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

by Dana Marton

  “To victory,” Prince Graho, Lord Karnagh, and Tomron echoed him before pulling back to lead their men.

  The first flight of arrows were loosed but a few moments later, flying over Batumar’s head, breaking the morning’s peace. The Landrian archers might be too far in the forest to hit the Kerghi on the parapets, but dozens of imperial troops fell, having been caught unprepared in the fields.

  The archers shot off another volley, still from inside the tree line. Before the imperial troops could even line up for battle, a hundred of them were dead. But that was all the advantage Batumar’s liberating army was able to steal. The imperial archers nocked their arrows at last, and they shot back.

  “Attack!” Batumar raised his sword and broke from the tree line, the cavalry behind him.

  The battle for Karamur commenced.

  Another hundred men fell to arrows, on each side, before the two armies met in the middle of the open fields. Tigers roared. So did the manyinga. Swords clashed. Batumar issued no further commands. Nothing could be heard over the din of battle. And in any case, his army had all pledged to fight to the death. They fought with the understanding that there would be no call to retreat.

  Batumar hacked at the enemy from horseback until a lance took the horse from under him. Then he hacked at the enemy on foot, picking the largest man he could reach. Hold on, my Tera. I am here.

  The imperial soldiers were no barbarians, no riffraff who joined a mercenary army for the spoils. These were trained fighters, proper troops, true warriors. Sword clashed against sword. Muscles strained. Then Marga lunged to help. The tiger brought down the enemy soldier’s horse, and Batumar cut down the rider at last.

  He suffered a cut himself, a deep gash in his thigh. He bled. He refused to slow. Tera waited for him somewhere ahead. He would not consider any other possibility.

  When he laid eyes on the commander of the imperial troops, at some distance, Batumar dispatched the line of golden-uniformed soldiers in his way and headed straight for the commander. Then tripped. No, not tripped, stumbled. The ground was shaking. His gaze snapped to Karamur, where, as the ground shook again, a great cloud of dust rose over the castle.

  A terrible cold spread in Batumar’s heart and gripped it hard enough to steal his breath. Damn the imperial commander. He changed direction, fighting his way to the portcullis.

  Hold on, Tera, my heart. Hold on.

  He cut down a great many more men before the dust cloud settled, and he could see at last that the north wing of the High Lord’s palace had collapsed, the very place where Kerghi soldiers had been sitting on the rooftops earlier.

  “Tera!” The desperate cry tore from his lips as he lunged forward.

  Tera had made it through the cave. She was fighting for them from the inside. He knew it in his heart. And he knew well enough how quick she always was to sacrifice herself for others. Not this time. Not if he had to take apart the fortress walls with his bare hands. “Tera!”

  Men around him picked up the shout. “For the Lady Tera!” And it spread, giving strength to the warriors, her name their rallying cry.

  When Batumar reached the city wall, he climbed. Lances showered down on him, until Prince Graho’s remaining Landrian archers used their last arrows to clear the top of the battlements and the climb became easier.

  Others climbed next to him, scrambling for handholds. When Batumar went over the top of the wall, he was not alone. A dozen of his men had his back.

  They fought their way to the portcullis with single-minded attention, cutting down anyone who would stand in their way. He raised the winch first and sheathed his sword to work the pulley. The rope snapped tight, the counterweight lifting. The metal grid gave a protesting screech, but up it went in its stone channel.

  Tomron was the first man through, his most trusted men close behind him. The khan’s mercenaries stationed between the outer walls and the inner walls attacked them. The palace collapse had to have killed at least a few hundred, but plenty remained—maybe as many as a thousand.

  How many did the emperor’s sorcerer send through the Gate of the World? The question floated into Batumar’s mind, then disappeared. Numbers no longer mattered. He would not have turned back if the enemy numbered ten thousand.

  “To the inner gate!” He drew his sword and threw himself back into the fight. The second wall had to be breached next. All around him, the battle raged, men falling, blood soaking the ground. He barely saw them.

