Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion)

by James A. West

  Rathe knew questioning the strangers was exactly what they should do, but hearing it spoken aloud, envisioning the bloody outcome of such a confrontation, gave him pause.

  “For now, just keep an eye on them.”

  Loro looked disappointed. “Are you sure?”

  “As much as I can be,” Rathe said, not sure of anything at the moment, especially why he resisted what instinct told him he must do.

  “Good enough,” Loro said, rattling a cup of bone dice at the insistence of his opponents. They were a surly lot, clad in rank, untanned furs, but with Master Tyron about, they minded their manners.

  Rathe left them to their game.

  At the top of the stairs, he came face to face with the vanishing fellow. Even as Rathe’s hand tightened on the hilt of his sword, the man caught his arm and leaned in close.

  “I’m Edrik, a vizien priest of the Munam A’Dett Order. You must come with me.”

  Putting on an apologetic smile, Rathe extracted himself from the man’s grasp. “I’m afraid I’ll have to disappoint you.”

  Unbelievably, the fool drew a dagger. Its blade was clean and bright, with golden crossguards fashioned after a winged serpent.

  Rathe set his feet. “Unless you intend to clean my nails, you’d best put that pretty blade away.”

  “You must come with me,” Edrik insisted. Sweat beaded on his brow and upper lip. That didn’t settle Rathe’s mind a whit. The most dangerous men he had ever faced were the nervous ones. They tended to do stupid things, heedless of their own safety.

  “Why must I come with you?” Rathe asked, his tone reasonable, as if he might consent.

  The dagger lowered a bit. The man licked his lips. “You’re known as the … the Scorpion, yes?”

  Rathe schooled his face to calm, but his blood went to ice. It seemed this fellow was not a merchant, adventurer, or even a priest, but rather a bounty hunter. “You’re mistaken, friend. I’m only a traveler seeking to return to warmer lands before my balls freeze solid.”

  Edrik gawped at him with sheeplike stupidity. “But … you must be the one I seek. The Oracle described you, foretold where you would be. Please, you must come with me.” He cut off, licked his lips. “If you do not, many thousands will perish. You are the hope of Targas.”

  That set Rathe back a step, but he recovered quickly. “I do not know this Scorpion, but I ceased being the hope of anyone or anything some time ago. I suggest you tell your fellows, and this Oracle, that you should save yourselves, and leave me be.”

  A stubborn look crossed the man’s face. “You will come with us.”

  Rathe shrugged. “Since you put it that way….”

  The instant Edrik’s face relaxed, Rathe caught his wrist and bore down with all the strength of a swordsman who had spent most of his life swinging killing steel. With a strangled whimper, Edrik’s fingers sprang open, and the dagger popped free. Rathe plucked the weapon out of the air, twirled it against his palm, and presented the hilt to the priest.

  Still holding the fool’s wrist, Rathe said, “Take this knowing I could’ve buried it in your heart. As it happens, I’m feeling benevolent today—now there’s a priestly term, yes?” The man nodded, hesitantly reached for the dagger, but Rathe drew it back. “Come at me again, and you’ll learn that all the gold in the world cannot buy back your life.”

  The man stared in confusion. “The Munam a’Dett has no need of gold. We only seek your help.”

  Rathe decided then that the man truly was a priest, and was glad he had decided not to kill him. Helping Edrik, though, was out of the question. “Take yourself and your friends out of Iceford, and go back to Targas, or wherever it is you really came from. What you seek is not worth the price you’ll pay to have it.”

  Rathe dropped the dagger and shoved Edrik aside, every muscle tensed to strike, every sense alert for a sign that the man had ignored his advice, and was coming after him.

  Before he reached the door to his room, he heard clattering footsteps descending the stairs. Some fools can learn, he considered, and breathed easier for the first time in days. He had been jumping at shadows and looking for trouble that, save for Edrik and his band of idiots, had refused to show itself. Perhaps he really had escaped King Nabar’s bounty hunters and, too, the Shadowman.

  He reached for his door, but found it standing open a crack. Neither he nor Nesaea ever left without closing it. His sword flashed out, all his good thoughts blowing away like ashes. Rathe slammed open the door and dropped into a guarded crouch, sword poised.

