The Fiend Queen (22 page)

She hung back as Einrich lingered over his wife’s body where it lay in the corridor. He didn’t remove the coat from her face but bent close and whispered something. Maia knelt by her uncle’s side, and Starbride stared at the floor. Maybe they’d feel better if she burned the queen’s body to ash. Would they grieve less with nothing physical to mourn?

Had that helped her?

If she could only set the adsna roaring through them, it would wash away their grief. “The people of Belshreth must have never felt sadness,” she whispered.

“You will feel all again one day, daughter, when the pain is less. Let the adsna be a balm. And for them,” Yanchasa said, pointing at Einrich, “there’s always mind magic.”

She cocked her head and wondered what Roland’s vision of eternal happiness for the kingdom would look like in the hands of a master.

At last, Einrich signaled Brutal to bear the queen away until she could be seen to. Some of the servants had already returned to the palace and some of the housekeepers as well, everyone eager, it seemed, for their lives to return to normal.

Starbride let Maia and Hugo take the lead as they ventured into the dark basement and then the caverns beneath the palace. Being this close to the capstone, to Yanchasa’s physical body, made power hum in Starbride’s ears, and she felt the comforting presence surround her, blocking out pain. They stepped over the bodies of fallen remnants, no one giving the poor dead things more than a glance.

At the bowl-shaped divot in the cavern floor where his daughter had been obliterated, Einrich stayed silent. More of the cavern had come down during the fight, and the floor was littered with stone. Starbride let the adsna flow until it screamed, and she felt hollow.

“I don’t know if this cavern is safe, Majesty,” Hugo said.

Maia clung to Einrich’s arm. “Perhaps we should come away, Uncle.”

Einrich pressed his palm to his mouth. Starbride thought he might collapse, but he exhaled and straightened. “You said you captured Roland, Starbride.”

“Yes.”

“Show me.”

She led the way, her belly warming in anticipation of his gratitude.

Roland’s screams had become a wheeze. Maybe the pyramid inside him kept him from healing. When he saw his brother pinned to the cavern floor, one-armed, sweating and writhing in agony, Einrich stopped mid-stride. “What have you done to him?”

“Less than he did to your wife and daughter, Majesty.”

He turned a cold eye on her at last, and she welcomed it. When he turned back to Roland, she saw rage pass over his face. She thought he might stride forward and kick what little life remained from his brother, but he held himself rigid, fists curled at his side. Maia and Hugo approached their father with a myriad of expressions on their young faces.

“Why have you left him alive?” Einrich asked.

Starbride shrugged. “For the pain, and for you, of course. I thought you might want to have a hand in his death or at least witness it.”

Einrich put his arms across Hugo’s and Maia’s shoulders. “I am not such a man. But he is too dangerous to keep captive for public execution.”

At his feet, Roland opened his eyes and shrieked, “The pain!”

“End this torture,” Einrich said.

Starbride dropped to Roland’s side and opened his belly to remove the pyramid. The others gasped as they watched.

“How did you…and why?” Hugo asked.

Maia pressed her mouth as if she might be sick.

Starbride looked between their stricken faces. Roland had caused them such pain, and they felt only horror at seeing him tortured. She felt as if she would have understood that once.

“Do you want to do it?” Starbride asked.

Hugo and Maia didn’t answer. Einrich’s tendons stood out in his jaw. “I can’t.”

Starbride saw the problem: he had no weapon, and strength alone wouldn’t prevail against Roland’s Aspect. Very well. She would make it easier for him.

Starbride’s flesh magic skittered along Roland’s body as he sagged against the stone, still held by the remnants. He tried to speak, but she laid her destructive palm over his mouth.

His old wound called to her. The blow that had nearly severed his leg so long ago was still a part of him, the limb held in place only because he had merged with his Aspect. It made him slower than he should have been. The Aspect had caught him at the cusp of life and death, making him more corpse than man, the reason he’d needed his daughter to pass along the Aspect to others. If Starbride removed Yanchasa’s gift, his leg might separate from his body.

Flesh held the answer, but Roland had barely scratched the surface of its uses. Starbride flexed her power and fused the leg back on to his body. Roland cried out against her palm, and she pressed down harder.

