The Queen of Storm and Shadow

by Jenna Rhodes

  “Who can blame him?” She picked the mirror up again to examine, her face, not so much in vanity, but to look at her condition Bistane realized as he watched her. She tugged on the ends of her much shortened hair, her lips tight, but she made no comment.

  She finally looked back to him. “We’ll have to deal with the ild Fallyn once and for all. I’ve put it off far too long, and now their roots have stretched far and wide.” A shadow fell over her face. “She has been making alliances while I’ve slept. I don’t want a civil war. We have to be very careful what we do.”

  He nodded. “When you’ve strength.”

  “What else have they been up to?”

  “Not the ild Fallyn, but the Galdarkans. Diort has an oracle—”

  “Does he now?”

  “A good one. She steered his troops here, to meet the Raymy threat and come to our aid. She’d seen it, knew he had to be here or Larandaril would fall. Or so she says.”

  “I hear mistrust.”

  “You do.” Bistane crossed his arms. “Diort’s girl is the result of the ild Fallyn back-breeding program. She says the program has had little real success, but it exists. They are herding people, Lara, like animals.”

  “And she’s a seer.”

  “She claims to be. Diort seems to be convinced.”

  “That is a very rare Talent in any of our backgrounds. Their program could be more successful than she knows.” Lara fingered the golden frame of her mirror. She closed her eyes for such a long while Bistane feared that he’d lost her to sleep again.

  “Lara?”

  Her eyes opened. “I’m here. Just thinking the Gods of Kerith are awake, and wondering what they think of us, meddling with the threads They used to weave their world. What are the Gods of Kerith, as it comes down to it? Will they move to meet us? Deal with us? Stir the pot so vigorously we destroy ourselves?” Her stomach let out a tiny growl and she dropped her hand to it with a laugh. “More practically—go get me something to eat! I think I may be starving.”

  “As I am commanded. Something light, though. You’ve been existing on dreams and the waters of the Andredia.”

  “With apologies to the sacred river, it no longer seems to be enough. Save me once again and get me something to eat!”

  Laughing, Bistane hurried to do her bidding.

  Chapter

  Seventeen

  LARA COULD NOT BEAR the vein in her throat that began to pulse as she stepped out onto the balcony to view her valley. It sent a painful throb down the curve of her throat down to the too sharp edge of her collarbone where it collected to the point of agony. Larandaril was not her kingdom: it was her heart and her trust. The wind off its green hills and vales comprised her breath. Her Vaelinar heritage was her blood, cold perhaps as some claimed. The Kobrir had been rewarded and left, and she could hear Bistane clearing the room, giving her space, giving her time. She’d drunk her fill of cool, clear water and allowed herself to be spoon-fed bread dipped in broth, but now she wanted to stand and exist on her own. It was time. It was past time. Nearly two years, they’d told her.

  She put her hands on the stone railing, and curled her fingers tightly. Dark black scourges marked the land like scars, gashes of war carved deeply into the firmament, emitting faint puffs of gray, greasy looking smoke. As the smoke drifted upward, it did not thin but coalesced with other wisps of smoke into webs that caught upon the canopy of the trees and hung there. She wondered for a moment if the dark blight upon the branches had any relationship to the black mold that had been affecting the Books of All Truth at the Ferstanthe Library, eating them away and if the librarian had found a cure with the help of Tolby Farbranch while she slept. She marked that thought as another question she must ask. Answers, so many answers she had to have. Questions she had to remember to ask. Life that had passed her by while she slept without dreams, without knowing, without hope.

  The Andredia River sliced through the valley, its waters so bright blue that their reflection hurt her gaze upon them, but even that brilliant river faltered where it traveled through the scars. The pastures nearby seemed nearly empty, the breeding herds thinned, few mares with foals trotting at their sides. She could see the magnificent dapple-gray stallion Aymaran, Sevryn’s favorite, pacing the railing of the stallion paddocks. He hadn’t gone to the killing fields of the battle. She could see his influence in several of the foals, their coats a dark, flinty gray that would, as his was doing, whiten as they aged. But his bloodline could not save the hot-blooded tashyas. She would have to appeal to the other Houses and holdings for both studs and brood mares.

