Upon the Flight of the Queen

by Howard Andrew Jones

  The curtains parted, creaking faintly and swaying as they were drawn by hidden stagehands, and then Rylin and the people of Darassus looked upon the Goddess.

  He muttered in unconscious awe. “By all that’s holy.”

  He had thought the statue of Darassa, or of the lawgiver, were masterworks. Here, though, stood a forty-foot statue of beauty undreamt, a woman beyond parallel formed all of shining crystal, composed of hundreds of colors. She was slim and muscular and impossibly perfect. She stood with head turned off-center, her hands raised in a warding gesture, one well-formed calf twisting as she rotated. She was supported in part by scaffolding, but so lovely was she in all those blending streams of colors that Rylin scarce noticed.

  The crowd let out a variety of sounds that registered as a collective gasp.

  It was only as Rylin looked more closely that he saw there were gaps in the structure. Her nose had a few chips missing. A wedge was absent from her right hand, and there were various smaller holes and divots across her body.

  The queen turned and beamed at her audience, and they clapped appreciatively, if a little hesitantly.

  Only then did Rylin begin to feel misgivings. “She’s certainly beautiful.”

  “You’ve felt the beauty of the hearthstones, haven’t you?” Thelar asked him. His question was challenging.

  He hadn’t known quite what to expect and he realized now he’d been a fool not to ask what he might see. Somehow it had never occurred to him the hearthstones might actually piece together this way. Or that being in the presence of them all would evoke such warmth, even when they were inactive. He cursed. If he himself was feeling drawn to the thing, what must the crowd be thinking?

  “We should have tried to stop her before,” Rylin said to Thelar. “Why didn’t you tell me they’d react like this?”

  “I’ve never been near her this assembled,” Thelar admitted. “I didn’t know.”

  A trumpet blast sounded from the nearby walls, a high, clear call. Rylin knew it instantly for a summons to arms. The queen froze, puzzled, and her head rose, as though she could see through the upper rank of stands. He wondered if her powers allowed her even that.

  Many in the crowd might have no better idea of a trumpet fanfare versus a signal, but there were enough who’d served or paid attention that shouts of alarm spread through them. Someone backstage shouted that Naor were almost within sight of the city.

  Surely that was paranoia. How could the Naor have gotten so close to Darassus without word having spread beforehand?

  Thelar turned to face him. “What do you think we should do?”

  “I think we’d better finish this while her attention’s diverted.” Earlier he had assumed the Darassans would side with him. Now he understood that his actions might earn him their enmity. He worried, too, that Thelar’s resolve would falter.

  The exalt slid with him from the booth and together they hurried to the backstage stairs, where they discovered a frightened young guardsman in the midst of reporting to one of the red-haired twins Rylin had dueled in the exalt practice yard. Today she wore a stiff new khalat with red piping, and as she turned he saw the mole on her lip and recognized her as M’vai.

  “The scouts have gotten a good look at them. They’re riding immense black beasts,” the guard reported, panting. “And there are huge ko’aye things flying above them!”

  “How far out are they?” M’vai demanded.

  “Less than a half hour.”

  “How did they get so far with no one seeing them?” M’vai asked. She sounded as though she meant to find the person responsible and bring them up on charges. She caught sight of Thelar and Rylin for the first time and her eyes widened. “Where have you been? Why is he with you?”

  “What are their numbers?” Rylin asked the guard.

  The soldier replied quickly. “There’s one huge ko’aye closing on the city now. Our scouts spotted six more. There are dozens of the huge animals carrying standards. They’re gigantic, sir,” he said in dread. “Monstrous. Each is longer than a house and crowded with Naor troops. The earth shakes when they move. Cavalry follow in their wake.”

  Rylin spoke quickly. “The first priority’s getting these people safely out of the arena and behind the inner walls. I have squires standing ready—signal an alert and put them on that. Until the people are secure keep the guards solely devoted to the gates and walls.”

  “Yes, sir.” The soldier saluted and hurried off.

  Rylin turned to M’vai and found her staring warily.

