The Fiend Queen (16 page)

Katya bit her lip. No, she would not think about that.

Focusing on her surroundings wasn’t much better. Deserted and quiet, the underground city felt like it was waiting. Shadows made by Redtrue’s pyramid seemed to move of their own accord, just at the edge of the light. Katya’s thoughts turned to Yanchasa, trapped for hundreds of years, waiting for anyone to come looking for it.

She told herself not to be silly. If the great Fiend could grab people, it would have eaten anyone who’d ever come to Waltz in the capstone chamber.

Unless it couldn’t reach them. It might be able to now, when they walked where Yanchasa was the only living thing, alone in a sea of stone.

Katya told herself to focus on the rock, watching the cracks and lumps, the lines in the ceiling, the smooth stone of the rooms. Tons of dirt and rock, packed above her head, and the palace sitting on top of that. It was a marvel that this place had been able to survive this long. It all
wanted
to come down on top of her, to finish what it had started—the natural order of things. Just as it leaked through doors and windows, so it would through nostrils and throats. It wanted to crush and kill and be rid of the fact that there had ever been life here.

Katya clenched her fists. Since when had she been afraid of rocks or her own thoughts, for spirits’ sake?

But she’d never been trapped far belowground with a monster for company and pain and misery waiting above.

She tried to focus on Roland, who was a far greater threat than Yanchasa or a bunch of stone. She tried to summon her anger, but fear wasn’t so easily banished in this foul, dead place.

Maybe that was Yanchasa’s doing, too; maybe the Fiend was affecting her the same way it seemed to be affecting Redtrue. “Dawnmother, are you feeling strange?”

“How?”

“Well, Redtrue’s clearly uneasy being so near Yanchasa’s prison.”

“A wise reaction,” Redtrue said.

“And I’m feeling…” Katya couldn’t finish, ashamed. Some leader she’d become.

Dawnmother tsked. “You’d have to be made of stone to be able to relax in this place. The living were banished from here long ago. I would place a wager that even the famously rude Lord Vincent would break a sweat down here.”

Katya had to grin. Sweat he might, but he’d never let anyone see it.

Starbride

Starbride sank through the void, her spirit towed down as if through quicksand. The white faded to swirls of gray, and among them she saw a vague collection of shapes: a huge arm, the curve of a wing and a horn, the sharp glint of a fang. A slit of light tracked her spirit as it slowed to a halt, and she looked on an enormous, half-closed eye.

“I am not your daughter.” Energy pulsed around Starbride’s spirit, the dark power of the Fiends, but as with the pyramid that passed the Fiend from one person to another, she found beauty here. She sensed strength and hunger for battle, but there was also cunning and a protective urge that appealed to her. The scent of intrigue brought her closer. Here was a puzzle even Crowe didn’t know, one that would be the instrument for her revenge.

The whispering voices chuckled, and images formed in Starbride’s eyes: mountains, tall peaks tearing holes in the clouds and then jutting beyond. A snow-covered valley lay between those peaks as if nestled in a giant bowl. A city filled the valley from end-to-end, yet it seemed to float above the snow it rested upon.

Towers rose up from the jumble like fingers, spare minarets, intricately carved, almost too delicate to stand on their own. Five stood taller than the rest and were spread through the city in a rough circle.

“Belshreth,” the two voices whispered in her ear. “Filled with inquisitive people who could do wonders.”

Starbride gasped as she sped through the city. Each building bore the same sort of intricate carvings as the minarets, and all of them gleamed. Though snow blanketed the streets, the inhabitants wore thin coats that hung to their knees, brightly colored and standing out sharply against walls that shone like pearls. Their skin was dark like hers, and their hair black, but their features were a little different, broader faces and smaller noses, and each carried crystal pyramids at their belts.

Children used magic to light their rooms, to make their dolls dance. Adults used it to build, coaxing crystal from the ground, large groups meditating together upon a single pyramid to raise a tree from a seedling to a towering giant.

“How is this possible?” she asked.

“We were the people of the crystal. Born among it and so raised.”

“You are
not
a person.”

The whispering voices chuckled. “There was a time.”

