Queen of Oblivion

by Giles Carwyn

  “How long ago did this battle take place?” she asked. None of the corrupted had decayed. Bugs would not touch them, but this person had been human.

  “Many years, my child. This is no place for us to linger in our moment of triumph. Come. Let us see other parts of the city. This is a memory of violence that, I hope, we need never visit again.”

  But Arefaine did not follow him. A glimmer of color caught her eye, and she leaned closer. On the ground where the Silver Islander’s belly had once been, there lay a shard of multicolored crystal. She frowned.

  “What is all this?” she asked, rising and looking at the herd of grisly bodies.

  “A failed escape attempt, my child,” he said.

  “You called these creatures to rescue you?”

  “I did.” He nodded. “Many years ago when you were still a child. But the Islanders stopped them. I made many such attempts. They all failed. If you walk through the city, you will find many battlefields like this, especially on the beaches. This herd made it much further than most.”

  “But…” Arefaine stared at the foul remains, so tainted that nature would not touch them. She had read everything there was to know about the corrupted, but until she had unleashed her own black ani upon her traitorous Carriers, she had never felt what it was truly like to be in their presence. The horror of that moment came rushing back to her. Her corrupted Carriers had been feral, single-minded. She couldn’t imagine controlling them, becoming one with them such that they would do her bidding. Bending them to her will.

  She looked at her father. He stood there, watching her with concern, and a chill ran up her spine. She glanced quickly at the circle of defenders, and for a moment she thought the corrupted and the indentured weren’t very different at all. She shoved the thought down.

  “You used these creatures?”

  “I had to.”

  “Yes, but you were the one who led the crusade against the creation of the indentured. You were the strongest critic of Efften’s reliance on the black…on the emmeria.”

  “Where would you get such an idea?”

  “From the emperor,” Arefaine said.

  Her father raised an eyebrow at her.

  “I also read it. All the books say the same thing.”

  “Books written by?”

  “Ohohhim,” she admitted.

  “Exactly.”

  Arefaine swallowed down her anger. When would the lies end? She shook her head. The emperor was dead. Dewland was dead. Oh was dead. Nothing they had said mattered anymore.

  “Remember, you were raised by our enemies. They went to great lengths to infect you with their fears, to vilify all power in any of its forms. But ani is not inherently evil, any more than a net or a plow is inherently evil, no matter what the fish or the forest think. Ani is a tool, a very powerful tool, as are the stones you carry. The indentured are also a powerful tool. Are they dangerous? Of course. Should they be used in all things? Of course not. Like a knife, you must use them with caution, and only when necessary. But should all knives be thrown into the ocean for fear of being cut by one of them?”

  “But surely you feel the way I do around them. They’re…” Arefaine put a hand to her abdomen. “They make me sick to my stomach.”

  “I understand, my child. I would have preferred to employ different methods, but I had little choice. My only other option was to place you in danger, which I would not bring myself to do. So I tried to free myself any way I could.”

  “But these creatures are so foul,” she said, looking down at the corrupted beast.

  “Foul enough to stop the evil Islanders, or so I hoped. I took up the sword that I had to hand, my child, as any man would in defense of his family.”

  She searched for the right words to explain to him why this wasn’t right, but she couldn’t find them. Couldn’t he feel it in his bones?

  “I’m sorry, Arefaine,” he said quietly. “This is not the reunion I dreamed of, not this fierce battle with the Silver Islanders, this tainted homecoming. I dreamed of freeing myself, and then rescuing you from the Opal Empire. I wish I could have brought you to a beautiful garden without dragging you through the thorns, but I failed.” He paused, watching her. “And now you have to rescue me instead.”

  Arefaine looked into her father’s weary features, wanting to embrace him and wanting to run away at the same time.

  A sudden explosion shattered the silence and a flock of screaming birds fled from a nearby tree. “What was that?” she gasped, turning and jogging in the direction of the noise. It had come from her tower.

  “Arefaine, wait!”

  But she didn’t listen to him. She raced up the street, over another bridge, and between two tall buildings toward the center of the city. More explosions echoed off the buildings ahead of her, one right after the other. She turned a corner and found herself in a huge clearing. The largest spire in Efften loomed over her, the top of it lost in the glare of the sun. A formidable barricade had been constructed around the silver tower’s base. Stones and debris from the ruined buildings had been stacked into circular battlements nearly ten feet high. The wall was sturdy and well built, but still a feeble defense against the swarm of indentured clambering over it like crazed ants.

  A lone Silver Islander woman stood at the top of the barricade, shooting arrow after arrow into the horde. The attackers exploded as they came. The first lost his arm, spun away, and tumbled down the rocks. The woman shot again at the next, who was almost upon her. His head exploded, and he fell over backward, crashing into two more behind him.

  But there were too many. The woman reloaded and turned as a third indentured reached the top of the wall. She shot. His stomach exploded, and he twisted sideways. She nocked another arrow, but two more had come up behind her. She turned as the nearest grabbed her wrist and snapped it. The woman cried out, struggling as they pulled her down the back side of the wall, out of sight. She screamed, her ragged cry sharp and desperate, and then all was quiet. Arefaine turned her head away.

