Upon the Flight of the Queen

by Howard Andrew Jones

  Teeth gritted, he forced home the coherence of the bonds of their existence, and the multitude of threads that composed them all. He touched the energy centers of the four remaining mounts, lent them strength, soothed the threads that composed their straining muscles.

  On the instant, he felt his own mount leap ahead, Lasren’s horse lagging only a heartbeat behind.

  The entity swam after, a vast tower of hungry will. Despite all his efforts, Rylin grew colder, and colder still. His grip weakened. His concentration ebbed until all he could sense was the blue light about his ring. Dimly he was aware of a vast cloud bank that loomed before them and kicked his mount into further speed.They galloped into the shifting fog as the creature reached down, greedily—

  And then they were in sunlight, upon the grass. The wind howled behind them, and Rylin thought he heard the thing’s anguished, frustrated roar as a rising moan. Still shaking with cold, he turned in his saddle, alert for a looming pseudopod of cloud or energy or whatever it had been, exactly.

  Praise the gods, nothing of the sort emerged from the wall of storm clouds rising skyward behind them.

  Fatigue grasping at him, he examined his companions. The governor slowly released her hold. At his side, Lasren and Elik took in their surroundings, wide-eyed. The four horses neighed nervously to one another.

  This looked to be an balmy Erymyran evening, although Rylin didn’t recognize their point of entry. Probably he’d gotten off course by diverting around so many of those terrible trees. The skies beyond the border were clear but hazy, a washed-out blue. The air itself was still and a little humid, despite which he continued to shiver.

  “How about lighting a fire?” he suggested to Lasren. He just managed to slip down from his horse. He’d planned to check the roan over, but he discovered his legs really couldn’t hold him up.

  Nor, it proved, could his arm completely arrest his fall.

  His companions hurried to him, pushed food and wine on him, and eventually set camp with a fire roaring.

  Rylin chafed at his weakness and the delay it necessitated. He could only nod as the other three voiced speculation that there’d been a monster in the shifts, and shake his head when they asked him what it really was. Something hungry. He was thankful he hadn’t seen it.

  After nearly an hour, he started to feel human once more, although he could probably have gone straight to sleep. Lasren had slipped off to scout. Elik kept watch, and Feolia sat beside him.

  “A little harder going than you expected, was it?” she asked, not unkindly.

  “A little.”

  She chuckled. “Well, you said you’d get us through, and you did.”

  “That may have been the easy part.” His thoughts had turned toward the challenges that still lay before them. “Do you know what you’re going to say to the Darassi counselors?”

  “Yes. After I tell them about what happened in Alantris, I’ll tell them about N’lahr. And I’ll move on from there. Probably to his letter.”

  Rylin nearly had the text of the commander’s letter memorized. It had been a little strange reading his own accomplishments described through someone else’s eyes. The extent of luck involved in Rylin’s activities had been glossed over; everything had been presented as if planned with great foresight.

  Rylin took another swig from his own wineskin, wishing that he had some of Varama’s energy-fortifying juices. He wished even more that she was here, with him. Her own situation seemed even more impossible than his. He brought his thoughts to what Feolia had last said. “Probably?” he asked.

  The old woman adjusted the forehead line of her scarf. “I know how to read a crowd, young man. I’ll play them as best I can. What I don’t know is what their mood will be.”

  “Nervous,” Rylin answered. “They’re always nervous. It doesn’t matter that they’re the safest realm in our alliance. They’re deathly afraid of the Naor.”

  “You sound awfully critical for someone who grew up in Erymyr.”

  He shrugged. “You saw what the Naor did to The Fragments. What they’ve done again and again. The Erymyrans have a right to be nervous. Just not more nervous than your people, or the Kaneshi. Maybe they fear battle more because they’ve so rarely experienced it.”

  Elik called up to them from the nearby hillock. “Alten Lasren’s on his way back,” he said, even as Rylin heard the hoofbeats of his approach.

