The Shadow Queen bj-7

by Anne Bishop

  The Shadow Queen

  ( Black Jewels - 7 )

  Anne Bishop

  From the national bestselling author — the new novel set in the 'darkly fascinating world' (SF Site) of the Black Jewels.

  Dena Nehele is a land decimated by its past. Once it was ruled by corrupt Queens who were wiped out when the land was cleansed of tainted Blood. Now, only one hundred Warlord Princes stand — without a leader and without hope.

  Theran Grayhaven is the last of his line, desperate to find the key that reveals a treasure great enough to restore Dena Nehele. But first he needs to find a Queen who remembers the Blood's code of honor and lives by the Old Ways. The woman chosen to rule Dena Nehele, Lady Cassidy, is not beautiful and believes she is not strong. But she may be the only one able to convince bitter men to serve once again.

  The Shadow Queen

  (The seventh book in the Black Jewels series)

  A novel by Anne Bishop

  FOR CASS, MAGGIE, CHERIL, AND DEE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  My thanks to Blair Boone for continuing to be my first reader, to Debra Dixon for being second reader, to Doranna Durgin for maintaining the Web site, to Anne Sowards and Jennifer Jackson for being enthusiastic about this story, to Pat Feidner just because, and to all the friends and readers who make this journey with me.

  JEWELS

  WHITE

  YELLOW

  TIGER EYE

  ROSE

  SUMMER-SKY

  PURPLE DUSK

  OPAL*

  GREEN

  SAPPHIRE

  RED

  GRAY

  EBON-GRAY

  BLACK

  *Opal is the dividing line between lighter and darker Jewels because it can be either.

  When making the Offering to the Darkness, a person can descend a maximum of three ranks from his/her Birthright Jewel.

  Example: Birthright White could descend to Rose.

  BLOOD HIERARCHY/CASTES

  MALES

  landen—non-Blood of any race

  Blood male—a general term for all males of the Blood; also refers to any Blood male who doesn’t wear Jewels

  Warlord—a Jeweled male equal in status to a witch

  Prince—a Jeweled male equal in status to a Priestess or a Healer

  Warlord Prince—a dangerous, extremely aggressive Jeweled male; in status, slightly lower than a Queen

  FEMALES

  landen—non-Blood of any race

  Blood female—a general term for all females of the Blood; mostly refers to any Blood female who doesn’t wear Jewels

  witch—a Blood female who wears Jewels but isn’t one of the other hierarchical levels; also refers to any Jeweled female

  Healer—a witch who heals physical wounds and illnesses; equal in status to a Priestess and a Prince

  Priestess—a witch who cares for altars, sanctuaries, and Dark Altars; witnesses handfasts and marriages; performs offerings; equal in status to a Healer and a Prince

  Black Widow—a witch who heals the mind; weaves the tangled webs of dreams and visions; is trained in illusions and poisons

  Queen—a witch who rules the Blood; is considered to be the land’s heart and the Blood’s moral center; as such, she is the focal point of their society

  PLACES IN THE REALMS

  TERREILLE

  Dena Nehele

  TAMANARA MOUNTAINS

  GRAYHAVEN—BOTH A FAMILY ESTATE AND A Town

  Ebon Askavi (aka the Black Mountain, the Keep)

  Hayll

  Zuulaman

  KAELEER (THE SHADOW REALM)

  Askavi

  Ebon ASKAVI (AKA THE BLACK MOUNTAIN, THE KEEP)

  Ebon RIH—VALLEY THAT IS THE KEEP’S TERRITORY

  RIADA—BLOOD VILLAGE in Ebon Rih

  Dea al Mon

  Dharo

  WEAVERS FIELD—BLOOD VILLAGE

  BHAK—BLOOD VILLAGE

  WOOLSKIN—LANDEN VILLAGE

  Dhemlan

  AMDARH—CAPITAL CITY

  HALAWAY—VILLAGE NEAR SADIABLO HALL

  SADIABLO HALL (THE HALL)

  Nharkhava

  TAJRANA—CAPITAL CITY

  Scelt (shelt)

  MAGHRE (MA-GRA)—VILLAGE

  HELL (THE DARK REALM, THE REALM OF THE DEAD)

  Ebon Askavi (aka the Black Mountain, the Keep)

  SADIABLO HALL

  PROLOGUE

  TERREILLE

  two years ago

  Still shaken by the storm of power that had destroyed half the Blood in Dena Nehele only a few days before, the rogues came down from their camps in the Tamanara Mountains to face an unexpected enemy.

