The Fiend Queen (17 page)

It reminded her again of the pyramid that passed the Fiend from one person to another, dark but powerful. Yanchasa showed her how to focus it inward, to change herself, and she fashioned her hand into one strong enough to crush stone to powder.

Lightning tingles cascaded through Starbride’s body, and she fought a giddy laugh.

Yanchasa showed her that all destruction pyramids came from the same base design, so all she had to do to access them was create that base. She re-tuned a small flash bomb, and Yanchasa guided her through using flesh magic to implant the small pyramid in her palm. In her other hand, she embedded a utility pyramid for disabling other pyramids or casting light. For mind magic, she crafted a tiny replica from a hypnosis pyramid and then pushed it into the thin skin of her forehead, all without pain. They set her nerves jingling, a constant reminder of the adsna that coursed through her. “I can do anything.”

“Soon, daughter. Now you will only need to focus briefly upon each in order to use them.”

“What about the flesh?”

Yanchasa cocked her head. “Where do you think it should go?”

Starbride pressed her small flesh pyramid over her heart. She stared at the soft glows in both her palms, in her chest, felt over the tiny cold patch on her forehead. “Why did the Belshrethen not continue to do wonders after they fled your city? Why do the Allusians not use flesh pyramids now?”

“Fear. They are the descendants of the rebels, after all. Fear rules all that they do.”

She thought of Redtrue. If Katya hadn’t come to the adsnazi, they wouldn’t have learned anti-flesh magic, either. They’d let themselves become weak. She glanced at the corpse Fiends and focused on her flesh pyramid. “Get up.”

They rose as one.

“Why would they obey me instead of Roland? He created them.”

“I created them, daughter. I taught him how.”

Jealousy roared through Starbride, and she rounded on Yanchasa’s shade. “How long have you been talking to him? I’m your chosen one, no? Daughter and descendant?”

Yanchasa threw his head back and laughed. “One uses the tools one is given, daughter. Now that you have come to me, his presence is no longer required.” Yanchasa laid hands on her shoulders, settling on feminine as she whispered in Starbride’s ear. “If these corpse Fiends are remnants of me, he is but a ghost of you. He could not have taken to the pyramids as you have. He is not blood of my blood.”

So that was why Redtrue used anti-flesh magic with such ease. She was also blood of Belshreth and hadn’t had to learn from the Farradains, minds that barely comprehended it. What could she do with such wondrous power, one who’d grown up among it, though her people wouldn’t use it?

“I have felt her,” Yanchasa said, “bursts of power flying above my head, but she would never come to me, daughter. Power is nothing without creativity, without courage.”

“Miss Starbride!” Hugo called from the entrance to the cavern.

The corpse Fiends turned his way and barred their teeth. “No,” Starbride said, and they turned back to her.

Hugo stepped into the chamber, his mouth hanging open. “What happened here?”

Freddie skidded to a stop beside him. “Did you find her?” He quieted as he surveyed the room. When his eyes settled on her, he stared, but at her or Yanchasa?

“They cannot see me, daughter. I dwell within you.”

Yanchasa’s secret presence made her want to beam. Power, calm and confident, flowed through her. Hugo and Freddie would feel it soon enough when she mended their every woe.

As she came closer, Freddie’s eyes fixed on the miniscule pyramid in her forehead. Hugo gawked at her from head to toe. She’d undone the first few laces of her shirt, and she knew the pyramid emitted a faint light, as did the ones in her palms and forehead.

“Starbride?” Hugo asked.

As if she could be anything else. “Where’s Roland?”

“The others are harrying him through the tunnels. We thought he might have run in here,” Freddie said.

“No doubt he intended to,” Starbride said, “but first he wanted to see how many of you he could pick off.”

“Even if he had come,” Yanchasa said, “I wouldn’t have given him what I gave you.”

“What’s happened to you?” Hugo asked.

She gave him a bright smile. “I’ve found the power to do what must be done.” She pushed past him, focusing, feeling for Roland through herself like Redtrue did, as Yanchasa guided her. She detected the way he’d been shaped by the Fiend inside him.

“By the Aspect
I
gave him,” Yanchasa said. “There are no such things as Fiends.”

Starbride laughed aloud. She shaped her legs to carry her faster.

