveler’s Moon, but indoors and a lot sweatier and louder. The noise is music.”

  Zara paused on the stairs, cocking her head to listen. She shook her head. “No,” she said. “That is not music. I hear rhythm, but no melody. Rhythm without melody is but the stamping of cattle in the byre.”

  “There are tunes if you listen carefully, honest, but people like plenty of drum and bass these days. It’s modern dance music. You’ll get used to it.”

  “I sincerely doubt that I shall,” Zara said.

  The thudding of the music grew louder as they walked along a black-lined corridor.

  Tania felt Zara’s fingers digging into her hand as she pushed her way through a set of black swing doors. The music hit them like an avalanche.

  The main club room was a huge dark area traversed by a framework of stairs and walkways and galleries of open-mesh steel. Multicolored lights spun on the high ceiling, sending rainbows of color skidding across the walls and down onto the seething mass of bodies that filled the dance floor. The room was circled by a raised mezzanine floor, filled with tables and chairs and lined with black velvet couches.

  The place was packed, the high-octane music thundering out, vibrating the floor under their feet, so loud that conversation was virtually impossible.

  Tania looked at Zara. The Faerie princess was staring around, her mouth twisted in a tight grimace and her eyes narrowed as though from pain. Maybe bringing her here had not been such a great idea after all. Tania had guessed it would be a culture shock for Zara but the princess didn’t look so much shocked as terrified.

  She put her arm around Zara’s shoulders and brought her lips close to her sister’s ear. “It’s okay!” she shouted. “There’s no need to be scared. We won’t stay long. I just wanted to throw the knights off our trail. Can you put up with it for a few more minutes?”

  Zara nodded and said something that she didn’t catch. She held her ear to Zara’s mouth, but still the music was too loud for her to hear.

  “Tell me later!” Tania shouted in Zara’s ear. Holding her close, she made her way around the floor, looking for an unoccupied table or couch where they could sit for a while.

  They were about a third of the way around the room when Tania spotted something that froze her in her tracks. A tall, thin gray shape had come sliding in through the doors.

  In an instant Tania drew Zara into the shade of a steel stairway.

  It was one of the Gray Knights. But how had he been allowed into the club? Did no one see how inhuman he looked with his long, slithering
gray cloak and his ash white face and his insane smile? And he was carrying the thin white sword openly in front of him as he moved through the crowds.

  Tania stared in horror as he glided forward. She saw how the people parted to let him through, even though none of them even glanced at him or acknowledged him in any way. It was as though he was invisible to them, like a cold stirring in the air that made them shiver and move away without knowing why.

  The death’s head turned, the red eyes raking the room as he walked with slow purpose toward them.

  Tania looked at Zara, but her sister had her eyes screwed tightly shut against the noise and seemed unaware of their danger. Taking a firm hold of Zara’s hand, Tania broke cover and ran down the wide steps to the dance floor.

  She edged into the dancing throng, the strobe lights flashing and swirling above her, the music pounding in her ears. She felt Zara trying to pull away from her, but she kept hold of her as she pushed through to find a place for them to stand.

  She managed to take command of a small space somewhere near the middle of the dance floor. The music changed as one song faded and another came pounding out of the speakers, this time with an even faster, more frantic beat to it. Laughing and whooping, the dancers began to bounce off one another. Tania stumbled as someone bumped into her. She felt Zara’s hand slip out of hers as the dancers swept them apart.

  “Zara! Zara!” Her voice was lost in the pulsing of the music.

  And then, as Tania struggled to get to her sister, Zara opened her mouth and let out a scream.

  Tania had heard nothing like it in her life before. It rose high above the booming of the music, brain-numbingly loud, piercing and intense and painful. People fell against her and she was thrown to the ground. And still the scream went on, blotting out every other sound, forcing Tania to press her hands to her ears with the pain of it.

  There were fizzing explosions from the ceiling. Sparks rained down. The whirling of the colored lights stopped. The music ended abruptly as the speakers erupted into crackling smoke.