The Queen of Blood

by Sarah Beth Durst

  “Knives, actually.” Daleina felt prickles run up and down her back. The spirits they’d summoned were filling the trees and watching them. There were so many. Aware of them too, Bayn pressed against her legs, and Daleina slid her hands into the wolf’s fur, though she wasn’t sure who was reassuring whom. The talking continued far into the night, and the fire spirits continued to spin and burn in the campfire. Curled against Bayn, Daleina slept only a few minutes at a time.

  She woke at dawn. The fire spirits had fled, but there were dozens of others that watched them from the branches. Keeping an eye on the water spirit, Daleina washed her face in the pool. The water spirit swam in circles, agitated. Seeing the others wake, it froze, and then ducked under the surface of the water.

  Airria and Evvlyn bathed in the pool after forcing a fire spirit to heat the water to a bearable temperature. The water spirit huddled by a tree, shivering and glaring. “Sorry for intruding on your grove,” Daleina told it.

  “There’s no point in that,” Revi said. Daleina startled—she hadn’t heard Revi behind her. “They will always hate us. You know that.”

  “I know, but . . .” She couldn’t find the words to explain. “It feels as if we’re riling them up unnecessarily. All of this, we could have done it without spirits. Instead, we’ve drawn the attention of all the spirits in the nearby area.”

  “I know,” Linna said, joining them. “It’s a strategy. Show them we have power. That way, if we ever face the spirits at the coronation, they’ll remember us and choose one of us. They’ll know we’re strong enough to lead them. Daleina, this isn’t foolhardy. We can handle these spirits.”

  I can’t, Daleina thought, and the realization was like a fist in her stomach.

  “Different champions have different approaches,” Iondra said.

  But that’s not it, Daleina wanted to say. It wasn’t a difference in approach; it was a difference in innate skill and talent. I’m not good enough. She looked at each of her friends. She’d known in the academy that commanding spirits came more easily to all of them, but it wasn’t until now, out in the world and away from the cocoon of the academy, that she’d let herself see how very stark the difference was between them.

  Her friends were still talking, unaware of the realization churning inside Daleina. “In truth, the trial doesn’t start at the border of Greytree,” Evvlyn said. “It’s already started.” She looked at the trees above them that housed the hidden, spying spirits. “These spirits will report back to the queen.”

  “And they’ll say we were unafraid,” Revi said.

  “Maybe it’s all right to be a little afraid.” Daleina thought of the six spirits and the sphere of wood. Her scratches didn’t sting anymore and, thanks to Hamon’s salve, were barely visible. In a week, her skin would be smooth again, and there would be no sign at all of any attack, but she wasn’t going to forget it anytime soon.

  “It’s not all right for us,” Mari said. “My mother always says that. To be queen is to be fearless. Why do you think I wanted to be queen so badly? If I were that powerful, I’d never feel fear again.” She hugged her arms. “I was so afraid before, in the first part of the trials. I think . . .” Her eyes were distant, and Daleina knew she was thinking back to the first trial and the candidate who didn’t survive. “I think maybe that’s why she died. If I hadn’t been afraid . . .”

  “Stop it, Mari,” Revi said. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  “Remember who the enemy is,” Daleina said.

  There was silence in the grove, but it wasn’t a friendly silence. Daleina was acutely aware of how many eyes were watching and ears were listening. She felt them like an itch on her skin, like new scratches, breaking open the old, and wondered why the others didn’t feel it too—another difference between them. Another reason why Daleina didn’t deserve to be queen.

  In silence, they moved on.

  GREYTREE.

  Home.

  The sign was faded and broken, appropriately, with another sign nailed on top of it: UNPROTECTED. ENTER AT YOUR OWN RISK. It had the seal of the queen. It’s been officially abandoned, Daleina thought. Somehow that seemed worse than just thinking of it as empty.