  Instead of an intruder, he found Nesaea sitting on a cushioned chair, her legs crossed. She was facing partly away from him, peering into a small mirror hanging on the wall. She held a hairbrush frozen in mid-stroke through her fall of dark waves. She was also completely naked.

  “Gods, woman,” he growled, shutting the door behind him. Without taking his eyes off her, he ran the bolt home. “I could’ve been anyone bursting in here.”

  She finished pulling the brush through her hair, and then placed it on a low dresser. “Not unless that ‘anyone’ could mimic your footsteps,” she said, voice husky.

  He thought to tell her about the foolish young priest, but when she stood up, his mouth became too dry for words. Before she could take a step toward him, he set his sword aside and went to her.

  Chapter 6

  Caught in a pleasant and satisfied reverie, Rathe slowly ran his hands along the smooth length of Nesaea’s legs, one settled on either side of his waist. His caress continued over the narrow flare of her hips. Her breasts seemed to float before his eyes. He reached out, cupping them in his palms. At his light touch, she rocked gently, a wicked smile playing over her lips. A ripple worked its way from his belly to his loins, and he bit back a groan.

  She abruptly sat up straight and pushed her hair back over her shoulders, her smile widening. “We’ve only just finished, and you’re ready again?”

  Looking into her violet eyes, he matched her grin. “You give me little choice.”

  “You must forgive me,” she said playfully, her breath coming quicker, her rocking more insistent.

  “Of course,” he said, pulling her down for a lingering kiss that gave rise to many more.

  Sometime later, they were both lying crosswise on the bed, Rathe on his back, and Nesaea on her side with one leg thrown over both of his.

  “I could get used to all this lolling about,” he said.

  “Is that what you call this?” Nesaea asked, running her fingertip around one of his nipples.

  Laughing, he caught her hand and kissed the palm. “Gods, woman, do you ever stop?”

  “I was merely getting ready for dinner, when you barged in and threw yourself at me.”

  “I’d say you laid a trap for me … unless most women are given to sitting naked in cold bedchambers while brushing their hair?”

  She laughed.

  “So you did lay a trap for me?”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “As far as ambushes go, yours was not half bad.”

  “I deserve more praise than that,” she said, her fingertip now tracing a scar angling across his chest.

  He tried to remember how he had gotten it, but each time he reached into his mind to pluck out a particular battle or face, they all converged on one another.

  “So much hurt for one so young,” she said distantly.

  He turned his head, eyes wandering over her own marks of past pains. Before she had founded the Maidens of the Lyre, Nesaea had been sold into slavery. She had told him very little of the abuses she suffered as a pleasure slave in Giliron, but he knew those wounds were deeper than any made by a sword. “Seems I’m not alone.” He hesitated, then asked, “Does it ever end?”

  She met his eyes. “The pain?”

  Rathe looked back to the ceiling. “Not just pain … but all that causes it.” After the silence stretched long, he began to fear what she might say, so he abruptly changed the subject.

  “It seems w
e’ll not be sailing for a few days,” he said, and told of Captain Ostre’s problems with the Lamprey. Then, still trying to keep from going back to his vague, yet unsettling question, he said, “Stiny and the others haven’t seen anyone suspicious around the village, so I paid his final wages and told him to stop looking.”

  “Perhaps that’s for best,” she said. Like Loro, Nesaea was of the mind that after Rathe had bested the Shadowman at Ravenhold, he had fled.

  “I think so, too.” He didn’t tell her that Stiny had offered to find him an assassin.

  Nesaea propped herself up on one elbow and peered intently at him. “You never let me answer you.”

  “I’m not sure what I was asking, so maybe you shouldn’t.”

  “I want to.”

  “Very well,” he sighed, but she remained silent for a time.

  “Every day begins a new round of battles,” she said at last. “Not all of them are bloody or painful, but they are battles nonetheless.”

  He could agree with that, but the idea of such endless struggle wearied him. “What if we choose not to fight?”

  “Some folk can decide to flee their troubles, but your troubles cannot be outpaced.”

