The Born Queen (3 page)

What was he doing? Who was he? Faces were fading in his mind. He glanced at the man beside him and could not remember his name. The place itself no longer seemed familiar.

Now he felt a current tug; the tide had come into him, and now it was going out. When it went, it would take him with it.

Unless…

There was an “unless,” but he couldn’t remember what it was. But he did see something across the unfamiliar space, something his eye told him was the shape of a man but was also something else. It was a river, a stream, a swift bright current. It was beautiful, and he reached for it like a man dying of thirst.

Everything else was paling. The spring was too far away, and the pull inside him was so
strong.
He realized he had stopped breathing, and suddenly he no longer cared. He could rest, forget, sleep.

No. I am still Marché Hespero. Son of…

He couldn’t recall. With an inchoate cry, he flung himself at the effulgent waters, and something in him reached farther than his paralyzed body, and he felt the stream that wasn’t a stream with fingers that weren’t fingers, and he drew it into him as if drinking. The separation of his soul and corpse eased, and he drank deeper, opening himself completely as everything faded into black.

Impossible,
someone seemed to say.

Hespero felt his grin, a grim crescent slicing through two worlds.

Impossible. You have not walked the faneway. Only I…

“You’re right,” Hespero said. “But I am attuned to it.”

Not as I am.

Hespero suddenly felt the chill replaced by fever, and his body stiffened, then began to dissolve.

“No,” he gritted.

Yes. You surprised me…

“Yes,” Hespero gasped.

But I am the more powerful here.

Hespero clenched his fists, but the strain tore his fingers loose from his hands. An instant later his shoulders sagged, and both arms dropped off.

No.

His spine wobbled and then began to crumble, and his torso almost gently collapsed as his knees dissolved. His body broke apart, the black current towing the pieces away.

Shivering with fear, Hespero renewed his grasp on the brightness even as he began to stretch thinner and thinner, becoming a stream himself.

“Here,”
a voice suddenly said. He couldn’t see anything, but he suddenly felt something shivery and hot.

“I remember,” he murmured. “I remember this.”

“Then hurry. You will soon forget.”

The voice was right, for even as Hespero struck with the thing, he was no longer sure what he was doing, or why, or—

Something like a scream, and then, and then…

Revelation.

Images came first, fractured and whole. Scents, textures, pain and pleasure, the stuff of matter, the stuff of life but peeled off of life, adrift.

But no longer adrift. In him, now.

The first came from Fabulo: fear and exhilaration. Yes, it had been murder, Lucio’s death, subtle poison, but then, it was all too fast, a life falling backward, flashes jumping out. The electric tingle of the faneway of Saint Diuvo, the stroke of a woman’s fingers, running through a field of tall wheat, the tap of his head on the cold marble of a chapel in z’Espino, shivering, hot, confused in chaffing blankets, the softness of linen, wonder, a face that was the universe, the sweet scent of mother’s milk, pain, light…

And then, for a long while, Hespero could not think at all as the well of knowledge opened, filled him, and—just as he thought he could endure no more—closed.

Something spasmed, and he felt his fingernails biting into his palms, a painful vise on each arm, and in his chest a terrible shuddering.

My heart,
he thought.
My heart.

It shuddered again, and his chest felt crushed.

Then a thump, pause, thump-thump, pause, thump.

And the agony eased to hurt, then relief. Gasping, he opened his eyes.

“You did it,” Sir Eldon said. The knight was holding him up by his left arm. Brother Helm had the right.

He fought his gaze up the tiers of benches. Niro Fabulo slumped in his chair, eyes wide, skin already turning blue.

Mylton was just turning from the dead
prismo,
his jaw dropping.

“How?” he asked.

“The saints rejected him,” Hespero wheezed. “They chose me.”

“But you haven’t walked the faneway,” Mylton objected. “How could you use the holy source?”

“The saints make their will known through me directly,” Hespero asserted.

“That’s impossible.”

“It is a fact,” Hespero managed. “You all saw. You must have felt.”

“Yes,” another of the tribiceri—L’Ossel—said. “Don’t you see? Don’t you remember? It’s true. The prophecy says, ‘and he will draw the power of Saint Diuvo, although he has not walked in his steps.’”

