Queen's Hunt (37 page)

She knew the answer already, from her life dreams. So did Valara Baussay.

She turned back to her questions. “Dzavek sent his soldiers after you and the emerald. Did Markus Khandarr know?”

Valara’s mouth tensed at the mention of Khandarr’s name. “No. He would not have allowed me to live so long, I think.”

Very true. Ilse could understand this woman’s reluctance to speak openly. She was a queen among her enemies.

It would have been simpler if she had trusted us. But then, we did not entirely trust her.

A savage ache had settled between Ilse’s eyes. She was hungry, weary, frightened. Angry with herself for not guessing the truth earlier. For trusting too much and not enough, all at the same time. Absently she rubbed her free hand over her forehead. Smelled the lingering scent of smoke and blood, overlaid with the strong scent of magic that permeated the air.
I cannot stop the questions yet. She is speaking at last.

“Did anyone else in your court know about the emerald?” she asked.

Valara shook her head. “Not at first. I had not decided when, or how, to introduce the matter. It is a delicate subject.”

And you were not certain you wished to share this information.

Ilse kept that thought to herself. “You say not at first…”

“I told no one at first. It was too dangerous—dangerous the way I used to understand such things. Court dangerous. Politically dangerous. There were several factions who— Well, never mind about them. I told my father and his mage councillor, but not until that very last day. They are both dead now.”

More glimpses into the woman’s life and Morennioù’s Court. Ilse had the impression of a strict and cold existence, of a life requiring exquisite balance.
Like walking the knife edge above spinning worlds in Anderswar.

Which reminded her of another question. “What about now? Why did you remain in Veraene? Why bargain with us at all?”

“Ah, that.” Valara lifted her hand to show the ring. “Because Daya would not allow me. She—he—they told me clearly they wanted deliverance, for themselves and their brothers, sisters. I had not understood before what they meant. I’m still not certain.”

More pieces from history and her own memories fitted together to complete the picture. Daya. Lir’s emerald. Once joined together with the other two.

Even through the enveloping magic, Ilse could hear the wind thumping against the Mantharah, like a vast fist hammering on a door.

Or like an angry supplicant, demanding satisfaction of its god.

Deliver us all,
the voice like bells had cried out.

We are all bound to these jewels,
Ilse thought.
Just as they are bound to us.

A man was created free, the philosophers said. It was his own choices, however, that bound him in the end. Even the choice to do nothing, to deny responsibility and claim that one was powerless to act, that, too, would bind a soul to the same life, the same questions, again and again.

“So then,” Ilse said softly. “I have my answers. Now I give one to you. We do as the jewels ask of us. If we refuse, we are set to this same task in our next lives, and the next, and so on until the end of eternity. If we deliver them to freedom, that in turn sets us free. So. We must recover the other two jewels and join them all together, as they once were.”

“I—” Valara broke off and stared at the Agnau’s surface. “No, I cannot argue that. But how? Leos Dzavek has Rana—the ruby—locked away in his castle. We cannot hope to attack him in that stronghold. Remember how it was before?”

“I remember.”

She did. If Ilse closed her eyes, she could see ghostly images of Zalinenka. The hundreds of guards who stood outside the gates and patrolled the lower halls. Even before Károví divided itself from the empire, the court had its factions who did not always restrict themselves to mere speech to gain their point.

“So we do not attack,” she said. “We infiltrate. But not yet. First we need to recover the missing jewel.”

“Asha,” Valara said. “I hid her, him in Autrevelye.”

Three hundred years ago, when Valara Baussay had lived as Imre Benacka.
And I read about you from a book written by a prison official named Karel Simkov. You died before you would admit to Leos Dzavek where you hid those jewels.

“So search your memories,” Ilse told Valara. “Find Asha and bring her back here. I shall stay by the Mantharah and keep Daya safe. Once you return, we can plan our next steps.”

Valara’s lips curled back in a snarl, as if she were a dog. No, a fox. Then her eyes closed and she touched the ring again. Her lips moved in a silent conversation. A long pause followed before she released a sigh.

