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

by James A. West

  “Because I trust you, Petar, and.…” Hera trailed off, touching her belly again. It was so big and heavy, as if she had swallowed a boulder. Petar’s face softened and he joined his hands to hers. She had loved him as a friend before their marriage, but in the last year she had come to love him as a man. A faint grin tugged his lips when the baby gave a kick.

  “Everything will be fine,” he promised.

  “Only if we escape.”

  “We will. You’ll see.”

  After a few more minutes, Petar drew away and searched the sky again. “I don’t see it anymore. We should go.”

  Hera took his hand and, with a few grunts, clambered to her feet. Before Petar could set off, she caught his wrist.

  “If we escape, what then?” She had no need to mention the godless deycath who inhabited the Iron Marches beyond the Shield of the Fathers, but as they were about to become deycath by turning their backs on the folk of Targas and the Munam a’Dett Order, she needed to know how Petar planned on keeping them both alive. All three of us, she silently amended.

  Petar glanced toward Targas and back. “Damon told me the Iron Marches are cold, but that the deycath are mostly like us. He warned that there are cruel folk, but far more are decent and kind. If we can find some of those, they will help us.”

  Nothing he had said, Hera realized, was from his own mind. It was all just the vague assurances told by Damon. He has no more idea what to expect or what to do than I. Hiding her dismay, she recited the ancient prayer, “May the Fathers protect us.”

  “They will,” Petar assured her, but she saw doubt in his gaze.

  He no longer trusts in the wisdom and mercy of the Fathers. For certain, her faith had grown weaker since learning what the Hanyata truly meant for those chosen to sacrifice on one of four ceremonial nights during the year. All her life she had been taught that being chosen was a great honor and privilege. The truth, according to Damon, was that the Munam a’Dett Order—all of whom claimed divine authority from the Fathers—used the chosen to reap great rewards for themselves and Targas, while never having to give of themselves or their loved ones.

  Petar adjusted the straps of his bulging haversack, gave her a reassuring smile, and began picking his way through the corn. Soon after, their pace proved too slow for him.

  “We must get to a road and follow it into the Sleeping Wood.”

  “We’ll be seen,” Hera protested. “Doubtless there are vizien patrols about.”

  Petar bowed his head in thought. “I have no worry over a few faithful idiots new to the priesthood—I expect most are half-asleep. But if I’m right, and there is something flying about, it’ll see the beaten trail we’re making as surely as it’ll spy us on the road.”

  “The dragon, you mean.”

  “I saw something,” Petar said hotly. When she didn’t argue, he vigorously brushed back a fall of hair as pale as the strands of corn silk hanging like cobwebs from his head. “If we hurry we can outrun it.”

  Hera reluctantly nodded her consent.

  Petar made a sharp turn and pushed his way through the corn until coming to a cobbled road. It was one of twenty such roads radiating out from Targas, like spokes of a great wheel, and ending at the Sleeping Wood.

  Just looking at that still, dark forest made Hera nervous. From childhood every denizen of Targas learned to avoid getting too near the forest encircling the vast, wedge-shaped croplands surrounding the city. It was said that a thousand kinds of unnameable death waited within those lush reaches. Part of her had come to believe those dire tales were but another tool the Munam a’Dett used against the common folk. Another part wondered if there was some truth to the warnings.

  “Let’s hurry,” Petar said, one hand resting against the small of her back, the other supporting her arm. Born to a crofter, much like her, a lifetime tending the fields had made his grip strong and sure. With his help she felt half a stone lighter, and was able to pick up the pace.

  They had nearly reached the Sleeping Wood when a booming cry cut through the night.

  “Dragon!” Hera blurted, the truth falling on her like a millstone. “How can there be dragons here?”

  Instead of saying he had told her so, Petar forced them into a clumsy trot. The trumpeting call came again, making her eyes water and threatening to crack the bones of Hera’s skull. She didn’t dare turn to look.

