The Queen of Storm and Shadow

by Jenna Rhodes

  “You! You are the worse of the worst!” He pointed, and a veritable bolt of gold flame lashed from him, spearing into the woman who dropped in the midst of a scream. She hit the ground shaking, her tremors becoming weaker until she lay absolutely still. Bregan put his shoulders back, lifting his chin, adding, “Give me Tolby Farbranch!”

  • • •

  “That will not be happening,” Dayne answered at his flank and set himself, left-handed with the aryn staff across his chest, and his right hand on his left hip to draw his sword. “Master Bregan, the Gods are warring in you today, and that’s not a good sign. Before you do any harm”—and his gaze fell upon the fallen guard who moaned softly from her sprawl on the ground—“I suggest you consider having a draft of good, cold cider and rest yourself.”

  “Is that what you think I am? A drunken fool? I know you, Verdayne Vantane, son of Bistel Vantane and a daughter of Kerith, and my mind is just fine, thank you.”

  “Actually,” said Dayne mildly, “From here, it looks like it might be on fire.”

  Bregan turned on him, quicker than the eye could follow, blasting him with a flick of his hand. The aryn staff caught it and lit up with the glow, the wood illuminating in a warm rose-gold from the inside out, delineating its grain and occasional whorls of the tree from which it came. The blow of the blast knocked Dayne on his ass in the dirt, but the staff held. More than held, it reflected a portion of its power back at Bregan, striking him in the shoulder and knocking him back a step or two, his shirt smoking from the heat. Dayne hurriedly got to one knee, getting up to follow the advantage, but Bregan recovered faster, spinning about and firing again, knocking him to his side, and dodging before Dayne could knock some of the force back at him again.

  “Enough!” shouted Tolby, shouldering through those onlookers gathered at the road’s edge, too entranced by the spectacle to run off, though they should have. “You know who I am, Master Bregan.”

  Nutmeg pelted up, her hair tousled, dust flying from her shoes, to pull the children from the doorway, where they crowded at Tolby’s heels, having squirreled away from their guard. She swung them up defiantly, but Tolby stepped in front of her smoothly. “He’s out of his mind, lass.”

  Evar kicked his heels against Nutmeg’s skirts. “Down,” he insisted.

  She wrapped her arms tighter and put her lips to his forehead, murmuring something that only the two children could hear. They quieted.

  Bregan had no choice but to face the man he’d cried out for. Tolby locked gazes with him, stepping out away from the crowd, one hand beckoning to Nutmeg to get away. She moved reluctantly to the side of the pub, letting its thick stone walls buffer her. Meanwhile, Dayne got to his feet, spat dirt out of his mouth as he settled his sword back into his sheath, and twirled his staff about in his hands. The aryn wood seemed unaffected except for faintly glowing wisps that wafted off it as it cooled. He moved closer without catching notice.

  Tolby grinned. “Attack me if you would, pup. I remember you when you were a guild apprentice trotting at your father’s heels, scarcely taller than his belt buckle. I remember when I gave you some of your first lessons with a sword.”

  Those words halted Bregan who pulled his jaw in as if he’d been slapped and ran a hand through his wild hair, both of them crackling with sparks as he did. His desert scarf ran out from his neckline like a banner, as if an errant breeze had found him and him alone, or perhaps the energies from his magic set him into motion.

  His lips worked, forming no words, and his hands raised again, little blue discharges of energy flitting from one tip to another.

  “Come at me, then,” Tolby said. He set his feet firmly. “We Dwellers have been the salt of Kerith’s earth for longer than you Kernans have claimed to own it.” Bregan stood a good two heads taller than he did, but he barely raised his chin to look the maddened trader in the eyes. “Come on.”

  Bregan leaped.

