The Hollow Queen (21 page)

Around the bony, sun-dried neck, he could see there was a leather cord. Whatever bauble or pendant had hung from that cord around her neck in her lifetime had snagged on the brush and was out of sight, in the shade of a large rock beside her skull.

Achmed opened his second cloak and slowly positioned it over more of the body. Then he crept closer, with agonizing slowness, until he could reach the leather cord. When he did, he gently pulled the strings away from the rock, feeling something metal and sharp rise out from behind it, still attached to its leather tether.

Darkness had come into the sky while he took his time, and now it was night in the canyon.

Within the very last shaft of radiance at the horizon's edge, there was just enough light to see by if he held the object up to it.

He slid his hand over the neck of the corpse and gently pulled the object over the broken shoulder.

And held it up to the fading light.

It was a metal tool, hinged together at the top, with two identical legs like calipers that were attached to the hinge, allowing them to be spread or closed. Between them was a support hinge that ran crosswise, and at the end of the legs were sharp points clad in tiny leather caps, ostensibly to avoid injury.

She's probably not too worried about getting poked at this point,
Achmed thought grimly.

He stared at the tool, in the last of the light.

As a sickening realization came over him.

It was a compass.

The sort of tool a mariner used to plot courses on charts and maps. An ancient tool that had, long ago, allowed a seafarer to find this place, or, actually, the western coasts of the continent, its seaside cliffs wrapped in the clouds of mist that had hidden it from human sight for all of history, and helped him to find it again on his way back from the Island of Serendair.

Merithyn's compass.

“Rhonwyn,” Achmed whispered.

He knew she couldn't hear him, obviously, had dispensed enough death in his lifetime not to believe in ghosts or spirits or even vibrations clinging to the empty shell of abandoned bodies after life had fled, but there was something sad and necessary about invoking her name.

He had met her twice in life, and seen her thrice, the second time at the Cymrian Council where Ashe and Rhapsody had been chosen as Lord and Lady, the third time at their wedding, where he had not spoken to her.

But the first time he had ever seen her was in an abbey in the holy city of Sepulvarta, where he had traveled with Rhapsody to get some answers about the children of a demonic construct known as the Rakshas.

Rhapsody had been trying to find out where on the continent these children, products of horrific rape, could be found. Rhonwyn's gift as one of the Seers, the three triplet daughters of Merithyn the Explorer and Elynsynos the dragon, was all-encompassing knowledge of the Present. Unfortunately, the realm of the Present to Rhonwyn was a span of approximately seven or eight seconds, after which the Present became the Past, and beyond her sight. She had driven Achmed almost insane with her prattle, until Rhapsody finally determined how to speak to her successfully, so by the time they had left her abbey his head had been throbbing with a headache beyond all proportion.

He could still hear in his mind the last exchange she had shared with Rhapsody, after hour upon hour of insane conversation.

Thank you, Grandmother. Rest now.

The Seer had looked at her dreamily.

You are called Rhapsody,
she had said.
What do you ask?

The same words she had greeted her with, hours before.

Achmed's head hurt with the memory.

And then another memory formed in his mind, painful in a different way.

It was a memory from a meeting that was held in secret, a council of war, really, which took place immediately after he, Grunthor, and Ashe had brought Rhapsody back with her newborn son from Elynsynos's cave in the forest of Gwynwood, where the child had been born. They had descended into a hidden cellar room and spoken in secret with Anborn and Constantin, the Patriarch, as well as Gwydion Navarne, who had just been invested as duke of his province.

The Patriarch had been the one to break the news.

Much is missing—much more than you can even imagine.

Tell us,
Ashe had commanded.

Many things are missing, but I will begin with the one closest to your own family. Rhonwyn, your aunt, Lord Marshal, your great-aunt, Lord Cymrian, the Seer of the Present, has been taken from the Abbey of the Sun in Sepulvarta.

While he had always suspected Talquist was responsible or at least complicit in her disappearance, it had never occurred to Achmed that anyone would be foolish enough to murder the most helpless and harmless of the three Seers, known as the Manteids, for which Gwylliam originally named the mountain range known as the Teeth.

Women who had been vested with the deep lore of vision into the Past, Present, and Future.

Epic figures in history.

Gods,
he thought as he looked at the body now with new realization.
Gods; he must have thrown her from the tower.

He looked above him, where the tower stood.

And knew he was right.

As much as Rhonwyn had annoyed him with the necessity of her form of speech, Achmed found himself nauseated at the thought of her death, imagining her last moments and the utter confusion she must have suffered.

One more reason to add to the list, Talquist,
he thought bitterly.

He thought back to the morning months before when he had left Ylorc to begin this mission, the first solo assassination he had undertaken since coming to the new world.

He had been in the Great Hall of Ylorc packing in preparation for his journey to Sorbold when Grunthor appeared. The Sergeant-Major had sized up the situation instantly, but had felt the need to ask the question anyway.

Where is it you will be goin', sir?

After Talquist. As soon as she's gone
.

Achmed had ordered the Sergeant-Major to activate the Archons, his most trusted advisors after Grunthor himself. The Sergeant had nodded and turned to leave, then looked back at the Bolg king.

I'm never goin' to get that image out of my 'ead,
he had said quietly.

Achmed had nodded in silent agreement. He had been thinking the same thing from the moment he had come into the Great Hall.

He shook his head now to try to drive Rhapsody's voice out of his ears, unsuccessfully as always. She had uttered the sentence that was burned in his memory after discovering that Talquist had had dealings with the baron of Argaut, a man the Three had all known in the old world as Michael, the Wind of Death, who had been especially brutal to Rhapsody. Until that moment, however, Achmed had not realized exactly how much.

