by M. C. Planck
Deprived of magic, the party stood in the darkness. Cannan’s sword no longer glowed. Christopher’s armor felt heavy again, his magical strength suppressed. Lalania stopped playing the lyre now that it was only music. The notes died away, buried by the sound of tumbling stone as the entrance she had been holding closed fell to the ant’s assault, allowing even more of them into the chamber. Only the circle of flashing blades just outside the radius of anti-magic held the ants at bay.
Light flared again. Einar had relit the lantern with flint and steel. Apparently it carried a store of oil as well. The Ranger seemed always prepared for any eventuality. He diffused the light to a general circle so they could see how badly they were surrounded.
“Which one will fail first?” Istvar asked.
“The blades,” Lalania said.
The Duke frowned in displeasure. “I don’t fancy fighting from inside this field. We cannot heal, and Ser Cannan will no longer enjoy the advantage of his sword.”
Christopher told them the bad news. “When the field drops, she’ll kill Lala, Cannan, and Gregor instantly.” Their rank was too low to survive a spell of that power.
“Possibly,” Einar said. “We may hope she is out of spells. She has already spent much; her champion was layered in magic.”
Lalania held her lyre out. “Christopher, you must carry this. Your tael will protect it, and I can be revived more cheaply than it can be replaced.”
He didn’t take it. She was wrong. The column of flame would consume her corpse and leave him nothing but ashes.
Instead he walked backward, cautiously, until he felt his strength return. He was standing between the two rings. Another step back would thrust him into the blades, which would ironically dice him as effectively as it had the ants. A step forward would return him to the temporary safety of the null-stone.
“Your blade spell will not last forever,” a voice said in his head. “Then my children will swarm over you before you can cast again.” Christopher knew it had to be the monster at the end of the hall, but it sounded just like Audrey Hepburn.
7
TEA TIME WITH THE QUEEN
He shook himself together and answered her. “You don’t believe that. We’ve already got this far, and I still have magic left. Plus we have tricks you haven’t seen yet. I think we can win.”
A pause before she replied. Not petulantly; she was too polished for that, although it had the flavor of dismay. “Why tell me this?”
With her alien form out of range of the light and hidden by darkness, he could not stop himself from thinking of her as a young princess trapped in court intrigue beyond her depth. “Why talk to me at all?”
“You spared my workers when you could. I thought . . .”
“You thought you could make a deal.”
“I answered your question. Now answer mine.”
Now he paused, trying to understand his own actions.
In front of him, Gregor was digging in his backpack. The blue knight fished out a grenade and heaved it into the darkness. A second later, they could tell where it landed by the explosion, the blast illuminating the ants it threw up from the floor.
“You fell short twenty feet at least,” Einar said, and held his hand out for one.
Christopher could feel the queen’s shock in his mind. “How can you summon fire from within the anti-magic field?” she cried. “This is not fair!”
“That’s two questions,” he said. “Which one do you want me to answer?”
Einar’s throw was better. In the flash, they could see he had reached the queen. The effect of her pain lanced through Christopher’s mind like he had physically slapped her.
“It does not matter. Now that you are in my presence, I can smell the taint on you. There will be no deal. You only wanted to witness my suffering.”
“No,” he said, disgusted and horrified by her words even without fully understanding what she meant, but got no further.
“Then listen,” she said. “Whatever part of you is still capable of feeling, hear what you would destroy.”
A hundred thousand voices rang in his head. A cacophonic din, the murmur of the crowd if one could be everywhere in the crowd at the same time. He staggered, overwhelmed by the sense of closeness, of standing at the edge of ten thousand conversations.
Individual voices began to resolve. Trivial details, gossip over the blandest events, the daily lives of creatures whose entire existence was concerned with work and community. Who bumped into who in the crowded tunnels, which year of food pellet was the best, which tunnel needed repair, what the weather was going to be like tomorrow. And one plaintive voice tore at his heart, asking what was happening, like a frightened child in the dark.
“Never you mind,” came an answer from a dozen sources. “Mother will take care of it. She always does.”
Sudden silence. Lalania had stepped toward him, reimmersing him in the field. All of them looked at him with concern.
He shared their concern. The experience had shaken him to the core. Nonetheless, he waved Lalania back. Still dubious, she moved away.
His head was empty again, save for the queen. He could feel her attention. Struggling with his composure, he tried to regain control of the conversation, his skin crawling. “What do you mean by taint?” Had the hjerne-spica cursed him with some lingering effect in that one meeting in the Gold Apostle’s keep? But no, that had been their second meeting. The first was in the snow, and he had been unconscious through it. It could have done anything.
Her disembodied voice was uncertain as he felt. “You did not react as I expected. Perhaps you do not know. Perhaps you serve unknowingly.”
“Pretend that is true.”
“You are Their creature, Their tool. They have crossed your path and touched your fate. When I divined you just now, I saw the empty places in your pattern where great powers have pushed and prodded you to their ends. Your entire history is an enigma shrouded in mystery, warped by unseen hands to some unrevealed purpose. How can you not be aware of this?”