  The crowd screamed as Dayne swung his aryn staff into Bregan and swept the stick up into a solid thwack under the chin that stopped the other in his tracks as sparks and lightning rattled up and down his frame with the smell of summer lightning and the heat of the full sun. Bregan’s teeth had clamped shut with the hit and he screamed through them, a whistling screech of pain and anger. Dayne ground one end of the staff into the dirt and swung about it, bringing it up behind Bregan’s knees and sweeping his feet from under him. Tolby followed with a swift kick to the downed trader’s abdomen, sending him gasping for air from lungs that would not cooperate. Dayne pinioned Bregan against the ground with the staff, the aryn wood absorbing the Mageborn fury and sending Bregan into a stunned silence, his hands pinned to his chest under the staff.

  Merri’s little voice spoke up. “Grampy wins!”

  “Yes, my babe. Grampy and our Dayne,” Nutmeg answered, with not a little bit of pride, as she lowered her two to the road and stood with their hands in hers.

  Evar pointed toward the city gates. Horse hooves pounding along the road scattered the crowd, but the citizens of Calcort did not look up to see their guard, as they thought. Instead, the Guardian King Abayan Diort rode in, a handful of soldiers and a woman in his wake. His horse slid to a stop near the combatants, and he swung off in a swirl of desert silks and haste.

  He looked down at the confined Bregan who looked up and then put his head back limply, settling into a kind of collapse. One last spark drifted off him, a blue star whirling into the air and then extinguishing with a pffft.

  Diort swung his gaze to his oracle. “It seems we were not needed, after all.”

  “Oh,” said Ceyla. “I didn’t mean that you had to be here to save Tolby and the children, or even Dayne. No, no. You had to be here to save Bregan.”

  Chapter

  Fourteen

  “I WOULD NEVER,” Dayne said firmly, “have put Bregan down. He is a madman and pitiable, and now even dangerous, but he’s not an animal.”

  Ceyla tapped the aryn staff which now rested against the trestle table where they all sat. All, save for Bregan who lay trussed up and sleeping in a cool side room away from the kitchen. “The staff absorbs energy as it is meant to. You wouldn’t have done it a-purpose, but Bregan has no control over what rules him now, and the aryn staff would have drained him of everything, down to the last breath of his life as long as he fought.”

  “Really.”

  “So I feel. Didn’t you feel it?”

  “Something like that.”

  “You Vantane have surely suspected the aryn wood properties for the hundreds of years you’ve used it here as barriers against the ruins, the pools of chaos left behind.”

  Dayne ran his hand down the staff. “I admit nothing. I wonder if it stores the energy or merely discharges it.”

  Tolby lifted his eating knife and pointed. “A topic to be examined later. Trials and demonstrations are in order.”

  “The calamities of the Mageborn Wars could have been much easier withstood if we’d known,” said Diort mournfully.

  “We didn’t have it then, my king. It’s not a wood that springs from the seed of Kerith.” Ceyla moved to refill his glass with cool cider and reseated herself. “He still sleeps.”

  “Good. Less trouble later.”

  “What sent him our way?”

  Diort shrugged. “Master Tolby, this one here has it that a God carried him here. I’ve no proof of it, but he traveled in a manner physically impossible, so . . .”

  “A God carried him?”

  “A whirlwind,” Ceyla said confidently as she put her hand out for the breadbasket. “I saw it.”

  Nutmeg dusted her hands off, standing at the table’s end, now bereft of the two children whose voices could be heard fading away into another room with their nanny. “You saw what he did not.” She pulled a stool out and found a place near her father.

  “In here.” Ceyla tapped her forehead. “I d
on’t often see, but when I do, I try to understand what I’ve dreamed.”

  “You’re the one.” Tolby leveled his attention on her. “The ild Fallyn who got away.”

  Tanned almost as golden as the Galdarkans, she blushed anyway, her cheeks coloring hotly. “I am that one. You may ask, rightly, who my dreams support and I answer: Abayan Diort. I risked my life escaping the fort and finding him, so that I could send him to meet destiny on the fields of Larandaril.”

  “So that’s how you got there in time.” A smile quirked the corner of Tolby’s mouth as he spread his fresh bread with soft cheese and put a bit of grape jelly on it.

  “You tell the tale.”

  “As it was told me, but now I hear it from the source! Truth is as precious as gold.” He popped the hunk of bread in to chew enthusiastically, beaming at Diort.

