Where had she come from, this warrior queen of Flumeer? Her father had been king before her, but he had not shown any inclination towards war—had overseen years of peace for Flumeer, in fact. Little was known of her mother, only that she had succumbed to a wasting fever when Amina was yet a child at the breast.
Somehow, the pair had born a conqueror.
Light bathed Erika’s face as the queen reached out with the gauntlet and pressed a finger to Erika’s chest.
“Why do you still fight, little Archivist?” Amina whispered. “You know you cannot resist. Eventually, you will give me what I want, you must know this. So why suffer? Why put yourself through this agony? In the end, the result will be the same.”
Fire lit in Erika’s belly at the queen’s words, at her arrogance, to think that Erika could not stand against her, that she would surrender so meekly. Staring into the queen’s eyes, she found a spark of courage and bared her teeth.
“Because I am a princess of Calafe,” she snarled, “because I will never surrender to the murderer of my people.”
“Calafe?” The queen seemed surprised by that as she rose. “Since when? Did your people not chase you from your lands, steal the rightful crown from your head? Did you not come to me yourself and kneel as a citizen of Flumeer, swear yourself to my cause as Archivist?”
“That was before I knew the truth,” Erika snarled. “Before your assassin revealed himself, before he told me about my father.”
“Ah…” the queen sighed. “So Yasin found you in the end. I take it he is dead? A shame, men of his quality are difficult to find. Though he always did have a loose tongue.”
“He killed my father on your orders!” Erika screamed, her rage coming alight at the queen’s casual tone.
“A means to an end, my dear,” the queen dismissed Erika’s anger with a flick of her hand. Turning away, she clasped her arms behind her back. “While other leaders have fought and squabbled amongst themselves, I alone knew of the danger that was to come.” She spun suddenly, golden eyes seemingly aglow in the dim light beneath the ship. “Tell me, Archivist, what did you discover in those mountains? What did you learn of their kind, of the Anahera?”
Erika’s retort caught in her throat at the queen’s words. “How…how do you know that name?” she whispered.
That was a name known only to the Anahera themselves. Surely Cara had not told her? No…looking into the queen’s eyes, at the anger simmering those golden irises, Erika sensed there was more to this woman than she had realised.
“They were the ones who betrayed us, Archivist,” the queen murmured, crouching before Erika. “The Gods we have worshiped, who my father so loved—it was they who cast down humanity, who schemed to destroy our ancient ancestors,” she paused, eying Erika a long moment, before nodding. “Yes, I can see it in your eyes, you found them, discovered the truth.”
“How can you know?” Erika whispered, barely able to manage the words. The queen’s words…they spoke a truth Erika had only learned from the Old One when she had invaded the city of the Anahera. How could Amina possibly…
“I have always known,” the queen murmured, looking away. “My father…discovered the truth. He knew they would come one day, that humanity’s growing power would threaten them, and they would seek to destroy us again. He raised me to prepare for that threat, for the coming of the false Gods.” She smiled bitterly. “When I heard your Goddess had revealed herself above the waters of the Illmoor, I knew that day was upon us. Alas, if you live, it means Yasin and his assassins failed. Time is short, Archivist. I will need every power at my disposal to defeat them. Come.”
The last word was an order and Erika flinched, her beleaguered mind unable to process the command. How did the queen know all this? Cara would not have told her such secrets, no matter the pain Amina gifted with the gauntlet. Only the Anahera and the Old One had known the truth.
“Come,” the queen said again, and this time Erika managed to stagger to her feet.
The queen went first up the stairs. When she disappeared into the light above, Erika might have slunk back to her shelter, might have tried to hide again in her corner, but then the queen would only send her soldiers to drag Erika out. And besides, she had a yearning to see the world again, to discover what had become of Gemaho and its people, now Amina had conquered them.
Emerging onto the deck, Erika squinted against the brilliance of the day. The sun shone high overhead, announcing the noon meal—not that Erika would be offered anything. Her head swam as she looked around, finding massive cliffs stretching above the river on which they sailed.