“What’s going on?” Hugo asked as he tried to keep pace. “What power?”

“Follow me,” Starbride commanded.

“We are,” Freddie said. “We just want to—”

But it wasn’t him she was talking to. The host of corpse Fiends—no,
remnants
—slinked in her wake.

“Starbride?” Freddie touched her shoulder. “What have you done?”

She felt along his body with flesh magic. She could make his arms drop from his shoulders with a thought. Why hadn’t she seen how fragile he was before?

His grip tightened. “You did something with the capstone.”

“Miss Starbride would never…” Hugo trailed away as she glanced at him. “Spirits above.”

“Yanchasa is not what you think,” she said.

“A giant monster the ancient Farradains used to conquer this land?” Freddie asked.

“Close,” Yanchasa said.

“And so much more,” Starbride added. “Now hush. I’ve got a Fiend king to find.”

They babbled at her, but she blocked out their words, listening to Yanchasa instead. She turned the corner to the sounds of fighting. Scarra tried to keep a pair of remnants from tearing her to pieces. Beyond her, the tunnel boomed again as Roland threw an explosive pyramid.

Starbride felt for his other pyramids and cleansed them, letting the power of the adsna carry their purpose away. She waved, and the remnants fighting Scarra went still. Scarra used her staff to smash in the pyramid of one. When she turned to the other, she backed away, confusion on her face.

“What the f—” Scarra glanced around the still remnant to where the glow of Starbride’s pyramids filled the tunnel. “Starbride?”

Starbride ignored her. Brutal stumbled around the corner, carrying Maia. She loosed an arrow back the way they’d come. Trickles of red flowed from both of them, and Starbride sensed wounds along Brutal’s entire body. Maia’s left leg hung crooked from the knee, her trousers soaked in blood.

Starbride closed the wounds on Brutal with a thought. He staggered as if she’d struck him, his eyes wide. “What?”

Before he could set Maia down, Starbride yanked her leg straight. As her howls filled the tunnel, Starbride mended the knee and closed the wound.

Maia gasped and sobbed in Brutal’s arms, and they all gaped at Starbride.

“Wait here,” she said.

Farther down the tunnel, Castelle lay in a pool of blood, unmoving. Starbride rolled her over and found a gaping chest wound, newly opened and still pumping, the edges singed.

“Explosive pyramid,” Yanchasa said as he knelt beside her.

Starbride used flesh magic to knit Castelle’s chest together, but the blood could replenish itself. When Starbride left her, the others rushed in to help as Starbride gathered the remnants in her wake.

Roland hid behind a boulder. Maybe he hoped she would pass him by.

“Come out.”

He stood and tossed a bright white pyramid at her feet. “Is this your doing?”

“Seize him,” she said.

The remnants leapt to do her bidding, but Roland dodged past them. The Aspect Yanchasa had given him bled over his features as he reached for her with the hand remaining to him. Starbride lifted her destructive arm, and the pulse of a flash bomb caught him full in the face.

He shrieked and staggered. The remnants piled on top of him. He thrashed and bit, but there were too many. When they dragged him close, he stared at Starbride with his all-blue eyes. The grating sound of his voice would have bothered her before, but now it was nothing.
He
was nothing.

“I see you, little fool,” he said. “I know what you’ve done.”

“What you couldn’t.”

“What I
resisted
! I wanted my people to be happy. You’ve killed them. Do you know that?”

“Take him to the capstone,” Starbride said.

As they hauled him past the others, he shouted, “You’re doomed, already dead. Don’t you see? Farraday will be a pile of ash by the time you’re through.”

His panic sweetened her ears like music. Yanchasa hummed along. The others pressed around her, but she ignored them. “Don’t follow if you don’t want to see.”

The remnants laid Roland on the floor of the great cavern. She took a suppression pyramid, anti-flesh, from her satchel. It burned her skin, but she ignored the pain and held the pyramid over Roland while he squirmed.

“You killed my love,” she said and felt nothing. She saw Katya clearly in her mind, but Roland had killed all the feeling in her.

“And you’ve killed us all.”

“Just you.” She used flesh magic to open a hole in his belly and then dropped the suppression pyramid inside, leaving it to heave among his guts. She focused and made it permanent, like she’d done with the light pyramid, before she closed the hole. He screamed and screamed as it repelled what he was from the inside out.

