Unbound (39 page)

“Are you in pain?”

“Pain is the gift of the Voice. Through pain I know the truth of his words and the wonder of his reward.”

She smiled at Dralgen. “Wonderful, isn’t he? The product of years of conditioning, a being of absolute servitude, freed from the burden of memory, pride, or identity. In time he may become formidable enough to warrant elevation to Shar-gur and become a great captain in service to the Voice. Are you not jealous?”

She expected more defiance but Dralgen wasn’t looking at her. Instead his gaze was fixed on the kneeling Tormented, features drawn in a mix of fear and sympathy.

“I’ll spare you his fate,” she went on. “You and all the other captives. A merciful death for every soul, if you will . . .”

“You saw her,” he said, turning to her, expression defiant once again, but also displaying a certain amused twist to his lips.

“What did you say?”

“You went to her rooms, didn’t you? I can sense the taint of her touch. Did she speak to you?”

Sharrow-met stared at him in silence as his smile broadened further. “Why do you imagine those rooms are left untouched?” he asked. “Not even King Therumin could stand to take one step inside.
She
has been waiting a very long time for a visitor, and now she has you.”

“And who is she?”

His smile transformed into a laugh, his mirth echoing about the cavernous hall. “A blessing who became a curse,” he said, laughter subsiding as she loomed above him, scimitar in hand. She couldn’t remember rising from the throne or drawing the blade, her heart once again thumping hard with no whisper from the Voice.

Who is this to stir my fury?
she wondered, placing the tip of her scimitar under his chin, watching the humour transform into grim but unrepentant acceptance.
No more than another broken spell-weaver. And yet he makes me so very angry . . .

“Take a look in one of her mirrors, great queen,” Dralgen said as she raised the scimitar. “You’ll find all the truth you need.”

Truth . . . Shatter it with truth.

* * * * *

She returned to the upper levels after the confrontation with Dralgen, resisting the impulse to hack Harazil’s head from his shoulders when he had the gall to question her decision to spare the mage.

“Greatness?” he said, eyes wide in his colourless face as she stepped back, sheathing the scimitar.

“Secure him close by,” she repeated in a faint whisper, meeting the Shar-gur’s eyes. It had been enough to see him stumbling to his knees babbling abject contrition, but still . . .
He questioned me.

She sat in the Silver King’s library, a scattering of books littering the floor. She had hunted through the shelves for a time, seeking some mention of the Diamond Queen, finding much in the way of history and legend but nothing useful. She could see the entrance to her rooms through the open door, the same sense of invitation rising every time she glanced towards it.
Come in . . . come in and see . . .

For the first time in many a year she felt a chill. She was clad in only the black silks she wore beneath her armour, having discarded it on returning to the spire. Normally she had little regard for the vagaries of climate, it made scant difference amid the constant ache of her invisible-but-present scars, but tonight she felt it, an icy cut straight to the bone that made her rise and seek out the king’s bedchamber. She dragged a blanket from his bed and draped it about her shoulders before returning to her vigil in the library, sitting in clenched immobility until the chill abated and a soothing warmth spread through her, allowing her mind to wander.

As ever the Black Vale was the first image conjured from her memory, the mountain holdfast where the Voice built his army and raised a girl to Greatness. Her earliest memory was of the day a Shar-gur had placed the amulet about her neck. She had no clear notion of how old she had been but guessed she couldn’t have been more than eight, just a small girl standing atop one of the obsidian tors overlooking smithies and training grounds where the Tormented laboured. She remembered her eyes had been sore and her cheeks damp but had no notion why that could be. Nor did she yet know her name.

The Shar-gur had been named Zorakath, a mighty champion to one of the now vanished hill-tribes before he had heard the Voice a decade earlier, now risen to generalship over forty thousand Tormented. “Sharrow-met,” he had called her.
Wraith-Queen in the ancient tongue.