“No choice. Or as you said, the only choice left.” She stared at the ring upon her finger, and for a moment, her features seemed to shift in the Agnau’s strange light, from woman to man and back again. “The only choice,” Valara repeated softly. “Would that I had accepted this before.” She glanced up, once more the Morennioùen queen, no traces of her former selves apparent. “Let us make our plans then.”

*   *   *

THEY SPOKE OF
practicalities next. What were the implications of Valara’s search? How long would it require? What if Leos Dzavek detected her presence there?

A few hours, no less,
Valara insisted.

What if you need more?
Ilse asked, equally insistent.
And what about the time difference? A single hour in Anderswar can mean days, years, in this world.

More arguments followed. Each of them was practiced in evasion, obfuscation, the many other intricate maneuvers one encountered in royal courts. In the end, the knowledge that they had to act for the future—theirs and their kingdoms—decided the argument.

“One day, then,” Valara said. “No longer.”

“How can you know when you return? Anderswar—”

“—is not invincible. Trust me to know that.” Her lips thinned to a sardonic smile. “Though, indeed, you have little reason to trust me. But what I say is true. Once I have the sapphire, I can traverse the void more precisely. I can return before the sun sets.”

She took off the ring and laid it between them. “One day,” she repeated. “If I do not return before then, consider me dead, and do what you must.”

*   *   *

FOR VALARA BAUSSAY,
it was as though she had carried a great weight this past year, one that grew heavier with every moment. Valara pressed both hands over her eyes a moment to regain her equilibrium. She still heard echoes of Daya’s bell-like voice within, but softer now.
Soon I will be alone.

“I must go in the flesh,” she said. “I can read the signs more easily that way.”

Ilse nodded. Her hand had closed over the ring, but loosely. A cautious woman. Good. She would need to be.

Valara seated herself on the sandy shore. She would do this properly, the way she had read in the old philosophers’ textbooks and journals. The oldest ones of all said that forms were irrelevant. That you did not need even word or thought to work magic. For herself, Valara took comfort in the ritual.

Ei rûf ane gôtter. Komen mir de strôm. Komen mir de vleisch unde sêle. Komen mir de Anderswar …

Her first journeys to Autrevelye had taken place with wrenching suddenness that left her ill and almost blind. This time, she felt nothing more than a subtle displacement, a momentary dizziness as her body accustomed itself to new surroundings. Then the rest of her senses caught up. Mantharah’s keening winds had vanished. The scent of magic was strong here, but nothing so intense as the steam rising from the Agnau. And less tangible, the sense that she was alone.

She released her breath, opened her eyes.

She sat in a darkened room that smelled of old stone and wet earth. Water trickled over the rough-cut walls. Strange how she had missed that sound at first—as if she had to relearn how to listen. The floor itself was smooth, worn to a velvet softness, as though many travelers had visited this chamber before.

Expectations, she reminded herself. Autrevelye read them from her mind to construct itself anew each time.

A plume of musk drifted past her. Shadows rippled away with its passage. The shadows turned upon themselves, revealing a lean dark wolflike creature. It curled around to face her. Its lips drew back from yellowed teeth in an unnatural grin. Rikha. Her first and only guide in this other world for the past five years.

Rikha snuffed at the floor and growled. “You returned.”

“I did.”

“But without the emerald, without Daya. Did a thief overcome a thief, perhaps?”

She felt a prickle of irritation, suppressed it. “I left Daya in safekeeping. Though that is not your concern.”

“No.” It laughed softly. “Nothing concerns me, not even your fondest wish.”

True enough.

In her early days with magic and Autrevelye, Rikha’s presence had terrified her. Then she had attempted to treat the beast as one of her subjects. She had mastered her terror, but Rikha had only laughed when she gave it orders. Slowly, they were learning to deal with each other.

“You want the sapphire,” Rikha said.

She nodded. “And for that I need your help in remembering. I know about my brother, about his search and mine for the jewels, but that is not quite … enough. Can you help me?”

Rikha tilted its head and regarded her with a clear implacable gaze. “Autrevelye never forgets, lady. Neither does your soul.”