A general murmur went up from what had been a stunned silence.

“He is the real Fratrex Prismo,” L’Ossel went on. “He is the one meant to lead us in the final days.”

Hespero rallied what little remained of his strength and shook himself free of the supporting hands.

“I will not brook doubt,” he said. “Time is short, and too much has to be done. If anyone else would challenge me, let it be now.”

He lifted his chin. Against all odds, he had survived both the fane and Fabulo. He had nothing left now. If even the weakest of them challenged him, it was all over.

But instead, they all went to their knees.

And a few days later, he was titled Fratrex Prismo Niro Marco.

It had a nice ring to it.

D
ARIGE

Stephen snapped awake, his heart thundering in his chest.

“What?” he gasped.

But no one answered. Something had awakened him—something loud, or bright, or painful—except that he couldn’t quite remember whether it had been a sound, a light, or a feeling. Had it been in the waking world or across the night divide? His scalp and palms tingled, and he felt like an insect mired in molasses.

Then the wind came in the open window, cool and clean, and the liminal moment faded.

He pressed the page of the book he’d been studying, realizing that he’d literally fallen asleep with his nose in it, and, as the waking terror faded, felt like chuckling at himself. What would Zemlé say?

She would make some joke about him being obsessed, but she understood. He tucked a ribbon to mark his place in the tome, then regarded the sheet of lead next to it with its faded engravings. It was the epistle, the letter that had led him to this place. Although he had translated the cipher it was written in long before, he felt something basic was escaping him, hidden in the text, some clue to the secret for which he was searching.

He rose and went to the east window and then paused. Hadn’t he left it shuttered?

A glance around the room revealed no intruder or any place that might conceal one. It was an open, airy space, carved of living stone but with enormous windows for each direction of the wind, hung with framed crystal thicker than the length of his thumb. Closed, they were translucent, suffusing the chamber with ample pleasant light during the day, but open, they offered a rare view. So far as he could tell, this was the highest room in the vast complex of caves and tunnels that riddled Witchhorn Mountain, hollowed out from a spindly upthrust on the east side of the peak the Aitivar—the inhabitants of the place—called the Khelan, or “spit.” He didn’t know what they called this upper room, but he’d named it the aerie. Sunrises were splendid from there, pulling above the jagged peaks of the Bairghs, and he fancied on a clear day he could see almost to the Midenlands south and as far east as the inlet of Dephis, because at times he thought he saw the liquid shimmer of a great water, although that could well be a trick of the light.

He shrugged. He must have left it unlatched, and the wind had blown it open.

It was dusk now, and the Witchhorn cast its long shadow out toward the blue haze of the horizon. North and south of the mountain’s umbra, the pikes and ridges burned orange, and a few stars were furtively appearing in the deep of the sky.

He savored a long, happy breath and put his palms on the marble sill, leaning forward a bit.

It was as if he had placed his hands on a hot stove, and he yelped from the pain and surprise. He stumbled back, staring at his hands in shock.

In a few heartbeats he began to calm down. The stone hadn’t been hot enough to burn his skin from such a brief contact; it had been mostly the surprise. He ventured back and touched the sill again. It was still very warm.

He felt the near wall, but it was as cool as the evening air.

He glanced around uneasily. What was going on? Had he unwittingly triggered some ancient Sefry shinecraft? Were volcanic vapors rising through the mountain? Curious, he continued along the wall toward the next window, then the next. There wasn’t anything unusual there, but when he came to the stone stair that descended farther into the mountain, he found the banister unusually warm, too.

He went back to the eastern window, knelt, and touched the floor. There it was, a warm spot. And a little more than a kingsyard farther there was another—a trail of them, leading to the steps…

His scalp was tingling now.

What had come through here? What had walked past him as he slept?

Now he wished he hadn’t wanted to be alone and had allowed some of the Aitivar to accompany him.

Whatever it was, it had ignored him when he was at his most vulnerable. Surely it wouldn’t hurt him now.

He strained his saint-blessed senses. He didn’t hear anything, but there was a faint scent a little like burning pine, but with a musky, animal component, too.