  She traced the letters with her fingertip, smearing away the mold that had spread in the creases of the words. She couldn’t remember who would have repainted the signs. She’d been too young to know which of the adults did what, but she remembered a man with a red beard who used to paint flowers on the walls of the houses. Their house had stencils of ivy painted on the walls, and the kitchen had fat apples painted above the sink. She hadn’t thought of that kitchen in years.

  “Daleina, are you all right?” Linna asked.

  “Of course she’s not all right,” Revi said. “Daleina, is there anything we can do to help?”

  Daleina pulled her hand away and forced it down to her side. She felt as if she’d forgotten what to do with her arms. They hung awkwardly by her side. “It will be good to do this. The village should live again.” Ven could be wrong. This might not be punishment at all, or even a test. Maybe the queen felt she was doing Daleina a favor—a chance to fix what was wrong in her past. It could be a chance to change something ugly and painful into something full of beauty and hope. “This way,” she said, walking down the bridge.

  The bridge was in disrepair, which was putting it kindly. Lichen coated the boards. Several were missing and others were rotted, making the entire bridge look like an old man’s smile. Daleina stepped gingerly, testing each board to see if it would hold her weight. She heard the others talking to one another, but it was like a buzz behind her. Her eyes were glued forward, waiting for her first view of Greytree.

  Her memory could be wrong. Maybe it hadn’t been destroyed as thoroughly as she’d thought. Maybe in a child’s mind, it had been skewed into a catastrophe. It wasn’t as if the rest of the country had reacted to the loss of Greytree. When they’d moved and she’d told people where she was from, there hadn’t been gasps of horror. Just blank expressions, as if she’d named someplace far away. At the academy, most hadn’t known of her tragedy, until one of her friends who liked to talk, Zie perhaps, had spread the world. She hadn’t minded that they knew. In fact, she’d wanted them to know. It explained why she was there. But bringing them here . . . She was both grateful they were here with her and wished that she were alone.

  The bridge ended. Just stopped in midair. Ahead was the village tree. It had been sheared of all branches at midforest level, with no trace of the village that it had once cradled in its powerful arms. No trace except one hut, its roof sunken in, its door hanging on one hinge, but otherwise intact. This was home, this broken place, in a way that the charm-covered, garish-green house never was. She’d felt safe here. And happy.

  She felt a hand on her shoulder, Mari’s hand. She couldn’t pull her eyes from her old home. There, she remembered the day that Arin had been born. She’d been like a squalling kitten, and Daleina had been surprised she was so messy. Daleina remembered the breakfasts that her mother used to cook in that kitchen . . . or was she remembering those breakfasts in their new home? The memories were jumbled. She wished she could separate them out clearly.

  After a moment, she forced herself to look down toward the forest floor. For an instant, she saw the wreckage again—the just-broken boards, the just-broken bodies—but then her eyes focused, and there was only green, the lush green of bushes spread between the tree roots, as if denying there was ever a tragedy here.

  There was no trace of her village below. Only the broken bridge, the missing branches, and her home, alone.

  “Are you going to be all right?” Mari asked softly.

  “I don’t know,” Daleina said. “Are you?”

  Mari was silent for a moment. “I don’t know either.”

  CHAPTER 23

  The other candidates coaxed new branches from the old trunk, thickened them, hollowed them, and shaped them into new houses. Dozens of spirits from the surrounding woods were per
forming the construction, swooping and soaring among them.

  Daleina knew she should be out helping them, but instead, she was inside her old house, sweeping the dust from the half-rotted floor with her mother’s decade-old broom. A family of bats had taken up residence in the roof, and she’d shooed a nest of squirrels out of the fireplace. The chimney would need to be patched before it could be used again, and the pulley system that they’d used to haul up water and other supplies had been severed.

  When she’d swept out every speck of dirt, she forced herself to walk out of the house and all its old memories. She affixed a rope from inside to a hook and lowered herself to the forest floor. Bayn was prowling between the bushes, sniffing at them.

