Guardian Queen: Epic Fantasy Romance (Hardstorm Saga Book 3)

by Dana Marton

  I did not turn my head, only whispered to her under my breath. “Tell the servants to stay out of the north wing.”

  She gave no response but briefly rested her hand on my shoulder to reassure me that she would see my request fulfilled. Then she stepped aside once again, for the sorcerer was returning from the door, his gaze fixed on me.

  “I ask you for the last time. How did you enter the fortress city?”

  When I remained silent, he placed a hand on the back of my neck. The unnatural cold of his fingers seeped into my flesh. This time, I did feel his power buzz along my skin under his palm, and all across my scalp, under the pins I was now wearing in my hair.

  “How?” he demanded.

  I felt compelled to answer. I did not mind. I only feigned resistance, looking away, pretending some measure of fear as I turned to face him. “None will follow after me that way, I promise.”

  He held my gaze, his dark irises expanding. I did hold back then. I wanted to test how far his powers to compel me extended. I remained in control, but only just. The sorcerer was powerful. I knew only one power greater than his in Karamur—the ancient god of the caves.

  When I remained silent, Drav nodded to the guards. “Start drowning the women, one by one, until the Lady Tera deigns to give us a straight answer. Start with this one.” He pointed at Onra.

  The nearest guard grabbed my friend and heaved her into the water without hesitation, then stepped in after her, boots and all.

  “A tunnel!” I blurted.

  “A tunnel where?”

  Onra struggled to stand, but the guard put his hand on her head to hold her under the surface. The water churned as her arms flailed. I lurched toward her, but Drav caught me by the arm and held me back with an unnatural strength.

  “A tunnel through the mountain!” I shouted, then rushed on. “I can tell you how to reach it, but you will not find any enemy hiding in there.”

  The guard let up, and Onra lunged away from him, collapsing against the side of the pool and gasping for air, water running down her face in rivulets. I watched her for only a moment, to make sure she did not need my help, then turned back to the sorcerer. He was lucky I was no true sorceress, or he would have felt my vengeance.

  “I do not sense a tunnel.” He watched me closely. “Have you the skill to hide it?” He paused. “Take us there.”

  A sorcerer’s command—the words brimming with power.

  I drew back and shook my head. “You can easily find it. Look for the iron door on the lowest level of the castle, below the dungeons.”

  He raised an eyebrow and grabbed me by the arm once again. “You shall lead us, and you shall enter first.”

  “After the emperor’s speech, then.” I bit my lip. “He wants both of us to be present.”

  Drav narrowed his eyes. “There is time yet.”

  He led me out of Pleasure Hall, ordering the guards, “Bring me a full unit of men and make it quick. If there is a secret entry into the castle, we must secure it. If this is a trap and enemy soldiers are waiting behind the door, they must be rooted out at once. Meet us at the dungeons.”

  As the men ran off, Drav nudged me forward. “Lead the way.”

  I did, but none too fast, allowing my every step to speak of reluctance. I stayed silent as we passed dispirited servants who scurried along, hugging the walls, avoiding our gazes. They were carrying water jars and food from the pantries toward the Great Hall. The emperor must have demanded a feast, a feast I did not plan on attending. If all went well, he would not be attending it either.

  We kept going. By the time we reached the dungeons, my heart was beating so hard, I feared Drav might be able to hear it. Then boots slapping on stone drowned out all other sound as his unit of soldiers joined us, hurrying to his service and crowding the hallway.

  I sighed with resignation. “Best light your torches here.”

  Then I led the men down the last set of stairs, into the long corridor that yawned darkly before us. The chill in the air made me rub my hands over my arms, but I did not slow. Neither did I allow the dread that threatened to overwhelm me deter me from my purpose. I filled my lungs with musty air and kept going, straight ahead.

  Within a few more steps, the torches illuminated the dead end, the jumble of flags.

  “If you think this is a jest—” Drav’s voice hardened with implied threat.

  “Behind the flags.”