  As soon as they passed under the leafy shroud of tangled tree limbs, the cries cut off. For Hera, the Sleeping Wood didn’t seem at all forbidding anymore, but protective. She decided they shouldn’t flee, but rather stay put and out of sight. If forced, they could live forever in the forest. Just her, Petar, and their soon-to-be-born child. There was food aplenty in the fields. As long as they stayed out of sight, no one would ever notice what they took for themselves.

  The dragon’s scream came again, and with it a sound not unlike great sheets flapping in the wind. Wings! Oh, Fathers, it really can fly! Then, farther back in her mind, a more rational thought arose. Who gives the beast leave to fly over Targas?

  “We must hide,” Hera said, looking wildly about. There were hundreds of likely spots nearby. Fallen trees draped in dense plots of ferns, briar patches a mouse would have trouble penetrating, a deep black hole running under a knot of gray-black roots, each as thick as her waist.

  We could live under a tree, she thought with giddy desperation. A family of little moles no one will ever find.

  Petar smashed the delirious notion. “We must reach the Shield of the Fathers. Escaping is the only way we’ll ever be safe.”

  Hera tried to swallow, but her throat had gone dry and hot as fresh ashes. If there were many grim stories about the dangers of the Sleeping Wood, there were even more tales that warned about getting too near the Shield of the Fathers.

  “What if Damon is wrong, or playing one of his tricks? What if we reach the Shield and it kills us?” The truth was, she had never wanted to go out into the world of the deycath, a place of eternal ice and death. She only wanted to escape the impossible demands of the Munam a’Dett.

  Petar gently caught her face between his palms and looked into her eyes. “The Shield of the Fathers won’t kill us … but the dragon will.”

  For a wonder, the terror he had shown earlier had collapsed under his newfound certitude. Of less comfort, the sour odor of his fear-sweat still wafted from his skin. The same fetid reek oozed from her pores.

  I trust you, my beloved, I do. I must! Belying that thought, slow tears sprang from the corners of her eyes. Instead of embarrassing herself by choking out an answer, she nodded. He hugged her briefly, then led them along a trail lit faintly by the Shield’s radiance dripping through the foliage overhead.

  Once, Hera heard massive wings beating high above, then a heavy silence fell, broken only by their ragged breathing and the crashing of their stout shoes through the undergrowth. She tried not to imagine what the dragon looked like, but everyone born within the golden radiance of Targas had seen the murals of the great wars fought between their ancestors and the former rulers of the Everlasting City of Light. Dragons were titanic flying serpents that roasted their enemies with blasts of fire and gnashed them asunder with great curving teeth.

  Dripping sweat and covered in itchy bits of leaf, she and Petar stumbled out of the Sleeping Wood a longtime later. Before them stretched a desolate band of dirt and rock. Nothing green grew there, and nothing of life crept. Few in Targas had ever seen this place, and Hera wished she had not joined their number.

  Beyond that barren verge rose the Shield of the Fathers. Following the curve of the forest at their backs, it stretched away in either direction, and vaulted high overhead until nearly lost to sight. Smudgy stars shone higher still, and with them the blurry, lopsided face of the waning moon. Damon had told Hera, Petar, and all the others, that the moon and stars shone clear and beautiful beyond the Shield.

  “We can’t stay here,” Petar said, but Hera found it impossible to move toward their destination. Fr
om the ground up to a height of six strides, the Shield had more substance, and shimmered with a white-gold radiance that almost blocked sight of the world of the deycath. Almost, but not quite, and what she saw rooted her feet.

  A forest unlike any she had ever seen waited beyond the barrier. There were few pines in the Sleeping Wood, but the deycath forest seemed to grow nothing else. And wild was that forest, all its tangled blacks and gray-greens made bleaker by stark white drifts. From the oldest stories, she knew those drifts to be snow. Imagining the sort of unrelenting cold needed to keep so much snow from melting made her long again to turn back and take shelter within the Sleeping Wood.