  The landens, who had been brutalized for generations by the “caretakers of the Realms,” hadn’t wasted time. When they realized the surviving Blood were stunned by the violent loss of Queens and courts, they rebelled—and decided that dying by the thousands was an acceptable price to pay in order to wipe out the Blood in Dena Nehele.

  So the landens died during those first days of the uprising. Oh, how they died.

  But so did the Blood.

  The males in the Blood’s towns and villages died as they exhausted the power that made the Blood who and what they were, until even the ones who wore Jewels and had a reservoir of power had used up everything they had in the effort to defend the women and children who didn’t have the strength or skill to defend themselves.

  When that power that lived within them was gone, they fought with weapons like any other man. But the landens kept coming, kept fighting—and the Blood, outnumbered, had no chance of surviving.

  Women and children died, along with the men. The landens, steeped in their hatred for the Blood, set fire to the buildings, turning entire villages into funeral pyres.

  Then the rogues, trained warriors who had refused to serve any Queen, came down from the mountains—and the battle for Dena Nehele really began.

  He rode with one pack of rogues, a leader committed to slaughter in order to defend what was left of his people. But as they reached a walled estate on their way to the town that served as Dena Nehele’s capital, he pulled his horse aside and stared through the iron bars of a double gate at the big stone mansion.

  Grayhaven.

  It was his family name. This was his family’s home.

  He had never lived in that mansion because the Queens who had controlled Dena Nehele had claimed it for their own residence, their own seat of power. And like the rest of the Territory, the house and the land had declined under the rule of bitches who had stood in the shadow of Dorothea SaDiablo, the High Priestess of Hayll.

  He had grown up in the mountain camps ruled by the rogues because he was the last of his line, the last direct descendant of Lord Jared and Lady Lia, the Queen who, like her grandmother before her, had been called “the Gray Lady.” And if there was any truth to the family stories, he was the last person capable of finding the key that would reveal a treasure great enough to restore Dena Nehele.

  Lord Jared had told his grandsons about the treasure the Gray Lady and Thera, a powerful Black Widow, had hidden somewhere around Grayhaven. While the family still lived in the house, every male had searched for it, and the story had spread to trusted advisers who shouldn’t have been trusted. When the family line failed to produce even a minor Queen, Dorothea’s pet Queens had descended on Dena Nehele like scavengers fighting over a fresh carcass. What was left of his family abandoned Grayhaven and spoke the family name only in secret.

  Generations had tried to hold on to something that was Dena Nehele, that was the Blood as they had been when the Gray Lady had ruled. Generations of the Grayhaven line had been “broken into service” as a way of keeping the people yoked to the rule of unwo
rthy Queens.

  Generations of suffering—until that witch storm swept through Terreille. A fast, violent storm, terrible in its cleansing, it had swept away Dorothea SaDiablo and everyone who had been tainted by her, but it had left the surviving Blood prey to the landens’ hatred.

  “Theran!” one of the Warlords shouted. “The bastards have set fire to the south end of the town!”

  He wanted to ride through those gates, wanted to protect the only thing left of his own heritage. But he had been trained to fight, had been born to stand on a killing field. So he turned away from the house and land he wanted to reclaim.

  But as he rode away, he promised himself that when the fires of rebellion were finally smothered, he would come back to his family’s home.

  If there was anything left.

