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

by James A. West

  Sneaking footsteps coming up the stairs dragged a startled hiss through Algar’s teeth. Still cloaked within shadows, he wheeled in absolute silence and merged with the natural shadows farther down the hallway.

  He squatted on his heels, the fingers of one hand parting the collar of his tunic to touch the source of his power, a cloudy gray gemstone the size of his fist, sunk deep into the raw meat and knitted to the fractured bones of his chest. A necromancer living amongst the highest crags of the Mountains of Arakas had placed it there at great cost, but Algar had never considered the price anything less than a bargain.

  Marking the approaching footsteps, he muttered arcane words he had engraved upon his heart and mind. The hue of the Spirit Stone changed to charcoal shot through with veins of red and gold. It grew warm within his breast, then hot, then blistering. He felt himself changing, becoming less than flesh and blood, less even than air.

  A scream of torment clogged the back of his throat as the searing fires spread, filling him up until he thought he must soon burst into flame. When the agony had stretched him to the limits of endurance, the stone went as cold and gray as a chunk of dirty ice. He let out a panting gasp and lifted his head.

  The details of the hallway remained unchanged, but all was darker to his eyes, as if a thunderhead had blotted out the light of day.

  And he was no longer alone.

  Hidden as he was between two worlds, he saw spirits flitting through the walls, floor, and ceiling. The gossamer figures, their distorted features smudgy and smoke-gray, ignored him as always. In this place between life and death, what the necromancer had named the Zanar-Sariit, Algar was not truly dead, nor was he truly alive, yet he could pass through the worlds of each, as if he were both. The necromancer had warned him that the Zanar-Sariit was a dangerous place to visit often, unless you fancied losing your soul. Yet Algar had never felt threatened here. If anything, the between realm was the only place he had ever know true peace.

  Invisible and untouchable to the dead and to the living alike, Algar watched a pair of shave-headed men in thick brown cloaks creep up the stairs, unaware of the roving spirits passing through them.

  Algar instantly recognized the fellow who had named himself Edrik. He had been waiting for Rathe when Algar came out of the Zanar-Sariit earlier. Edrik had babbled some nonsense tale about needing help. When Rathe denied him, the fool had drawn a dagger. Rathe had easily disarmed the youth. If Edrik was a bounty hunter, Algar judged that no man had ever been more ill-suited to the task. Instead of cutting Edrik’s throat, Rathe had let him go. During his years of hunting the man, Algar had seen his rival slaughter many foes without hesitation. He supposed mercy, just this once, had stayed the Scorpion’s sting.

  Mercy is for fools, Algar thought, watching Edrik fish a small golden flask out of an inner pocket of his cloak, pull the stopper, and take a sip. Grimacing, he handed the flask to the hulking man beside him. Of the pair, the second looked a man suited for battle. But when he drank from the ornate flask, he grabbed his belly and bent double, gagging like a boy taking his first taste of wine.

  Algar’s stifled chuckle died when the two men began to grow dim, insubstantial. Soon, they had vanished entirely. For a moment, Algar feared they would emerge within his refuge, but they never did. They were simply gone.

  After a few anxious moments, his fear abated, replaced by covetous admiration. Now that’s a trick worth having! But where did they get off to?

  His eyes narrowed when a linty ball of dust skittered down the hall, as if disturbed by an errant breath of air. What’s this? Before the thought was complete, something unseen squashed the fluff against the wooden floor. Algar blinked in amazement. The two men hadn’t gone anywhere, but had become transparent. Unlike him, it seemed they had no need to lurk within shadows. What other tricks do they have?

  “You’re sure this is the room, Edrik?” a gruff voice whispered.

  “I’m no fool, Danlin.”

  “Never said you were, but mistakes happen.”

  “Not this time,” said Edrik.

  Algar marked their progress by their voices and the way the grit on the floor shifted at their passage. They halted at Rathe and Nesaea’s door. If he acted swiftly, Algar knew he could kill them and take their potion for himself. Yet if he did that, doubtless the bustle would alert Rathe. Also, in killing the two, he would rob himself of finding out where the potion had come from, and how to acquire more.

