The Red Queen (124 page)

Lidge was the Destroyer.

I worked my way around the edge of the crater, trying to get close to her, but when I tried to reach out, her mind turned the smallest part of its strength on me and it was as if I walked into a monstrous storm. It was too strong.

I withdrew to my own mind and saw in revolted horror that blood was streaming from Ariel’s nose and ears. Then he gave a gurgling cough and his eyes, full of blood, met mine. For one moment I saw into the dark void of his mind and then he slumped to the floor, dead.

The Ekoni who had flanked him began to back away and I remembered that Riyad or maybe Gretha had told me that Gadfians believed in the black arts and feared them. That fear was in their faces now.

Lidge stared down at Ariel, her face utterly blank. Then one of the Ekoni screamed and clutched his head. The eyes of the Ekoni moved from the still figure of Ariel with his once beautiful face contorted with horror, to the Ekoni writhing, his eyes full of blood. Then they broke and flung themselves towards the steps, fighting and clawing to get out the small door. Another of them began to scream and fell to his knees.

‘What is happening?’ Daffyd cried.

‘It is Lidge. She is the Destroyer. She killed Ariel but I think . . .’

One of the emissary’s women had come forward to Gilaine and now laid a hand on her shoulder, then she gave a cry of pain and clutched at her head. She screamed, falling to her knees. Her headdress and mask had fallen away and I saw that it was the woman from my dream, who had spoken to Gilaine and the emissary.

‘Chiya Dawa!’ Gilaine cried in horror and anguish. ‘No! Lidge, don’t hurt her. She did nothing. Lidge, stop!’

The small woman screamed.

Gilaine threw her arms about the woman and looked at me, her eyes begging me to do something.

‘I am not strong enough,’ I said, thinking of the terrible maelstrom. ‘You will have to help me.’ I held out my hand and she took it at once. I was aware of Daffyd taking her hand. I did not know who had cut his bonds. It did not matter. I reached out with my other hand and caught the hand of the emissary’s woman, using the contact to enable me to enter her mind, taking the others with me, but I was frighteningly weak.

Then we were all standing on the edge of a crater that contained a vast land of steep, purple, heavily wooded, mist-shrouded depths and jagged black and snow-covered mountains that clawed at the clouds. The maelstrom was in the sky, and descending. Beneath it a white bird flew wheeling and crying even as Fey had done above the terribly injured Gavyn.

‘That is Lidge,’ I pointed along the ledge to where the child stood, screaming soundlessly.

‘I will get her,’ Daffyd said.

‘It will take all of us, if we can manage it,’ I said. ‘You lead, Gilaine, and then Daffyd. Try to reach her.’

We moved towards Lidge, but the force of her mind blew at us, a howling icy blast threateningd to tear us from the edge of the crater.

‘It’s no use,’ Daffyd said.

‘I don’t think she knows what she is doing. I don’t think she can stop,’ I said.

Then I felt Rushton’s hand on my arm and an idea came to me. I was terribly afraid, but I showed him.

‘Do it,’ he said.

‘Forgive me,’ I shouted to Gilaine, and I slapped her.

She cried out in shock and pain, and Lidge turned to look at me. Then the maelstrom began to pour towards me.

‘No!’ Gilaine cried.

I pushed her towards Daffyd as the maelstrom caught me up. I drew on the spirit power at my core to shield me from its awful mindless force and slipped free of its terrible grasp. I fled and it followed. It was the nightmare from the dreamtrails, made real. The Destroyer pursued me, too big and too strong and too fast, and now there was no man-beast to save me.

I entered Rushton’s mind and the Destroyer followed me, down into the depths of his spirit, into the vast unfathomable cavern that was his Talent. Down and down we went until the silence and the darkness quenched the maelstrom and there was only a child lying on the dark ground by a pool, blank faced and unconscious.

Then it vanished.

A hand touched my arm and brought me back to my flesh. I looked around and saw Gilaine holding a weeping Dawa, Daffyd holding them both. Beyond them, I could see Ana kneeling over Swallow, whom I had allowed Ariel to kill. I began to tremble. I felt brittle and cold. Hands grasped me, turned me, and I saw Rushton, his dear scarred face, the dusting of white at his temples. He brushed away tears I had not known were streaming down my cheeks, framing my face with his big, callused hands.

‘I have you,’ he said, and then he gathered me gently into his arms. I laid my head on his chest and closed my eyes, thinking of the deep, quiet, well of velvet darkness that was his Talent, the magnificent encompassing gentleness of it, that had stilled the maelstrom. For a moment all the babble of noise and the weeping and shouts faded and I heard only the deep steadfast beat of his heart.