  “Are all the Mageborn destined to be mad?”

  Everyone at the table paused to stare at Nutmeg. She lifted an eyebrow. “It has to be asked, doesn’t it? Look at our past. Look at our present.”

  “Bregan needs training, and his mind may be too broken. I was born for this, but I haven’t had training either,” Diort told her wryly. “You may well be right. I have been sending riders out to my lands and other Eastern holdings but we’ve not uncovered other Mageborn. He could be the only one, or—” He halted.

  “Or?”

  “His might be an inherited magic. From my knowledge of Bregan as the son of a wealthy trader, and one in his own right, he might have a scattering of bastards from one end of these lands to the other. It could be a long search.”

  “The only magic the elder has is his ability to pinch wealth until it squeals.”

  Diort laughed at Tolby’s mutter. “I’ve heard that, too! More important than my search is my care of him now. I do what I can. My presence usually calms him, but he’s been most agitated this last handful of days. And, as long as we are sharing truths, I’ve never seen him with power that could be considered dangerous.”

  “He could have killed my father. He meant to. And one of my guards lies stricken, although our herbalist says she should recover with but minor weakness. It was as though lightning had struck her. I hope she doesn’t have the infirmities of such a strike.”

  Diort shook his head slowly. “I have never seen that ability from him before.” He put a hand up as Nutmeg sputtered. “Not saying he didn’t do it. Only that he couldn’t before.”

  A look traded across the table. “The Gods filled him.”

  “Possibly. What quarrel have you, Tolby Farbranch, with the Gods?”

  “Only one I can bring to mind.” Tolby set his eating knife down with a thump. “I am aligned closely with the Vaelinars. I sheltered and adopted one, and Nutmeg’s child is fathered by one.”

  “Not all trouble on Kerith comes from the Vaelinars!”

  All heads turned to the angry outburst from the corner of the room where the lone guard left standing stood, his jaw jutted out in protest.

  “The lad has a point,” Tolby remarked. “But not necessarily a valid one. Trouble follows the Vaelinars closer than their shadows do. Even Queen Lara would not gainsay that.”

  The guard folded his arms across his chest and leaned back against the wall until Nutmeg said to him gently, “Merri is in the other room,” and he stalked off to oversee his charge.

  Ceyla lowered her hand from her face. “Not that you’re wrong,” she told Tolby. “I think that you’re probably right in this instance. The Gods slept, thinking the world safe after the purge of the Mageborn, and here we come, stirring things up again. We meddle with their people and the very threads of the world itself. If we don’t anger them, what would?”

  “Your people have been here hundreds of years. Why now?”

  “Who knows what time is to a God?” She finished by picking up a piece of hard cheese and nibbling on it delicately.

  “So a God set Bregan against me.”

  “Possibly. One carried him here. It’s possible Bregan could have summoned him, but why would he/”

  “Why, indeed.” Diort drained his cup dry and licked his lips. “You were speaking at the pub?”

  “Aye, news mostly. There was an attack at Larandaril—”

  “Old news,” the Galdarkan interrupted.

  “Not this one. An assassin got into Lara’s apartments and slit her throat while she slept.”

  Diort knocked the cup over. “What?”

  “She lives. By mercy, but she lives and heals. Bistane sent word that he encountered the villain and took him down. No proof, but the manner of attack says he was ild Fallyn.”

  “Not Kobrir.”

  “No. And they’ve been relatively quiet since Daravan’s fall at the great battle of the Andredia. Perhaps they toil as the rest of us do until someone pulls their strings to force them to kill. At any rate, Lariel lives but yet sleeps.” Tolby fingered the hilt of his utensil. “People have been curious since I brought my family back, so I thought to get them a bit of gossip along with their tidings.”

  “Why did you bring them back?”

  They looked at one another.

  “I am,” said Tolby, “a Dweller through and through, for all my dealings with the rest of us who live on Kerith. We have good roots, when allowed, and I deemed that my daughter Nutmeg needed her father and her mother more than she needed a sleeping queen. So I brought her and hers home.”