Einrich and the others shouted, wanting to know what she was doing, but she didn’t bother to speak. They’d see soon enough.

When she was done with the leg, she searched him for other wounds but found only the missing hand. That she thought he should keep as a reminder.

“Ready to have some of your essence back?” she asked.

“What are you talking about?” Einrich asked. “What are you giving him?”

Yanchasa answered, “Ready, daughter.”

Starbride focused on flesh again, on the rusty handle that lived inside all Umbriels and would turn them back into humans. She had cleansed one person of it before, had taken every ounce of Katya’s Aspect and returned it to its rightful owner.

Starbride remembered Katya’s energy as a ball of utter darkness, accessible only through Crowe’s Fiend pyramid, but Starbride saw it in Roland for what it was: a collection of flesh energy nestled in the brain, spread from there throughout the body, and she had the siphon waiting in the center of this room.

Starbride tapped the energy, and it poured from Roland. He arched against the remnants’ arms, his eyes rolling back in his head. Starbride used herself as a conduit, letting his power cascade with the rest of the adsna until it came to rest invisible in the capstone. When she’d drained him, he collapsed against the floor, blood leaking from his eyes, ears, and nose.

Yanchasa’s laugh echoed inside Starbride like the peal of a golden bell. “The second gift you’ve given me, daughter!”

“The least I could do,” Starbride said.

Roland lay still, unconscious but breathing, his cheeks pink with health beneath the blood, and his face never to hold its Aspect again. She sat back on her heels and commanded the remnants to withdraw.

“Miss Starbride?” Hugo said.

Maia fell to her knees. “Oh spirits.”

Einrich grabbed Starbride’s shoulder. “What have you done?”

She smiled up at him. “Made it easier for you.” She looked to Yanchasa who was staring at the capstone, eyes narrowed. “What is it?”

“What do you mean?” Einrich asked.

“I think we should move away from here, daughter,” Yanchasa said. “I have an uneasy feeling.”

Starbride glanced at the capstone and reached out with her senses but felt nothing. Perhaps the adsnazi were entering the city. If they cleansed the capstone, she didn’t know what might happen to the person who slumbered within. Yanchasa could be freed, she supposed, but it was just as likely that Allusian meddling would kill or hurt him in some way.

“Dearest daughter,” Yanchasa said, face shifting between maternal and paternal smiles.

“Starbride? What have you done?” Einrich asked.

Starbride gestured one of the remnants forward, and it scooped Roland into its arms. “Shall we retire to the dungeon?” she asked. “Maybe you can have that execution you wanted.”

They only stared at her, open-mouthed. She supposed she’d have to get used to that.

Katya

Katya stumbled through the tunnel, hardly seeing what was ahead. A few hours of sleep hadn’t been enough, but Horsestrong and all ten spirits couldn’t get her to stop and rest again. When she saw the shadow partially blocking the tunnel, she thought she’d finally become tired enough to hallucinate.

But Dawnmother said, “What’s that?”

Katya pulled up short and blinked away fatigue. Something sat against the wall, large enough that they’d have to step over it. “Legs?”

“Attached to what could only be a body,” Redtrue said.

Katya drew her belt knife as they crept closer. A musty smell washed over her, past the dry scent of stone and dust that had tickled her nostrils since she’d come to this place. As soon as light fell over the body, Katya put her knife away. This was one corpse, at least, that wouldn’t be getting up to attack them anytime soon.

The skeleton had a few leathery patches of flesh still attached to its face, though its limbs were bare of skin, and its clothing had gone to rags. All had turned the same grayish brown as the surrounding stone.

Katya knelt in front of the empty sockets. She couldn’t tell if this had been a man or a woman. It wore trousers and a shirt of an indiscriminate color, but the make was utilitarian and without adornment. A curved knife lay near the skeleton’s outstretched fingers; the others curled in its lap.

Katya picked up the knife and studied the handle, but the plain, wrapped leather gave her no clues. She set it back down at the skeleton’s side.

“There are more,” Redtrue said.

Another skeleton lay stretched down the middle of the tunnel. An arrowhead stuck from its back, caught in a rib, and one hand lay pointed down the tunnel as if showing the way out. They stepped over it carefully and continued into the open space beyond.