  He could not recount how he reached the inner wooden gate. Later, he could not recall bellowing over the din of the battle, “The manyinga! To me!”

  His men brought the beasts. And then Batumar set the manyinga against the gate and had them push forward. Wood creaked. One of the beams splintered.

  “Better than a siege engine!” Tomron grinned next to him.

  They were both standing on the bodies of their enemies.

  The thick gate did not give easily, but it did give. The manyinga, their heads blooded, surged forward, widening the gap, sweeping giant beams out of the way like tree trunks in a flash flood. The liberating army poured in.

  “To the castle!” Batumar looked around for Marga, but he could not see the tiger in the chaos of the battle.

  “Marga!” he called, but he did not wait for her to appear.

  The doors to the castle would be the most heavily guarded entrance. He fought his way to the nearest castle wall with a window, then began to scale the stones straight up. In his mind, he saw the north wing collapsing, over and over. In his heart, he was certain Tera had been in the middle of that collapse.

  He could not think past the walls crumbling, of that dust cloud rising. He could not think that Tera might have sacrificed herself to remove the leaders of the enemy army, to give the liberating forces a chance to win. He climbed, hand over hand, caring little that the rough stones scraped his fingertips bloody.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  (Tera)

  I expected to wake in the spirit world, but instead I woke to pain and darkness. The air felt different. The world felt different, as if some elemental power had shifted, as when after a great winter storm, the dark clouds depart, and the pressure clears from the air.

  I coughed, one violent spasm after the other squeezing my lungs, my whole body battered, worse than when I had been thrown around in our small cabin by the hardstorms. My mouth was dry and full of dust that burned my tongue and throat. My eyes burned too. As I blinked, the dust stuck under my eyelids scraped my eyeballs. My scalp ached where Drav’s metal claws were embedded in my head.

  Perhaps I deserved no better. I had taken lives—with my own hands. I had broken the most sacred vow of my people.

  I did not justify my actions by telling myself that I might have saved many more lives than I had taken. The Shahala believe that there are deeds for which a justification can never exist. I did not rail against being sealed in the rock, trapped in a sacrifice hole until I ran out of air.

  I thought my end was just. I had pledged myself to the ancient god. Now my bones would be his forever.

  And yet…

  He did not call to me with rage. He did not call to me at all. I sniffed the air, but could not smell sulfur, only dust. Maybe he had overgorged himself on sacrifice, and sated, he rested.

  I rested too, eyes closed, head bowed, my arms wrapped around my knees to keep me warm. I had fought for my people, and now my fight was over.

  Or was it?

  Had I not promised to lead?

  How long a rest did a god require?

  I coughed. Every joint aching, I struggled to rise, grateful to have room enough to stand, then I felt around the sacrifice hole. I was blocked in not by rubble but a single large boulder. My fingers found only the smallest gaps here and there around the edge of the huge stone. I could squeeze my hand through a few of them but nothing bigger than a hand. Had I turned all my bones soft, I still could not escape my rocky grave.

  I reached up to work Drav’s pins from m
y scalp. I could do little to improve my situation, but I could do at least that. None of the pins would easily budge, however. I had to rip. More blood trickled down my face before I had them.

  I fed them through the nearest gap, not wanting anything with me that belonged to the sorcerer. If he was out there still, I did not want him to have any power over me.

  To be in Kratos’s power was terrible enough. His darkness had taken me. I was surrounded by it, swallowed by it. That darkness trapped me, the ancient god’s last sacrifice—at least, at this temple.

  Kind spirits, save Batumar, and our people, and our island.

  I prayed for a good long time before my mind cleared and I remembered that I had been given power over stone. My heart quickened.

  I lay my hand on the boulder and envisioned it rolling away. I pushed. Then I pushed harder. The boulder stubbornly stayed. I could not soften it, nor could I crack it. I could not see the small fissures as I had seen in the great column I had shattered.