Her skin rippled at the tone of his voice. Of course. It was all a part of his nature, and Autrevelye’s. They only knew death and rebirth. Life itself was only a brief interlude between the two. Strange, how humans viewed everything in reverse.

“I do not forget,” she said. “Please take me to where Leos Dzavek last captured me, when I was Imre Benacka.”

“Do you order me?” he asked, his tone soft with menace.

She smiled. “Of course not. I beg a favor of you, Rikha.”

“Ah, that is different. Come, lady, and we shall find your past.”

She stood and laid her hand on Rikha’s shoulder. They paced forward slowly, and with a few steps, the darkness ebbed away, the stone room faded into a bleak desert, then to a jungle of sweet-smelling flowers. In silence they passed through a grove of silver trees and crossed a river, skimming through the air just above the surging current. The sun above had stopped in the sky, and the air itself had turned still. In Autrevelye, in the outside worlds, time might be pouring into the future, but here it was frozen.

They stopped at last at the edge of a barren cliff. Ahead stretched a wasteland, a pale desert of sand and rock. The cliff itself was part of a stony ridge that divided the desert from an even more desolate mountain range. Valara didn’t need Rikha’s explanation for why he’d brought her to this place. She already knew—she’d come this way untold centuries ago as a different person, almost a different soul. Here, she had once fled, desperate, with Lir’s jewels in her hands. Here, Leos Dzavek had captured her, when her name was Imre Benacka.

My brother, my king. The man who captured me, killed me, or nearly so, and revived me so he could take me prisoner and rip the truth from my throat.

And here, just last summer, she had returned in her quest to rediscover her past.

In that moment, the sun dropped toward the horizon. The golden plains turned dark red in its dying light. Blood touched the cliff face and the rocks behind her. “This is too much,” she murmured.

“We’ve not begun to explore excess,” Rikha answered. He snuffed the ground and with his forepaw indicated a depression where dust had collected. “That spot.”

Valara touched the soft red dust. She saw no footprints at first, then realized the prints were as red as the ground.
Scarlet for eternity,
she thought. Dzavek’s prints, she noted, were the silver gray of twilight. She dug into the dust with her fingers, tasted the salt of old tears and the metallic edge of panic. She heard snatches of voices she recognized—Dzavek and herself arguing loudly. Both called out words of magic. Valara felt a sharp stab and plucked back her hand. Immediately, the voices cut off.

Future and past together. It was almost too unnerving to continue.

Rikha sniffed at the ground. “The tracks lead on.”

“Then we do as well.”

It was a trail in opposite directions, a looping path across rivers and lakes, over bare hills and thickly forested plains. Two sets of prints—one laid down by Imre Benacka, one by Leos Dzavek. Several times the prints disappeared beneath landslides, or lay submerged where rivers had changed their course. She could see where Dzavek had broken off his search, only to return again and again. Rikha himself, a creature of Autrevelye, had to circle around with his nose in the dirt until he found the trail once more.

Rana’s hiding place lay underneath a waterfall, hidden behind a cascade of water and mist. Wind and rain and water had smoothed the dirt; only a shallow pit remained where Dzavek had dug up the ruby behind the waterfall. Crossing back and forth over the area, Valara found her tracks leading onward, backward. Handprints covered the branches and higher rocks; footprints dotted those leading across the frothing water.

“You tried to disguise your trail,” Rikha said. “You knew someone would follow you.”

Memory returned, much stronger. Oh yes, she remembered that day. On the farther bank, she had climbed down the rocks from the next plateau. Valara followed, gripping the same rocks, hearing, as though her own self were just ahead, the uneven gasps as she eased herself down the sheer cliff. Above, the land stretched into a wide and even plain. Here the prints were spaced farther apart, as though she had come in this direction running as fast as possible, leaping ahead of pursuing danger. Valara ran the same path backward, matching leap for leap, each one longer and longer, until …

The tracks disappeared.

Valara cried out in shock and fell to her knees. Rikha hurried to her side. His muzzle wrinkled in surprise. “Where next?”

Where indeed? She pressed her palm over the last footprint. Fear and urgency vibrated from its essence. The signs were clear. She’d run headlong over the packed dirt. But from where?