  And she could not bring them to graze on corrupted fields or drink from tainted waters. The Andredia cried out to be cleansed, for her to fulfill her blood vows, and to keep the valley as she had pledged. She could not see beyond to the actual battlefield itself. Bistane would have to take her there, if he would. She anticipated an argument. He would say she was too weakened, and he would be right. But she could not wait a moment longer. Her pulse drummed in her neck and hummed and beat hotly at her collarbone. She had work to do.

  A step scuffed faintly behind her. She asked, without turning her head, “Bistane?”

  “Never far from you.”

  “I heard you. In my dreams. Or my waking. Sometimes I seemed to see things, even though I could not move or react to them.”

  “You would open and close your eyes, sometimes,” he answered. “We couldn’t leave your eyes open . . . the healers were afraid they’d dry. So we would close them, and you’d stay for days—weeks—with them closed, and then I would come one morning and you’d be looking out. I knew you weren’t dead. Sevryn told me that the toxin would be all that could keep you alive, at first, to heal. But I could never be sure that you’d really live again, either.”

  “You sang to me.”

  “I talked. Sang, once in a while. Sat, and worked.”

  “Sevryn.” Lara opened her hands from the balcony rail, and stepped away, turning slightly. “Rivergrace took him through the Gate.”

  “Yes.”

  “Have either of them returned?”

  “Not yet.”

  “Are they expected to?”

  “We don’t know. The Gate has stayed open like an eye that’s barely slit, since the battle. There are those who would force it, but that is a matter better discussed when we have the others here and you’re rested.”

  “My being awake doesn’t solve everything at once?”

  His mouth twitched. “It seems as though it should, but it does not.”

  She traced a fingertip over the half-moon scar along her throat. Unlike her other scars, this one hurt and her touch quickened nerves to tell her so. “What was it Sevryn gave me? It wasn’t the death blow I feared, but it felled me all the same.” Her hand drifted to her thigh and rubbed along the robe as if she could see the small scar left by the knife he’d plunged into her.

  “His dagger was coated with a potion called king’s rest by the Kobrir. It plunged you into a coma, so that you might heal instead of die, but then you were trapped within. The dagger couldn’t be removed until the antidote was verified by the Kobrir, but it seems they’d lost their master . . . poisoner . . . leaving no one quite sure of the potion. With a sacrifice or two, they eventually recreated it.”

  “I understand the time span for that. But this.” She tapped her neckline. “But this is still sore.”

  “An assassin broke into your chambers. If you hadn’t been within that healing coma, that slice would have killed you, but your heart refused to bleed out.”

  Her eyes narrowed. “How did he get in?”

  “Jumped to the window and in. Or, I should say, levitated.”

  “Ild Fallyn.”

  “One of their Talent line, yes. Dead now.”

  “You sound as if you regret that.”

  “He did not live long enoug
h to tell me what I wanted to know.”

  “Mmmm. So I healed yet again under the influence of this poison, the king’s rest.”

  “Yes. I sent another appeal to the Kobrir. I told them that none of them could walk safely upon Kerith until the poison was cured.”

  “And so they found they had the antidote.”

  “Eventually, yes.”

  “Do you think they stalled on purpose?”

  “They gained no advantage by it. Actually, they had not planned the poison for you at all.”

  “Oh?”

  “No. It was intended for Daravan. The more particulars of that, I could not tell you. Sevryn had precious little time to tell me anything, and the Kobrir were even less inclined to give me information, even when they sent one to administer the cure.”

  “Daravan was the target?” She turned to face him fully, one hip braced against the balcony, unable to admit her legs felt unsteady. She could not be weak. She could not afford to show it.