  “Be gone!” I pushed anyway.

  Nothing happened.

  I heaved against the boulder with all my strength then, but it still refused to budge. I tried and tried again, tendons popping, muscles screaming. Nothing. My power over stone was gone. Kratos had given, and Kratos had taken.

  Yet I had some lingering sense, enough to know that beyond this boulder lay another, then another, the temple fully collapsed and the entire north wing of the palace with it. Mixed in with the ruins was the blood of our enemies and their broken bodies, like mortar among the great stones of the fortress’s outer walls. I had succeeded. Hundreds of men from the Kerghi army, and very possibly Emperor Drakhar, were dead. I had increased our army’s odds of victory.

  Was Batumar here? Had the battle already been fought? I wished I knew how he and our people fared. The thought that he would never know what became of me twisted my heart. I prayed again to the spirits to grant him victory, to grant the islands peace. For myself, I asked nothing.

  I brushed my tangled hair and the dust and blood from my face, then I rested my head on the rock behind me and thought about my mother. I wondered how soon my spirit would join hers. I hoped we would recognize each other at once and would soar over the tops of the numaba trees like a pair of knar eagles. If I was granted the privilege to reunite with her.

  I had never feared passing over to the spirit world. But now… When I had been a child, I used to think the good spirits lived on top of the numaba trees on our hillside, while the bad spirits lived under the sea, always angry and cold, pulling down ships.

  After what I had just done… I did not know how I would be judged. I shivered. And once I started, I could not stop.

  I kept coughing too. The air remained thick with dust. I wiped my face again, but it helped little. The burning in my eyes did not lessen.

  I coughed more and gasped for air, until I slid down onto the ground. I lost track of time. I soared, sometimes into the past. I talked with my mother who was still alive and not a spirit, relieved to tears when she embraced me with love, not a trace of disappointment in her eyes. I reached for her hand, but my fingers closed around air instead.

  Next I was soaring into the future, high above, in a cloudless sky, looking down the emerald carpet of the forests, then flying over the fortress city. Below me lay not ruins, but Karamur rebuilt, Batumar once again High Lord of the city and protector of its people.

  I soared over the sea and saw the other Middle Islands, everywhere men and women living in peace. I saw ships sail swiftly to trade. They carried many of my Shahala people to heal.

  I saw the Outer Islands, all rebuilt, even Rabeen. I saw the mainland, then Uramit, and the Landrian islands to the south, Prince Graho on his throne with a queen who held the moon and the stars in her eyes when she looked at him.

  Up north I flew, to the kingless kingdom of the Selorm, over the castles of the Selorm lords, their tigers patrolling their fortresses. I saw Lord Karnagh in the seat of honor on their war council and, by his side, his warrior queen.

  I flew higher then, into pure bright white made up from millions of points of light. At long last, I was among the spirits.

  “I do not belong here.” I tried pulling back.

  One of the points of lights that surrounded me pulsed. Not yet.

  “I tried to win the world with kindness and light. I could not. I brought men to their deaths.”

  Darkness and light cannot live together in the same place, at the same time. There is no compromise with evil. Light drives out the darkness.

  “The Guardians said I was born to a prophecy. I was supposed to be a hero. I failed.”

  All prophecies call for heroes, and the number of these prophecies is many, one light said gently.

  All are born to be heroes, another light added.

  None are born to be heroes, yet another responded, but they were not arguing.

  Then: The hero is the one who takes up the challenge to give whatever it takes to save others.

  “I could not save all,” I protested.

  The world is imperfect, and so are all heroes, for they are of the world. The hero is not always the one who succeeds. The hero is the one who tries, even at a great cost.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  (Tera)

  The next moment, I was back in the darkness, sealed in rock.

  My skin burned. My throat ached as if I had swallowed sharp blades. My eyes felt as if they were melting out of their sockets.

  I tried to heal myself but could not.