  “Because of the Black Breath,” Rathe said. He had never believed in demons harboring in folk, until he had seen the Khenasith with his own eyes.

  “Once the demonic spirit of the Khenasith has chosen its quarry,” Nesaea said, “it feeds off the misery inflicted upon its prey.”

  Rathe shuddered at the memory of that creature of smoke, with its horned head covered by four ghoulish faces. He saw again how it had ripped free of the woman who had briefly taken it from him in a bid to tap the demon’s power for her own ends. Yiri, Horge’s sister, had been little more than a waif, but she had also been a born witch. The powers she sought to hold had ultimately destroyed her. Afterward, the demon had returned to Rathe, making his soul its home.

  “I turned my back on a fight today, if not a true battle,” he said, frightened and exhilarated at the same time. Nesaea gazed silently at him, and he added, “Just before I came to you, I met a man, Edrik, some priest or other. He wanted me to come with him. When I told him no, he drew a dagger, and I took it away. I itched to plant that blade in his heart…. Instead, I let him go. I let him live.”

  She touched his face, her fingers cool and soft. “It’s good that you denied the Khenasith its desires, but the demon won’t always allow you to do so.”

  “I know,” Rathe said just above a whisper, imagining he could feel the demon’s ire building in his heart.

  “I have something for you,” Nesaea said at length.

  “A gift?” Rathe asked, surprised.

  “Yes … but after what you told me, I’m not sure I want to give it.”

  He laughed wryly. “There’s nothing you could give me that I would not want.”

  “Very well.” She bounded off the bed and padded lightly to the wardrobe shoved against one wall.

  He watched the sway of her hips. She cannot help but dance wherever she goes, my goddess of snow and silver. He tried to look away when she opened the doors and bent to root about on the lower shelf, but his eyes had a will of their own.

  “Here it is!” she announced, spinning with a scabbarded sword held in her hands. He guessed her delighted expression had more to do with catching him looking at her, than with the weapon she held. Trapped me again. He smiled, because her traps were hardly traps at all.

  As she came back, Rathe sat up, curious.

  “I had it forged for you,” she said, holding out the sword. “Captain Ostre might count it bad luck that we’ve stayed in Iceford this long, but for me it’s been a blessing.”

  The scabbard was of tooled black leather covered in intricate silver filigree. He gripped the leather-wrapped hilt above a silver crossguard fashioned into a pair of scorpions locked claw-to-claw. With a soft whisper of steel sliding over leather, he drew the burnished blade. The edge was free of nicks and deadly bright, and an etched chain of scorpions marched along the length of the fuller. The balance of the weapon was perfect. The sword was masterwork, making his previous weapons seem like crude utensils. It was also of virgin, unblooded steel. He wondered how long it would remain so.

  “I can never repay such a gift.”

  “I can think of a few ways you can try,” Nesaea said, joining him on the bed.

  Rathe hid his smile. It seemed that she had fallen into his trap.

  Chapter 7

  Cloaked by a heaving and unnatural darkness, Algar’s lips twisted as the sounds of lovemaking began again, thrusting through the wooden door and into his ear like a cold dagger. His thin lips contracted in disgust. Do they ever stop?

  He had trailed Rathe for years, ever waiting for the right moment to strike. As such, he knew well the man’s penchant for tumbling any woman foolish enough to have him. Nesaea, Rathe’s current wench, was mistress of an entire troupe of likeminded sluts who concealed their true purpose behind singing and dancing. She apparently didn’t mind that the once esteemed Rathe Lahkurin had fallen so low as to be considered a common brigand in his homelands.

  But then whores were whores, and cared only for the coin they earned in pleasuring men. This Algar knew all too well, having suckled milk from the teat of a common slattern—his mother.

  Kill ‘im, Algar, her warbling, wine-soaked voice crooned in his mind. Stray thoughts never failed to summon his dear dead mother. Carve ‘is heart an’ have yer revenge, boy. Slaughter him and the whore he’s plowin’! Do it now!

  Algar gripped the hilt of his sword. The shadows around him boiled and pulsed, provoked by his hatred for both his mother and Rathe.

  Do it, Algar!