  Her father appeared next to her.

  The three indentured who had dragged the woman out of sight reappeared again, picking their way nimbly over the stones. Their hands were bloody to the wrists.

  Arefaine said nothing, only stared at the silent wall. The indentured all slowed to a stop and stood panting at the base of it. She wondered why her heart raced and bile rose in her throat. The woman was a Silver Islander. She deserved to die. She deserved worse than death.

  Then why did Arefaine feel this way?

  “Our enemies left a few of their fellows behind to guard my prison,” her father said. “But that is the last of them. The Silver Islanders are no more.”

  Hesitating, Arefaine finally nodded. She swallowed and said, “Yes,” in a voice that sounded dead to her ears. “Yes, that’s good.” She looked at the clearing. The cobblestones had a black sheen, like the bottom of a copper kettle baked in a fire. Like the site of the herd of corrupted corpses, nothing grew in this place. The jungle that had overtaken the rest of the city refused to come here.

  The indentured who had been blown in half by the Islander woman’s last arrow was crawling toward her. He had a mane of curly black hair, and his bright blue shirt slowly turned black as it soaked up his blood. As soon as she looked at him, he stopped, laid his head on the ground, and continued that grotesque panting breath. She stared at the black-eyed man, fixated, and she didn’t know what to feel.

  I am not a child, she thought. And this is part of war.

  “I regret this unpleasant business, daughter. But I assure you it is all over now. We will be together in moments.” He pointed at the top of the tower where the monolithic dish blotted out the sun high overhead. “I’m up there, in the garden,” he said softly. “It is almost over.”

  Her father’s prison was made of the same strange, silver stone as the other towers. It must have been almost a hundred feet around at the base and several hundred feet tall. Birds flew near the middle, and th
e trees beyond it seemed like flowered twigs in comparison. A curtain of vines climbed the sides of the tower for nearly a third of its length. Beyond them, it tapered as it rose, sharply at first, and then more gradually as it approached the top, smooth and perfect. Then, at the last, it bloomed into a huge atrium around the edges of which she could see a fringe of green lit by a corona of sunlight.

  Arefaine stared up at it as she walked mutely to the ring of stones and began climbing. She passed the last Silver Islander guard. Her arms, legs, and head had been ripped from her body. Her dark blood blended with the black stones beneath her. Arefaine turned her gaze away to the tower.

  She had to focus on what must be done. All this could be cleaned, wiped away as if it had never been. They would start anew, and when she rebuilt Efften there would be no indentured, no corrupted, no shadows anywhere in her city of light.

  Once beyond the makeshift wall, she looked for the tower’s entrance. Broad silver steps led twenty feet up to a pair of filigreed double doors twice the height of a man. Thick, gnarled roots grew through the gaps in the doors, spilling down the stairs and rising up the sides. She tried to imagine what kind of tree could have roots that large and how it could be growing inside the windowless tower. The roots were so entwined through the doors she wasn’t even sure they could be opened.

  Arefaine turned from the tower to the mutilated Silver Islander and the trio of bloody-handed indentured who stood around her, breathing like dying dogs. She swallowed down the sickly feeling in her throat.

  “I don’t want them here, Father,” she said suddenly.

  “I know, my child. We will let them go as soon as we can.”

  “No. I want them gone now!” She looked at him, tears in her eyes. “The dream isn’t just to restore Efften. We need to rebuild her better, without repeating the mistakes of the past. Weren’t the indentured one of those mistakes?”

  Her father held up his hands. “Of course, of course. Do not upset yourself over it. I will send them away directly.”

  The indentured came to life before he had finished speaking. As one, they turned and ran up a northbound street and disappeared from view. The only one who remained was the one with thick black hair who had been blown in half. His frantic panting slowly tapered off as her father extinguished his meager life light. She turned away.

  “There, we are alone now,” her father said, gazing up at the tall staircase. “It is time.”

  Chapter 4

  Brophy hacked through a cluster of vines, clearing the path for another couple of feet. His sword was thick with sap and dotted with green bits of all the vegetation he’d slain to get to this point. He followed a muddy slope next to a river, working his way ever southward.

  He had never seen jungle this thick. The entire island of Efften was covered with the twisted-trunk trees that soared overhead, blotting out the sun.

  When Arefaine’s ship had sunk beneath him, Brophy had treaded water for hours, waiting for Shara as long as he dared before swimming south toward Efften. He’d pushed through wave after wave all night, trying to reach the City of Sorcerers ahead of Arefaine.

  The black emmeria’s anger burned within him, and he would have drowned without it driving him forward. He rode that wave of endless rage all the way to the shores where it had been created.

  He had spent the first ten minutes slogging through the sand around the beaches, but finally decided to cut inward and brave the jungle. He’d found an abandoned and overgrown road and fought his way along it for most of the day.

  Arefaine would already have reached the island, he was sure, and every second was precious.

  A few more swings, and he crested the top of the hill and stopped as the jungle dropped away.

  Before him stretched the city of Efften. The cliff below Brophy disappeared into mists as dozens of creeks dropped over the edge in a series of gentle cascades. The little waterfalls fed an immense, crescent-shaped lake that bordered the edge of the city.