  As Lasren drew to a stop on his black he turned his mount to face southeast. “A patrol spotted me. They’re riding this way.”

  “Do you think them hostile?” Feolia asked.

  “I’m just being cautious,” Lasren replied. “But we ought to stand ready. There’s six of them.”

  “Squires?” Elik asked.

  “Yes,” Lasren said. “And an exalt’s leading them.”

  27

  Among the Missing

  As Elenai looked over the lightly armed horsemen facing them, she realized she should have been more skeptical with her assumptions when they’d found Renik’s body. Kyrkenall had gone right on thinking that the woman’s tracks near the dead man were Kalandra’s. Now, given that the leader of these warriors, Sorak, had proclaimed they would escort them to the “Goddess” Cerai, it seemed more likely that the traitorous alten had been the one exploring past Renik. And while that hadn’t been an obvious deduction, Kyrkenall had been too quick to believe his own hypothesis and Elenai hadn’t questioned it.

  Kyrkenall sat silent upon Lyria’s saddle. Sorak waited patiently, certainly unaware of the sudden violence the archer could unleash against his enemies. The remaining five soldiers were spread out behind their leader almost indifferently. They were all well-built men in sleeveless shirts, armed with swords that none reached for, astride mounts of brown and gray that none seemed ready to kick forward into battle. If this were an ambush, it was the least aggressive in history.

  Finally Kyrkenall asked, with careless directness, “Suppose we don’t want to talk with Cerai?”

  The question puzzled Sorak. The handsome young soldier’s brows wrinkled in confusion, as if he had never once considered the thought someone wouldn’t want to speak with his ruler.

  Elenai glanced at the man’s companions and discovered them still waiting dispassionately. She worked to stretch tired muscles without revealing her intent, for she more than halfway expected Kyrkenall to launch into deadly action, pulling her along with him.

  “If you did not wish to talk with her,” Sorak said finally, “why did you come?”

  “That’s a good question, Sorak,” Kyrkenall said, although he didn’t answer it. “Does Cerai know we’re here?”

  “Yes. She called for us to show you the way to her.”

  Kyrkenall exchanged glances with Elenai, who realized that he was as confused as she. Yes, they’d been told Cerai was a traitor working with the queen. But this didn’t feel like a threat.

  “Did she say what she wanted?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “She wanted to speak with you. Don’t you want to speak with her?” Sorak’s voice rose in confusion.

  Elenai saw no evidence of threat on Sorak’s face, or on the chiseled visages of any of his companions, merely earnest curiosity. There was something almost childlike in the sincerity of their consternation.

  Kyrkenall mulled over an answer for a little while longer, and then relaxed. “You know what, Sorak, I think I do. Why don’t you show us the way.”

  “I will.” Sorak turned his horse and started forward. Elenai assumed that the others would ride at their sides, or behind them, but they merely fell in after Sorak, leaving Elenai and Kyrkenall to trail as they wished. The two Altenerai followed after, along a winding trail into the dusty hills. Behind them they heard a distant crack of thunder. Ahead, the light was dim under darkened skies, but the storm seemed uninclined to follow.

  “We need to be get back,” Elenai said. “The commander—”

  “I know,” Kyrkenall said, quietly but sharply. “But don’t you think this begs lo
oking into?”

  “What if we’re riding into a trap?” she asked.

  “Here’s what I’m thinking. We couldn’t safely turn back without a wide diversion.” He glanced at their escort, many horselengths ahead. “I’m pretty sure we could take those guys, but what would that get us? They seem like innocents, too, so killing them didn’t feel right. They’re sort of odd, but I really don’t think they have orders to take us prisoner.”

  “What if they take us some place where we’ll be even more outnumbered?”

  “What if pastries grow on trees?”

  She frowned at him. “You know the one’s more likely than the other.”

  “By a damned sight,” he agreed, “but our options are low, and I think we ought to play along. Let’s talk with Cerai.”

  She couldn’t help being curious herself, but she thought his reasoning sloppy. “N’lahr warned us that she’s gotten very powerful.”