He knew all of that. He had just thought they had failed. They had sent the ring to break his mind and broken Cannan instead. They had sent the Gold Apostle to torture him and the King to execute him, and now both those men were dead. Now they waited for him to open a path to Earth so they could consume that entire planet. He intended to see that they would fail at that, too.
On the other hand he suspected she was better at divination than anyone in his realm. Nobody else had ever mentioned empty spots and patterns.
Her voice was resigned to an infinite sadness. “Had I known I would not have avenged myself for the lives you took. Yet it would not have mattered. They send you where They will. I have communicated your status to my Empress. She does not desire conflict at this time. Therefore, your master need not fear retribution for what you do here today.”
So she was being cast off by her own people, merely at the mention of the hjerne-spica. That was a power he would have been terrified by, if he weren’t already.
“Nonetheless, I am free to defend myself. I will destroy you if I can and hope that your master turns its attention to other tools. It is the only option open to me.”
He felt her turning away. “Wait,” he said desperately. “I don’t have a master.”
She almost laughed. “We all have masters. Even the Ur-Mother serves at the whim of necessity.”
He said the only thing he could think of to keep her talking. “I’m going to kill mine.”
“Before or after you kill me?”
“Neither. Unless you make me. You are not my enemy.”
“Of course I am,” she said. “Your kind and mine must always contend, for the world is destined to belong to us. We will use it so much more efficiently than you. We will end suffering and waste, the lust of the hunter and the terror of the prey. All the planes of the Great Wheel shall fall to us in time. My daughters . . . I suppose I should say now, my nieces, down through the ages will see this glorio
us day. I regret only that I was of so little aid to our holy crusade.”
He felt an involuntary pang of sympathy for the Wizard of Carrhill. Talking to religious zealots was definitely taxing.
“Okay, that sounds like it’s a ways off.”
“True enough,” she conceded.
“In the meantime, we’re here. I’ve got a hjerne-spica on my back and a war on my southern border. You can help me with at least one of those.”
“You started this war. You invaded my realm and killed my warriors. And then you did unspeakable things with their corpses.”
“I didn’t do that. My predecessor did.”
“From my perspective, there is no difference. The fact remains that humans from your lands slaughtered and despoiled my people. In exchange I took the souls I was owed, along with a small increase for my troubles. Did you expect me to do nothing?”
“I didn’t expect anything because I didn’t know you existed. If you had asked, I would have reimbursed you.”
She paused, surprised. “Really?”
He thought about it. “Probably. Well, maybe.”
“Instead you have lain waste to my realm. Half of my army lies dead, and my children shiver in their chambers, waiting for madness. Is this the concept you call justice?”
He shook his head. “You don’t get to lecture me on justice. You killed innocent people because other people hurt you.”
“And you slaughtered those who only defended their home from armed intruders.”
She had him there. But he was not going to apologize. It wouldn’t help.
“We have about five more minutes before those blades come down. Then we’re going to fight, and one of us will die. If you have any way out of that, now’s the time to bring it up.”
“You could choose to walk away,” she suggested. “I could choose to let you.”
The rest of his party was listening to his half of the conversation. It was just easier to speak out loud. He closed his eyes because he did not want to see their reactions. “You named yourself my enemy. How does leaving you alive help me?”
“It does not,” she conceded. “And yet it could. You need never face me in battle again. I will not intrude on your lands if you do not intrude on mine. I will let you keep the souls you have already collected and return the rest of my dead children to the larders without prejudice. And I will give you a tool against Them.”
He had come here looking for monsters. Their tael would move him closer to the rank where he could challenge the hjerne-spica. Instead he had found arguments. He should not have listened. He should have fought in silence, thinking her just a foe to be destroyed, just as she said she was. As Lalania would no doubt tell him, it would have been the normal thing to do.
Instead, he did what he always did. “What can you give me?”
Now he could afford to open his eyes. Only Istvar seemed disappointed. Einar was calculating. Gregor was relieved. Lalania was amused. Cannan was stabbing at ant corpses just outside the circle and draining their tael with his sword.
“What you could not get anywhere else. It may not help; you may never thank me for it. But it will be one thing They will not expect you to have. What you make of it will be up to you.”
He could not refuse. The hjerne-spica knew every move he could make. Only here, inside the cloaking spell of the ant queen’s wards, could he hatch surprises, just as Alaine had told him secrets at the bottom of the goblin’s keep. There was a lesson in that. The foes he battled offered resources other than tael. He would need all of them.
“Okay,” he said.
“You swear it, by your patron and affiliation?”
“I do.”
“Then I swear by the Ur-Mother: truce and a tribute. Come forward. Bring your null-stone if you please. You might not survive the journey otherwise, and I would rather not have to reset all of my traps afterward.”