‘You monster,’ Dragon said coldly.

I turned to see her facing the white-faced emissary, who seemed not to have moved. She had taken up the sword dropped by Rushton, the sword that had killed Swallow. ‘You helped him. How could you give one of your women to him like that? You deserve to die.’

‘No,’ said one of the emissary’s other women, very calmly stepping in front of him. ‘No.’

‘No!’ Chiya Dawa gasped. ‘Please, Gilaine.’

‘My queen,’ Matthew’s voice held a warning note.

Dragon glanced at him, then she looked back into the painted, featureless face of the emissary. ‘You deserve as little mercy as you showed. But there has been enough death here. Matthew, take him and his people to the nearest compound and see they are guarded well, until I decide what to do with him.’

The emissary said, ‘I await your pleasure, oh Queen of the Red Land.’

Dragon looked at Matthew, who nodded and ushered the white-faced emissary and his women out of the chamber.

Rushton kissed me and said, ‘I must help the wounded, my love.’

I saw Gilaine speaking to Dawa, who had sat up.

‘Elspeth, what happened?’ Daffyd asked, looking over at Lidge, who to my astonishment, was still standing, her face blank, her eyes empty.

I told them and Gilaine’s pale lovely face suffused with pity and horror. She left the Shambalan woman and Daffyd helped her to her feet. Then she and Daffyd went to Lidge. For a moment I was afraid. But Gilaine folded her arms around the poor stiff little body and kissed her slack face and then Daffyd gently lifted her, unresisting, into his arms and they carried her out of the crypt into the sunlight, followed by Chiya Dawa.

Oh I longed to go after them, out of that dreadful place, up into the warm day, but I forced myself to turn back. Rushton had cut Dameon free and was staunching his wound with Dragon’s help. Seeing Maruman’s limp body, I felt a fist of ice close around my heart, but the moment I touched him, he stirred, and opened his lambent eye. His paw was bloody and he was in terrible pain, for Ariel had smashed it with a stone, and he snarled at me to let him lie. Reassured by his ill-temper as much as the knowledge that he would heal, I asked anxiously about Gahltha, only to learn that the wolves had dug him free, but he had not moved when Ariel’s men came with a net to take him.

I left him as he bade, full of anguish at the thought of Gahltha dying in such a terrible way, and then I saw Ana holding Swallow’s body, weeping. I felt a sick guilt at the knowledge that the gypsy had died because I had refused to give Ariel what he wanted. I had not had any choice it seemed, and yet now, I could not imagine how I had refused him, faced with such a choice. I knew a darker end would have waited for all of us, had I submitted to Ariel, yet it seemed to me that any normal person would have succumbed. And in the end, I would have done, I realised. I had been about to do so. But Ariel had given into the violent madness that had always simmered under his plots and plans. The thought that I would have given over the terrible power of the Balance of Terror computermachine to such a person chilled me and I thought of Swallow’s words, and his eyes, and it struck me then that he had known this lay in his future. Somehow, he had known it would come to this, and yet he had followed me on my quest, because of the ancient promises made to the D’rekta in this land; in this place.

I went to Ana, and though I was prepared for it, she did not blame or reproach me. She let me help her carry him outside. There were Redlanders waiting, who bore him to a nearby residence, and there, I helped her bathe the blood from his body and close the terrible wound in his chest. I helped to dress him in soft, fine clothes. And nearing dusk, I helped her to lay him on a pallet of branches high on the windswept cliff above the sea near the ruins of Ouroboros, and I gave her the torch with which she lit the pyre, because he had told her once that was how he wanted his body dealt with. She said that she was grateful for the strange chance that had led him to speak of such a thing, and I did not tell her that I thought he had spoken of it because he understood that she would need to know, that she would need to be able to do this thing for him.

Oh, she had been a fitting match for him, with her courage and bright curious mind, I thought, watching her stand alone in the gathering dark, yellow hair shining above a flapping cloak, as the funeral pyre blazed beside her, and the sun sank into the sea, staining the waves red.

‘We had so little time together and it was all hard travelling and danger,’ she said, as I came to stand beside her.

I put an arm around her. ‘Some people do not love as well in a long lifetime of being together in comfort and security. You made his last moons sweet and rich with love and laughter. He adored you and he was proud of you.’

She laughed and wept and I held her and cried bitter tears, wishing things had happened in a different order so that he could live. But I did not weep for guilt because, knowing that he had known what would come, I knew that Swallow had chosen to keep his promises even though they would lead him to his death.