  “We must stay together,” Petar said, his voice tremulous—whether from distress, excitement, or a mingling of the two, Hera couldn’t guess. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders and squeezed tight. “As close as we can get to one another. Damon says that’s the only way we can survive passing through the Shield of the Fathers.”

  Hera was far past wondering why their nearness to each other mattered. Besides that, she wanted to stay close to Petar. If possible, she would’ve crawled into his skin and wrapped herself around his bones.

  “If we mean to go,” she said, her voice a tense squeak, “then we should.”

  Petar swallowed audibly, then stepped forward with Hera. One step became two, and two became three. They had barely crossed half the distance of the barren patch when an unfamiliar, sexless voice rang out in her mind.

  Why do you think to steal away a treasure that belongs to all your kindred, little one?

  Hera’s footsteps faltered, as did Petar’s. When he slowly looked toward her, his eyes huge and round, she knew that he had also heard.

  “Hurry,” she urged.

  Petar nodded vigorously and took a few more steps. There was a jerky hesitancy to his strides, as if something unseen held him back.

  Before you begin a journey that can only end in grief, little one, let us reason awhile together.

  “Never!” Hera had to force the word through her clenched teeth. Now her footsteps came as slow and hesitant as Petar’s, as if walking through thick mud. Her belly seemed to gain weight, threatening to drag her down. The voice, so reasonable, so insidiously persuasive, went on as if she had not denied its request.

  I can forgive you for heeding the lies of your spiteful and malcontented fellows, but only if you cease this foolishness, return to Targas, and give over your treasure in thanks for my generosity.

  “You have given me nothing!” Hera cried.

  Is it not I who allows you to thrive here, while the wild winds of winter rage all around? Is it not I who gave your forefathers peace where there was none before? Is it not I who even now protects you and yours from the reavers of the north and, too, the roving murderers up from the summer lands, those who even now come to take their spoil? You have known only plenty in your life because of me. I have given you life, little one, and yet you dare to withhold my one small tribute?

  “O, Fathers!” Hera wailed, as the voice became a sibilant whispering. Behind her eyes, terrible visions danced. She saw the monstrous men the voice warned of, men who would happily cut Petar to pieces before ravishing her, as they did all their women.

  The voice, a wordless and grating babble, sank deeper.

  Petar convulsed and staggered away. His fingers, curled like claws, raked the sides of his head. “Stop! No more! Stop it!”

  Hera barely heard him or noticed his absence from her side. She seemed to be somewhere else. A grim, cold, and lonely place. Now she could feel cruel hands on her, tearing her clothes, bruising her flesh. Faces loomed, covered in bristly hair and strange black markings. Hard eyes full of malevolent glee locked on hers. Sour breath filled her nose. Reeking spittle drizzled from rotted teeth and slathered her lips. Pain, sharp and hot and blinding, stabbed at the center of her. Stabbed. And stabbed. And stabbed again.

  Hera screamed when she saw and felt a rust-pitted blade carve a ragged line across her huge naked belly. Blood poured from the gaping lips of that wound. Much more pooled around the writhing misshapen lump of her unborn baby—

  “Lies!” Hera shrieked.

  The images fled at once.

  She found herself sprawled on her side, legs drawn up and arms wrapped around her blessedly fat belly. No voice. No raping monsters. No pain and blood. Only her and Petar, who now stood silently off to one side.

  Meaning to go to her husband, Hera clambered to her feet and pushed a matted clump of hair out of her eyes. Petar was looking at her, his eyes wavering in their sockets. Tears had made muddy black tracks through the dust on his face.

  “We must return to Targas.” His voice was no longer his own. It had become the one she had heard in her mind.

  “Fight it, Petar!”

  “Our duty is to serve the Munam a’Dett.”

  Hera took a step backward. “No. Please, no.”

  “We must return.” He came nearer, smiling a sickly grimace. “There is no escape, little one. We must return and prepare for Hanyata. Soon we will give that which is required.”