  He waved his hand, and half a dozen soldiers rushed to clear the back wall, revealing the partially open and still-chained iron door that separated the castle from the cave.

  Drav examined the narrow gap, then raised an eyebrow as he glanced back at me. His measuring gaze ran over my body. “You came through there?”

  “With difficulty.”

  He fingered the padlock. “I take it you do not have the key?”

  “Last I knew, Vooren, one of the stewards, had it.”

  The sorcerer laid his hands on the lock and mumbled something, barely a few words. The sight of melting metal was startling. It dripped to the stones little by little and sizzled as it hit the cold stone. The chains gave and clattered to the ground, the sound echoing in the corridor. A demonstration of power.

  Does it weaken him like difficult healing weakens me? Is it enough to make a difference?

  The men dragged the door wide open, the metal screeching and scraping, then Drav pushed me into the darkness ahead of him and waited for me to take several steps.

  “I was not certain if you were lying, but there is a cave here. Where does it lead?” he asked when he finally moved up next to me.

  “To a hidden harbor. The journey is long, over difficult terrain. Some of the passageways are too low to walk through, so whoever passes through them must crawl.” I did not bother hiding the shiver that ran through me. “We should go back. We do not want to keep the emperor waiting.”

  Drav watched me closely. “Not yet. I want to see more. I want to see at least what is right here.” He turned to the men. “Spread out. Torches raised.”

  Across the room, several doorways yawned black before us. I knew the one I wanted. I led the men forward, straight to Kratos’s chapel, then stopped in the middle of the cold cavern where the air held a taint of sulfur.

  I could better see now the three great columns that surrounded the low circular platform we stood on, their tops disappearing into darkness. The platform and columns were richly carved with black snakes twisted to form long-forgotten symbols. The snakes had legs—capped with talons.

  “What is this place?” Drav raised his torch, but the light did not reach the ceiling.

  I hoped he would not realize that somewhere above that ceiling was the Great Hall and part of the courtyard where the Kerghi would be by now gathering for the emperor’s speech.

  “We are in an ancient temple,” I said. “We must offer a sacrifice here.”

  Indeed, we were in a place of sacrifice. With all the torches, I could see higher up now, could see the crevices—similar to the ones on the cliffs of Rabeen—with their metal bars hanging half rusted off their hinges. Sacrifice holes.

  Far above us, a dark chuckle floated, softly echoing off the rock. “Sorceress, you serve me well.”

  “Who is there?” Drav raised his torch even higher and peered up, while his men pulled closer to us and formed a protective circle.

  “I have brought you sacrifice,” I shouted to Kratos.

  The god responded with full-blown laughter, and the next I knew, a soldier floated up from among us, shouting “Help me!” and waving his sword at the air.

  He soon rose past the light our torches provided, then came silence, and then a piercing scream.

  The remaining soldiers ran for the doorway or, rather, for the spot where the doorway had been moments earlier, but the entry had disappeared. Real or imagined, we were surrounded by solid rock.

  Drav tossed his torch and let me go so he could hold his sword two-handed. He set his feet apart in the stance of a warrio
r, ready to fight. I gaped at the blue light that glinted on his blade.

  Some of the guards cowered with their backs to the walls, weapon in one hand, searching with the other for a hidden lever to open the doorway they knew to be there somewhere. Others hid themselves in the handful of sacrifice holes that stood close to the ground. Others still hid behind the columns that long-ago supplicants had carved from the stone of the mountain.

  Drav and I alone remained in the middle of the temple. I eased out of reach, while his attention was fixed above, then I eased all the way to the wide column behind me.

  Another soldier rose in the air, as if invisible talons gripped him around the middle. He struggled to no avail. As with the first man, this one too disappeared from sight, this one too screamed.

  The ancient god gave a satisfied sigh. “A fine sacrifice. And you bring me a sorcerer too. I shall have a priest and a priestess. My temple will be rebuilt. I am well pleased.”