  Teeth grinding, he drew the blade an inch from the scabbard. He sucked in a breath and prepared to pass through the wooden door as easily as a ghost. Such was the gift of the dark magic nested within his flesh.

  No more waitin’, boy!

  Algar envisioned himself materializing in his enemy’s room from a cloud of shadow. He saw Rathe and Nesaea’s gasps of shock when they recognized him, the one they had named the Shadowman.

  Now, boy!

  A whine of tortured ecstasy squeezed from his throat, as he pictured Rathe and Nesaea’s astonishment become agony when he impaled them upon the length of his blade. Both at the same time! Two with one deadly thrust! Rathe and his filthy slut!

  Do it, boy!

  Algar saw them die in his mind, their corpses bound together by blood, steel, and the issue of their loins.

  Now! his mother howled.

  The spent breath burning in Algar’s chest burst out of him, cold now, foul, acrid. I cannot! He slammed his sword home. The shadows grew still as frozen smoke. Rathe will die, Algar promised the unrelenting harpy that had birthed him into such a detestable world, as will his whore … in time. But not yet. No, no, not yet.

  When will you act, you pissin’ wretch? asked his mother. Though she was long dead, Algar hated her as much as he ever had, maybe more, as her spirit was with him more now than she had ever been in life.

  Soon, he answered.

  Soon? How soon? How soon afore you stop shittin’ down yer leg whenever tha’ black-hearted monk says you must, boy? How soon afore you stand on yer own, and do wha’s yours by right to do?

  Algar tensed at the mention of his current accomplice. Jathen doesn’t command me.

  Well then, you mus’ be affrighted, boy. Affrighted the Scorpion’ll beat you a third time … and mayhap that’d be for the best.

  Algar ignored her last slight. First Rathe must know who will kill him and why … the Scorpion must acknowledge who is the better of us … the Champion of Cerrikoth must admit that he took for himself what was mine! And when he does, I’ll make him watch as I slaughter his whore, so that he feels the loss I felt at his treachery.

  You been makin’ the same promise for years, Algar. Methinks fear stays yer hand. As the boy was, so now is the man—a snivelin’ coward. Tha’s why y
ou failed to cleave the Scorpion’s stinger not once, but twice, and tha’s why you stand here shakin’ now.

  No.

  No?

  No! Algar screamed in his mind. He cheated me of my honor and the king’s blessing! He took everything from me!

  Even now, years after their first meeting—a meeting Rathe no doubt didn’t recall—and long before hounding him over the Gyntors and crossing blades with him in the halls of Ravenhold, Algar could still hear the roaring jubilance of the crowd, could still feel the shame of defeat while lying in the shadow of the man who’d humiliated him. Rathe Lahkurin, with his upraised sword glittering in the summer sun, turning slowly before the King of Cerrikoth and the folk of Onareth. He was only boy then, as was I. The sharpest memory of that day was the cocky victor’s smile that had spread across Rathe’s lips when he leaned over Algar, hand outstretched like a father reaching to lift his fallen child.

  Taking my glory was not enough! Algar seethed. No, the bastard had to twist the dagger of disgrace by shaming me in front of his legions of admirers … in front of the king … in front of the entire realm … even in front of you, mother!

  Hard, that’d be, his mother snickered, as I was naught but bones an’ dust by then. You mus’ remember that, don’t you, m’sweet boy—

  Leave me!

  For a wonder, she did go, though he sensed her mirth waiting to bubble to the surface. Most times, she refused to leave him in peace, choosing instead to squat in the back of his mind like some humpbacked fiend, endlessly prodding him, endlessly belittling him. He hated her, wanted to kill her again, a thousand more times and in a thousand different ways—

  Behind the door, Nesaea let out a soft cry of pleasure. Guts churning, Algar edged back, his face knotted like a fist.

  As a child in various flesh-houses of Onareth, Algar had had no choice but to listen to his mother’s false cries as strangers labored between her legs. Sometimes after those men spilled their seed, they would then defile him. A shiver of remembered pain and humiliation gripped Algar’s lean frame, for that was not the entire truth. Rather, his mother had coaxed a few more coppers from the purses of those men by offering up her son to use as they wished.