Upon the Flight of the Queen

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Elik looked troubled. “I think he wanted to send more and was angry he couldn’t.”

  “He told you that?”

  “No, sir. I could just tell how upset he was. And the queen’s official note was only a few lines, saying that she regretted she had no troops at her disposal to send. I got the sense Exalt Thelar wasn’t supposed to send as many as he did.”

  That suggested Thelar might actually be taking his job seriously, which Rylin decided shouldn’t have surprised him, because Thelar took everything seriously. “I’ve gotten off subject. What I was wanting was a status report on the city. What are we riding into?”

  Rylin had known the studious younger man for years, for he’d come up through the ranks in good order and Rylin had marked his progress. He’d seen Elik chagrined on the practice field when he’d failed, and elated when he’d succeeded. He’d seen his eyebrows knitted in concentration, and he’d seen him laughing when he relaxed with his fellow squires.

  But he’d never, ever seen him so consistently somber. Elik had apparently long anticipated the question, for he answered without hesitation. “When I left, the queen was as quiet as ever. But the exalts were far more visible.”

  “How many exalts are there?

  “Less than two dozen, all told. But there are aspirants as well, probably forty or so.”

  “Aspirants?” Lasren asked.

  “That’s what they’re calling their squires now. They travel in groups. They’re almost always in pairs. Keep in mind that the Exalted have nominal command over the city guard, since they’ve taken over command of the Altenerai.”

  “How many squires are in the city?” Rylin asked. “And where are their loyalties?”

  “There’s just over thirty of us, predominantly first and second rankers. Most are confused but a lot of us were upset we didn’t go with you and Varama.”

  “Why couldn’t they?” Lasren asked.

  “Some were off duty, or on patrol, or standing watch,” Rylin explained. “She got everyone she could.”

  “I was in charge of the lower gate that evening.” Elik sounded disappointed.

  “If you’d come with us, you’d probably be trapped in Alantris right now. Or have died on the way when the queen attacked. Like Renahra.”

  Elik’s eyes widened at mention of his fellow fifth ranker, then he nodded once, in grim resolve.

  Rylin brought him back to the subject with another question. “So are the squires loyal to the exalts, or the Altenerai?”

  “A lot of them are skeptical, but they can’t talk about it. They were told Kyrkenall and Elenai were traitors. I knew Elenai couldn’t be a traitor but thought maybe she’d gotten involved in something she didn’t understand. It’s when I heard the exalts saying you had joined forces with the cabal I was certain they lied.”

  Rylin was a little touched by the younger man’s regard of him.

  Lasren looked over to Rylin. “A bunch of second and first rankers aren’t going to be that much help against dozens of trained mages.”

  He was missing the point. “I’m worried that they might stand against us,” Rylin said. “I don’t want them harmed. But we should be working to avoid any kind of conflict in any case. The enemy’s too powerful. Are there any Altenerai in the city?”

  “No, sir.”

  Rylin was puzzled by that. “Cerai isn’t there?”

  “No.”

  “Hasn’t she appeared? Riding a ko’aye?”

  “No, sir.”

  “That would have been hard to miss,” Lasren said.

  Rylin agreed, although he supposed it was just possible Cerai might have turned up late at night, with magics to conceal her. But if she hadn’t ever returned to Darassus, what would she have done with the keystone? And if she hadn’t planned to give the stone to Queen Leonara, then why had she kidnapped Lelanc and abandoned Alantris to the Naor? “Cerai is a problem for another time. What about the people? Any idea what they think about all of this?”

  “Opinions vary. I get the sense that they’re suspicious of the exalts. And there have been little jokes about the queen for a while now, about how she’s lost in her own fog. People are apprehensive about her. A lot of them are skeptical that any of the Altenerai are traitors.”

  Rylin couldn’t think of anything else to ask, although he was certain Varama would have come up with much more.

  Lasren sighed and sat back in disgust. “I sure never saw any of this coming. It’s still hard to believe Denaven was lying to us all that time.”

