Queen of Fire

by Anthony Ryan

  She whirled as they closed, the spear-point slashing the disarmed spearman across the eyes, another the face. The second spearman came at her with an overextended thrust, indicating a level of expertise best confined to abusing helpless captives. She parried the thrust without difficulty, deflecting the spear with the haft of her own and spinning to slam the blunt end into the back of his neck which snapped with a gratifying crack.

  She stood watching the others as they dithered, casting wary glances at the man she had blinded, screaming as blood seeped through the hands he held to his face. “Come on!” she whispered as they exchanged uncertain glances. “You cannot think I deserve to live.”

  A horn sounded somewhere close by and Reva’s eyes found a group of horsemen cresting the dunes a few hundred paces distant. She turned to see more riders approaching from the north end of the beach. Any thought she might soon be rescued faded at the sight of the slavers’ evident relief.

  The lead rider pulled up next to the body of the overseer with the crushed larynx. The riders differed from other Volarians Reva had seen, clad in red breastplates and greaves. She would have taken them for Kuritai but for the patent amusement on the leader’s face as he regarded the overseer’s corpse, an amusement shared by the thirty or so riders at his back.

  The slavers greeted the red-armoured man with a babble of outrage, suddenly less cowed now there were other eyes to witness the scene. The rider ignored them, shifting his gaze to Reva, his grin growing wider. He held up a hand to silence the slavers then asked a question, raising his eyebrows at the response, the slaver with the slashed face seeking to staunch the blood with a rag as he gesticulated at her, voice shrill with fury.

  The man in red armour, however, seemed unmoved by their entreaties, reclining in his saddle and nodding at Reva as he voiced a short command. The slavers’ confidence visibly waned on hearing his words, casting wary glances in her direction, fidgeting in uncertainty. The rider spoke again, voicing a single word, the other riders all drawing swords with identical speed and fluency. The leader pointed his own sword at the slavers then at Reva, repeating his first command with slow deliberation.

  The slavers, now pale of face and shrinking from the many blades surrounding them, began to advance towards Reva in a slow crouch. She saw little point in prolonging the encounter, choosing the tallest and sending the spear into the centre of his chest, then sprinting forward, rolling under the wild slashes of the remaining slavers to claim his sword. After that, the others offered no more challenge than a light practice.

  Crouched in her chains in the back of a caged wagon, two of the red-armoured Volarians standing close by, she forced herself to watch as the other captives were inspected. She had managed to scar one of them back on the beach, throwing her sword at the first to come close. He dodged with an uncanny swiftness, but not before the spinning blade had left a long cut on his jaw. She had expected death to follow quickly but the scarred man seemed to find the event as amusing as his companions. They were already greatly entertained by her treatment of the slavers, slapping their hands to their breastplates in appreciation when she killed the last one, a gangly man who had tried to flee only to be kicked back to face her. He hadn’t lasted long.

  She had started to run, intending to leap at one of them, pitch him from the saddle and ride clear, but soon found herself flat on her face with a mouthful of sand, a cord tightening about her leg. She thrashed, trying to tear free but another cord wrapped itself around her wrist. The rider who had spoken to the slavers dismounted to crouch at her side as she struggled, smiling in warm appreciation as he smoothed a hand across her face, speaking a single word in Volarian, “Garisai.”

  They bound her from foot to shoulder, banishing all thought of escape, heaving her onto the back of a horse to be carried a few miles to this camp. They had been greeted by more slavers under the command of an overseer who displayed a strangely cowed demeanour in the presence of the red-armoured men, his head bowed as the leader gave curt instruction and Reva was placed at their mercy. She had steeled herself for further suffering, seeing the hatred in the faces of the slavers as they chained her, one holding a knife to her throat, two more standing with spears no more than an inch from her chest as the shackles were snapped into place. But whatever vengeful thoughts they harboured, it seemed their orders forbade any mistreatment beyond some rough handling as she was hauled into the caged wagon. But, as she surveyed her new surroundings, it became clear she was not to be spared all forms of torment.