  Many mooncrossings before, in Ishaf, when I thought Batumar dead, my hope had died with him, and I had lost my healing powers for a time. Mayhap that had happened again. Or mayhap the spirits, seeing what I had done at Karamur, let me live but took back my powers.

  I did not know how much time had passed since the collapse. I could only judge time by how weak I was from lack of food and water. I tried to struggle to my feet again, but I could no longer stand.

  The earth trembled above me. Or did it? I was so shaky, I could not be certain.

  Wanting to be with the spirits once again, I closed my eyes. But this time when I dreamed, the dreams were dark.

  I was back at the Kerghi siege of Karamur the year before, when I plummeted from the wall into fire. I heard Batumar call, “Tera!” over the moans of the dying, saw the night sky and the flickering of the torches in the distance as the Kadar soldiers searched the bloody battlefield for me.

  I wanted to remain in that dream. Back then, Batumar had found me.

  The same thoughts filled my mind now that had filled my mind then.

  He lives.

  He will come.

  He will find me.

  When I revived some, I stopped repeating the words in my head. I had to accept that even the most powerful warlord of the land could not reach me here. This time, not even Batumar could save me.

  Pain was an ocean, washing over me in waves. When I slept, I dreamed dreams of delirium—flying fish with feathery wings, red manyinga dancing, tigers with emerald frogs for eyes. Sometimes, wide awake, I hallucinated. I thought I heard Batumar right next to me, telling me how much he loved me.

  The earth trembled again and again. I am shaking from shock. Or maybe not. Dust sifted over me. The rocks above me were moving. The dust burned my eyes more, made my skin itch, then that burned too wherever I scratched.

  I thought of Vooren’s tale, how his grandfather went blind in the caves, in a tunnel where the walls wept poison. Mayhap the stone of the caverns contained poisonous minerals, like the Desert of Sparkling Death that separated the Kadars’ country from our Shahala lands.

  I had a terrifying thought: What if I would not die, not for a long time to come? What if my body was healing itself, but as I was covered in poisonous minerals, they kept burning me over and over? How many days of agony before I finally wasted away from lack of nourishment?

  Exhausted from pain, I slept again. Or maybe I had simply lost consciousness, for when I woke, I
could remember no dreams.

  “Tera!”

  I smiled at Batumar’s voice. I was in a dream, then, after all, back to the night after the Kerghi siege of Karamur.

  He lives.

  He will come.

  He will find me.

  I wanted to dream the part when he lifted me into his arms.

  A roar sounded somewhere above me—a tiger. I recognized her distinct sound: Marga.

  There you are, great mother.

  Moments later, a deeper, more powerful, roar reached me. The rocks shook, as if that roar had the power to move them. I recognized that sound too—one of the manyinga beasts.

  Then came yet a third roar, one that echoed in my heart. “Tera!” From Batumar.

  My throat felt as if it had melted. I could not call out for him. This did not upset me. I was in a dream. The noise and trembling came nearer and nearer to me and went on for what seemed days.

  Then the very boulder locking me in shifted a little. I wished I could push to my feet, but I could barely lift my hands to block my face from the dust that fell again to cover me.

  Marga roared, so near now. Then I heard the crash of the boulder. Air moved around me as the space opened, but I could see nothing. Something large and soft nudged me in the darkness. Marga’s head. I thought again that I must be dreaming. I had to be, for she did not lick my face in greeting, but whined like a kitten.

  “She is here!” a man called out.

  Then Batumar’s torn cry: “Does she live?”

  “I cannot tell, my lord.”

  A hand landed on my shoulder and was rapidly shoved aside.

  Strong, familiar arms lifted me, and I curled against Batumar’s wide chest. This part of the dream was my favorite. This part I did not want to end.

  “I am here.” His voice was a ragged whisper.

  I did not know how he recognized me in the dark, or how he had brought the tiger and the manyinga to me. For I was lifted, lifted, then felt the beast’s coarse fur against my leg as Batumar settled us into the saddle.