Erika recognised their surroundings immediately—there was only one place like it in all the kingdoms of humanity. They were sailing down the Illmoor through the pass that connected Gemaho and Flumeer.
“Come and look upon the fate of those who defy me, Archivist,” the queen called to her from the bow.
Erika swallowed at the power in the woman’s voice. Her back was turned and the crew on the ship did not seem to be paying Erika much attention. She might have fled to the railings and hurled herself into the racing waters. But Erika was weak in mind and body, and instead she found herself staggering across to where the queen waited, her spirit crushed, defeated.
Amina gestured to the shore as Erika joined her. A dozen ships sailed around them, each flying the scarlet sails of Flumeer, while a hundred yards away, an army shadowed the fleet on the banks of the Illmoor. They too bore flags of Flumeeren red, the conquering army returning to its homeland. Their numbers hardly seemed diminished from the force that had stood outside the Illmoor Fortress and demanded King Nguyen surrender. She wondered what had become of the man, how he had been defeated so quickly.
Then the ship sailed around a curve in the gorge, and Erika looked upon the truth.
Ahead lay the Illmoor Fortress itself, whose walls had defended the lands of the Gemaho. For generations, those walls had defended the kingdom against Tangatan and human foes alike. No foe had ever breached their granite expanse.
Now the fortress lay in pieces, great holes torn through the stone of its walls, as though a giant had swung his club to break them. Blocks the size of a small house lay scattered around each breach, and part of the citadel had been broken too, crumbling before some vast power. Black ash scorched the stone blocks, suggesting some fiery explosion had been behind the fortress’s fall.
“Your Archivists guild finally proved itself useful,” the queen announced. “After your departure, I had my guard tear their school apart in search of any secrets you might have hidden from me. Turns out they had secrets of their own. Black powder. Seems you used it for minor excavations, but my engineers saw other possibilities. The Gemaho never knew what struck them.”
A shiver ran down Erika’s spine at the destruction the queen had wrought. If the Illmoor Fortress could have fallen so easily…
“You see now, Archivist?” the queen’s words echoed Erika’s thoughts. “You see the truth? There is no one left to save you, no one left to stand against me. Nguyen, your father, they stood in my way. Now they are dead. Whatever it takes, I will unite the kingdoms beneath me against the Anahera. There is no reason left now for you to resist, nothing left for you at all, but surrender.”
Looking upon the ruin, Erika knew it to be true. She closed her eyes, her body trembling. She imagined returning to the stale air of the hull, to the torture and pain, to the unending agony without even a hint of hope. No one would come for her. Nguyen was gone, his kingdom fallen, the Gods made slaves to the enemies of humanity. Her future held only agony, and death.
But the queen was wrong. There was still one person left that Erika cared about, one good deed she might yet fulfil.
“Okay,” she croaked, eyes still closed, unable to meet the queen’s gaze. “I’ll give it to you. But first, I must see Cara.”
3
The Sovereign
“Well, I can’t say the past few weeks went quite as I imagined when I set out
from Gemaho,” Nguyen said, speaking to those gathered in the room.
Holding a glass of whiskey in one hand, the other tucked behind his back, there was regal manner to the way the king paced the room while Lukys and Sophia sat together on a velvet sofa. Lukys tried to hold himself a little straighter to mimic the king’s posture, but it was only a moment before he slumped back into the soft cushions. It was no use—Nguyen had trained all his life in the ways of royalty. Lukys couldn’t hope to achieve the same poise in the span of a few days.
“You mean when you fled from Gemaho, right?” Travis interjected. Standing to attention at the door, he seemed to take his Sovereigns’ silence as an opportunity to speak himself.
A scowl crossed Nguyen’s face as he glanced at the newly made royal guard. “It’s customary for guards to keep their silence in a gathering of monarchs,” he said with a scowl.
“It’s also customary for a king to have a kingdom,” Travis shot back, face blank.