Holding her, my mind drifted to the events of the day.

All had been chaos for a time and many things had happened at once so that I did not see all of them but heard of some of them afterwards. The strangest was that the Ekoni who had fled the crypt had tried to take Dragon prisoner once more when she stepped from the crypt into the daylight. But Dawa, who had been sitting outside on a broken stone wall with Gilaine, holding Lidge, had stepped forward and produced a small red device. Pointing it at the Ekoni she told them that if they did not surrender, she would do to them what had been done to Ariel. The Ekoni surrendered at once. Later, Dragon told me that the device had been nothing more than an ornate hair clip!

The emissary and his women were a mystery, truly, for they had allowed themselves to be taken prisoner by Matthew and had gone peacefully and passively to the Chafiri compound where they were now confined. The emissary had asked to have an audience with Dragon and strangely, with me as well. Matthew thought they wanted to speak about the ilthum and privately he told me that he thought some sort of accommodation would have to be made with the emissary in order to prevent the Shambalan emperor declaring war on the Red Land. But for the moment, the Dragon Queen had elected that they be kept hostage as surety for the good behaviour of the Shambalan fleet, still anchored beyond, and visible from, the cliffs.

Neither of us could guess why they had mentioned me. Unless they thought I had some influence on Dragon.

‘Which ye do,’ Matthew had said, with a lopsided grin. There was no sign that he had been wounded by Dragon’s cruel words, and I guessed he had realised that she had been trying to protect him by making Ariel believe she did not care for him.

The Chafiri were all being held in the compound of the Prime in the Infinity of Blue, for although they did not deserve such splendid surroundings, the wall and protections that had been created to keep people out, were just as effective at keeping them in, until some decision was made about what to do with them. The Ekoni were being held in the slave pens in the Infinity of Obedience and in the pens that had once been used by Salamander. There was some talk of marching them all to Quarry, but Matthew thought it more like they would be put to work in the mines and on the farms.

Rushton told me the three High Chafiri who had been in the crypt insisted that they had been unwilling accomplices to the black sorcerer Ariel, as they now named him. Ariel had come to the Prime in his compound in the wake of the rise of the Red Queen to insist that she was not the true Red Queen, and as proof he had produced Dragon herself. It was clear that she had been under Ariel’s control for she had admitted to being an imposter, transformed by black arts to resemble the first Red Queen carved on the wall of the Great Hall, and that the dragon she had raised had been wrought by the black arts, too. As final proof, Ariel had reminded them of her failure to produce the sceptre of power, and then he had told them the emissary would return at his behest, once they had reclaimed Redport. Dragon had then ceded control of the city to the Gadfians. They had promptly presented her to Murrim and others, whereupon she had made the same speech. Bewildered and devastated at being tricked into betraying their oaths, the Redlanders had laid down their arms, giving Redport back over to the slavemasters. Dragon’s ascension had been so swift and dramatic that half the city was still confused about what was happening and it had been easy for the Gadfians to resume control.

The real trouble had occurred outside the city, where the Landborn, unshackled and free, refused to surrender and submit to being shackled. There would have been a pitched battle between them and the Ekoni, save that the Gadfian warriors were badly outnumbered by men and women they had trained to fight. Ariel had bidden the Chafiri Prime instruct them to set up a holding defence around Redport, promising them the rebels would be dealt with using powerful Beforetime weapons, as soon as the emissary returned to Redport. I had little doubt that he had used coercion on them.

All of this had occurred after I had ridden out of the city to fetch the stone sword and while I was seeking out Sentinel. Dragon told me that I had barely ridden off before Lidge came walking up to her with Matthew and a cloaked man. I guessed that Ariel had hidden somewhere with Lidge, perhaps in the rail tunnel, and had emerged to enthral Matthew, then he had used the farseeker to get to Dragon. Once Ariel had given control of the settlement back to the Gadfians, he left them to secure it and set about gathering the others he intended to use against me. Ana he had already, for she had told me that some of Salamander’s shipfolk appeared while she had been trying to help the dying Gavyn, and that one of them had struck Rasial a fatal blow with a stone when she attacked, leaving her to die beside the boy, Fey wheeling endlessly overhead. Later when Matthew had gone to look for their bodies at Ana’s request, there had been nothing to find. There had been prints that suggested they had been taken by nocturnal scavengers. Nor when he searched, had he found Gahltha or the wolves, for the whole lower part of the mine had collapsed in on itself.