Upon the Flight of the Queen

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “Perhaps we might take a little longer to seek it,” Tesra suggested. “There are still some hearthstones missing—”

  “We have enough of them,” the queen said curtly. “I’ve issued orders for attunement to begin today.”

  “Today?” Tesra repeated, feeling a chill.

  Synahla spoke with icy disdain. “The time of her return draws nigh, Tesra. You yourself have felt her building heartbeat at the depths of the stones! Why do you object?”

  Tesra gulped under the critical regard of the two most powerful sorceresses she knew. Somehow she found her voice. “I am as eager for her return as you,” she said slowly. “But what happens if the ceremony doesn’t work? We’ll release all that energy, with nothing to constrain it. And,” she added quickly, for she saw Synahla’s mouth opening, “there are dozens of hearthstones missing from the matrix. Their absence makes the whole ceremony more likely to go awry.”

  “Oh, Tesra,” the queen said. “I thought that you had faith in me.” She smiled sadly.

  “I do,” she protested

  “Then why do you question her?” Synahla demanded, waspish.

  “It is but another trial,” the queen said, as if to herself.

  Someone rapped on the door. The queen hesitated, glancing first to her left, at a secondary entrance that led to her apartments, and then over Tesra’s shoulder to the door by which she’d entered. From there came another knock.

  “We are in conference,” the queen announced.

  “My queen, it’s me,” came the tense response, “Commander Thelar. I’ve urgent news.”

  The queen sighed and a frown pulled at her features. “Enter.” She sat back resignedly in her chair as if troubles had fallen unfairly upon her shoulders.

  Thelar let himself in, closed the door behind him, then advanced to stand stiffly before the queen, to whom he offered a formal bow. He nodded politely to Synahla, still his commanding officer no matter his own title, and caught Tesra’s eye. She noted a vein throbbing at his temple.

  “Yes?” the queen prompted.

  “We’ve received a messenger from The Fragments. The Naor have invaded their realm and are laying waste to the villages as they advance upon Alantris.”

  Less than two days ago a messenger had reached them from Arappa, proclaiming that the Naor were marching through that realm, and heading for the capital, Vedessus of the plains. Tesra’s mouth gaped in outright horror. “Two attacks at once?”

  Thelar paused for a moment so that the queen might respond, but since she did not, he declared his intent. “I request permission to muster a force of squires, a force of exalts, and some Erymyran troops.”

  The queen quickly shook her head. “No. All our exalts are required for our final preparations. The Goddess is almost ready for her glorious restoration.”

  Thelar struggled and failed to mask his surprise.

  Synahla explained, her voice kind. “That’s too little to help them, in any case, Thelar. We sent all our available troops to Arappa. If we send any more there will be no one to defend Erymyr.”

  Thelar spoke bluntly to Synahla, though he glanced at the queen as he did so. “If the history of the Altenerai tells us anything, it is that a few men and women in the right place can accomplish the impossible. That’s what the Altenerai and now the Exalted are trained to do.”

  “And which are you, Thelar?” The queen’s tone had grown pointed. “Exalt, or alten?”

  Thelar blinked in astonishment. But then he’d spent much less time with the queen and was unused to her sudden mood shifts. “Majesty, I have taken the oath of the Exalted.”

  “Then you know that the time of the Altenerai has passed. We can spare no exalts.” She bestowed a beneficent smile upon him, as though it were a favor. “Besides. The sooner the Goddess returns, the sooner all this pain and suffering will be at an end.”

  Tesra understood why Thelar looked shocked. “But Majesty,” she said, “there will be suffering in the meantime. Many may be hurt and killed.”

  Synahla’s glare intimated that she should stop speaking immediately and that painful repercussions would surely follow this meeting.