  “So have you.”

  “I appreciate the compliment, but I just got beaten by a godforsaken Naor sorcerer a few days back. And Cerai has been studying hearthstones a lot longer than me.”

  Kyrkenall arched an eyebrow as he turned in his saddle to look at her. His horse Lyria snorted, too, as though she were a little disgusted. “We’ll just do what we do best. Improvise.”

  She almost commented that was always his plan, but fell silent.

  Before very long they had rounded two more hills, after which the land rose. And then they topped a rise and its character changed entirely. Low, tree-topped knolls surrounded them. The temperature warmed, and the thick-limbed trees were heavy with the creamy gold fruit known as sunberries, farmed just north of Erymyr’s Storm Coast.

  Elenai stretched out with her inner sight and felt for the borders, discovering they had just crossed from the shifts into a true landscape that extended for many miles in a roughly oval pattern.

  Their escorts glanced back, but kept on across the hilly terrain. Elenai caught up to ride beside Kyrkenall.

  “Did you know a fragment this nice was out here?”

  “From here on out this is all new.” She half expected him to be brooding, but he actually seemed to be in good spirits. “I’ve been thinking. You and I have a bad habit of coming up with the answers to questions we weren’t asking.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  He raised one hand, index finger aloft like he was ticking the first point on a list. “We went to find N’lahr’s sword and we found N’lahr.” His second finger joined the first. “We went to find Kalandra and we found a Naor invasion.” He looked over at her and raised a third finger. “We went after the ko’aye and we found Renik’s resting place. And then I thought we’d found Kalandra’s whereabouts, but it turns out we’ve discovered Cerai’s hidden kingdom.”

  “Wait—this is a hidden kingdom?”

  “It kind of looks like it, doesn’t it? A private little fragment out here. And apparently she knew about Renik but didn’t tell anyone.”

  Elenai realized that must be true. “All you’ve really said about her is that she hates Denaven. N’lahr says she’s a powerful mage. What else can you tell me? Cerai Far Treader, right?”

  “Well earned. She’s always been the one to report about the fringes. She came to the ring a little before Renik, so she’s older, but not as old as Asrahn or Tretton, obviously. I always felt like I understood her better than the others, because she was a little bit like me.”

  That was surprising. So far as she knew, no one else had ever made the comparison between the flamboyant archer and the secretive mage. “Is she?”

  “I thought so. Remember how I told you I wanted to go out there and see all the different little fragments and splinters? Cerai’s done that. She loves the distant places and had no problem being gone for weeks or months at a time on some errand for the crown. She’s very quiet, but sharp, and she has a wicked sense of humor.”

  “Anything else?”

  “She could be a bit obsessive, but we all have our little quirks. Especially Altenerai.”

  “You seem well disposed toward her.”

  “She helped sponsor me to the ring.” He eyed her. “Don’t get me wrong, Elenai, I’ll have my guard up. But there are generally two sides to every story.”

  “Sure.” Elenai didn’t hide the skepticism in her response. “What about this business of these men of hers thinking she’s a goddess?”

  He had an interesting answer. “I don’t guess there’s anything against deification in the oath, but if you’re busy out here setting yourself up as a ruler it’s kind of hard to bring justice to the people you’re sworn to defend, isn’t it?”

  “An excellent point. One to remember.”

  “Heart and mind, Elenai, heart and mind.”

  He was repeating one of the lessons their instructors worked so hard to instill in their charges, to judge each challenge both with reason and emotion, so that you weren’t convinced into folly by reacting without thinking, and so that you didn’t apply laws so rigorously that you failed to apply compassion. Even if the admonition were appropriate for this particular instance, she resented his chiding manner. “Remember when you told me not to act like a squire?”

  “Yes,” he answered cautiously.

  “Don’t treat me like one.”

  He grunted and fell silent.

  The escort led them over the next rise and down onto a dirt road stretching long and straight through the fragment, past long fields of cultivated wheat and vegetables and arbors of trees. Dozens of men garbed in white tunics worked those fields, weeding and harvesting the produce into wheelbarrows.