  “We should kick in the door and take him,” Danlin said.

  Having survived his first encounter with Rathe, it seemed Edrik was more cautious. “I’d rather persuade him to join our cause. If we hold him against his will, he’s not likely to help us. We must convince him.”

  “You tried that already. As I recall, you’re lucky he didn’t kill you.”

  “I’ve no fear of death at his hands,” Edrik said, his confidence sounding forced.

  A pause. “A foretelling from the Oracle?”

  “As befitting his station, Quidan Salris never reveals all of the Oracle’s tellings to Essan Thaeson, but our master was able to glean enough for us to find Rathe. More than that, I looked into Rathe’s eyes, and it was not my death I saw.”

  “Well,” Danlin said dubiously, “now that we’ve found him, and he’s refused you once already, how do you plan to ‘persuade’ him to come to Targas?”

  Another pause.

  Algar waited, scarcely breathing.

  The thin layer of dirt outside Rathe and Nesaea’s door scuffed about. Behind the door came soft, breathless laughter.

  “Can you hear them?” Edrik asked.

  “I’d rather not,” Danlin said. “But, yes.”

  “Have you seen the way they look at each other?”

  “I have, but I cannot see how that helps us.”

  “Love, Danlin, is a potent tool.”

  A gasp. “You don’t mean to…?”

  “I’ll do whatever it takes, Danlin. We all must. This man, the Scorpion, has given us no other choice.”

  “I suppose.”

  “Come, Danlin, we must prepare.”

  Algar waited until the sounds of stealthy feet moved off, then touched the cool gray stone buried in his chest. With a thought, he sank through the floor, shadows dancing across his vision, until he was standing in a dank storeroom below the inn’s lowest basement. He had no worry of anyone finding him. By the age of the masonry blocking what had been a doorway, and by the dusty bones clad in a man’s rotted clothing in one corner, he guessed murder had been done here, and the storeroom then sealed off for several lifetimes.

  Still fingering the Spirit Stone, Algar murmured a different phrase than the one that had brought him into the Zanar-Sariit. The stone went cold and colder, freezing his bowels, stiffening his limbs. Gradually, he began to feel the cracked floor tiles under his boots, the familiar heaviness of his body. The iciness fled, leaving him shivering but otherwise unharmed. With his return to the world of his birth, the darkness of the storeroom dropped over him.

  Reaching into a pouch at his belt, he withdrew flint and steel, then moved by touch to a fat candle tucked into a small nook in the wall. After a few tries, he sparked the candle wick alight, then collected a coarsely woven sack off a stone shelf. He sat down next to the bones, and propped his elbow on the dusty skull. By the dead man’s gap-toothed grin, he didn’t mind.

  Algar swung the leather sack before his eyes. The seeing glass hidden inside was an orb the size of his fist, but it was not made of glass, at least none like he had ever seen. I never should have returned to Skalos, Algar thought. And I never should have taken the glass, or Jathen’s gold.

  But he had returned to the mountain citadel governed by the brothers of the Way of Knowing, and he had taken the warrior monk’s tainted gifts. While the Spirit Stone granted him the ability to become the finest thief or assassin the world had ever known, he despised those who practiced such illicit and disreputable trades. He was a man above reproach, a man of honor.
As such, he needed honest gold to replace that which he had frittered away while chasing Rathe from one kingdom to the next, from Onareth to Fortress Hilan, and finally across the Gyntor Mountains to Ravenhold. To earn gold in a way he deemed respectable, he’d had no choice but to form a tenuous allegiance with Brother Jathen, which in turn forced him to meld his plans with the monk’s.

  I raised you to be more than a puppet-boy, his mother said within his mind.

  Always there! Always! Always! Always! Algar ground his teeth together, tamed his silent raving. I was never more than a ‘puppet’ for you to earn a bit more coin.

  Does a puppet cut his strings?

  This puppet did, Algar thought, a smile tugging his lips. In truth, he had cut more than the imaginary strings his mother had used to make him dance for men who enjoyed a boy’s sweet favors. Isn’t that so, mother? Do you remember how you screamed? Do you remember how you bled … how you burned?