He stepped forward into the circle, where the queen could not read his mind.
“You made a deal,” Gregor said.
“I did.”
Einar cocked his head. “Have you reclaimed the bodies of my kin so that we may return them to the cycle?”
“No,” Christopher said. “I’m sorry, but they’re gone. The ants eat . . . everything.”
“To be honest, we already knew that. Yet we thought we might at least gain vengeance. How shall I go to my people and tell them you have made a deal instead?”
Istvar growled. “I find myself also indisposed. You bleed the realm for every scrap of tael, and yet you will leave millions in the ground for the sake of mercy?”
“She promised me something to fight the hjerne-spica with. What good does it do me to gain rank if at the end it just eats me? What good does that do any of us?”
“Half the kingdom still doubts such creatures are real. Will you parade this fantastic weapon through the streets to convince them otherwise?” Istvar asked.
“No, of course not,” Lalania said. “He’ll keep it secret and expect the rest of us to make up a story that satisfies the people.”
Christopher thought about stepping back outside the circle. The ant queen’s conversation had been less painful.
Gregor shook his head. “The time for reservations has passed. We all signed on for this ride no matter how perilous the road.”
“Your faith is commendable,” Istvar said stiffly, “but it is not my faith.”
“And yet, when you pray, does Foresetti guide you from this path?” Gregor shot back.
An uncomfortable silence followed. The blades whirred softly one last time and faded away.
“The gods give us less direction than we would hope,” Istvar finally said. “As you already know. Yet I have chosen. I will tell my people that the Saint took what he was entitled to and no more.”
“I will tell my people he is a squirrelly devil whose abuse we must suffer yet a while longer.” Einar grinned wolfishly. “We have said the same of kings for generations.”
“And I will tell the people you made the queen beg for mercy. Pray do not correct the record.” Lalania shivered despite the heat. “Now what do we do to get out of here?”
Christopher waved them forward. The sea of ants parted as they walked across the long cavern. The queen’s great bulk gradually came into focus, towering over them, growing from suggestive shadow to solid nightmare. Up close Christopher could see that her legs were not to scale. They did not even reach the ground.
A small, freshly formed ant, still shiny and wet, wriggled out from underneath the queen, holding something small and round. It paused just outside the circle and held the object up in offering.
“It wants you to step outside our protection,” Lalania said. Her tone suggested this was an absurd request, tantamount to the lion asking the trainer to insert his head in its mouth.
At this moment, most people would have questioned the wisdom of such an act. Perhaps it was a trick to get Christopher close enough where her mandibles could reach him. Despite the fact she could not walk, her massive head had considerable range. Maybe she had a spell that only worked at point-blank range. Against this proposition was the fact that she had let Christopher bring all his swordsmen into striking range. She was at as much risk as he was.
Of course, neither she nor he had even considered the issue. His affiliation was White; hers was Yellow. They could be trusted to keep their word. Even the goblins had kept their word, after a fashion. The ulvenmen had been too proud to lie. The hjerne-spica had told him only true things, however misleading. The only dishonesty he had faced in this world had come in human form.
He stepped forward, out of the safety of the circle. Her voice was in his head again, no louder than before.
“You can now say you have stood in court with a Formian Queen. Few of your kind ever hold this distinction.”
It was like a sight-seeing souvenir. Another magnet on the refrigerator, another supernatural beast to mark off on his bingo card. Dragons and elves and now giant ants
. And of course, the hjerne-spica in the center of the card, the one space he would have preferred to not fill.
She apparently could detect his skepticism. “Should you ever meet another of my kind, you may find the distinction useful. But I confess the probability of that is vanishingly small. Honesty compels me to acknowledge that you will almost certainly lose any confrontation with Them and die screaming before being repurposed from tool to host.”
“I haven’t lost yet,” he said. “People keep underestimating me.”
“You underestimate Them,” she said ruefully. “As we all do. They see to ends even the Ur-Mother cannot scry. As much as I sincerely wish for your success, I can give you no help other than plain and simple advice: avoid the obvious, the reasonable, or even the possible, for They will have foreseen all of those.”
“And this,” he reminded her, pointing at the gift.
“And this,” she conceded. “Whether it can be of any value to you, I cannot say. If you learn to tolerate it, you may gain a momentary edge in a physical confrontation. It is up to you to leverage that into advantage, for this is the only gift I can give you. At worst I can tell you they will not expect it; the substance is incomprehensibly difficult to obtain.”
The small ant shuffled forward.
“As with most things, start small and work your way up. It will always hurt, but in time it may not incapacitate. I myself have suffered the regime, although I will probably never face Their touch.”
He took the lump from the small ant’s grasp. It was a small pottery vial sealed with a plug so well-fit it did not leak. An artifact made solely for function, without a single thought for appearance.
“Don’t thank me,” she said before he could. “You will regret it later. Now go and do not return. I do not wish your taint to encompass me; I do not wish the web of divinations to weave my thread across your weft.”