For a second, Lukys thought the king might explode at his friend’s impudence. The moment stretched out as Nguyen stared at the guard, teeth bared. Then suddenly the man let out an explosive ha! Waving a hand, he turned his back on the gathering and continued his pacing.
“Might be your man is right, Lukys,” he said, glancing at their sofa. “Regardless of how we came to our current circumstances, we have what we wanted: Gemaho and Perfugia united.”
“It won’t be enough,” Sophia spoke up.
Lukys looked at her sharply, his consciousness already extended, sensing the familiar fear she had carried since that day in New Nihelm when Maya had slain her Matriarch. There was more to Sophia’s fear now though, augmented by the knowledge they had acquired, though they had still only glimpsed a fraction. The rest lay buried, like the iceberg concealed beneath the waters. But what they had uncovered so far of the Old Ones filled Lukys with terror.
Sophia did not reply to his silent enquiry. Instead, she reached for the table beside their sofa. Taking up her glass of rum, she raised it in silent salute, then down it in one go. Lukys raised an eyebrow, even as he sensed ripples of the alcohol’s burning from his partner. She seemed to have developed an appreciation for Nguyen’s various liquors over the last week, though Lukys understood from the Sovereign memories that a Tangata’s sense of taste and smell were far more sensitive than humans.
Letting out a sigh, he took a measured sip from his own glass. Unlike Sophia, he did not have the metabolism of a Tangata, though…it might have been his imagination, but his senses did seem augmented now, as though the imbuement of all those lifetimes had passed something else onto him. He held the rum in his mouth, savouring the caramel tones overlaid by wood smoke. Memories stirred at the taste, an image stirring in his mind, of shakes built of wood clinging to cliffs, a hundred at most, a broad harbour stretching out beyond.
Ashura, as it has been long ago.
Lukys shivered. Nguyen claimed to have uncovered the cask in the Sovereigns’ private cellar, a vintage over a century old. The image in his mind suggested it was even older than that, stretching back to a time not long after their ancestors had first arrived on the island.
The king did not return Sophia’s salute, only stared at the Tangatan Sovereign, as though he were still trying to communicate in the telepathic manner of a Melder. Finally he shook his head and crossed to his own chair. A servant stepped forward to fill his glass from the decanter as he sank into the soft leather.
“What would you propose, My Lady?” he murmured.
“I do…not know,” Sophia replied, her eyes drifting to the open window that overlooked the harbour. Outside, in place of the shacks Lukys had seen, buildings of stone stretched across the cliffs. “Only that we must stop Maya, before…” she trailed off, and Lukys shuddered as fresh images flickered through their minds, of a land overrun, of fields, forests, an ocean aflame.
The king sighed. “How many Tangata will this Old One bring against us?”
“Maya will have thousands from New Nihelm,” Sophia replied, “but…others have been moving north to occupy Calafe. My people once had a bond with that place, with its people, in centuries long forgotten...” She shook her head at the distraction, at the memories rising from the depths of their minds, struggling to restore her train of thought. “If she gathers more on her way north, they could number ten thousand by the time she reaches the Illmoor.”
Her words sent a chill down Lukys’s spine. “Even amongst the younger generations, it would take thirty thousand human soldiers to match that force.” The younger the generation of Tangata, the more their lines were mixed with humanity. Sophia was of the fifth generation, the others they had brought with them mostly sixth. “Perfugia has only three thousand regular soldiers,” he finished finally.
“And my fleet six thousand,” Nguyen added grimly. “What of your citizens though? If we could recruit—”
“No,” Lukys cut him off, turning hard eyes on the king. “I will send no more untrained innocents to be slaughtered in a foreign kingdom.”
The king scowled. “You would prefer them to be slaughtered in their houses when the Tangata come?” he snapped.
“I would prefer them not to be slaughtered at all,” Lukys replied.
