The Queen of Swords

by R. S. Belcher

  “‘There’s always a way,’” Maude finished. “Yeah, she was damn frustrating, wasn’t she?”

  “The greatest people usually are,” Isaiah said.

  * * *

  Maude awoke in the darkness before dawn. She had been wrestling with something, some complex, tangled dream-thought, for what seemed most of the night, existing in that twilight place between slumber and conscious awareness. The struggle had finally driven her back to her waking mind. She sat up in her bed and rubbed her face. It was cool, but not cold. She had been sleeping nude, which she had always enjoyed, but seldom did back in Golgotha.

  She got up and grabbed her robe, putting it on and belting it, and made her way down the stairs and out the kitchen door of the manor house. She wore no shoes, and had no need of them. The rocks, grass and twigs were all sensation, not pain. She welcomed them. Years of running in these woods, and along the scalding sands of the noon-day beach, had made her feet tough and strong.

  She moved through the stand of trees, running her fingers over the tangles of Spanish moss that were drooping everywhere. She heard the waves crashing, smelled the salt foam and after a moment, she broke free of the foliage. The dark beach yawned before her. The sky was indigo; the stars had fled, sensing the impending dawn. The sky was lightening, but for now, it was dark and the only sound for miles was the defiant roar of the waves cresting, dying against the land, and the lapping, whispering of the water that heralded their rebirth.

  Maude liked to believe she knew every grain of sand on this beach. She slid off her robe and welcomed the sea breeze on her skin. She walked out onto the cool, grasping sand. She left no footprints, out of instinct.

  When Gran had taught her how to move and leave no trace or memory of her passing, she had expected Maude to maintain the practice, especially here, on their beach. Once, when Maude was still very young, she had been so excited to reach the water on a very hot July day she forgot and left big, ugly tracks in her wake. When she had emerged from the water, laughing and smiling, she had seen the prints and Gran standing beside them. The smile fell from Maude’s face.

  “Did you enjoy your swim, girl?” Anne had asked. Maude nodded slowly. “Good,” she said. “Was it worth your life?”

  Maude looked down at the sand and her footprints, partially exploded in the loose sand.

  “That’s no trick question, Maudie,” Anne said. “Was it? You were laughing and enjoying the feel of the cool water, feeling life jumping and splashing all about you, just as you should. In that emotion, you left your training behind, and in the wrong circumstances it could mean you die for a mistake, for letting your emotions drive you.”

  “But it’s hard to think cold all the time, Gran,” Maude had replied. “I’m sorry, I messed up. I’ll do better.”

  Gran walked across the beach, leaving tracks in her wake, looking up and laughing at the brilliant sun embracing her wrinkled face. “Ah, that feels so good. I swear the older I get the more I understand those damn lizards that sit on a rock all day and bake themselves. Feels glorious, it does.

  “I don’t want you to dry up inside and not feel, Maude. We all make mistakes, we all make a mess of it sometimes—hell, I’ve made more grand, glorious fuck-ups than I can even recall. We all have feelings, and to try to divorce ourselves from how we feel, what we feel, that’s depriving ourselves of a mighty source of strength. It takes us away from the core of life itself and that is truly a crime and a shame.”

  “Father said that women are too emotional,” Maude said. “That they let their hearts guide them too much to be able to do a lot of things men can do.”

  “Ah, Martin,” Anne said, kneeling with a grunt beside the girl. “The ‘things men can do,’ like start a war, turn people into slaves, burn folk at the stake for their beliefs. Very unemotional bits of business, those.

  “Your da is a good enough fella, Maude. He’s like most of the folks in this world, though, men and women, walking around shuffling in their chains, no idea of the prison they were born into, the prison they help maintain every day of their lives, in their minds, in their hearts. Martin has his head filled up with a bunch of fool notions about what he can and can’t do, what you can and can’t do. It’s silly and it’s sad. Like a lot of prisons, there’s no windows to look out and see past the darkness. Don’t let some other fool’s prison hold you too.”