  She had to strain against her chains and crane her neck to see it, but with sufficient effort could view the spectacle of other captives being brought in and subjected to the slavers’ attentions. Their injunction against harming her clearly didn’t extend to the other prizes claimed from the shoreline. The first was an archer judging by the breadth of his frame, stumbling to his knees before the overseer who bent to view a deep wound in the man’s chest before standing back with a dismissive wave. Another slaver came forward, curved dagger in hand, and slit the archer’s throat before Reva formed sufficient thought to cry out in protest.

  She refused to look away as more were brought in, though her body ached from the strain. They were mostly Cumbraelins, with a few Realm Guard, slaughtered or spared depending on their injuries. The storm had evidently wrought considerable damage for it seemed more were discarded than spared. She resisted the faint seed of hope nurtured by the fact that neither Antesh nor Arentes were among the prisoners. Lost to the sea or slaughtered on the shore, what difference does it make? I killed them all regardless.

  The last captive provided the hardest trial, a slender figure with cropped hair, moving with a straight back despite her shackles, refusing to be cowed by the men who towered over her. “Lehra!” Reva called out, slashing her chains against the bars of the cage. A slaver thrust his spear-butt through the bars to push her back, then stepped away at a harsh glower from one of the red men. Reva strained to see Lehra again, finding the Scarred Daughter standing with a smile as she beheld the Blessed Lady, eyes shining with undimmed awe. “I knew the Father would spare you, my lady!” she called, voice bright and joyous.

  The overseer grunted a curse, raising a hand to deliver a cuff to the girl’s face. Lehra didn’t shrink from it, instead angling her head and opening her mouth wide as the slaver’s hand connected with her face, biting down hard. A girlish shriek erupted from the overseer’s mouth as he tried to tear himself free, but Lehra held on, even as the other slavers assailed her with whips and cudgels, shaking her head like a terrier as she worried at the flesh, stopping only when a spear was thrust through her back, pinning her to the sand.

  Reva heard a woman screaming somewhere, feeling a hard thumping in her forehead and a warm trickle of blood cascading down her face. A Volarian voice barked at her and she felt rough hands pulling her back from the bars, now bloody from where she had pounded her head against them. She heard the woman’s screams fade and choked over the sudden catch in her throat. She found herself staring up into the face of the red-armoured man from the beach, the one who seemed to command the others. His grin was gone now and he regarded her with an expression of faint puzzlement, head tilted like a cat regarding a shiny novelty.

  His face dimmed and she knew that fatigue, pain and despair were conspiring to drag her into unconsciousness. She found enough hate to keep it at bay a moment longer. “I am the elverah,” she told the red man in a hoarse rasp. “I have killed more of you than I can count, and I am far from done.”

  She awoke to find herself no longer alone in the cage. The face of the man slumped opposite her was concealed by a lank cascade of blond hair, swaying with the motion of the wagon. Reva could tell he was tall, and no stranger to work or war judging by the strength evident in the scarred and powerful hands resting on his knees, the shackles tight on his well-muscled wrists. Reva sighed, not for the first time wondering at the Father’s inexhaustible supply of trials for a sinful soul.

  “Wake up, my lord,�
� she said, kicking out to nudge his bare foot. Like her, his boots had been taken.

  The blond man stirred but failed to wake, voicing only a faint grunt. Reva kicked him again, harder. “My lord Shield!”

  His head jerked up with a shout, blue eyes wide with alarm and, she noted to her dismay, not a little fear. His panic faded at the sight of her, though his survey of their surroundings provoked a barely concealed moan of despair. “I dreamed I died,” he muttered, head slumping. “It was a good dream.”

  “They took you on the beach?” she asked.

  His head jerked in affirmation. “A dozen or so of us. I managed to cling to some wreckage in the storm with a few others. We swam to shore at first light. We were heading north, making for the landing site, then they came.”

  “The slavers?”

  “No, the others.” The Shield’s hands tightened into fists, his chains giving off a faint rattle.

  “The men in red armour?”