  “Yes. He brought the Raymy army back on us en masse with purpose, to bring Kerith and all its peoples to their knees. We thought his control weakening, by the small troops that kept dropping here and there, but it was him practicing his control until he could hit you in force here in Larandaril.”

  “Do we know why?”

  “Other than he wanted to rule? No.” Bistane spread his hands out, palms up. “Sometimes there is no more reason than that.”

  “Not with Daravan. Never a single rationale. You may be certain of that.” She paused. Her throat, her mouth, felt terribly dry. “For years I’ve wondered if he plotted Gilgarran’s death at the hands of Quendius. What Gilgarran might have spared us from, if he had lived. He taught Sevryn much as his protégé, but not enough. Not nearly enough.” Her voice faded. She turned her chin to cough lightly, but that turned into a terrible hack that set her shoulders to shaking and racked her entire body.

  Bistane darted back inside her rooms and returned with a tall glass in his hand. “Come in. Sit. And we will talk some more.”

  Chagrined, she accepted the drink and emptied half the glass before she felt she could even thank him. “I feel,” she added, “like a spring shoot, just out of the ground where it can be annihilated by the slightest drop of rain or tug of wind or even a too bright ray of sun.”

  He put his hand about her waist. “Then come in and be protected for a while.”

  Lara let him guide her to one of her padded chairs. He sat in the carved wooden one at her secretary desk, after having pulled it around to draw close to her. She finished her drink, water sweetened with a bit of honeyed mead, and waited as he refilled it. The drink both cooled and warmed her.

  “First, I wanted to talk about Sevryn.”

  “He was no traitor to you.”

  “No. No, he wasn’t. I feared it. I had . . . seen it. And that brings me to talk to you not only about Sevryn, but myself. Things very few have ever known.” She sat back in the chair, heard the material rustle like silk at her touch, felt it cushion bones that had too little flesh left over them. She’d gotten horribly thin, she realized, and looked down at her arm. Pale, almost translucent skin showed the tracery of her veins beneath the surface clearly; old scars tracked spidery-white etchings over it. Translucent and fragile looking, like the pages of a very old book, holding ancient knowledge. She pulled her sleeves down over her arms, suddenly feeling chilled.

  “You don’t have to tell me anything,” Bistane said softly. “It’s unnecessary.”

  “Not to me. I have been an unknown quantity most of my life, to those important to me, and who trust me in spite of that which has never been revealed.” Lara took a deep breath. She folded her hands in her lap. When had her fingers become so slender, so frail looking? And the stump for her missing finger looked almost as if it had melted away, rather than been sliced expertly. “Sinok kept many secrets and for a very long time, I was convinced it was to protect this throne. But it wasn’t. It was done to protect him and what he felt was his legacy. Sinok was not only my grandfather but my father. When Jeredon grew older, he took stock of his grandson and found him lacking in the Talents he needed to rule. Jeredon’s father met a fatal accident. Jeredon was disinherited. My mother remarried again, an even more unwanted match, and he also died but not before he could give the impression he’d impregnated her.” Lara looked away from Bistane’s face and earnest expression. “Sinok had raped her. She gave birth to me and raised me in the truth, in shame and silence that Sinok demanded from both of us. Eventually, I lost her as well, and he trained me to succeed him. I had inherited his Talents, or I would have been shunted away, too, I believe.”

  “I think Gilgarran suspected and was quietly gathering evidence. I know that Sinok tried to have him assassinated at least once. But Gilgarran also supported me. Whatever sin there was in the matter fell on Sinok’s shoulders, not mine. So. That is where I came from. What I can do has been whispered about since I could walk. I could become as a vantane and ride the winds, gathering information no one else had. I could think faster than my opponents could react. I could always stay several sword strokes ahead in my battles. How I did it, no one knew. Now Sevryn, wherever he is, knows. And so will you.”

  She stretched out a hand, found it trembling, but placed it on Bistane’s leather clad knee, anyway.