  You’re an evil, vicious brat. Always were!

  When he sensed her fleeing him, a blurt of harsh laughter gurgled from his throat. The blackest memories of his heart always made the rancorous whore take flight. She would return, she always did, but for now he was alone with a stack of companionable bones.

  Algar spilled the cloudy sphere from the sack into his palm, and traced a pattern over the curved edge of the seeing glass, just the way Jathen had shown him.

  ~ ~ ~

  The familiar low chiming sounded.

  “A moment’s peace!” Brother Jathen shouted, spinning away from his map table. Here he was trying to plan a war to ensure Skalos became the rightful seat of power in the Iron Marches, while at the same time nurturing a feeble alliance with a distant king, and his shadowy ally could not leave him alone.

  I never should have recruited Algar, he thought, despite knowing he’d had no choice in the matter, not if he was to meet his rather lofty goals.

  He marched to one of a dozen wood and glass cases standing around the immaculate chamber, each holding an array of precious weapons and artifacts. He jerked open the door and snatched out the twin to Algar’s seeing glass. Jathen held the milky orb up before his eyes, took a calming breath, and reminded himself again that Algar was very useful, as well as full of secret knowledge.

  After speaking at length with Algar, Jathen had concluded that Nesaea, not Rathe, must have been behind the disastrous alchemy that had destroyed the Wight Stone and the Keeper’s Box … along with Jathen’s face.

  He resisted touching the hideous pink scar of wrinkled and puckered skin marring half his brow, but he could feel the dead stiffness of that flesh every time he frowned or smiled. When he went outdoors, the northland cold did little to cool the scar’s ceaseless burning. When he was indoors and warm, only copious amounts of wine could sooth the crackling heat that still burned there. The vaults of Skalos had a thousand and a thousand forms of magic locked away in its stony vaults, yet none could alleviate the burning deep in his flesh. Some of his brothers of the Way of Knowing, those who followed the Path of Healing, had tried to tell him the pain was all in his mind, an undying memory. As none of them bore his wounds, he doubted their wisdom on the matter. Since he could hardly stay drunk and still properly perform his tasks, he had learned to bear his suffering in silence.

  The low chiming came again from the seeing glass, and a tingling sensation raced through Jathen’s fingers. He bobbled the orb, almost lost hold, then wrapped his other hand around it, forming a tight cage.

  Moving back to the map table, he placed the seeing glass on a stand, and sat down. Looking at the pale surface, he could imagine his grim friend within the odd crypt he had taken for his shelter, staring impatiently at his own glass, waiting for Jathen to respond.

  For the moment, Jathen resisted. Though he had not yet learned the reason why, he knew Algar wanted to kill Rathe as much as Jathen wanted to make Nesaea suffer for ravaging his face. Unfortunately, that was the extent of his knowledge about the man, which made Algar unpredictable, and that in turn made him dangerous. His ability to become one with the shadows made him more so.

  And he is quite insane, Jathen reminded himself, remembering the tightly reined madness in Algar’s eyes the few times he had come to Skalos as a man, instead of as a patch of living shade. If all went well, Algar’s insanity and hatred, guided by Jathen’s expert hand, would serve Skalos splendidly.

  But I must have a care, he mused, not for the first time. As a brother of the Way of Knowing, there were many Paths from which to choose. Jathen had chosen to follow the Path of War, so care and caution were traits he had cultivated. Such had kept him alive, and such had placed him ahead of his peers.

  The chiming came again.

  Now we shall speak, dear Algar, Jathen thought, tracing a rune over the surface of his seeing glass. The mists caught within swirled briefly, then began to clear. Algar’s rather sinister face gradually took shape, framed by crumbly brickwork and hanging cobwebs.

  “Algar! How are you, my friend?” Jathen said with practiced cheer, even as he wondered anew at the strange form of magic Algar used to become one with shadows. He suspected it must have something to do with necromancy, as the sorcerers who practiced those foul arts favored anything to do with darkness. One day, you will tell me your secret.