  A thudding rush of wind sounded above them. Hera craned her neck and recoiled from the sight of a great crimson serpent descending on beating wings. She spun to flee, but her swinging belly put her off balance and she fell. Breath whistling in her closed throat, Hera scratched and clawed at the lifeless dirt. When a thumping rumble shivered the ground beneath her, she knew the beast had landed. More thuds shook the ground, as if a merciless god had decided to take stroll. But it was no god. It was the dragon. And it was coming.

  Hera crawled faster, back toward the Sleeping Wood, but the forest seemed to recede. As the pounding tread came closer, fearful tears sprang from her eyes. Everything before her sight became a watery blur, and the trees melted into a hideous collage. Hide in the Sleeping Wood. Hide! Hide!

  When shapes began emerging from the forest, Hera’s silent chant cut off. The monstrous men were real, and they had come to join the sport of the dragon. They wanted to despoil her, but first they would chop a hole in her belly and steal her baby!

  As the first man drew near, Hera shrank away. He reached for her, and she lashed out with clawed fingers, digging crimson furrows into his arm. He snarled a curse, but instead of retreating he came again. This time Hera wriggled close and used her teeth to take a bite out of his leg. He loosed a furious shriek and slammed his fist against the back of her head, making everything spin madly.

  Stunned, Hera flopped onto her back. Her arms and legs flailed in a bid to turn her over, but it was no use. More men had joined the first. They caught ahold of her thrashing limbs, pinning her to the ground. When the stern face of one young man hove into view, Hera saw that he had no unruly beard, nor strange painted marks on his face. He looked much the same as any of the youths she knew, save that his head was shaved. Her eyes widened, knowing she looked upon a priest of the vizien caste, the lowest order of the Munam a’Dett. That terrified her almost as much as seeing a—

  “There’s a dragon!” she screamed, hoping beyond hope that the beast had not already devoured Petar. “It’s behind you!”

  The priest did not so much as flinch. “There are worse things here than dragons.” He leaned in as if for a kiss. His eyes were shot with red and ringed by dark circles. “Where is my wife?”

  Hera shook her head, baffled, terrified. Why wasn’t he concerned about the dragon? Why did he think she, a crofter’s daughter, would know anything about his wife?

  “Her name is Kyreen!” He eased closer, until only a bare inch separated them. Desperation swam in his gaze. “Where is she? You must know!”

  “She’s only another fool girl deceived by foolish lies, Edrik,” said a wizened man standing over the first man’s shoulder. His blue-and-gold quartered vestments named him a priest of the essan caste. “Come away, my boy, before you upset her further.”

  “She knows!” Edrik shouted. “She must!”

  “If so, we will learn the truth later. Now c
ome away.”

  Several hands fell on the younger priest’s shoulders, but he fought them off and looked again at Hera. “Why do you always come to the Shield of the Fathers? You know it will kill you, but always you come here. Did you send my Kyreen here? Did you kill her with your lies? Tell me, you witless traitor!”

  Hera turned away from his wrath and found Petar lying on his side a few strides away, his eyes staring at nothing. He might have been dozing, save for the bloody slit across his neck.

  “Oh, my sweet Petar,” she sobbed, but he was beyond hearing. When a sharp spasm of agony ripped through her belly, her sobs became shrieks. The baby is coming early! Fathers protect us!

  If the Fathers heard her plea, they chose to ignore it.

  About James

  James A. West is the bestselling author of the epic fantasy series Heirs of the Fallen, and the ongoing fantasy series, Songs of the Scorpion.

  James is a native of the Pacific Northwest, but life is a road of many turns. He served in the US Army, spent a year as a long-haul truck driver with his wife (who also happens to be his high-school sweetheart), and attended the University of Montana.

  He lives in Montana with his wife. James has been known to work for chips and salsa.

  While James spends most of his time navigating alternate realities, he periodically comes up for air at: jamesawest.blogspot.com