  “We had no weapons. Nothing to fight with.” A strange guttural sound escaped him and she realised he was laughing. “So they gave us swords. Each of us, given a sword by our enemies. I fought so hard … But I couldn’t save them. When it was over they killed the wounded and took me, the only one left, too spent to even stand. They seemed to find me … entertaining.”

  “Garisai,” Reva murmured.

  The Shield’s head came up again, his gaze suddenly bright. “What?”

  “One of them called me that when they took me. You know what it means?”

  He leaned back, some vestige of his old humour showing in the sardonic twitch of his brows. “Yes, it means we would have been fortunate if they’d killed us.”

  The succeeding days in the wagon took on a dreadful monotony. They were never allowed release from the cage; their food, consisting of two bowls of gruel a day and two cups of water, was shoved through a slat in the wagon’s iron-braced sides. No utensils were provided so they were obliged to eat with their fingers. They had been provided a bucket for bodily waste, emptied whenever they stopped by means of a collaborative effort to tip the contents out through the bars. They had learned to wait until the slaver driving their wagon had stepped down from the board as he took great delight in spurring the oxen on a step or two in order to douse them in their own filth.

  “Redflower,” the Shield observed on the morning of the tenth day, gazing at the passing fields of crimson blooms. “Puts us perhaps forty miles from Volar.”

  “You know this country?” Reva asked.

  “Came here as a boy sailor many years ago. Merchant vessel, before I saw the wisdom, and profit, of a pirate’s life. The Volarians grow the best redflower, and it always brings in decent coin, if you can stomach their ways long enough to strike a deal.”

  “Your hatred was birthed before the war, then?”

  “Hatred? No, merely vague disgust in those days. My people are rich in faults, I know, but slavery has never been amongst them. Any Meldenean captain found to have carried slaves would soon find himself shunned and shipless.”

  Reva looked up, feeling the wagon begin to slow, her gaze drawn to the driver staring at something ahead. It took a moment for the object of his interest to come into view, a tall pole set alongside the road, topped with a protruding beam in the manner of a gallows. Suspended from the beam was something so mangled it took a moment for Reva to recognise it as a corpse. The legs were blackened and charred to stumps, the stomach cavity open and empty, and the head … The face was probably male, rendered into an ageless cracked leather mask by decomposition, but the teeth bared in a wide, frozen scream, testifying to the agony with which this man had met his end.

  The driver murmured something to himself, looking away from the sight and snapping the reins to urge the oxen to a faster pace.

  “The three deaths,” the Shield translated. “An agonising poison first, then burning, then disembowelment. Traditional Volarian punishment for treason, though it hasn’t been used for many years.”

  Reva glanced up as another pole came into view, the corpse that dangled from it similarly abused, though this one’s eyes had been put out. She asked Ell-Nestra if this held any significance but he shrugged. “Only that someone enjoys his work, I suspect.”

  By the time night fell they had counted over a hundred poles, ten for every mile they covered.

  Volar came into view the following morning. Reva raised herself into a back-straining crouch to get a better view as they crested a hill a mile or so west of the Imperial capital. The road, flanked on both sides with more corpse-bearing poles, became an unerring straight line at the foot of the hill, drawing the eye to the western suburbs, consisting of tree-lined rows of one or two-storey houses. Volar appeared to have no walls or defensive fortifications, the Shield explaining they had been swallowed up by the city’s growth centuries before.

  “The largest city in the world, or so it’s said,” he told her. “Though I’ve heard there are a few in the Far West that might also claim the title.”

  The height of the buildings grew as they moved deeper into Volar, plush individual dwellings giving way to close-packed streets and tenements. Mazelike avenues stretched away from the road, reminding her of Varinshold’s less salubrious districts, now of course razed to the ground.

  “She wanted to burn all of this,” the Shield said softly, frowning as he gazed at the passing streets. “And we would have helped her wield the torch.”

  Reva’s thoughts flashed to Lehra, as they often had during this dreadful journey. She had been one of the free fighters to emerge from the forest country south of Alltor, leading a group of a dozen other girls, all freed from the slavers’ clutches by their own agency, steeped in blood and hungry for more. Reva recalled how they had gathered around her, sinking to their knees in unbidden respect; the tale of the Blessed Lady had already flown far and seeing her in the flesh seemed a confirmation of a cherished legend, a sign that their sufferings had not been in vain. The awe in Lehra’s eyes that day had been no less bright than the moment she died. Her voice was so full of joy … She died believing my lie.