  CHAPTER 1

  TERREILLE

  present

  Reaching the broken-down stone wall and the double gate that was half-torn from its hinges, Theran Grayhaven planted his feet in the exact spot where he’d stood two years before. Now, finally, the landen uprising had been completely smothered, and the Blood—those who were left—could set about the business of trying to restore their land and their people.

  If there was any way of restoring their people.

  “Since you invited them here, you’re going to feel like a fool if you’re still standing at the gate when the other Warlord Princes arrive.”

  Theran looked over his shoulder. He hadn’t heard the other man approach, hadn’t felt a warning presence. Even a month ago, being that careless would have gotten him killed.

  “You shouldn’t be up before sunset,” Theran said. “It drains you too much.”

  The old man scowled at the wall and the gate—and all the other signs of neglect. “I’ll manage.”

  “You’ll need blood tonight.”

  The scowl deepened. “I’ll manage.”

  “Talon . . .”

  “Don’t be using that voice on me, boy. I can still whack some sense into that stubborn head of yours.”

  Talon was a grizzled warrior who was missing two fingers on his left hand and half his right foot—evidence of the price paid for the battles won. He was also a Sapphire-Jeweled Warlord Prince. Since Theran was a Warlord Prince who wore Green Jewels, Talon was the only man in Dena Nehele who was strong enough to “whack some sense” into him.

  But only after the sun set.

  Talon was demon-dead. If he was forced to act during daylight hours, his strength drained at a terrifying speed.

  “Did you ever wonder if it was worth it?” Theran asked, looking away from the man who had raised him.

  He had never known his father. The man had mated to continue the Grayhaven bloodline and had been caught, broken, and completely destroyed before Theran had been born.

  When he was seven, his mother had brought him to the mountain camps to keep the Grayhaven line safe from Dorothea’s pet Queens.

  He never saw her again.

  Talon looked at the mansion and shook his head. “I was in this fight for three hundred years, give or take a few. I knew Lia, and I knew Grizelle before her. I stood with Jared and Blaed when we were all among the living—and I stood with others when I became demon-dead. So I never wondered if bringing Dena Nehele back to the way it was when the Gray Ladies ruled was worth the blood and pain and lives that were lost. I knew getting that back was worth the price.”

  “We didn’t win, Talon,” Theran said softly. “Someone else eliminated the enemy, but we still didn’t win.”

  “A Grayhaven is standing once more on the family land. That’s a start. And there is a marker on the table.”

  A marker Talon hadn’t told him about until a few days ago. “A dangerous one, assuming the man who owes us a favor is still alive.”

  “There’s no way to win unless we gamble,” Talon said. “Come on. We’ll bring the Coach onto the grounds and camp out here tonight. Tomorrow you can go through the house and see what needs to be done.”

  “We’ll be lucky if we find anything intact,” Theran said bitterly. “I can’t imagine the bitches who ruled from here not trying to find the treasure.”

  “But the key wasn’t in the house,” Talon said. “That’s part of the legend. And without the key that begins unlocking the spells, they could have ripped up every floorboard and knocked down every brick in every fireplace, and they still wouldn’t have found the treasure even if they were looking right at it.”

  “Doesn’t mean we’re going to find a safe floor or a working fireplace,” Theran grumbled.

  “Do your pissing and moaning later,” Talon said. “We’ve got company. I’ll fetch the Coach. You give yourself a kick in the ass and get up to the house.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Surrogate father and protector of the Grayhaven line, Talon had held him when he’d cried and hadn’t hesitated to give him a smack when it was deserved—at least, deserved according to Talon. Everything good that he knew about the Blood, about honor and Protocol and what a Warlord Prince should be, he had learned from a man who remembered Dena Nehele as it had been. Who remembered what it meant to have honor. To wear, as Talon put it, the Invisible Ring.

  Bracing himself for the discussion ahead, Theran strode toward the mansion.