“Keep him here,” she said. The others had gathered at the mouth of the cavern, watching Roland writhe and shriek, their hands over their ears. Starbride smiled at them. “We’ve got an army to save.”

Katya

Katya paused as tiny stones cascaded down the sides of the cramped tunnel. Not since the first one had they found a tunnel so unstable. The floor became littered with debris, digging in to her palms and knees. She could almost feel the rock overhead straining to crush her, but she made herself breathe. “Go carefully here.”

All the bending and crawling continued to take its toll on Katya’s back and Redtrue’s ribs, and the suffocating feeling of being buried alive frayed all their nerves. It became harder and harder to get back into the tunnels once they’d broken through to another room.

Whenever they encountered writing or the ruins of decorations and mosaics, Redtrue stopped and examined them. If they’d been in the palace halls, Katya would have chafed at the delay, but the prospect of another tunnel tempted her to say, “Take as long as you need.”

At each pause, Katya lingered by the tunnel they’d come from, listening. If Starbride and the others came looking, Katya would have to crawl back the way she’d come, but she could deal with that as long as she knew Starbride waited at the other end. So far, she’d heard nothing. Maybe they hadn’t been able to break through or were still trying to find their way back to where Katya and the others had fallen. It couldn’t be easy with Roland dogging their steps.

Or maybe Roland had killed them all, and there was no one coming to rescue her.

Katya shook the thought away. “Let’s get moving.” She plunged into the next tunnel, trying not to think, keeping her eyes fixed on the gloom. After a few turns, though, she had to blink at what seemed like light coming from ahead.

“Redtrue, hide your pyramid.”

When darkness descended, it was a relief not to have to look at the rock. Katya blinked to adjust her eyes to the meager light coming from ahead. Steady and unwavering, it couldn’t be firelight, though it had a soft yellow glow. They crawled slowly until at last they broke into a large room. Light trickled up from a hole in the floor, but no sound came with it.

Four columns rose to a ceiling at least twenty feet high, and a stone balcony stretched along the left side and then through the far wall. A door guarded the entrance to the next room, old but intact, unlike the floor-to-ceiling windows which were filled with debris.

By the dim light coming from the hole, Katya noted an intricate mosaic under their feet, some fantastical beast that looked like a three-headed hillcat. She drew her knife as she tiptoed toward the hole, fighting images of what the people who lived in this dead city might look like as they dug their tunnels and whispered in the dark. They’d be huge moles with giant white eyes.

But moles wouldn’t need the light.

Katya peeked down and saw a large pyramid implanted in the floor of the room below. She gestured Redtrue forward.

Redtrue stared at the pyramid before whispering in Katya’s ear. “It feels old.”

They knelt and listened. Dawnmother crept to the door and put her ear to it. Katya despaired of just dropping down and then not being able to find her way up again. She glanced at Dawnmother, who shook her head. Katya pushed the door open slowly. She froze as it shrieked on old metal hinges. Well, there went secrecy.

A large room lay behind the door, much like the first, but with a staircase that led to the balcony, and what had probably been a large front door now blocked with stone. Makeshift beds ringed this room, cloth-wrapped bundles of straw with furs sitting atop them. Katya doubted they had belonged to the original inhabitants but instead to the mysterious tunnel builders.

Redtrue commanded her pyramid to glow again as she bent over one of the beds. She picked up a piece of fur that cracked, yellow with age. She let it fall and wiped her fingers on the hem of her shirt.

Part of the staircase had been buried under debris spilling from the windows that ran its length, making it impassible, but a door underneath led back into the house. As they passed through, Katya stopped in surprise. The outer wall in this small room bore another tunnel, but this one reached a little more than half her height, and had been reinforced by thick wooden pillars. The remains of a torch lay at the mouth as if someone had tossed it there passing by.

Another wall in the small room had collapsed, but someone had cleared it out enough to punch a hole in the floor and reveal a stone staircase going down, wan light filtering up it.

Katya stepped carefully down into the five sided room that held the pyramid. When no mole people dashed from the shadows, she stopped and stared in wonder. Each wall had been carved with two intricate figures, surrounded by the same blocky characters Katya had come to think of as ancient Allusian.