  There were more important things to worry about. Rylin peered past her and saw scaffolding, and a giant crystal leg, and the ranks of exalts and aspirants. He couldn’t see the queen, but he heard her working to quell the growing fear of the crowd, some of whom were already rising from their seats.

  “The Naor pose no lasting threat!” the queen shouted.

  Any remote chance of calm was shattered the moment a huge black-winged shape appeared in the air above the stadium. The crowd gasped almost as one, and then screamed as the beast circled, dived, and roared.

  The sound of its attack was drowned out by the rumble of falling stone as a back section of the amphitheater collapsed upon itself. Screams of terror were replaced by screams of pain. An arch toppled sideways through the upper stands, smashing all it reached and sending stone shrapnel flying. A cloud of dust plumed and the dragon arrowed through it and banked even as Rylin raced forth, calling the exalts to attack. The wooden platform supporting the statue and its presenters vibrated under Rylin’s bootheels with each crash of masonry. He saw the queen’s look of surprise as he and Thelar drew close. She didn’t look so much like a queen as an actor who’d suddenly forgotten her lines.

  The beast roared once more and sent another section of wall to ruin, along with hundreds of innocents crushed by the falling stone. And then it vanished beyond the side of the stadium once more.

  The smell of blood was borne up on the wind with the white dust of crumbled stone. The air rang with the cries of the injured and bereaved and frightened, and the pound of feet as people fled for multiple exits.

  Rylin turned to the ranks of sorcerers. “Exalts! Aspirants! It’s going to come back! Ready for its return!” He saw dozens of confused and anxious people, many of whom looked familiar, and some of whom he knew, like Tesra and Meria, M’vai’s twin.

  “I will wake the Goddess,” the queen declared, her voice nearly lost in the sounds of her panicked people. She spoke then with greater force. “We will waken the Goddess together, and all will be well!”

  “No,” Rylin cried, turning on her. “Use the hearthstones,” he urged, “but we’re summoning no goddess today. Not without consultation from the council and the people of Erymyr!”

  “He’s right, Majesty,” Thelar urged. “Let’s just focus on repelling the Naor.”

  She glowered. For a brief moment it looked as though she meant to say something, for her lips worked. Then she threw back her flowing green sleeves and sent blue white tendrils of energy rippling at them.

  Rylin heard Thelar’s sharp intake of breath beside him and felt the sorceries like a physical force. The sapphire on his hand lit and with it all those linked to it blazed to life. The spell slid to either side of them both, striking the wooden floor, which shifted on the instant to that terrible crystalline substance.

  Rylin’s face went ashen as he understood what she’d tried to do to them, what she yet attempted as she shouted and sent more power.

  Even knowing she meant to kill him, he knew regret when he leapt with his knife.

  He grasped one of her slim shoulders and delivered the perfect killing blow, the blade sliding up under her ribs and driving toward her heart.

  She staggered and goggled as she leaned into him, and he was sickened by how much this death was like a loving embrace. He saw astonishing little blood as he pulled free and stepped back.

  The queen looked down at the injury, then up at him, and he saw madness in her eye
s, along with the glittering energy of the hearthstones. She should have been dead, or dying. Instead, she slapped at him, and while no strike landed, the air hit like a physical force. The rings couldn’t shield him from a hurricane wind, and he tumbled backward through the air, on past the scaffolding and the impossibly beautiful statue of the Goddess until the wall dividing field from seating arrested his flight.

  As he painfully struck the stone, bright points of light trailed before his eyes, and he struggled to refind the breath that had been knocked out of his body. The screams of the crowd trebled, by which he guessed the dragon had renewed its assault.

  He raised his head and called out feebly to Thelar, fearful the queen would kill him with the linked rings out of protective range, but the queen was distracted. This time the dragon aimed straight for the stage.

  A handful of mages were whipping energy at the monster, not knowing to target the men who rode it. He saw the dragon’s massive maw open, and then the creature roared.