The Voice was her father, she understood this on some fundamental level, but Zorakath had been her teacher. She had been at his side when he led the first wave of Tormented against the eastern duchies, grown to adolescence by the time he overran the lake-lands, and gained womanhood the day she watched him die at the Battle of the Pass. The mages of the Westlands had reached a concordance by then, stirred into panicked unity by the inexorable advance of the Voice. Near a thousand had stood together at the Pass, their spells searing fire and ruin into the ranks of the Tormented. Zorakath took his blackwing in a vertical dive into the midst of the mages, wreaking havoc until their fires consumed him. Sharrow-met made ready to command Keera to follow the Shar-gur’s example, but the amulet had thrummed, the subsequent command implacable and absolute.
Return to me. I have a task for you.

And so he had sent her south, alone but for Keera and the chest of looted treasure. The memories shifted, accelerating into a blur. The duels she had fought with various pack-chiefs, spilling blood to earn the right to speak to their sisters. The vast tracks of jungle and desert, the breeding grounds where dull-eyed males tended the endless rows of eggs, and everywhere so many of these clever, wonderfully fierce creatures, willing to fight and die on promise of ever more trinkets. It took ten years, but when she returned it was at the head of an army, one no number of mages could halt.

Come in . . . come in and see . . .

The compulsion lurched anew and something moved beyond the half-open door to the Diamond Queen’s chambers, a flickering shadow accompanied by the faint whisper of dust sliding over faded tiles.

Fear now,
she thought.
First memory, then cold, now fear. But those who hear the Voice have no need of fear.

She rose to her feet, letting the blanket fall away, striding forward to slam the doors aside, ignoring the chill of the floor on her bare feet as she made for the hall of mirrors. “I have seen a thousand miles of horrors!” she hissed aloud. “I have seen cities burn and rivers turn red with the blood of my enemies! What do you imagine you can show me?”

But still she paused at the entrance to the hall, her disgusting human heart thumping in her chest as her eyes played over the silent walls of glass. She realised she had left the amulet in the king’s chamber with her armour, its absence a keen ache in her breast.
Truth,
she reminded herself.
The mage said there is truth here, and the Voice commands I seek it out.

A sound behind her, the faintest sigh of an indrawn breath heralding another bone-cutting chill. She shuddered as the skin on her back prickled, knowing something had reached out to caress her flesh. More unheard but undeniable words, effortlessly pushed into her mind:
I knew you would be beautiful. Go in, now . . . Go and see . . .

There was little light to see by, only the faintest gleam on the edges of the mirrors, and every glass seemed like a portal pregnant with the threat of sights unwanted.

There is only the Voice. The Voice brings great rewards and dark glory. Those who hear the Voice have no need of fear.

She repeated the mantra several times over, drew a breath, and stepped forward, the lingering goosebumps on the back of her neck a clear indication her unseen companion had followed her through the door. She paused at the first mirror, her eyes roaming over the gilt frame, steeling herself for the sight of the porcelain-faced young woman. Instead she saw nothing. The mirror held no reflection, just a rectangle of black glass in an ornate frame. She frowned and was about to turn away when the icy caress came again, a numbing touch to her shoulder, holding her in place.

Wait . . . It searches for you . . .

It took a moment before she saw it, a barely perceptible glow in the centre of the glass, growing slowly until it filled the entire mirror, an opaque swirling haze that soon coalesced into a recognisable figure. The girl was small and thin, pale of face and red of eye, her lips colourless and chapped. She wore a fine dress that seemed to jar with her sickly appearance; blue silk and sequins that matched her eyes. She stood gazing into the mirror, head cocked at a curious angle and a motley rag-doll dangling from her hand. Tentatively she reached out to touch the mirror, then drew back, small face bunching in a puzzled frown.

“Does she see me?” Sharrow-met asked in a whisper.

A shadow only,
her companion replied.
A possibility . . . A twist in her future captured by the glass.

Sharrow-met’s gaze roved the girl’s face, taking in the hollowness of her cheeks before lingering on her red-rimmed eyes. “She has a sickness.”

From the day she was born. It happens sometimes. Those born with the power can be too fragile to contain it. But she never complained . . .

Abruptly the girl turned from the mirror, glancing over her shoulder at a slim beckoning figure, too shadowed to make out. The girl gave the glass a final bemused glance before clutching her doll to her breast and scampering off. The mirror misted over once more, then slowly faded to black.