  “This is true,” the queen admitted. “And perhaps you are right to question me.” She then seemed to address not just them, but some audience watching beyond the room. Perhaps she thought the entirety of the future somehow looked upon her. “This is a weighty burden I shall bear. Many sacrifices have been made and I alone shoulder the blame. I wish it were not so, but it must be this way, and I gladly take up the responsibility. Those who know the Goddess shall be safe, and she shall make the world anew for us upon her waking.” She smiled again and her voice was once more room-sized, her gaze upon the acting commander of Altenerai. “All will be well soon. No more than a matter of weeks.”

  Thelar, no dissembler, stood with mouth hanging partly open, like a dead fish. “Majesty, thousands are in jeopardy.”

  “We are all in jeopardy, Thelar,” the queen snapped, “until the Goddess is once more in our lives.”

  Obviously dumbstruck, he glanced to Synahla, found no hope there, and mustered a response, voice rasping. “I would like to dispatch messengers to Ekhem and Kanesh, to ask them to send aid to The Fragments.”

  The queen sighed and sank back into her chair. “If it pleases you.”

  “I will also dispatch a return messenger to The Fragments. With your leave,” he added.

  “Yes, yes. You may go.” Leonara watched as he offered another bow, retreated to the door, and departed, closing it behind him. She frowned fully upon Synahla. “Truly, Synahla, must all of your underlings question us so?”

  Tesra saw the set of Synahla’s jaw, and then the exalt commander turned to her. “You were quite rude, don’t you think, Tesra?”

  At the same moment, she felt a flush of horror as the commander’s magic washed against her. Her own powers were far from negligible, but the block she attempted was blown away with the ease of dandelion fluff, and the spell enveloped her. As she struggled against its relentless pull she heard Synahla ask if she truly was as concerned about the queen’s plans as she’d earlier proposed.

  “Well?” the queen demanded, peevish. “Is she mute?

  It was then that Tesra apologized and accepted fault, fully believing each and every word she spoke.

  6

  Crimson Dreams

  Elenai woke, heart pounding, unsettled in the darkness of the unfamiliar room. It took a moment to remember she lay in the Altenerai garrison of Vedessus, upon a bed with mattress and pillows and blankets as clean and fragrant as she herself. She’d vowed earlier that night that she’d never take such luxuries for granted again, and yet now she had little thought for them.

  She lifted her hands. There was only a vague suggestion of them in the darkness, and she knew that there would be no blood upon them. She had scrubbed so very carefully.

  She shook her head, trying to clear the residual images from the nightmare that still preyed upon her. She took in a few deep breaths and waited for her pulse to slow.

  She had dreamed of blood. Monstrous Naor warriors had charged again and again and somehow she kept them back. But her arm had grown weary and the soil around her foul. And everywhere was blood, coating weapon and boots and clothing and hair and eyelashes and skin until she was one hue with the corpses at her feet. Then, gruesomely, a slight figure rose, dripping, from the sticky red earth and looked about with piercing blank eyes—and through glistening crimson teeth the strange blood woman demanded to know if they had met before.

  That moment had wakened her.

  Lying in the safety of this room behind guarded walls, the stark dream terror fading, she wondered not at all at why her mind couldn’t let go the dread from her recent experiences. But why had the dream changed who animated the gore? In life it had been a male sorcerer named Chargan manipulating blood.

  Elenai shook her head wearily and found the mug of water some thoughtful squire had placed beside her bed. She drai
ned the vessel, for her throat felt almost as dry as it had after the battle, and returned it to the nightstand, her pulse normal at last. She guessed it must be three hours before sunrise. She frowned and settled back between the covers because she had no business being awake after what she had endured for long weeks. Fatigue wracked her yet, and muscles ached as she stretched out to find a comfortable position.

  Yet sleep would not return. And the distant sounds of revelry didn’t help.

  Eventually, with an irritated sigh, she cast aside the covers and turned up the flame on her bedside lantern. She noticed then that she had a clean, dry khalat folded over the nearby chair. The city squires must have quietly placed the garment after scrubbing for hours. There had been so much blood.…

  She didn’t have to imagine the process, as she had occasionally been involved in the care of the sacred garments herself. Hand washing over and over with astringent extracts left nails brittle and knuckles cracked; occasionally magical exertions were necessary to exorcize the most stubborn combat remnants, and most certainly had been used here as the cloth was already dry. They’d also taken pains to remove the red piping from this khalat and to replace the edges with gold embroidery, no mean feat given the toughness of the material. It no longer resembled an article worn by exalts, a castoff from a defeated enemy. It was now truly her own.