  “They’re buried under there,” she told the wolf. “Everyone I didn’t save.” You’d think she would have outgrown the old hurt by now, forgiven herself, and moved on. Kneeling, she pressed her palms against the cool earth. She sent her mind down, as if that would let her touch her old friends, family, and neighbors—

  She felt something beneath her. It moved, deep within the earth, like an undulation of a wave. It spread wide beneath them, under the roots of the village tree, its thick tentacles reaching out in every direction.

  Oh no.

  She’d felt this once before.

  The shifting sand.

  But it couldn’t be the same spirit.

  It didn’t matter if it was. It was old, impossibly powerful, and beneath them, and it knew they were here. She felt its hatred rolling through the earth. It meant to—

  “Run!” she cried.

  Bayn obeyed her instantly, sprinting through the underbrush, and she ran after the wolf. Above her, she heard the chatter stop. She felt the eyes of the other girls, friends and strangers, watching her curiously from above. “Don’t be idiots!” The tentacles reached far. If they flexed—“It’s below us! Reach down. Don’t you feel it? It’s too strong!” Jumping onto a tree trunk, she began to scale it, shoving her feet into the groves of the bark.

  One of the candidates—a girl with silvery hair—laughed, a sound like a bell. Another laughed as well. Daleina ignored them, climbing higher and calling to her friends. “Revi, Linna . . . remember our first survival class? Remember when you were all talking and thought I was foolish to climb a tree, and then the wolf attacked?”

  “Yes, but there was no danger,” Mari called to her. “It was Bayn!”

  “There’s danger here! Feel down. Can’t you feel it?”

  “There’s only earth,” another said. “Nothing to fear.”

  Dammit, they weren’t going to listen to her. The smaller wood and air spirits could feel it—they were straining to resist commands, to flee the area, and she realized climbing wasn’t going to be enough. “The trial isn’t about building the village; it’s surviving His Highness beneath us.” She heard murmurs—about her, about how she was afraid, about how an heir shouldn’t fear spirits—and she sensed the earth spirit coil its tentacles, ready. “Fly, everyone. Right now!” She tossed the thought to every air spirit. Fly! Fly us high!

  Already agitated, they listened to her—she was telling them to do what they already wanted to do: Flee. Three air spirits dove for her, grabbed her arms, and pulled her into the air. Another scooped up Bayn. Around her, she saw other spirits lift candidates up into the air.

  And the village tree began to sink.

  Air spirits fluttered to the tree, and the candidates were lifted up out of the branches as it sank beneath them, as if swallowed by a vast mouth. The ground around it shifted as if it had turned to liquid, and the other trees undulated. Above, held by spirits, Daleina watched as her home sank toward the earth.

  She didn’t listen as the other candidates shouted to one another. They were trying to stop it, fight it, control it, but Daleina didn’t try. The tree sank, despite their attempts, lower and lower. She wondered how there was so much earth beneath it to claim it, but there was. The trees around it continued to tremble, but none of the others sank. Only the village tree, lower and lower, until at last the tops of the leaves disappeared into the brown lakelike sludge. And then it was gone.

  Lower me, Daleina ordered the spirits. They obeyed quickly, plummeting down, and she sensed their curiosity like pinpricks in her mind, the only reason they obeyed so fast—they’d never seen anything like this. But she had. She bent her knees to absorb the impact from landing. Around her, the other candidates flew down on their spirits.

  The ground was hard beneath her feet. Kneeling, she felt the soil. Solid.

  “How did you know it was going to do that?” one of the candidates asked.

  “Because it did it before.” Granted, it hadn’t done it on such a scale, but she’d felt its power. She reached out with her mind but felt only ordinary dirt and rocks beneath them. “I think it’s gone now. We can build the village.”

  “Is it coming back?” That was Evvlyn.

  “I don’t know,” Daleina said. “But it’s not here now.”

  All of them drew closer, touching her arms and back, and touching each other’s hands and shoulders, as if reassuring themselves they were all still here, whole, and alive. They murmured to one another, an overlap of voices that felt like a comforting blanket.

  “I’m sorry about your home,” Mari said softly, to Daleina. “I know it had memories, good ones as well as the bad ones.”