He looked back out the window, examining the drop that stayed sheer for two hundred kingsyards. Whatever had come, it must have flown.

He glanced back at the stair, and then he remembered. Zemlé was down there where whatever it was had gone. Maybe it had left him alone because he was asleep, but if she was awake…

He suddenly heard dogs barking—Zemlé’s hounds—and everything went pale.

He wasn’t a fighter by nature, but he wished he had thought to carry a weapon: a knife, at the very least.

Swearing that from now on he would do so, he grabbed his lantern and started down the stairs.

The dogs suddenly stopped barking.

The aerie wasn’t the only chamber in the Khelan. The whole thing was rather like a small castle or mansion or, perhaps more aptly, a wizard’s tower. Fifty-seven steps brought him to the next chamber, which he and Zemlé had dubbed the Warlock’s Bedroom. It was carved in a high vault, and although there were no windows as such, numerous long shafts brought light in from different directions, depending on the time of day, offering not only illumination but also a rough sort of clock.

The scent was stronger on the stairway, cloying in his nostrils, and when he burst into the chamber, he had the start of a good panic. Zemlé’s three great beasts were at the far end of the room, facing the hall where the stair continued down. They weren’t making a sound, but the hair on their necks was up.

“Zemlé!”

He could see her on the bed, one bare leg thrown out from beneath the quilt. She wasn’t moving, and she didn’t respond to his shout. He raced to her side.

“Zemlé,” he repeated, shaking her.

Her lids fluttered open. “Stephen?” Then her brows dropped. “Stephen, what’s wrong?”

Gasping for breath, he sat on the bed.

Zemlé sat up, reaching for his arm. “What?”

“Nothing, I—I think something came through here. I was afraid it might have hurt you. Didn’t you hear the dogs?”

“They started up,” she murmured, rubbing her eyes. “They do that. This place spooks them.” Then her vision seemed to clear. “Some
thing
?”

“I’ve no idea. I fell asleep, upstairs—”

“Nose in your book.”

He stopped. “You came up?”

“I guessed. If you’d gone to sleep on purpose, I rather think you would have come down here with me.” She shrugged. “Or do I flatter myself?”

“Ah, no, you don’t.”

“But go on.”

“The, umm, the window ledge was hot.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Hot?”

“I mean
really
hot. Burning, almost. And the banister of the stairs and the floor, in places, as if something really blistering walked through.”

“Like what?”

“I’ve no idea. But what with all of the greffyns and utins and waurms and generally ancient nasties I’ve seen lately, it might be anything. A salamandra, maybe.”

She stroked his arm. “Well, it didn’t hurt you and it didn’t hurt me, did it? Or even the dogs. So maybe it’s a friendly burning-invisible thing.”

“Maybe. Or maybe friendly like Fend.”

“Fend hasn’t made the slightest false move,” she pointed out.

“He tried to kill me.”

“I mean since he became the Blood Knight and swore himself to your service.”

“Well, right, but…he
will,
mark my words. Anyway, it’s been less than a month. He’s up to something.”

She shrugged. “Do you want to keep trailing this beastie of yours? I can get dressed.”

He blinked, suddenly understanding that in sitting up she hadn’t brought the covers with her and was quite nude.

“That’s something I’d hate to ask,” he murmured.

“And generally untypical of men,” she replied.

“Still…”

“Just wait.” She swung her slim legs off the bed and stepped onto the floor, crossing a few paces to a dressing gown that lay rumpled there. As she slid it over her head and her white body vanished into it, he felt a strong stirring. Why should it be more erotic for her to dress than the opposite? But there it was, a fact.

He shook that off. She pulled on her buskins, and together they set off in search of the apparition, the dogs padding silently behind. Stephen wondered if she even believed him or if she was just being as deferential to him as the Aitivar and Fend appeared to be. He hoped not; he had been attracted by her strong and independent spirit, not her pliancy. In fact, she had been very much in control of the relationship in the beginning. Now, it sometimes almost felt that he was. It was as worrying as any other unfamiliar thing, especially considering the reverence with which the Aitivar seemed to treat him.