  Most of the squires hadn’t taken any active part in the battle, and she’d seen disappointment in their faces at the impromptu celebration that had swept up the city last night. Doubtless they had worked overtime on more than her khalat repair, hoping to distinguish themselves and be chosen for duty in the battles to come. They craved conflict and glory, just as she and her friends once had, not fully appreciating that they’d return soaked in blood if they returned at all.

  From a pitcher nearby, she splashed water into a washbowl, then scrubbed her face, brushed back her hair, and peered at herself in the bronze mirror. She really didn’t look like a killer, she thought. But maybe she didn’t stare back fresh-faced, either. Those weren’t just fatigue lines around her eyes. What she’d experienced was somehow etched there just in the way she held herself.

  She turned with a contemptuous gesture and glanced over the bedroom. It was larger than her quarters back in Darassus, but she’d been so long in the wilderness that it felt constraining.

  She pulled on a dark blue blouse and pants, then buckled on the khalat, noting dryly she didn’t feel comfortable leaving without the armor even though it hadn’t availed the woman who’d first owned it, someone she herself had slain. Ortala had been trying to kill you, she reminded herself, as she slid into her now well-worn parade boots.

  The garrison corridors were still and empty until she reached the main entrance. The squire on duty there came to attention. Elenai was a little taken aback by the hero worship in the third ranker’s eyes.

  “As you were,” she said, wondering at the crisply dismissive air in her voice.

  She walked past him as though she actually knew where she was going.

  No one was up, of course. What had she expected? The halls were quiet, the doors closed on people who had better sense to sleep or had taken their celebrations to the city streets.

  And then, in an interior hall, she paused in mid-stride. She heard the scuff of bootheels on pavement, and saw the blaze of a light through a doorway to her left. She changed the course of her walk. Two lanterns burned brightly in the garrison courtyard, and a single man paced and pivoted between them. Shirtless in the warm night, N’lahr worked through a weaponless form.

  She stood and quietly watched the perfection of his movements.

  At rest, the commander’s face was plain. But it was quietly expressive in motion, and his body was beautiful: long and well-muscled, flat bellied, glistening in a sheen of sweat. His movements were flawless, and as she looked upon him, she felt an unexpected stirring of desire.

  Years before, she had idolized him. Now that she knew him as an individual, she’d thought her childish romantic inclinations a thing of the past. She supposed such a reaction was only natural. She knew the difference between love and lust. Who wouldn’t be attracted to such a finely controlled physical specimen?

  She stepped through the door as he knelt to deliver a blow to an imaginary opponent then rose to block others. She spotted his khalat and sword belt upon a nearby bench. Strange, that he wasn’t practicing a fighting form with his famous blade. But then perhaps he meant to rehearse attacks he hadn’t recently used. Irion had certainly been oft employed over the last two weeks. Or was it three? She realized wearily she had no coherent count of the days since N’lahr materialized into her life.

  He paused, balanced on his left leg, his right hand ready to deliver a blow. For an impossibly long moment he perched there, and she was awed by his poise. Then he swept into a blur of motion as he delivered a sweeping combination of blows and kicks.

  He came to a halt, breathing heavily, then looked up and met her eyes. “Hail, Alten.”

  He’d never greeted her thus. But then, she hadn’t really been apart from him as an alten before.

  “Hail, Commander.”

  “Why are you awake so early?”

  “I couldn’t sleep.” At his quizzical look she added, “Bad dreams.”

