The Hollow Queen (19 page)

Without a single miss of center.

Farther beyond the gate, another rank of soldiers stood before another stand of haybutts, these closer, unleashing upon command round after round of throwing knives, their technique as perfect as Anborn had ever seen.

He stared at them in shock.

A smile crawled over his face. It continued to spread, like a wandering river, until it almost reached the corners of his ears, his teeth gleaming brightly in the light.

Then he opened his mouth and he laughed until he could stand straight no longer, doubling over.

 

19

VIADUCT UNDER THE CITY OF JIERNA'SID

Dranth had visited the palace of Jierna Tal on three occasions before, each time entering through a hidden passageway beneath the city which had at one time been an enormous sewer.

The historic use was clear in the odor that still remained, centuries later.

And while Dranth had cultivated a supremely sensitive sinus system and nasal passages in order to be able to detect infinitesimal traces of poison and other toxic substances, he felt no disgust at such odors, being long accustomed to hiding out in places where they infused themselves into the air.

This fourth occasion was a bit more dicey than the first three, however, for two reasons. The first was the sort that was always a hazard: on all other occasions, he had been specifically invited by the emperor, and so there had been arrangements made for his safe passage into and out of the palace at the highest levels of security. This time, he knew, Talquist was unaware of his impending arrival, and so there might possibly be unexpected difficulties to solve.

Nothing he could not handle.

With any luck, Yabrith would follow his lead and not find himself in harm's way.

Secondly, this was a visit in which he needed to deliver bad tidings. Obviously one never wished to find oneself in such a situation, but Dranth was still comfortable with the trump card he was holding, a piece of information that Talquist was seeking.

And so he felt their chances of coming to a mutually satisfying solution to the unpleasant failure of the first attempt on the Bolg king's life were strong.

As they made their way into the viaduct, Dranth scanned the towering arched ceiling in surprise.

The last time they had come through, a massive breeding program was under way, filling the viaduct tunnels with screaming noise. Dranth had not ventured into the bowels of the vast sewer to see precisely what was going on, but it was clear to him that it involved beasts of some size and considerable power.

Now, while some of the sounds and the stench remained, the noise was greatly reduced.

He skirted that part of the tunnel and kept to the far wall which led inside the palace.

Yabrith traveled silently behind him. Occasionally Dranth checked over his shoulder to make certain he was still there, and on those occasions it seemed to him that Yabrith was holding his breath, more in trepidation than in actual reaction to the stench of the place.

Finally, after many hours of traversing the stinking water and cold, black emptiness, Dranth and Yabrith came to the hidden passageway that led into the library of the emperor. Dranth effortlessly found the handhold that opened the passage.

The doorway was obscured by a moving shelf of books which swung open silently, leaving them in direct sight of the center of the enormous room.

A page, a middle-aged man with short salt-and-pepper hair sitting at a table near the floor-to-ceiling books, blinked upon their entry.

Talquist looked up in surprise from behind his desk. He swallowed and inhaled silently, then gestured for them to step into the room. Dranth did so, scanning the remainder of the room, which was empty.

“Apologies, Majesty. The sentries let us in.” It was a lie, but covered their surprise appearance.

“Did they?” the emperor said. “Hmmm. I shall need to get new sentries, it seems, if they are not able to announce my guests better than that. What brings you gentlemen here this evening, from so far away?”

Dranth glanced around, but otherwise did not move. Yabrith followed his lead.

“We bring news you were awaiting.”

The emperor raised his hand to the page.

“Will you excuse us for a moment?” he said, addressing the man, his gaze never leaving the two members of the Raven's Guild.

“Of course, m'lord.” The page stood and began to assemble his papers and leather portfolios.

“What sort of news?” the emperor asked as the page pushed his chair in at the library table, gathered his materials, and took his leave.

The two men looked at each other.

“The name of the child you were hoping to hear about,” Dranth said as the page opened the library door behind him.

A wide smile broke over Talquist's face.

“Oh,” he said pleasantly. “No need; I already know it.”

He nodded briskly.

The page swiveled around seamlessly and with great precision fired the crossbow hidden in his leather portfolio, sending a bolt into the back of the guild scion's head.

Dranth was mostly dead before he hit the floor, where he proceeded to bleed his remaining life out through his eyes.

Yabrith's own eyes opened wide in shock.

The emperor pointed.

“This man as well, Fhremus.”

Another bolt, another member of the Raven's Guild was dead on the heavy silk carpet, the magenta coloring of his blood clashing with the scarlet threads of the rug.

From his chair, Talquist exhaled deeply.

“Thank you, Fhremus. Two assassins, just as my information indicated.”

Fhremus inclined his head in the direction of the two bodies on the carpet.

“The first man, his reflexes were prime,” he said, pointing to the body of Dranth. “I could see him beginning to coil as I fired; had I not surprised him, he would have taken both of us, m'lord. There are throwing daggers in his boot and at his wrist that I imagine he could have heaved two-handed and in two different directions simultaneously; I can tell by the way he stood, balanced perfectly. The other fellow, however, seems a bit of a sluggard. With the notice of seeing his friend shot through the skull, he should have gotten at least to draw. That was a long bit of notice. He hardly seemed qualified to be in the company of that other assassin.”

Talquist waved his hand impatiently.

“Nonetheless, I can assure you, he is a member of the same guild as the first. Two assassins, as predicted.” He words ground to a halt and he looked askance at Fhremus.

The supreme commander merely nodded. “Orders now, m'lord?”