  “The barest chance is all I need,” she muttered to the Shield. “Just one chance at freedom and I’ll burn this place to the ground.”

  He slumped back down, voice faint and bitter, “It was all a madwoman’s dream, my lady. And she made us mad with the sharing of it. Look at this place. How could we have thought to bring down an empire capable of crafting a city like this?”

  “We crushed an army that should have crushed us,” Reva pointed out. “Their cities may be strong but they are weak, their souls blackened and sickened by ages of cruelty.”

  He lifted his wrists, jangling the chains. “And yet, here we are. Brought here to die for their amusement.”

  “‘Despair is a sin against the Father’s love, for it is but indulgence, whilst hope is a virtue of the stronger soul.’”

  “Which one is that?”

  “The Third Book, The Book of Struggle, Verse three, Trials of the Prophets.” She realised the Book of Reason had been absent from her thoughts since her capture. And why not? Reason will not avail me here.

  The Volarians seemed highly fond of statuary, bronze warriors for the most part, standing amidst the cascading fountains and neatly kept parks that greeted them once they cleared the cramped outskirts. However, the most salient feature of the city’s inner region was the towers, great marble structures of hard-edged symmetry rising on all sides. Strangely this district seemed mostly empty but for the huddled forms of slaves tending the parks or scrubbing bird droppings from the statues. Reva supposed the absence of citizenry might be explained by the sight of the bodies that hung from the towers by the dozen. Some had clearly been strung up whilst still alive judging by the red-brown streaks that adorned the high walls.

  “Their Empress seems keen to make an impression,” the Shield observed.

  The wagon train drew up to the largest structure they had yet seen, a tall oval-shaped wonder of red and go
ld marble. It stood fully seventy feet high, constructed in five tiers, and differed markedly from the other architecture she had seen. There was little evidence of the Volarian liking for straight edges here, the tiers constructed from elegant arches and gently curved columns resembling the stem of a wineglass.

  “The great arena of Volar, my lady,” Ell-Nestra said. “Enjoy the view, it’s unlikely either of us will see another.”

  A tight circle of red-armoured men surrounded the wagon whilst the driver unlocked the cage, standing well back and ordering them out with near-frantic impatience. From his guarded expression and the sweat sheening his face Reva surmised he was keen to be away from their guards. She climbed out with difficulty, legs and back aching with every movement. She had tried to flex her muscles during the journey but such prolonged constraint was bound to weaken even the strongest body. The Shield groaned as he stepped down, sinking to his knees with teeth clenched.

  “Stand up.” The voice was uncoloured by any anger or threat, the words spoken in unaccented Realm Tongue. Reva looked up at a man perhaps forty years in age, dressed in a plain black robe, his dark hair, greying at the temples, drawn back from a smooth forehead and lean, inexpressive features.

  The Shield glanced up at the black-clad, squinting in the sun. “Can’t see a whip on you,” he said.

  “I do not require a whip,” the man replied. “You obey me or you die.”

  Ell-Nestra jerked his head at the arena behind them. “Here or there, what difference does it make?”

  “In there you have a chance of life, at least for a time.” The black-clad’s eyes went to Reva, narrowing in careful appraisal. His gaze was intense but she saw no lust in it, also, she noted with surprise, no hint of cruelty. “My name is Varulek Tovrin,” he told her. “Master of the Great Volarian Arena and Overseer of Garisai, by the gracious consent of the Empress Elverah.”

  He turned and beckoned to a pair of red-armoured guards, Reva noting the mass of tattoos that covered his hands from fingertip to wrist. They were unfamiliar in design, much more dense and intricate than those worn by the queen’s Lonak woman, and she could only wonder at the hours, and pain, endured to craft such a complex web into his flesh. He caught her scrutiny and his expression transformed into something shockingly unexpected: sympathy. “She wishes to see you.”