  To a one they looked broad shouldered and powerful. They glanced up with dull curiosity as the riders passed. They were universally strong jawed and handsome, curiously similar in appearance, with dark hair and eyes.

  “I guess she prefers a certain type,” Kyrkenall said.

  To Elenai it rather looked like she was building her own personal army. These men did the work of farmers, but they didn’t especially look like the men she’d known whose habit was to till the soil. She wondered where they’d come from. Surely they weren’t Naor. Maybe their origin point was one of those unallied fragments beyond Erymyr.

  The road curved around one of the hills, past a trail that led to a village of tidy square brown-shingled homes. More of the handsome men walked along the row of identical cottages. “Where are the women?” she asked. “The children?”

  “Or the elderly, for that matter?” Kyrkenall asked.

  Maybe they were all inside the village huts.

  The road rounded another hill, and they looked suddenly upon a fortress built of brown stone. It had been fashioned from smooth rock, a hexagon of four stories with battlements. A tower stood at the juncture of every wall.

  The riders led them through a grand black gate standing open before an arch cut into the front of the fortress.

  “No seams,” Kyrkenall sounded troubled.

  For a moment she puzzled over his meaning, and then realized he was right. None of the walls were built of separate bricks or stones, nor did they seem to have been covered over. They were simply there, one immobile, solid piece, as if willed into being.

  “Hearthstone work,” Elenai whispered.

  “She was always talented,” Kyrkenall said, still taking in the height of the walls. “But this is beyond anything I knew she could do.” He looked over to Elenai. “This is Rialla-level magic. Maybe even better.”

  “I’m not feeling reassured,” she said. “In case you were wondering.”

  They passed under the cool dark archway of stone, a tunnel through the building. The clop of the horses’ hooves echoed in the enclosed space.

  They emerged in an open courtyard where a large fountain jetted water into the pool at its feet. Bright multihued fish swam there.

  They left their horses under the care of four of their escort, then, still preceded by Sorak and one of his companions, walked over a rounded ston
e pathway amidst lush grasses until they reached the back wall of a courtyard and a wood door carved with winding vines. Sorak opened it for them. “I will lead you to a place of refreshment. It has many waters.”

  That struck Elenai as a very kobalin-like statement, and with a pang she wondered how Ortok was, and whether he was even still alive.

  The walls of the spacious hallway beyond the door were strangely barren. It was staggering to believe that Cerai had really built all of this with the aid of hearthstones, yet there was no other conclusion to be drawn, for all of the stone was mortarless. It had not been shaped by an army of craftsmen laboring carefully for long years, but by a single woman who’d lifted it into existence from the surrounding bedrock. The level of control that had taken impressed, intimidated, and alarmed her.

  Sorak turned to the last of his companions. “Report to the goddess.”

  As the man hurried down the hall, Sorak started up a stairway winding into one of the nearby walls. Kyrkenall and Elenai followed him.

  “So,” Kyrkenall asked Sorak, “where are you from?”

  “I am from here.”

  “Always? Is this where you’re from, originally?”

  “I think so.”

  “And how long have you lived here?”

  “A while now.”

  The answers were nearly meaningless, but they were delivered without any guile, as if Sorak’s evasiveness wasn’t deliberate.

  They left the stairwell for a long walkway overlooking a garden four stories below. The sun streamed in without hindrance, for the garden had no roof; there appeared to be a higher walkway running along the battlements.

  Elenai stayed close to the hall’s stone railing, studying the trees and plants. These, too, were arranged in rows, and she realized she was looking upon a variety of flora found in Erymyr. Stranger yet was a long line of lifelike statues of various fauna, from tiny birds to cats to dogs and horses, as if Cerai had commissioned the works and hadn’t yet decorated the building with them. They had been painted with stunning detail. But who could have designed such beautiful pieces? Were some of these strange men artists and artisans? If so, they possessed amazing talent.