  Was the honey pear tree still in the back gardens somewhere? Could the tree have survived that many centuries? There had been a few honey pear trees growing in one of the rogue camps low in the mountains, and there was a grove of them—or so he’d heard—tucked away in the southern part of Dena Nehele, in one of the Shalador reserves. Having heard stories about Jared’s mother growing the honey pear trees for her sons and how Jared had gifted Lia with his tree and given another to Thera and Blaed, he’d been disappointed when he’d finally gotten to taste one of the hard little fruits. But Talon said the trees didn’t grow well in the mountains, that something they needed was lacking, and that was the reason the fruit didn’t taste right.

  Well, the trees weren’t the only things that had felt a need that had gone unanswered.

  Talon set the Coach down on the scrubby front lawn, while Theran watched the Warlord Princes appear near the gate as they dropped from the Winds, those webs of psychic roadways that allowed the Blood to travel through the Darkness.

  It wasn’t until Talon limped over to join him that the first Warlord Princes came through the gate, walking up the weedy drive in pairs, the lightest-Jeweled males coming first.

  *I count about a hundred,* Talon said on a psychic thread.

  *That’s probably every Warlord Prince left in Dena Nehele,* Theran replied.

  *Probably. And a better response than I’d hoped for.*

  What wasn’t said was that only a handful of those men wore an Opal that was considered a dark Jewel. He and Talon, wearing Green and Sapphire, were the strongest males in the Territory. Everyone else wore lighter Jewels.

  They formed a semicircle around him and Talon, the lighter Jewels leaving spaces so the darker-Jeweled males could stand in the front.

  Except for one Opal-Jeweled Warlord Prince who stood apart from the others—a Prince whose golden brown skin marked him as having a Shalador bloodline. Maybe even being pure Shalador.

  Lord Jared’s coloring. Lord Jared’s race.

  Theran resisted the urge to look at his own hand and see the similarities.

  “Would you care to join us, Prince Ranon?” Talon said.

  “I can hear from where I’m standing,” was the chilly reply.

  Talon nodded as if the less-than-courteous response made no difference.

  Prince Archerr, another who wore Opal Jewels, stepped forward. “You called us here, and we answered. But none of us can afford to be gone long. The landens have to be held on a tight leash, and some of us are the only trained warrior left in our piece of Dena Nehele.”

  Theran nodded. “Then I’ll come to the point. We need a Queen.”

  A moment of disbelieving silence before several men made derisive sounds.<
br />
  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Spere said.

  “We’ve got Queens, more or less,” Archerr said.

  “Would you serve any of them?” Theran asked.

  “When the sun shines in Hell.”

  Mutters with an undercurrent of anger.

  “We have Queens,” Theran said. “Women who, even in their prime, weren’t considered strong enough to be a concern to the Queens who whored for Dorothea SaDiablo. And we have Queens who are still little girls, barely old enough to begin training in basic Craft. And we have a handful who are adolescents.”

  “One being a fifteen-year-old who’s turning into such a ripe bitch she may not live long enough to be sixteen,” Archerr said bitterly.

  “We need a Queen who knows how to be a Queen,” Theran said. “We need a Queen who could rule Dena Nehele in the same tradition as the Gray Lady.”

  “You won’t find one of those within our own borders,” Spere said. “Don’t you think we’ve all been looking? And if you look beyond our borders to find a Queen mature enough to rule, the males in that Territory aren’t going to give up anyone good. And since I live in a village along the western border, I can tell you the Territories west of us aren’t doing any better.”

  “I know,” Theran replied.

  “Then where are we supposed to find a Queen?” Archerr asked.

  “In Kaeleer.”

  Silence. Not even embarrassed coughs or shuffling feet.

  “There’s no way into Kaeleer except through the service fairs,” Shaddo said. “At least, no other way to get into the Shadow Realm and stay alive long enough to state your business.”

  “Yes, there is,” Theran said, grateful that he and Talon had considered this possibility. “Someone goes to the Black Mountain.”

  Ninety-eight men stared at him.

  “And does what?” Archerr asked quietly.