  The queen cried out and threw up a vast, glittering screen of energy. By accident or design it not only shielded the people on the stage, but most of her precious goddess, and Rylin wondered why she hadn’t done something similar to protect the crowd.

  As great as her spell was, it still wasn’t large enough to protect the whole of the statue. The end of the left elbow was blown free, along with parts of the face, and hearthstones rained down across the back of the stage. The floorboards rumbled under him as the immense statue swayed in its scaffolding. He staggered to his feet.

  At the same moment something happened to the dragon. Just as it was pulling up from its dive white energies streamed out from the broken points of the statue and slammed into the monster.

  A lattice work of crystal erupted across the dragon’s head and swept up across its shoulders. It dropped, wings beating furiously as it struggled not to plummet. What looked like a fine sheet of alabaster lay across the monster’s snout and down the length of its spine. The effect struck the Naor pilot and the three mounted behind them, coating them in what looked like ivory shards. They froze in mid-motion, though the dragon’s tail, unencumbered, still twitched.

  The dragon struck the un-peopled back area of the arena, above Rylin’s head, with the sound of thunder, shaking the stage and the damaged statue once more. The queen screamed in fury, somehow louder than the background pandemonium. The citizens were still in flight for the exits, although some made their way to tend the wounded, and others cradled the dead, inconsolable with grief.

  The queen cared only for her goddess, shouting for help. She should have long since dropped dead from that well-placed knife wound, and he could only assume Leonara’s intense connection to the hearthstones somehow sustained her.

  He wondered what he might do, as his senses settled in. He tested his battered limbs by putting hand to his sword and sitting up. He hurt in many areas, but nothing seemed to be broken. He supposed he’d try to find out if the queen could keep weaving once her head was lopped off.

  He searched for sign of his lone ally, thinking to find him dead, and discovered Thelar and a small group of exalts bending all their magical energy to keep an exitway out of the stadium from crumbling. Great jagged lines riddled the front of its decorative arch. Only their sorcery held it upright as hundreds fled beneath.

  Right—he couldn’t call them from that. He turned for the queen himself.

  That’s when he saw what the queen and the mages wrought: a distortion in the air behind the statue, almost as though he stared at salt flats at midday in the height of summer. That distortion multiplied, spread, and suddenly ripped open to encompass the queen, the statue, and her followers, and would have reached Rylin if he hadn’t dived away.

  Groaning from yet another roll, he picked himself up and saw that beyond that wavering outline an entirely different landscape was superimposed upon the stage, a twilight land stained in crimson by a setting sun.

  That landscape faded like morning mist, taking the queen and her statue and some scattered hearthstones with it. He glimpsed a bewildered Tesra caught at the spell’s edge, as if she were uncertain she wished to go, and then the dark-haired exalt faded with all the rest of the queen’s mad followers. The stage was empty.

  31

  Joining Forces

  Elenai found Lelanc where she’d last seen her upon the battlement, under the twinned moons. It had somehow seemed easier to release the ko’aye the first time, but then she hadn’t been in quite as much of a hurry.

  Lelanc awoke and reared, wings wide, ready to throw herself into the attack. She let out an ear-splitting battle cry and searched the walkways and stone embrasure for enemies.

  “Where is Cerai?” Lelanc demanded. “Where has she fled?”

  Elenai had thought about what she’d say as she’d pounded up the stairs. “There’s a way out from here,” she said. “But you and Kyrkenall and I have to hurry.”

  The ko’aye called out once more, then looked down at her. “Hurry from what? Other enemies?”

  “A great storm comes,” she said, which was the simplest way to explain matters. “I’ve talked Cerai into letting you go, but we’ve not much time.”

  “I will kill her!”

  Elenai had worried talk with the ko’aye would be difficult, and decided on blunt truth. “She’ll turn you into a statue before you can even get close. And I can’t stop her. But we can get you away from here if you meet me down by the stables.”

  Lelanc flapped her wings twice and set all four feet on the ground. Her eyes shone in the moonlight, eerie and unknowable.

  “What you say of her powers may be true,” Lelanc said. “But my heart cries for vengeance. For the city of my sister. For Rylin.”