  “There’ve been a lot of terrible surprises,” Rylin said. “And we may see more. That’s for the future, though. Right now we’d best turn in.” He rose, clapping a hand on the squire’s shoulder.

  Lasren reached out for his arm. “Rylin. Stay a moment.”

  Rylin hesitated, then nodded to the squire. “Go on. We’ll be down soon.”

  Elik saluted and departed, with a backward glance before he headed down. Rylin felt a little guilty to be sending him off apart from them, but turned to his friend, who patted the cushion beside him.

  Rylin took the seat as Lasren pulled on the wine. After, his friend held the bottle by the neck, beside his leg, until he found his voice. Lasren partly turned his head, and tried to sound casual. “Remember when we used to dream of being Altenerai?”

  “I remember.” Rylin nodded with a mixture of amusement and sorrow. “We weren’t the only ones.”

  Lasren looked up. “But from our class, only you and me and Gyldara made it.”

  “I think a couple of others could have, if they’d stayed with it.” He didn’t mention Tesra, or Vatahn, a redhead who’d mustered out at the fourth rank after falling in love with a book binder.

  “That’s just it—they didn’t want it like we did. Gods, but I wanted to be a hero. Get the ring. The khalat. The glory. The girls.” Lasren grinned and looked briefly like the man Rylin remembered. “I wanted songs to be sung for me. I wanted to hold the gate, like Herahn, or even go down in a blaze of glory, like Kyrikin. I mean, once I was older.” He met Rylin’s eyes. “I held the line, against the Naor, with Kyrkenall the Eyeless and N’lahr himself. I wanted but wasn’t sure I’d ever see a day like that.”

  “You’ve more than proven yourself,” Rylin assured him.

  Lasren sat back against the bench. “Have I? All this time I thought I knew what a hero was, and maybe I didn’t have a clue.”

  Rylin thought this introspection refreshing. “A hero stands with his friends,” he said.

  Lasren didn’t respond to that. “N’lahr and Elenai—they’re the ones who saved Vedessus. Me, I was just along for the ride. Oh, I fought well, but the Naor were coming to kill us. It was fight or die. That might have taken heart, but we’re supposed to be more than warriors, aren’t we? We’re supposed to see with heart and mind. You did.”

  “I was just as fooled as you were,” Rylin reminded him. “It was Varama who opened my eyes.”

  “Is she the one who told you to lead those people to freedom under the very eyes of their enemies? Rylin of the Thousand. That’s the stuff of heroes.” Lasren raised the bottle in silent toast. Rylin searched his friend’s eyes, expecting to find jealousy there, but seeing only honest admiration, touched with grief. And then his friend asked the question he’d probably kept Rylin for. “Would I have done so well had our places been traded?”

  Once, Rylin might have offered an easy platitude. And then, more recently, he might have dismissed the notion that Lasren was capable of growth and tried to change the subject. Neither was the right response. “We have different strengths,” Rylin said at last. “Only a few days ago, Varama was consoling me when I realized I couldn’t be as clever as she was. Ever. I’ll never be as fine an archer or swordsman as Kyrkenall. And we’ll never track as well as Tretton, or ride as well as Enada. But we are siblings of the ring. Maybe we were too busy dreaming rather than seeing, but our eyes are open now. We just have to know our strengths, and use them when they’re needed. That’
s what I’ve done. And that’s what you’ve done, and will continue to do.”

  Lasren spoke softly, with another sidelong look. “What I said about Varama the other day … I wasn’t thinking. You were in some tight places together, weren’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you have her back. I get that. I guess that’s how I always wanted it to be between us.” He was deadly serious again. “I don’t know what you’re really doing, and I guess I’m not supposed to know but … if you need help, I mean to come through for you. The two of us, together—I figure we’d be pretty unstoppable.”

  “I’m glad you’re along,” Rylin said, and meant it. “If I need help I know that you’ll be there.” He’d recently been doubting, but his faith in his friend had been restored. “Now let’s get some sleep.” He rose. Together, the two of them headed down.