She soared among the five great towers and saw three women and two men, each with a tower to her or himself. They met in each other’s homes or strolled among the streets to the adulation of the people. They talked and laughed and loved.

“Close as fingers on a hand,” the whispers said. “The council of five: Layess the Wise, Fionette the Skilled, Edette the Beautiful, Daronee the Lucky, Yanchasa the Mighty. We ruled and led and transcended.”

The faces flashed by too quickly for her to tell who might be whom, but that didn’t matter as she watched the marvels they wrought. They created towers out of light and darkness, transformed ice into servants to do one’s bidding. And their bodies! As the power of the five grew, they transformed themselves, taking fearsome shapes or those so lovely it made Starbride weep to see them. They cast off sex and could appear as women or men. They shucked their humanity to turn to crystal or smoke.

“Or what you call Fiends,” Yanchasa said, still in dual whispers. “I led Belshreth’s great army and thought it apt to be as fearsome as I could.”

Fiends as people? Not possible. Animal, beast, monster, those she could believe. Fiends infected people like viruses. They did not create miracles. Only humanity could do that for them, and they corrupted whatever they touched.

But they had power she needed.

“If you became Fiends, where did the wild Fiends come from?” she asked. Crowe had told her that greater Fiends had a reputation for manipulation that they did not share with their lesser brethren.

Yanchasa showed her its fearsome form—winged, horned, fanged, scaled—huge as some of the peaks it walked among as it led Belshreth’s army against any invaders. It took chunks of crystal and ice and breathed life into them, remaking them into copies of itself.

Malice molded by human hands, not the other way around. Starbride felt the truth in those visions. Redtrue had been right about one thing: only humans could corrupt, but power did not always equal corruption. Roland’s desire to dominate had been within him the entire time, Fiend or no, based on what she’d heard.

“Show me more.”

“At the pinnacle of Belshreth’s dominion, the council of five discovered the secret to life in the adsna that flowed around us. We ruled for centuries but did not unlock our secrets for the people we led, seeing how that would lead to overpopulation and destruction.”

“And they resented you,” Starbride said.

She watched secret sects and cults meet in dark rooms, jealous of the council’s powers. Rebellion followed. The council of five fell in a long, bloody coup. The jealous and the wrathful imprisoned them, but the city paid a great price. Belshreth crumbled without the power of the five, and the traitorous rebels fled southeast.

“Toward Allusia,” Starbride said. And a thousand years spent in the harsher southern sun had changed them a little.

“And so I name you daughter,” Yanchasa said. “More so than that pale copy who sought to merge with me before.”

But did he mean Katya or Roland? Both names brought rage to Starbride’s mind. The descendants of Fiends had founded Allusia. And wasn’t that good news for her? If Roland was a pale copy, she could take what Yanchasa offered and use it for good. “I need power.” She thought of Roland, of the Fiendish Darren or the mindless Umbriel Fiends. “I won’t become a monster, no matter that it’s one humans created.”

Yanchasa laughed, a sound that skittered around in her mind. “When the Farradains imprisoned me here by stealing some of my essence, I
chose
what I gave them.”

Starbride thought of what that could mean. The Fiends she’d known were cruel, malicious, barely cunning, seeking only slaughter.

“Any good general shows malice and cunning, daughter.”

Starbride frowned. Had she spoken aloud?

“To share in power, one needn’t be mindless or fanged. I gave the Umbriels the Aspects of myself that I wished. They thought me a monster, so I gave them one.

“When I was first summoned, I was not myself, drowsy from long captivity. I made do with mindless destruction, and so they called me animal, and still do. I hid my true self from them, but I will grant you my wisdom and so much more, daughter.”

She sensed something else. “Well?”

Feminine laughter surrounded her, and a hazy silhouette formed inside the void, hovering in front of the horned, fanged creature that sat motionless inside the great pyramid. A tall woman strode out of the shadows, dressed in silver armor outlined in gold and adorned with tiny pyramids. She held her arms out, her form shifting from female to male and back again as she came closer. Her skin was reddish brown like Starbride’s, her face longer and more angular, and her cheekbones high. Her brown eyes sparkled with knowledge. Her hair was hidden under a tall silver helmet with a gold ribbon cascading back from its peak.