  Five silver towers soared skyward, dominating the ruined landscape laid out at his feet. Songs were written about those towers: “The Spires in the Flames” and “Besha’s Flight.” “The Day the Mages Came Home,” “Crab of the Silver Wharf,” and “Alohmena.” Every child in the world had heard those stories and songs dozens of times, and each was inspired by this place.

  The jungle had moved in on the city, fringing everything in green. Only the tallest buildings and an elegant network of canals could be seen through the trees. The buildings were sculpted by magic, and Brophy could see detailed carvings along the tops of some, stories told in stone. Other buildings told stories in the way they stood, partnering with other buildings across a street or connected by high, thin walkways over sparkling canals. Arching white marble bridges crisscrossed those waterways, creating a spiderweb design that seemed almost symmetrical. The entire city toyed with the imagination of the viewer while at the same time embracing the chaotic clusters of trees, ferns, flowers, and vines. It was as if a deal had been struck between the mages of Efften and the laws of nature. Each bent for the other, sometimes demanding, sometimes accommodating, and in the end creating something wholly unearthly.

  Brophy looked over the city, built on the backs of ani slaves. Her beauty had been bought with the darkest of coin and now the hollow palaces sat abandoned, a mute testament to their grandeur and their folly.

  He shook his head. What a waste.

  Beyond the city, he scanned the shoreline to the west. A flicker of movement caught his eye, and he squinted. An Islander ship lay moored to one of the docks, its furled sails fluttering in the breeze.

  It was Arefaine. It had to be.

  She arrived some time ago, a quiet voice spoke into his head.

  Brophy’s lip curled, and he checked the urge to spin around and look for it. The voice was unmistakable, even though he’d heard it only once before. In Oh’s cave.

  “I was wondering when I would hear from you again,” he said, feeling his body tense.

  Time is short, Oh said, his ethereal voice almost a whisper. The resignation in his tone set Brophy’s teeth on edge. You must stay by Arefaine’s side, no matter the cost. She has already reached the central tower. I have seen that spire fall again and again through the shifting veils of time. If you fail, it will collapse. A hurricane of our own hatred, pain, and greed will spread out from the rubble, rushing across the face of the earth and destroying everything in its path. Only Arefaine can stop it.

  “So you have said.”

  And she will not stop it unless you are by her side.

  “I told you before. I will not help you kill her.”

  I wish there was another way.

  Brophy snorted.

  Our world rests on the brink of oblivion, Oh insisted. Only you can help her make the right decision.

  “Not if that decision is to kill herself.”

  There is no other way.

  Brophy retreated from the edge, turning his back on Efften. “There is always another way,” he said.

  With a growl, he turned and leapt over the cliff. The wind and mist rushed past him, and he dove into the lake below.

  Chapter 5

  Arefaine followed her father up the steps to the tower’s filigreed gates. She could feel the power inside, throbbing like an unnaturally slow heartbeat. Her father stood next to her, waiting patiently, and the Heartstone, her sister, was tucked warmly in the satchel under her arm. She didn’t know why she hesitated. She wanted something that wasn’t here, something that eluded her. The archway came to a point twice as tall as she was. Bas-relief carvings of willowy trees formed the outer edges of the gates, and the silver bars were wrought into the shape of intertwining branches. Roots and vines of all sizes pushed through the gaps in the filigreed gate, latching onto anything they touched. The vegetation had pushed the gates open a couple of inches but also held them fast.

  “I’m afraid you will have to force your way inside,” her father said.

  She walked
closer, careful not to touch the hungry roots. They felt alive, more like a person than a plant. They were saturated with ani, overflowing with it, but it wasn’t corrupted. It was something else. She peered into the gloom inside the tower. Its interior was entirely filled with a mass of twisted roots. Their vast brown coils wrapped over one another like the coils of enormous snakes. A swelling of ani she had never felt before was in the heart of the twisted mass.

  “There is something in there,” she breathed.

  “This building is the center of all power in Efften. The heart of this tower is flooded with ani, like a giant Heartstone. The lifeblood of our empire flows through her walls.”

  She shook her head slowly.

  “The vitality and power of anyone who steps within is multiplied. You will see.” He reached out and brushed one of the green serrated leaves sprouting from the vines. “As you near the top, the effect becomes stronger. At the height of Efften’s glory, the garden overhead fed the rest of the towers like a mother feeds a child in her womb. But no one has pulled from her reserves for centuries, and the garden’s growth has gone unchecked.”

  “The tower feeds this immense tree?” she asked. “Nothing unmagical could grow so large.” Arefaine tested the gate, tugging lightly. The roots shifted as if alive, but would not release their grip. “How do we even get inside?”

  “It is not as great a hurdle as you might think. A little emmeria from your sister and these roots will wither away.”

  “No,” Arefaine said suddenly, more forcefully than she meant to. She didn’t like her father’s casual use of the emmeria or the indentured. It was childish, she knew, but she couldn’t get the thought out of her head. Hadn’t the time come to use better tools?

  “I’ll chop them away,” she said, drawing her dagger. She called upon the Floani form, filling her body with strength.