  “It’s all right,” Daleina said, and strangely, it was, because this time . . . this time she had saved them all.

  ONE OF THE GIRLS HURRIED OVER TO DALEINA. “WE’RE READY. Where do we start?”

  She contemplated the trees for a moment. They’d decided that there wouldn’t be a single village tree—without the queen’s power, it was too difficult to grow one massive tree, but more important, a single tree was prone to attack from the earth kraken. Instead, the houses would be shaped from the surrounding trees and connected via bridges that would sprout from the branches. “Start with establishing platforms for each of the houses and then construct the bridges between them. Grab everyone who’s good with larger wood spirits for that, and we can fill in the details after.”

  They were listening to her, both because she’d saved them and because she was one of the few that had grown up in an outer village and knew what was needed. She laid out the plan and divvied up the tasks, and then they dispersed, calling to the nearby spirits. Except for her.

  It was a hard, bitter-tasting pill to swallow, one that stuck in her throat and scraped all the way down. All of these girls were more qualified, more powerful than she was . . . and these were merely the candidates. There were heirs already out there in the world with both training and experience. If all of them were at the coronation ceremony, the spirits wouldn’t hear Daleina calling to choose her any more than they’d hear the cries of an ant. She had no chance.

  She watched Linna coax water spirits into creating a well for fresh water, and she watched Revi rouse the fire spirits into hollowing wood into furniture with the heat of their fire. Evvlyn was summoning earth spirits to pile rocks. Others, many whose names she didn’t know, were working with the wood spirits to build houses and bridges. All of it was beyond Daleina’s skill.

  Oh, she could help, and she did. She could command the smaller spirits, assisting the others as much as possible, but they did the bulk. Every shred of confidence she’d developed had dribbled away. She may be able to sense spirits, but she couldn’t command them, not in the same way or with the same ease as the others—not unless the spirits were already agitated. If they were worked into a frenzy, she could redirect them, shift them from destruction to creation, but this kind of pure control was beyond her. This was what Headmistress Hanna had been trying to tell her from the very beginning. This was what all her teachers had tried to tell her on every test and in every report. This was what the other champions, the ones who hadn’t chosen her, saw.

  Her greatest regret was that she would disappoint Ven. He’d believed in her, for some unfathomable reason.
Maybe he was out of practice as a champion, or maybe he’d been fooled by a few lucky moments. When the trial was over, she’d tell him, she’d explain she simply wasn’t born with the gifts that the others had. She’d never be queen.

  But she could assist the queen, as heir. She’d play a vital role in Aratay. She was sure of it. She could be the queen’s trusted adviser. Her right hand. Surely there was a place for that in the palace. She could coordinate the other heirs, find a way to effectively use them.

  As plans went . . . it wasn’t bad. In fact, she could feel herself getting a bit excited about it. She’d be like Headmistress Hanna, but for the graduates. She could unite them, even lead them. Yes, this was a future that fit her talents and personality. She wasn’t meant to be a star, shining brighter than the rest. She was, as her reports said, a team player. After she became an heir, she’d talk to Queen Fara and propose her idea. She could be a valuable heir, even if she would never become queen. I could still have a purpose.

  As she worked on the village, she continued to watch the other candidates. Each of them had a preferred kind of spirit, it seemed, though all by necessity could work with any kind. They fell into groups, and each group had their star. She was happy to see that some of her friends shone just as much as the others. Iondra, for example, was adept with water spirits. She funneled them into paths, creating channels for water within the trees—rainwater basins high above that would then run through water-worn paths toward the houses. Another girl, adept with wood spirits, worked with her, creating valves and dams to control the water flow. Each house would have water in its sink. Evvlyn was working with several others to create the bridges, encouraging the wood spirits to thicken branches between the houses. Linna and Revi were a team making houses. Revi concentrated on the structure, while Linna added details like doors and windows. On the forest floor, Zie worked with a group that was cultivating the berry bushes and creating corrals for the villagers’ domesticated animals.