  It was a good two days before they arrived at the road’s terminus, at the closest crossing points between The Fragments and Erymyr. A small village with two inns and stables prospered on The Fragments side of the border. While Lasren and Elik traded horses and stocked up on supplies, Rylin and the governor walked to the settlement edge and contemplated the storm churning on the border.

  Feolia stared at the of roiling mass of clouds, now black, now charcoal gray, hiding the entire horizon ahead of them from the ground on up. “I’m afraid that’s the end of it, then,” she said. “There’s no crossing today.”

  Rylin wasn’t ready to give up. “Not necessarily.” He slipped into the inner world and tentatively probed the storm. He found whirling currents advancing and rotating and moving past one another like a maddened line of dancers. What he was most concerned with was their unnatural predictability. The wind was strong, the currents flowing in a consistent way.

  “We should cross now,” Rylin said.

  “Young man, I appreciate your haste. I do. But I’m not in a hurry to kill myself.”

  “The storm’s steady,” Rylin said. “But the landforms are still solid beneath it. I think I can get us past. “

  “Anything can happen in the Shifting Lands,” Feolia said. “That solidity may not last at all.”

  “And the entire storm may worsen if the queen wants it,” Rylin said. “That storm is deliberately strengthened.”

  “You really think she’s that powerful?”

  “I think she and a small army of mages with hearthstones could be that powerful, and desperate to hold back the Naor. Or possibly us. That’s why we can’t wait for things to get better. They won’t, and they could get worse. We have to chance it. Lasren and I have rings to keep us safe, and I have magic to make things safer for all of us.”

  Feolia regarded him as if she had caught sight of a madman. “How fine a mage are you? There’s almost a four-hour ride through there, and that’s in the best conditions. And all you have to protect us is a couple of Altenerai rings. I was always given to understand their protection didn’t extend much farther than the alten and her immediate belongings.”

  Technically, they had three rings, for Decrin’s was borne in one of Rylin’s pouches. He wore his own on a thin necklace tucked under his shirt. “We’re going to have to double up in the saddle, lead the other horses, and trust to luck.”

  “Luck,” Feolia huffed. “When I was a little girl there used to be a great stone archway right here.” She pointed into the storm. “It was generations old. And the actual border didn’t start for another hundred feet. The storms in the last years just blew it away.”

  “Yes,” Rylin agreed, “the storms have worsened and the borders have crumbled.”

  She sighed. “My point is that if a storm can do that to ancient stone, it will have no problem with us.”

  “If you want to wait behind—”

  The lines about her face deepened into crevasses as she frowned at him. “I’m no coward, young man.”

  “I didn’t mean—”

  “That’s exactly what you were implying. I just don’t intend to die owing to stupidity.”

  “If you die, it will be my fault.”

  Her look suggested that this was precisely the sort of stupidity she meant. Maybe he deserved that. He turned away from her as Lasren and Elik arrived with fresh horses. Rylin explained his plan to both men while they sat down with full wineskins and dried rations.

  Lasren’s reaction wasn’t that different from the governor’s. “If that’s what we’re doing, why did you have me request four extra horses?”

  “For when we get through.”

  Lasren smiled crookedly. “You say that with such certainty. Maybe we should spare a couple of horses instead of killing them along with us. Take pity on them, like.”

  Rylin glanced at Elik, wondering if he understood Lasren was joking. The squire did his best to look at ease.

  Lasren took a swig from his wineskin, addressed his friend more seriously. “You’re sure about this?”

  “I’m sure.”

  Lasren looked over to Elik. “I don’t think you ought to make this journey an order for our squire.”

  “The alten raises a good point,” Rylin said to Elik. “This is strictly a volunteer—”

  The bright-eyed squire cut him off. “I’m going with you. Sir,” he added quickly.

  Less than a quarter hour later, Rylin led them into the storm. Governor Feolia sat behind him, one hand about his waist, the other grasping the line tied to two of the spare mounts. Riding a few paces to his right was Lasren, with Elik as passenger, holding the lines to their extra horses.

  None of the animals looked any happier to head into the rolling clouds than Rylin himself felt; their ears were erect and they snorted in concern.

  Visibility was limited to less than a few feet. What little Rylin saw was normal grassland.