“You knew her,” Sharrow-met said, finding her skin suddenly beaded with sweat despite the chill at her back. “What was her name?” Her companion said nothing, though the cold air shifted, impelling her towards the next mirror.

This one was wider, the black glass misting, then forming into an impressive view of a garden on a summer’s day. The same little girl played in the foreground, a little older now but somehow even weaker in appearance, a certain fatigue evident in her movements as she made her doll dance. Beyond her a man and a woman stood side by side, the woman talking with great animation whilst the man stood staring fixedly out at the glittering sea in the distance. The mirror conveyed no sound but Sharrow-met knew with absolute certainty the words spoken by the woman:
I sensed no lie in his promise . . .

She remembered it all. The feel of the grass against her skin, the sun on her back, the scent of the orange blossoms, and the voices of her parents arguing a short way off.
Raggy,
she thought, sheened in sweat and limbs trembling.
The doll’s name was Raggy.

She saw the man round on the woman, a tall man of noble aspect, handsome as his wife was beautiful, made suddenly ugly by anger and fear. “Can’t you see the trap in his words?” the man had demanded in a tone she hadn’t heard before, causing her to look up from Raggy’s caperings, as the little girl in the mirror looked up now. The man leaned close to the woman and Sharrow-met found herself mouthing his next words as he spoke them: “You think he promises life? The histories are clear. All the Voice ever brings is death . . .”

She whirled away from the mirror, eyes shut tight, gasping as the cold enveloped her, the chill cutting even deeper, making her cry out and sink to her knees. “There . . . there is o-only . . . the V-voice . . .” she stammered through misting breath. “The Voice . . . b-brings great . . . rewards and . . . and . . .”

This was where it found me,
her companion’s words invaded her mind with calm ease.
In this hall, this place of power and wisdom. For this was to be my legacy, the finest collection of enchanted glass in all the world. A blessing for those who came after me, twisted into a curse. For this was how the Voice found me. Lacking form or substance, it lives in the artefacts of power; the blessed blades of great warriors, these wondrous mirrors, the jewel you wear. It came to me and whispered of wonders, of impossible reward . . . I can save her, it said, and through the glass it sent a vision of what you would be, the warrior queen, so strong, so beautiful, so much more than the sickly girl who broke my heart with her every rasping cough. He sent his Shar-gur captain on a great bird to take you, and though I knew my husband would hate me for all the ages, I gave you to the Voice. He promised one day he would return you . . . and now he has.

“The . . . the glamour,” Sharrow-met gasped, the chill now gripping her like a vice. “You wove it!”

My husband shunned my company from the day I gave you away, forbade my presence at all councils and formal gatherings. I spent my remaining days in these rooms. I knew by then, you see. I knew what I had done
. . .
One day he would send you home with fire and slaughter. So for years I sought an answer in these mirrors, rarely sleeping or eating. I suppose I became mad after a time, and when my body finally died, I barely noticed, and my labour continued.

The icy fist closed ever tighter, squeezing the air from Sharrow-met’s body, her back convulsing into a spasmodic arch, a shout of pain filling the hall.

Open your eyes, my daughter.
The grip tightened further and Sharrow-met’s shout became a scream.
Open your eyes and see!

Her eyes flew open, stinging and streaming from the cold, and there before her stood a woman, or rather the mist of her own stolen breath formed into the shape of a woman. Sharrow-met choked, her empty lungs unable to give sound to the words she sought to speak:
What is my name?

The face of the spectre shifted, becoming more solid, the features recognisable as those of the woman in the glass, her expression sorrowful but not unkind. Her lips moved to form a silent reply, the words conveyed to Sharrow-met by other means.
Mara, we named you for the city.
The spectre of the Diamond Queen smiled then raised her arms, every mirror in the hall suddenly filling with bright light, banishing shadow and invading Sharrow-met’s eyes with a searing pain.

Now, my daughter,
the Diamond Queen said as Sharrow-met tried vainly to scream once more.
Now it is time for you to see . . .