  “Rylin lives,” Elenai reminded her, and Lelanc’s head rose.

  “How can this be? This is not one of her lies?”

  “I heard this from my commander, not Cerai. Rylin was wounded, but he escaped the city.”

  “That is a glad thing,” the ko’aye said.

  “Yes. But we have to hurry. A magical exit is going to be readied for us.”

  Lelanc’s head bobbed back and forth on the end of her swanny neck. “I do not know your meaning.”

  “I’m not entirely sure I do, either,” Elenai admitted. Rialla had died before the Ko’aye alliance, so there was no point in mentioning her name. “Kyrkenall’s old friend, a sorceress, has come, and says it’s our only chance to get out of here quickly. Lelanc, we’re caught in the midst of … two storms, and the wind is heavy between them. I’m not sure where they’ll take us, but I swear that if you come with me and Kyrkenall we will look out for you.”

  Lelanc’s head lowered, then raised once more. “You have helped, and I am grateful. But I will find my own way.” She turned to put front feet on an embrasure. Before Elenai could say anything more, the ko’aye pushed out and soared away, flapping to gain altitude.

  Elenai cursed inventively as she watched the ko’aye climb toward the moons, a little surprised at her vocabulary. Too much time with Kyrkenall, she guessed.

  There was nothing more to be done, so she hurried back to the stairwell and down, and out toward the stables, a two-story building built into an interior wall of the wide fortress courtyard. A group of Cerai’s guards stood watching while Cerai spoke with the glowing figure of a woman in the midst of the compound. Kyrkenall was only a little distance from the stables, attention held raptly by the two women.

  “What are they doing?” Elenai asked as she strode up, a little breathless after having run up and then down five flights of stairs. “Has Rialla said anything about what she’s doing here, or what this is all about?”

  “No! She keeps saying that she doesn’t have time, and that we’ll talk later! They’ve been going back and forth about magical theory now since just a little after you left.” Kyrkenall seemed to take real note of her for the first time. “Where’s Lelanc?”

  “I don’t know.”

  His voice rose.
“You don’t know?”

  “She flew off! She said she’d find her own way.”

  “That’s great,” Kyrkenall growled.

  “There wasn’t much I could do about it,” Elenai said, irritated by Kyrkenall’s attitude. “Are you sure this is truly Rialla?”

  That garnered another hard look. “She sure looks and acts like her. Apart from being glowing and transparent.”

  “But why didn’t she know who I was when she’s been talking to me in my dreams?”

  “You’re asking me?”

  “Maybe you should ask her.”

  “I’ve tried asking her all kinds of things and all she’ll answer with is a ‘not now.’”

  “And why is she here, now, rather than talking to us in our dreams?” The more she’d thought about it the less Elenai liked an already bad situation. “Before we walk into the middle of some huge spell,” she said, “don’t you think some clarity would be nice?”

  Kyrkenall’s brows drew together, then he brusquely nodded his assent and started forward.

  Elenai came after and soon they stopped two spear lengths out.

  Rialla turned and considered them. Somehow her ghostly image looked even more unnerving here under the moonlight. Cerai’s nonchalant confidence was mostly absent. Now the alten was pensive.

  “If you’re ready,” Rialla said, her voice once again reaching Elenai’s mind while the ghostly alten’s lips worked silently, “where’s Lelanc?”

  “We need some answers, Rialla,” Kyrkenall said. “How do we know it’s really you? And how are you even here? I put you in your tomb more than ten years ago! And why don’t you know Elenai when you’ve been talking to her in her dreams?”

  Rialla’s head tilted a minute degree, birdlike. “So I will die,” she said wistfully. “Or at least my physical form will.”

  “You already have.” Kyrkenall sounded both confused and sad.

  “I haven’t done this in an order that would make sense to you.” She looked at Elenai again. “If you said we’ve met before then I must have found something important to tell you I don’t know yet. But please, you must hurry. It’s vital you get to Darassus, or it will end badly. And I don’t know how many times I can try this.”