  The wind, though, was wild, and the older woman clung to him. His horse strained to move forward. He could just make out a vague shape moving in the gloom to his right and saw Lasren’s ring winking.

  It was a long, slow process. The nervous mounts walked ever forward at the urging of their riders. Rylin’s, at least, was little troubled by the extra weight. Lasren had chosen a sturdy gelding, and so far as Rylin could tell, the animal was bearing up well.

  He felt the governor jerk to one side.

  She had to shout into his ear to be heard over the storm. “The horses slipped away from me.”

  The wind stole his curse. He turned, but there was no sign of the spare mounts now, lost somewhere behind them. He felt the land contours rippling before the transformation spread. Dark water stretched away on their left, and a wall of palms stood on their right, shaken by the roaring wind. Beneath their horses’ hooves the grass rippled away into red sand.

  The low-lying fog had vanished, although storm clouds hung above the white-capped ocean, which thundered against distant rocks. Rylin looked through the inner world and studied the land around them, saw that it all but vibrated with incipient violence. More alterations could follow, and might well wreak life-threatening changes.

  “Hang on,” Rylin cried. “Lasren, fall in behind me!”

  He reached into his ring, remembering that first day it had been given him, and the impatient tutelage Denaven had provided as he woke it to his service. “Someday,” the commander had said, “this ring may save your life, so listen well.”

  He touched the threads of its power to himself and the governor, then stretched out with his own magic to assist Lasren in the same. All who were given the ring could learn to manipulate it, but mages naturally had a greater advantage. Varama had told him hearthstones were a far more effective ward during shift storms, and he supposed having a great weaver would be a tremendous asset as well.

  But he had neither Varama nor a hearthstone.

  When the ocean rose up from its bed in a great curling claw he threw up a mystic shield and the waters rebounded. When the ocean fell away into a glowing void that threw forth blue sparks, he conjured a wind to sweep them off.

  Under rumbling
skies the land shifted again, and they rode a rolling, empty country populated only by towering trees with massive boles and drooping branches that swayed contrary to the wind. Swirling dust intermittently obscured their vision.

  He guided them on, keeping to the clear spaces. He heard the storm growling in the distance, its strength centered somewhere else, and he prayed silently it would remain that way.

  It did, and so for an hour they had to contend only with the occasionally sandy soil and the eager tendrils of the unwholesome things that weren’t real trees. After one cast up a wriggling root to grasp at them, Rylin gave them an even wider berth.

  Eventually these, too, fell away and they traveled a dark land under dark skies. A half moon rose. Rylin stretched out with his senses, feeling that they were close to Erymyr.

  He found something else. A presence, enormous and distant.

  The thing’s awareness fixed upon them, as if Rylin’s scrutiny had drawn its attention. He felt its fascination, and its ravenous hunger, and pulled swiftly away.

  “Lasren,” Rylin called, “something’s out there. We need to push for it. I think Ermyr’s close!” Rylin turned his head to the governor. “Hold on tight!” The moment he felt her fingers dig into his side he kicked the horse into a gallop.

  From behind there was a change in the air. The wind wailed.

  He’d never had the magical reserves of the great weavers. He had only a finite amount of power, and he used it now to feel ahead. Faintly, as if seen through fog at great distance, he brushed the outline of Erymyr, its solidity pulling to him. His ring enabled him to sense the life force of Lasren, Elik, their horse, and the riderless mounts they led. And he sensed a vast cloud that was much more than a lack of life energy gaining upon them all.

  He willed his ring to full power and brought all his energy into contemplation of the solidity of them and their horses. Lasren had the wisdom to ride nearly stirrup to stirrup, his own ring shining its brightest, and Rylin stretched his magics to bolster him and Elik.

  Behind them a storm cloud filled the heavens. Their amorphous pursuer reached toward them with a tendril of will, a brush of nightmare cold and lust. It pressed against them, a cloud given will and purpose. This was no bracing fog, but an entity that fought against the very bonds that held them together. Rylin knew that if he relinquished concentration they would dissolve like sugared candies in a bowl of water.