  “Being at Larandaril is pointless, anyway, without Rivergrace,” Nutmeg added quietly. She stood with the empty breadbasket and disappeared into the kitchen, where a cupboard could be heard as it opened and closed and a pan or two clattered.

  “No word of the two?”

  “None. The Returnists are squatting determinedly by the Eye between worlds, but it neither opens or closes. Sometimes . . .” Tolby paused and reached for his drink, taking a hearty gulp before continuing. “Sometimes things get pushed through.”

  “What sort of things?”

  “Bloody bones. A bit of fur. Once, a cloak, ripped to shreds and muddied unrecognizable. Nothing of any consequence or good.”

  Ceyla shivered. “Bones?”

  “Aye.”

  “No wonder you brought everyone here.”

  He gave a fierce grin. “One of the reasons.”

  Ceyla’s fingers curled, and Diort looked down at her hand, a thoughtful expression crossing his face. She looked up at him and then shook her head, ever so slightly.

  Dayne and Tolby did not miss the exchange nor did they remark on it.

  Nutmeg came out with more fresh bread, neatly sliced, and a cup of butter taken from the cold cellar. “That will have to hold us over until I set dinner to fixing, although we have stew in the pot, simmering, and I’ve added to it, for company.”

  Diort stood. “My thanks for the hospitality, but I think I should return Bregan as soon as possible. I’ll need to engage a wagon.” He waved a hand, and his handful of soldiers who had been sitting quietly to the side jumped to their feet and passed through the kitchen to the outside door, each of them snatching up a nubby piece of bread as they went, Nutmeg laughing as they did.

  Ceyla put up her scarf and followed, but he lingered a moment beside Dayne.

  “A staff or two might be useful,” he said finally, as if he’d thought carefully before choosing his words.

  “There are trees on your border.”

  “We treat them as sacred. We don’t cut them or use them for any lumber.”

  “Use the lumber. You have my permission as a son of Vantane.”

  He inclined his head. “Thank you. I’ll send word if we have any interesting experiments to report.” He touched his chest in a farewell salute.

  Tolby followed him out the door and they paused together in the cooling evening air. “A word or two on his motives would be helpful here.”

 
“You will know as soon as I do. Or if Ceyla dreams it.” Diort smiled and took Tolby’s forearm in a shake. “May the queen awaken soon.”

  “May we all find peace.” Tolby released him and watched him stride off to where his men and Ceyla waited a-horseback. Lariel’s guards dragged Bregan out to the courtyard and stood him up where he blinked in the sun while they untied his trussing and held him steady until he stopped swaying.

  A slow smile eased across the man’s face who now looked for all the world like a beggar. He twirled in the dusty courtyard.

  “Enough,” snapped Diort, as he bent to hoist the man up in the saddle behind him. “The Gods are done with both of us for the while.”

  Bregan laughed as he threw his arms about his Guardian King, and they rode out of the farmyard.

  “What do you think Bregan really had on his mind?”

  Dayne shook his head at Nutmeg. “I might doubt there was even a clear thought in his muddled mind.”

  “A shell which an angry God held sway over for a time?”

  “As likely a reason as any.” His chin lifted, part of his attention attracted by the sounds of the twins squabbling in the back room, and his eyebrows lowered a bit. He called out, “Evar. Don’t tease Merri.”

  The argument subsided a bit.

  “It might be a hatred for the Vaelinars.”

  “He attacked your father.”

  “Who was holding discourse on Vaelinar news at the time.” Nutmeg ironed out an imaginary wrinkle in her apron with her fingers. “He was nearly destroyed by the embodiment of the Ferryman when he attacked that Way, his mind cleaved in half, like a stroke victim. It’s a wonder he lives at all.”

  “Or that he hears Gods.” Dayne looked back to her. “That could be the simple explanation.”

  “But his Mageborn blood?”

  “Oh, that was bound to happen to someone, sooner or later. As long as life walks here on Kerith, there is a chance a Mageborn might turn up. Gods’ work or not, I can’t imagine wiping out a bloodline or a people in their entirety. Can you?”