He thought the king might dig in his heels, but instead Nguyen waved a hand. “Fine,” he said curtly. “Then what do you propose? A gorilla campaign? We know the Tangata cannot easily replenish their number. If we retreat into the mountains and forests, avoid a pitched battle, we could whittle them down over a few years. It will cost Flumeer everything, of course. Turn the entire kingdom into a battleground, but I am prepared to play that game.”
Lukys’s skin crawled at the king’s words, at the thought of condemning an entire kingdom to years of open warfare, to armies rampaging across their lands, resisted only by small freedom forces, striking the enemy where they could. He could never countenance such an option, even for the warlike Flumeerens. But there was another reason the king’s strategy would not work, one that meant the war must end, and end quickly.
“No,” he replied softly, his tone so low that all eyes in the room turned to him. “We cannot afford to delay.”
The king raised an eyebrow, but when the said nothing Lukys swallowed and went on.
“It’s different with this creature, with the Old Ones,” he said, digging into those ancient memories.
The Sovereigns had only been created on their arrival in Perfugia, but even before then, the ancestors of the Tangata had passed knowledge between their generations.
“Maya, the Old Ones, they’re fertile, virulent. In ancient days, they would gestate for a matter of months before giving birth to litters of half a dozen or more. Those children would grow to adolescence within two years, but even before that they could be dangerous. If you think one Old One is terrifying, wait a few years, and there will be dozens.”
Lukys trailed off. A silence had fallen, heavy with the weight of his words, with the spectre of the danger that haunted them.
“Not even the strongest of the Tangata could stand against Maya’s power. Give her time, and she will give birth to an army of her own kind, superior in every way to our soldiers, and the Tangata,” he paused, those other memories stirring in the back of his mind. “Maybe superior even to the Gods.”
There was more there, a flickering in the back of his mind, a memory of Cara soaring above, and others, winged figures in the sky, soaring through mountain peaks…
…then it was gone, slipping beneath the surface of a hundred others. He looked around, meeting the eyes of his friends, of the king, and let himself fall silent. Slumping into the sofa beside Sophia, he waited for someone to speak, to offer a plan, some semblance of hope. That had been his task for so long now, first as they marched south of the Illmoor on the Archivist’s mad quest, then again on their desperate flight from New Nihelm, on the ship amidst the storm, even here in Ashura, when they had faced the condemnation of the old Sovereigns.
But now�
�this time Lukys couldn’t see where to begin. If she chose it, Maya could remain at the seat of her power, safe in New Nihelm, far from any danger humanity might pose to her. Their only chance was the rage of Old Ones, that her hatred for humanity would drive her to attack, to place herself at risk.
“You’re right,” Nguyen said finally, his voice reassuringly calm, though Lukys didn’t know how anyone could keep their cool when faced with such an existential threat. “We cannot let this Maya go to ground. She must be destroyed…even if it means going through ten thousand Tangata to get to her.”
Lukys nodded, but before he could ask what the king planned, a fresh wave of emotion struck him, a surging, bubbling, rippling red, of anger, of rage. He looked sharply to Sophia, shocked at the abrupt change in her state of mind, though…it came not just from her, but others in the room, from the blue-garbed guards, from her brethren Tangata.
Sophia had grown so pale Lukys feared she might lose herself, might surrender to the uncontrollable rage of the Tangata. Silently he reached for her, but she jerked away and swung on him, eyes wide, shining.
“You’re talking about my people,” she said, and hearing her voice break, Lukys knew suddenly the grief that lurked beneath her rage. “About slaughtering thousands of innocents. How can you be so casual, so calm, as though they were no more than numbers on a piece of your paper.”
“They are the enemy now, My Lady,” Nguyen replied softly, leaning forward in his chair. “They have chosen their side.”
“They have chosen nothing,” Sophia grated. “Maya controls them, just as she would have controlled me, or any of my sisters and brothers in this room, had she turned her mind against us.” She shook her head, and Lukys’s heart twisted as a tear streaked her cheek. “You don’t understand, can’t understand…”
Dreams of Fury: Descendants of the Fall Book IV Page 3