Katya’s heartbeat quickened at the scene of ancient slaughter. Skeletons lay scattered across the long room along with weapons and tools. Dawnmother knelt next to one and shifted a pickaxe out of its bony fingers. Beneath it was a rust colored stain of long-dried blood. Another slumped against the wall, its jaw and half its lower face missing, slashed away. A few more sported arrows or deep tears through the remains of their clothing, exposing nicked and broken bones.

“Someone killed them all,” Katya said.

“Why were they left here?” Redtrue asked, turning a slow circle.

Katya shook her head, but she could guess. It would have taken a lot of effort to haul this many bodies through the tunnels. Perhaps whoever had killed them had thought them not worth the bother.

Another stain lay off on its own, a puddle so large she didn’t think anyone could have survived its loss. “Someone was killed here and then moved.” A friend of the attackers? If she had come down here with the Order, chasing someone, she would have carted off her own wounded and dead and might have left the rest.

As she took a closer look at the room, she saw that this space had never been someone’s home or shop. The floor and ceiling were unfinished and choppy, the walls pitted and crooked. The tunnel makers had carved this from solid debris. “By the tools they’re holding, I think these must be the tunnel makers. They must have retreated here during an attack.”

“It didn’t do them much good,” Redtrue said. “Were these some of the original inhabitants of this land? Did your people not stop until they’d killed them all?”

Katya shook her head. “I won’t let you bait me into a fight.” Redtrue bristled, but Katya ignored her. “Besides, we’ve decided that this had to have happened a long time after my people first arrived. The stone here had to settle enough that these people could build tunnels.”

But, she reminded herself, they’d also been drawn to rooms that had been important to the original inhabitants, and it was clear that the pyramid had always been their goal. Maybe whoever had made these tunnels were
descended
from the original inhabitants. They hadn’t all been killed when her people took over. Some of them had probably survived, interbred, and remembered.

But remembered what?

Dawnmother poked her head into the continuing tunnel. “The tunnel ends here.”

Katya shuddered at the thought that they might have reached the end of their hoped-for way out. If the way into these ancient tunnels had been sealed, they could be trapped under tons of rock with nothing but the dead to keep them company.

And Yanchasa, of course.

Katya gritted her teeth and stared at the dead-end. It was green-flecked stone that stood out sharply against the gray rock. By the steady light of the pyramid, she followed the new stone upward to a large hole above them. “Bring the light closer.”

She stood on tiptoe. The tunnel continued above their heads in a gentle slope, following the green-flecked stone. Katya couldn’t keep in a grin. “It’s the pyramid. We’ve made it.”

When she glanced at Redtrue, the tunnel wall caught her eye. Rust colored stains covered it, too, but these had been shaped into letters.

“Those are not Allusian,” Redtrue said.

Katya shook her head. It was an older dialect, but one she still recognized. “They’re Farradain.”

*

Before they began the arduous climb, Dawnmother insisted they rest, even if it had to be among the dead. They ate the last of their food and water. Katya sat and stared at the Farradain letters written in someone’s blood. She couldn’t make out all of them, but what she could gather gave her a good approximation:

“Do not seek the Fiend, or you shall die as these.” Beneath it was a mark she’d studied under Crowe’s tutelage.

The Order of Vestra hadn’t always been as secretive as it was now. Always a shadowy group, some of her forebears had thought to give it an ominous reputation. Whenever they apprehended criminals or traitors, they left a mark, something to strike fear into the hearts of any traitors who might have escaped, a stylized O and V, linked together.

The mark in front of her wasn’t as graceful as what she’d seen in books, but given the medium, she wasn’t surprised.

“So,” Redtrue said, “whoever made these tunnels sought Fiends as well as your spirits, just as I suspected.”

Katya rested her chin on one fist. It certainly seemed as if the tunnel builders had been looking for the Fiend, or at least the Order had thought so. But what would they want with it? Their ancestors had seen the havoc it could wreak. Surely they didn’t think they could control it if they let it out.

“Perhaps they thought it could be banished, and with it gone, the Farradains would have no power,” Redtrue said.