Talquist loosed an easier breath. “I assume you are going to want to have them gone over by an expert and stripped of all their weapons and traps and whatnot. Please send that person up. And if you would be so good as to summon the chamberlain and let him know the cleaning staff is also needed, I would be most grateful. Thank you for your vigilance. You are dismissed. Go and find company, libation, or slumber. You deserve a good knob, good drink, or a good sleep—or all three, whatever you desire.”

Fhremus nodded again and took his leave. He hurried down the steps to the chamberlain's quarters and then to the barracks, making the arrangements that the emperor had requested.

Then he wandered out into the coming night, where the streetlamps of Jierna'sid were just being lit, and the celebratory commerce and cacophony of the city just beginning to rise.

 

20

Many hours later, after the light stalks had burned down to the stubs and all but the most stalwart of merrymakers had returned to hearth and home, Fhremus remained in the town square of Jierna'sid, a tankard in one hand, the other hand cupping his own chin.

Even the strongest libation had done nothing to numb the raw ache in his gut, an acidic scorching pain that had been brewing there for months.

As the streetlamps began to wink out, one by one, an enormous shadow began to emerge in the half-light, and it fell upon him as he sat on the rim of the Ovris Fountain, whose water-circulating pumps would continue to send its decorative spinning spray skyward through the dark hours of the night.

Fhremus looked up.

Looming above him on a hilltop many streets away, at the Place of Weight, the great Scales rose in the blackness of the night sky, the faraway streetlamps that shone on them constantly, like the ones on Ovris Fountain, casting shadows around the central district of the city.

There was something painful and proud about that instrumentality, a remnant from the Lost Island of Serendair, which had been carefully disassembled in the exodus and transported across the sea to be reinstalled in the place where Fhremus's ancestors had lived, unaware of its tradition and history. Though he was not descended of Cymrian stock, his whole family had lived for centuries in a land that had once been part of the first Cymrian empire, prior to its dissolving in the Great War and returning to an independent Sorbold ruled by the family dynasty of the Dark Earth.

Fhremus's family had been loyal subjects and military servants of that Dynasty, which itself had been installed long before by the Scales.

It was his understanding that every major decision of state in the First Cymrian Age, and certainly the history of the dynasty of the Dark Earth, had been decided by those scales. Fhremus was a man of normal life span, as was the rest of his family, and while he knew that there were those alive who had seen those Weighings, had in fact sailed on the very ships that had brought the Scales to this land in the first place, he could only place his faith in the history and traditions that validated their wisdom. Being a military man, it was a way of life that applied to everything he knew.

Or thought he knew.

As if summoned by an internal call, Fhremus drained the last of the brew in his tankard and set it down on the rim of the fountain, then rose unsteadily and walked the darkening streets to the city hilltop where the Scales stood.

When he finally arrived at the Place of Weight, as the sacred hill was known, he stood at the foot of the Scales and gazed up, his eyes still partially clouded by drink, at the massive crossbeam that held the chains of the two enormous plates on either side of the towering stanchion. There was something deep and mystical about the instrumentality, as if it was its own entity with a spirit, imbued with wisdom of ages past considered so irrefutable, so complete, as to make it the judge for all decisions of state throughout two separate eras, two different empires.

Fhremus himself was one of the few people to ever mount the stand and place himself in front of one of those enormous plates. When Leitha, the empress of Sorbold, had died the year before, Fhremus, as the supreme commander of her armed forces, stepped forward to represent the military in the choosing of a new leader for the now-headless land.

The Crown Prince Vyshla, Leitha's only child and heir, had by coincidence died an hour or so before she had, and she had reigned for so long, almost three-quarters of a century, that all but the most distant of her family had died out in the meantime. To see if any of those distant family members were considered to be the choice of the Scales, the Ring of State, a symbol of royal conference, was placed in one of the two plates, while the individual aspirant to the throne was offered the opportunity to stand in the other while it was held in place.

Then the plate was released.

Each of those family members had been Weighed and found wanting; in the same atmosphere as an event of bloodsport, a gigantic crowd of observers hooted and catcalled each time a prospective emperor or empress was hurled unceremoniously out of the plate by a violent swing of the arm of the crossbeam. It was universally humbling to aspirants who wished to be granted divine status, and Fhremus could not blame the crowd for the joy it took in watching the mighty humbled.

After no one from the actual family survived being Weighed, at least in the ceremonial sense of the word
survived
, various other factions had stepped forward to be considered. Each group presented a symbol that represented it, and that symbol was placed on one Weighing plate across from the Ring of State of Sorbold.

When it was Fhremus's group's turn to be Weighed, their symbol, the military's shield of state used in the service of the empress, was Weighed quickly and rejected, rather than thrown by the Scale arm, so for that at least he was grateful. His humiliation was much less than that of those who had gone before him, and he was secretly pleased by the decision; he had never believed that the military should rule anything, especially a land as powerful and full of resources as the empire of Sorbold. So he returned to his place, watching the proceedings.

The counts of the large city-states, lesser nobles in the pantheon that Leitha reigned supreme over, mounted the stand next, led by a particularly pompous man named Tryfalian. Their symbol, a dynastic seal for stamping treaties, was Weighed and found unworthy, swung violently off the Place of Weight and tossed into the surrounding streets, again to the delight of the crowd. Fhremus had been vocally opposed to the plans of this group and relieved by this outcome, as he was a believer that the empire should remain united, and it was the spoken intent of the nobility to dissolve the empire into a few groupings of some of the larger city-states.