  “Then you will grant me power?” I called up into the darkness.

  “Are you willing to pay the price?”

  “I am. Grant me power, and I shall pledge you my life.”

  “For what power do you wish?” Kratos asked then. “The power over the wind to raise great storms? The power over water to sink ships? The power over stones to build yourself castles? Or the power over fire to burn your enemies?”

  While he spoke, men kept rising in the air one by one, some dropping their weapons, some their torches, some both. All screamed.

  I heard them but in a muted way, saw them but with my vision blurry, as if a veil had been raised between us, as if the god existed in two different worlds, talking with me in one while drinking the blood of his sacrifice in the other.

  Drav too was shut away from me. The sorcerer, realizing he faced a more ancient power than he had first thought, tossed his bespelled sword and lifted both hands as he shouted an incantation. Lightning burst from his fingertips.

  I had no time to think about him. I had a god to trick. “I wish for the power over stones. I want to raise all the cities my enemies demolished. I want to rebuild our islands.”

  Kratos was silent for a moment. When he did talk, he sounded pleased. “You will raise my temples again.”

  A statement, not a question.

  My body tingled. And with each man sacrificed, the tingle became stronger. I felt as if I was growing, as if my body was expanding, yet when I looked, my limbs remained the same.

  “I grant my sorceress the power to command stone,” the god declared, his voice neither cold nor threatening now, almost as if he was drunk on the blood of his sacrifice.

  Even I felt dizzy.

  The men were rising faster now, two or three at a time. Then I saw the last of them rise into the air, the unit commander, wild-eyed and grunting, slashing uselessly with his sword.

  A happy sigh sounded from above. “Royal blood is strong blood. It is a rare sacrifice.” The god slurred his words.

  I had no time to ponder whether the commander was one of the emperor’s bastards or the son of some king the emperor had conquered. My moment had come. Time to fight.

  All through this war, I had thought to save my people and triumph over our enemies with kindness and light. I sought to heal. But when I had stood before the emperor and saw his darkness, I did not know how to heal that.

  His empire had spread through the world like a black cloud. Like the blackening caused by an infection as it spread through the body, the kind of illness that, if a healer did not cut it out, would end a man’s life. For that reason had I cut the blackening out of Prince Graho—to save him.

  Batumar did not go to war because he enjoyed the killing. The warlord went because keeping his people safe required that sacrifice. I understood that before with my mind, but not until now did I understand it with my heart. Batumar gave no thought to what he wanted, what he wished. He did, at great cost, what was required—for the sake of others. That was why he was a hero to men, a hero to me.

  I loved the warlord with all my heart.

  From love comes courage.

  As mad laughter rumbled from Kratos, bouncing off the walls of his sanctuary, I turned and laid my hands on the great column behind me. “Help me, kind spirits, if you can hear me.”

  With my mind’s eye, I could suddenly see the small fissures in the stone, as in the past I had been able to see the cracked bones of a man when healing him. When healing, before knitting the bones, I had to soften them. I knew how to do this. Now I softened the stone beneath my hands.

  “Sorceress!” the god roared high above.

  His thunderous voice deafened me. An invisible hand with claws tipping the fingers knocked me back, hard enough so I flew across the cavern and slammed into the rock wall at the far end.

  I could not breathe. My chest was on fire. But even as I fought not to lose consciousness, the temple trembled around me. I saw double, but I did see the great stone column buckle, then crumple, large chunks of stone rolling on the ground, like the severed heads on the emperor’s golden kaftan.

  Before the rumble could quiet, other stones fell, these from the ceiling that remained shrouded in darkness. Some rolled close enough to me that I could see carvings on them, ancient letters I could not decipher. Another column shuddered. Then even more stones fell, and I could see no longer, for too much dust filled the air.

  The sorcerer’s pins in my hair turned into claws and dug into my skin. Drav knew what I was doing and tried to stop me. But what I had set into motion could not be stopped. I clutched my head as blood ran down my face. The pain was sharp—like nails being driven into my head. I could do nothing to stop it.