  Algar’s jaw flexed, and Jathen thought sure he heard the grinding of teeth. “We’re not friends, monk.”

  “More’s the pity,” Jathen said, not meaning it in the least. “So, what news do you have?”

  “Same as ever. Time and again, I’ve ensured that the Lamprey cannot sail from Iceford. The last trading vessel departed days ago. Our quarry isn’t going anywhere, until Captain Ostre gets his ship in order.”

  “No one has grown suspicious?”

  Algar ground his teeth again. “Rathe’s wary, if no one else.”

  “Perfect,” Jathen said happily, just to savor the ripple of annoyance that crossed Algar’s face.

  “Wait much longer, monk, and you’ll be waiting all winter. I warn you, I will not be so patient. Bargain or no bargain, I mean to have Rathe’s head.”

  “And have it you shall,” Jathen said merrily, ignoring the threatening tone. He glanced at his maps, did a hasty calculation. “There’s no reason to delay the Lamprey any longer. Depart Iceford as soon as you’re able. I’ll meet you where we agreed upon.”

  “It will take days, perhaps as much as a fortnight.”

  “As long as you are there before the Lamprey sails past bearing our mutual acquaintance.”

  “Very well,” Algar said slowly. “But I still don’t understand why you want Rathe and Nesaea to leave Iceford, when taking them in the village would be easier.”

  Jathen decided to give the man just enough information to appease his curiosity. “The first thing Rathe did when he arrived in Iceford was to hire many spies—”

  “Shit gathering urchins,” Algar said dismissively.

  “Be that as it may,” Jathen went on, “he might have hired more than you know. Should these unseen friends rise against us, the resulting chaos would prove a hindrance for Skalos and my brothers’ future endeavors. Better that Rathe and his companions come into my hands with none the wiser.”

  “Our bargain gives you Nesaea and that redheaded slut—”

  “Fira is no slut,” Jathen growled before he could stop himself. He had dreamed of bedding that sultry wench since the day she arrived at Skalos with Nesaea. True, he had willingly sent them off to Ravenhold—and to certain death at the hands of the Lady of Regret—but it had been a choice he always regretted. He could not forget Fira’s witty banter, and the way she had looked so wantonly upon him. That she had survived Ravenhold only made her more desirable. Such a wench as that would bear him strong sons.

  Algar smirked. “Do what you want with the women, monk, but remember that our agreement puts Rathe into my hands…. Unless you’re planning to cheat me?”

  “Of course not,” Jathen said.

  Expressionless, Algar stared
at him.

  Jathen reminded himself that the man was not like the common scum he usually sent chasing after enigmatic artifacts of a magical nature. Oh no, not at all. This fellow often displayed startling measures of insight, proving he had at least a bestial level of cunning.

  “Rathe will be yours to do with as you wish,” Jathen promised, fully intending to keep his word. Of course, at this juncture, his word was no longer final. Certain other interested parties had joined the hunt, and their goals most certainly didn’t match Algar’s. If any tensions resulted … well, that was between them and Algar.

  “There’s another matter I must bring to your attention, monk.”

  “Pray tell.”

  “There are others seeking Rathe.”

  Jathen sat straighter. “Who?”

  “Strange folk. They have the look of Prythians, but are not.”

  Jathen thought a moment, and decided they must be bounty hunters late to the game. “Do they seem formidable?”

  Algar snorted. “Not in the least.”

  “Be that as it may,” Jathen said, “I charge you with keeping Rathe and his companions out of their hands.”

  “So I must protect the man I will soon kill?”

  “You will, if you want him to die by your hand.”

  “There’s nothing I want more.”

  “Then keep him safe, friend. If it serves you better, think of Rathe as a chicken you’ve been fattening up for a fine supper.”

  “A chicken?” Algar said derisively. Cold seemed to seep out of the seeing glass, and for a moment Jathen thought sure Algar could see him. He shook that off, knowing only one seeing glass of the pair—his, in point of fact—allowed the user to see as well as to hear.