Occasionally, when I inadvertently crossed him in a way he did not find stimulating, or when he was merely bored, his favorite pastime was to encourage—no, actually, command—his entire regiment to rape me while he watched. Every one of them. Repeatedly
.

Given that Michael had been the voluntary host of a F'dor demon, the possibility that Talquist had been compromised, might even be a demonic thrall, was certainly enough of a reason to hasten his decision to go after him. But, in truth, it was really the unwanted picture now in his mind that had been the impetus for him to finally leave the mountain, to narrow his focus to the singular intent of putting an end to the life and plans of the Merchant Emperor of Sorbold.

He had almost spat the explanation at Rath when the Dhracian demon hunter had objected to his targeting of Talquist at the expense of his participation in the Primal Hunt, the tracking and extermination of the loose F'dor in the world that the ancient Brethren practiced to the exclusion of every other priority.

You may not understand this, Rath, but not every evil in this world is conceived and executed by elder races. The F'dor may have brought the forces of destruction and chaos into this world at its beginning, but they no longer are the exclusive owners of the concept. A man
wants something: a child, a woman, immortality, sadistic satisfaction—and if he has a crown, he thinks he can have whatever he wishes, and do whatever he wants with them. He doesn't have to be of an elder race. He doesn't have to be part of a larger design, he doesn't have to desire the unraveling of the world. Your lore disregards the wretched sadist, the petty manipulator, the cruel abuser, the power-mad despot—not everyone who needs to die is a demon
.

Especially someone who might be carrying on the legacy of the maniac who had degraded one of his only two friends in the world in such a terrible way.

Now he had a concrete image of one of the nightmares that had tormented her constantly, terrors he had witnessed every time the Three had slept on their endless trek through the root of Sagia, along the Axis Mundi, through the depths of the world. More often than not, when his sleep was peppered with dreams, that was what he saw.

It was as if he had inadvertently taken Rhapsody's nightmares on himself.

It was the top entry on his imaginary list of reasons to snuff out Talquist's life.

Now he was looking at another one.

He stroked the woman's mummified hand, then took the compass and held it up before his eyes.

“I wish that you could explain to me one nagging mystery,” he said aloud to the corpse, almost absently. “If what your sister Anwyn said to Rhapsody was true, then the prophecy about death in unnatural childbirth has already occurred, in the Past. But, if I'm not mistaken, the Seer that uttered that prophecy was Manwyn, the Seer of the Future. Mayhap when the Past is changed, whatever replaces it is the Future of a sort. I wish you were still alive to explain this to me. Though no doubt you would just stare at me and babble something about the Present.”

He brushed a spider off the Seer's mummified forehead that had started to crawl into what was left of her hair.

“I must leave you here, I'm sorry. One day, when this is over, if the continent is still in one piece, I will come back for you and get Rhapsody to do whatever it is she does by way of burial rituals. But I will take your father's compass back to your family. It shouldn't be left here. I'm sure you would agree if you were able.”

He thought a moment longer.

“Of course, seven or eight seconds later, you would forget that you had.”

The last light left the sky, plunging the world, and the depths of the canyon, into total darkness.

 

22

PROVINCE OF BETHANY, ON THE WAY TO THE CAPITAL

The column of mounted soldiers thundered down the trans-Orlandan thoroughfare, four abreast, displacing enormous amounts of earth into the hot summer air.

In the center of the front rank rode the Lady Cymrian atop a barded warhorse, her chest similarly armored by a mail shirt of red-gold dragon scales, her green eyes gleaming in the clear wind of the Middle Continent. Upon her head was the smallest helm that the Bolg had ever smithed; the Sergeant-Major had presented it to her solemnly a number of years before, telling her that if it was too big to suitably protect her skull, he could use it as a codpiece to protect his genitals. Then he had shaken his head.

Naw. Would be too tight.

Beside her to the left was Knapp, Anborn's longtime man-at-arms. She was well aware by the vibrations emanating from him that Knapp had resisted being deployed with her, even if she could not hear what he had said when conferring with the Lord Marshal prior to Anborn's leaving Canderre. Rhapsody did not take offense at such things; she had been short of stature compared to her compatriots in all endeavors since childhood, and had long since learned to ignore being underestimated. The initial resistance had not resolved, as it generally did, but rather baked into a sullen, silent mien set across the face of the First Generation soldier.

It did not bother the Lady Cymrian whatsoever.

They had encountered a cohort of scouts that had breached the Threshold fifteen leagues from the capital of Bethany, and a party of chase had made short work of the men, capturing their horses and taking three of the six prisoner while slicing down the other half in an exchange of bolt fire. A quick conference had found the three commanders and Knapp to be in agreement as to the origination point of the cohort, but the Lady Cymrian had disagreed, citing the false notes she could hear in each of their confessions.

She had dismounted when the men were brought before the front rank, their hands bound behind their backs, and made her way impatiently through the line of guards until she stood directly in front of them.

The sternness of her expression was something Knapp, who had known her since her ascension to the Ladyship, had never seen before; there was a palpable fury in her emerald-green eyes that made it seem almost as if they were on fire. Her golden hair, shorn to the nape of her neck, had a distinctly masculine aspect to it, an effect so unlike how she had always appeared. The sharpness of her features and the coiled musculature in her stance made the ancient soldier unsure as to whether the cold chills sweeping his body, and clearly those of the three surviving members of the sortie, were signs of terror or arousal.