  “You have foresight. Extremely rare, and valued.” He sounded triumphant in having guessed it.

  Lariel shook her head. “No. It may seem like it, but that’s not what I do.” She leaned forward, her voice quieting. “I am a Possessor, Bistane. I possess another’s soul and observe. For those moments, I know all that soul knows and what it will do, based on its knowledge. And I am able to go into the future and possess in order that I might know what happens then.” She looked away from him. She could see from his expression that he was trying to understand and accept what she was telling him. But she didn’t think he ever would, or could, truly understand. “I saw myself struck down in the Raymy attack, and it looked as if Sevryn was doing it. I realize now that the soldier I possessed saw it from an angle which hid the truth, that it was Alton ild Fallyn and Tressandre who struck at me, but when I came back to myself, all I knew was that Sevryn had been there, blade in hand.”

  “And you woke up screaming assassin.”

  “I did.” She took her hand from his knee, her flesh warmed by the touch, her body still shaking faintly. “I didn’t want to die there, Bistane.”

  “No one would.”

  She tried to lift her chin, to look him in the eyes. “I can’t die. It’s important I don’t, and not for my sake. There will come a moment when the existence of all that is Kerith will depend on me, and I have to be alive to see that moment. I’ve seen it, and it wasn’t easy, and it’s nothing I want—but I love these lands. I don’t want to fail them.”

  Bistane’s posture had changed, just by the barest amount, one shoulder higher and tensed, as if his body fought to lean back and he fought against the reflex. He met her gaze steadily, his eyes so like his father’s, intense blue on blue, clear and piercing. “I cannot promise you that you will meet this moment in history, but I can promise my loyalty and silence.” He paused as if he wished to add one more thing.

  “But?”

  Bistane tilted his head. “No, nothing more. Not yet.” He did sit back in his chair then, with a sigh that might have come from relief or weariness. “So do all your observations come true?”

  “Yes. It’s not something I’ve ever done lightly, but only at great need. I wonder if I have ever tampered with the threads of fate or knotted what should be our true history, but I don’t have any evidence of it. Except that last battle when I thought I saw myself die. It wasn’t quite the same as what I’d envisioned, but when I fell, I found myself thinking. Not now. Not yet. I have something I must do for the others. And I haven’t loved yet. I can’t die because I’m not done living.
”

  “No different than any of us.”

  “No. No, I suppose not.”

  “Your Talent gives you an immense power.”

  “Perhaps. I have only been allowed to learn a very little. It’s rather like looking through an arrow loop, nothing more than that narrow slit in stone that my archers use. But perhaps that’s the way it’s meant to be, or I might be meddling in things I should not.”

  “You’ve never tried.”

  “It seemed wiser not to. I’ve saved myself, but I’ve never been able to—quite—save anyone else.” She looked away from him then, suddenly unable to meet his gaze.

  “You must have seen things you couldn’t bear to see.”

  “I didn’t go looking. What I searched for, Bistane, were answers to an immediate crisis, a knot that I had no way of cutting through without knowing what might happen if I took a certain action. And it’s not easy for those I possessed.” Her chin dropped, and her left hand joined her right in its trembling. “There are those who did not withstand being possessed. In the early years, Sinok had them killed so they could not talk. In later years, I—I—”

  “Don’t say it. You did what you had to.”

  “It was never done lightly.”

  Bistane thrust himself to his feet. “I doubt it could have been. When did you know? Were you taught?”

  “I learned what we all did when we were young, that owning another was an abomination. That people who could steal your soul needed to be put to death.”

  “Lara, that wasn’t quite—”

  “What I did? But it was.” She put a hand up to the cuff of his sleeve to keep him from withdrawing from her totally. “I took them from themselves so I could witness what they were meant to experience, and when I was done, I couldn’t always leave them untouched. Particularly when I was young. I learned the hard way how to disengage without destroying the mind I touched. Those were some very difficult lessons. Very difficult.”