“Embrace me, daughter, and I will show you everything.”

Katya would not want this, Dawnmother either. It was not the way.

But what other way? She could worry what the dead thought of her once the fight was done.

And then what? Live forever as a Fiend? Shunned by her old family and her new one?

“They will not shun you, daughter,” Yanchasa said. “They will see all the good you may do for them. With your help, they need never suffer, never hunger or want. Be as you wish, leader or helper, protector or god. You will be exactly what they need, and I will show you the way.”

Ultimately, it didn’t matter what else Yanchasa offered. Starbride could take the power, kill Roland, and then perhaps the power could also help her die.

Yanchasa’s face softened, reminding Starbride so much of Dawnmother that her heart ached. “I will never leave you.”

Starbride sobbed and reached out with spiritual arms. Yanchasa’s cold armor chilled her all the way to the heart as his male form wrapped long arms around her, supporting her, lending his strength. His cold breath tickled as he whispered in her ear.

She gasped as knowledge flowed into her mind. The whole basis for Farradain magic was wrong. One didn’t
use
pyramids but became one with them. Redtrue had been right about that, but the adsnazi were afraid of true potential.

“Work with the adsna,” Yanchasa said, “let it flow through you, become its master, and the pyramid becomes a tool to shape your art.”

As the adsna filled Starbride, she saw that calling anything done with it evil would be like labeling air or fire. It was simply power, and in the right hands, it was power that could raise a civilization or burn it to the ground.

“And only a mind that understands that is worthy of rule,” Yanchasa said.

“Yes.” Starbride saw it now, saw how the world worked and the adsna flowed with it, seasons falling into seasons, life and death, the sun and moon and stars, all of it wheeling together in the most intricate dance of all creation. How could anyone expect to call herself another person’s master if she didn’t understand this? Evil was pulling down the council of five, in laying low the greatest civilization in history. Their teachings would have spread to all corners of the world, to all peoples. They would have united humanity in the harmony of the adsna, as simply as they’d changed their bodies by its powers.

Starbride wept to see it. “Everything is so clear. How in the world did I miss it before?”

“Farradains like to do things the hard way.”

“Roland thought so
small
.”

“Indeed. Why stop at making his subjects eternally happy when he could make them better than they’d ever dreamed? When he could crush his enemies instead of toying with them?”

“The king of Farraday and the rulers of Allusia, I have to bring this to them,” Starbride said.

“They’ll thank you for it, daughter, I guarantee it.”

There was something she had to do first, if only she could remember.

“Vengeance,” Yanchasa said.

It burned in her again. “He stole my beloved.”

“He will be made to see his error. You will teach him, daughter, so he does not forget.”

“Show me more.” She felt her spirit begin to withdraw from the capstone, but Yanchasa went with her, happy to be her guide. When Starbride opened her eyes, the capstone was alight, washing the cavern in a bright glow. Some corpse Fiends were sprawled on the ground, arms out in worship.

“Pale remnants of my children,” Yanchasa said. He stood to her right, flickering, fading to female and back again.

“Should I destroy them?” It would be as easy as breathing. She’d turn their pyramids in on themselves.

“They could prove useful.”

Starbride dipped into her satchel. Throwing pyramids, such an archaic practice, a thing for children. She needed only to have the crystal near, and she could shape it with her mind, no more sanding and chipping and carrying on. Yanchasa showed her how to transmute the pyramid to anything she wanted, how to undo its pathways and remake them by letting the adsna flow instead of trying to control it.

She gazed a long time at her suppression pyramid. “We called this Fiend magic.”

“We call it flesh. It is the re-shaper, the most powerful magic that lets one”—she gestured at her body as it shifted to male—“control oneself. I’ll show you.” He pointed to the suppression pyramid. “There you have created anti-flesh. It repels anything created with flesh magic.” He gestured to the corpse Fiends. “Simply tune it so.”

Starbride shifted the pyramid to something more like Roland used. “Though not so crude,” Yanchasa said.