  He nodded, once, as if he understood. “That will happen,” he said, and from his manner, she knew that he accepted her as an equal, a recent development to which she hadn’t fully adjusted. But then it struck her that he really did understand. His own eyes were at least as tired as her own. She remembered he always looked a little haunted. Is this what it was like then, to be Altenerai? He toweled off his face and asked an unexpected question. “Have you made time for your family yet?” He glanced at her before reaching for his shirt.

  “I’m joining them for lunch.”

  “Good. Don’t spend all your time with soldiers.”

  She hesitated, but impelled by the discomfort of strange regard she’d seen in her sister’s eyes last night, blurted out: “Will it ever feel normal with them again?”

  He slipped on his shirt, frowning. “No. But they can connect you to a shared past. And once you’re with them for a while they won’t follow you with upraised eyes. Kyrkenall could quote you the line.”

  She knew the poem he meant. “Fenahnis,” from the Erymyran cycle. “‘They lingered on my words, they followed in my wake.’”

  “Yes.”

  “The squire on duty was looking at me like that just now.”

  “That’s how you were looking at me until recently.”

  Embarrassment at the blunt truth in his words set her spluttering. “But, you’ve done so much. You’re N’lahr the Grim, victor of countless impossible battles, returned from the grave, I’m just … me.”

  He held her eyes with a somber expression. “Elenai, you led an astonishing sorcerous attack to save your home city. You stood with five against a hundred. You were elevated from the fifth circle straight to the ring.” He hooked the next-to-last button of his cool blue shirt and rolled down the sleeve, then spoke with an air of finality that carried neither pride nor condemnation. “You are Elenai Oddsbreaker now.”

  She felt the blush on her cheeks. And her eyes drifted over to his sword. To fill the awkward silence she asked the first thing that came to her. “Why were you practicing a form without Irion?”

  “I can’t rely on it alone.”

  A sudden cheerless insight dawned. “You were expecting the war to end when you killed Mazakan, weren’t you?”

  He smiled sadly as he hooked his khalat. “I’m not sure what to expect anymore,” he said, and there was an uncertainty in his manner she hadn’t seen before. “Rialla foretold I would slay Mazakan, with the sword. Nothing more. Yet the Naor power is hardly broken, is it?”

  She thought of the image of the foul blood sorcerer last night bragging that Alantris had fallen and that Naor armies would soon take Darassus. “You killed Mazakan. You can kill Chargan if he really carries ou
t an attack.”

  “Rialla didn’t mention that.”

  “How many battles did you win that were never prophesied? More than you can count, probably.” She didn’t wait for an answer. “There was only this one that you knew about. That doesn’t invalidate the ones that came before, and it doesn’t mean no more will follow. And there’s no telling if that enemy boaster will actually attack because we’ve destroyed the Naor army here.”

  His gaze was sharp then. “Early this morning a messenger reached us from Alantris. He’d been traveling at full speed for nearly three days. A sizable contingent of Naor were marching on the city when he left The Fragments.”

  She felt the hammer of her pulse. “You think the city’s already fallen?”

  “Chargan could have been exaggerating to frighten us. But either way, we have to field an army of our own because there are Naor soldiers in our lands.” His voice grew taut with frustration. “And right now I have nothing to counter them but a few dozen garrison squires and a handful of Altenerai. So, in a few hours I’m meeting with the governor to request the aid of her troops.”

  “She’ll help,” Elenai said confidently.

  “I hope so. I need also convince her to side with us in the matter of the queen. She was … reticent last night when I described Leonara’s treacheries.” N’lahr frowned. “If we didn’t have Alantris to address we’d march straight to Darassus and charge the queen.”

  But they couldn’t, not until any Naor invasion was stopped. She nodded as N’lahr spoke on, unusually loquacious.

  “The last thing we want is for Leonara to have more time to scheme, but that’s just what she’s going to get. We must know what she’s planning with those hearthstones!” His teeth bared in a silent snarl, and then he buckled on his sword belt. He sucked in a deep breath, let it out slowly, then raised his eyes to her own. “I shouldn’t burden you with this.”

  “It’s a burden we must share,” she answered. “I’m Altenerai now.”