  The ground shook beneath me. More stones fell from above. I dove into a low sacrifice hole, and not a moment too soon.

  Kratos roared as the ceiling collapsed. Then something tinkled—metal on stone. Ping-ping-ping. The gold coins that had been stored in the dungeons were raining down on us. Kratos had wanted blood and gold. He had his wish—he even had me.

  I was buried.

  Drav’s hairpins stopped digging farther into my scalp but remained in place. My lungs labored for air. Every part of my body ached. I did not have a bone left unrattled, no patch of skin left unbruised. My nose bled. I was certain that something vital had been crushed inside me.

  I hurt so much, my ears were ringing. Yet even over that, I could hear the screams and howls of hundreds of dying mercenaries far above me. I could feel the men’s fear and pain. The north wing of the High Lord’s palace was collapsing.

  I felt the god’s rage too, felt Kratos coming for me, but the blood of the dying drew him. His bloodthirst, after being denied sacrifice for too long, was even stronger than his need for vengeance. It did not matter. Whether at the tip of his invisible talons or from my injuries and lack of air—I faced certain death.

  “I beg you, kind spirits, save Batumar and our people, our soldiers and our island,” I prayed with my dying breath.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  (Batumar)

  The liberating army stood in the forest, out of sight, all four hundred and fifty remaining soldiers lined up behind their leaders—Batumar, Prince Graho, Lord Karnagh, and Tomron—with the archers at the front of the army, ready for attack. They had not yet been discovered; no alarm had sounded. What outlying Kerghi guards they had found in the woods, they killed.

  Batumar hoped they were in time. He had managed to gain a day. He had marched his troops through the night. Now Karamur’s walls towered before them.

  In peacetime, huts and cottages crowded around the fortress city between the outer walls and the fields. Now only their rubble remained. The Kerghi had destroyed them the year before when they were on the outside and Batumar had been within.

  The mercenary hordes had also destroyed last year’s harvest in that siege, but the fields had been replanted in the spring. The wheat should have been waist-high by this time in the summer, the heads filled with grain the people of the city badly need
ed. Yet the fields were barren once again, the fall reaping trampled by the Kerghi army when they had taken the city in Batumar’s absence.

  Two lost harvests. He would have to find a way to stave off famine. But first, he had to take the city back. Impatience made his muscles twitch, bloodlust coursing through his veins as he watched the army outside the fortress walls, their golden uniforms a contrast to the Kerghi on the parapets in black.

  “Freshly arrived, from the looks of them,” Tomron said on Batumar’s left. “No tents set up yet, no fires built.”

  “They must have just come through the Gate and down the mountain,” Lord Karnagh agreed. “Imperial troops. Close to six hundred men.”

  And more within the walls. Batumar kept his gaze on the city.

  “Do you think the Lady Tera is inside?” Prince Graho asked on his right.

  “If she said she would pass through the mountain and into the city, she will do just that,” Batumar said. “I doubt her not.”

  Lord Karnagh turned to him again. “You were present when Karamur’s defenses were rebuilt. You know every stone in those walls. Any weaknesses?”

  “We worked hard to ensure we had none.” Batumar held the reins firmly to keep his horse still. “Had I expected to be outside the walls one day, wishing for a way in, I would have left a secret entry.”

  “How about tunneling in?” the prince suggested.

  “The city is built on solid rock to ensure that the outer walls cannot be undermined by digging.”

  “We have no siege engines,” Lord Karnagh said with regret. “Nor the time to build them. Do you think the emperor is inside the walls?”

  “The imperial troops would not be here otherwise.” Batumar looked toward the High Lord’s castle, set on the highest point of the city. Kerghi soldiers were sitting on the rooftops, looking down at the courtyard outside the Great Hall. They appeared to be listening to something.

  Batumar unsheathed his sword, then he nodded at each man by his side in turn. “May the gods be with us on this day and carry us to victory.”