  Anne pushed the strands of wet hair out of Maude’s face. She squeezed Maude’s nose and made a honking noise like a goose. Maude giggled. Anne laughed.

  “You do whatever you please, lass,” Anne said, “and you live with the consequences of that choice, good or bad, living or dying. Pay your debt. Just remember that at the end of it all—whatever it is—it should be worth the price you paid for it.”

  “So I didn’t mess up when I tracked up the beach?” Maude said, a smile growing at the edges of her lips. Anne moved her open palm an inch or so above one of Maude’s prints on the sand.

  “Oh, no luv, you mucked up royally! Tracked up my pretty beach.” Anne’s hand glided over the print and in its wake the track was gone. The sand looked exactly as it would if Maude had never set foot upon it.

  “How did you … what did you do?” Maude said, a look of amazement crossing over her face.

  “You figure it out,” Anne said. “Then you clean up all these tracks the same way. I don’t want to be able to suss where there ever was a track on this ground, girl.”

  “Hey!” Maude said. “Some of these tracks belong to your big old boats! What about all that stuff about ‘paying your own debts’?”

  Anne feigned mock horror. “My dainty little feet, boats? Surely not! And trust me, teaching a hellcat handful like you is debt a’plenty! C’mere!”

  Anne had chased her up and down the beach, both laughing hysterically, Maude made certain not to leave a trace she’d have to mend later. After a time, they chased the dipping seagulls, who glided and mocked them, and in due time, Maude learned how to catch them as well.

  Maude stood alone on the sand in the portentous dawn. She filled herself completely with the clean, life-giving air, careful to not gulp it, to rush anything, only to sip, until each cell of her was full of potential.

  It had been a very long time since she had meditated this way. Of all the gifts, all the education Gran had given her, she had never fully understood the benefit of these exercises. She had grasped and excelled at the healing meditations and the endless katas that maintained her muscle tone and muscle memory to keep her alive in combat. But these exercises were designed to quiet her mind and still it, and after a lifetime of being told to be still and quiet, Maude saw no value in ever voluntarily doing those things.

  The idea had come to her while she grappled with sleep. In part of the knotted dream, Maude was eating dinner with Alter, but the hotel restaurant had been replaced by the two of them sitting on driftwood benches, a linen-covered table between them, on this very beach. Maude was telling him about how what she and the Daughters did was not magic, merely training.

  As she talked, her words became someone else’s. Alter melted, replaced by the black-haired Daughter who had commanded the butterflies in the battle with the Sons. The mysterious woman was now saying the same words that Maude was saying, “It’s a property of the blood. We just ‘know’ things about the others who carry the Load, and them about us. It comes in dreams and in the secret parts of your mind that are always at work, always whispering, but which you are mostly unaware of…”

  Maude closed her eyes, felt the sea wind caress her skin. She raised her hand above her head, palms out, as if holding cups of water, and then slowly brought them down toward her face, turning her palms, almost steepling her hands, but not quite. Maude exhaled, inhaled and began to move, to dance, with the world and within herself. Each motion flowing into the next one, each action fluid, and intuitive, as natural as breathing.

  She began to feel the gentle suction of gravity on her, about her, felt the cool, wet sand anchoring her fee
t. Felt the spin of the Mother’s body, solid and immutable, yet hurtling through the void, ever-moving, ever-changing. She was centered, anchored, flying, spinning free. The incongruity was sweet and perfect.

  Time stretched out like taffy, then began to diffuse as it elongated further, and further. Time floated, drifted away on the wind, like the silky white hairs of a dandelion.

  Her mind turned inward now, on itself. The ocean, the wind, her body, were all dim, recessing shadows. Maude went further away from the skin and deeper toward the piercing crystalline awareness, the clarifying light. Everything was washed out in the radiance, but she was not alone in it. Far away she saw a young woman with bright red hair looking into a mirror that hung in the air, unsupported. Her back was to Maude, but Maude felt a strong connection to the girl.

  Maude turned away from the girl and her mirror to find herself facing the black-haired Daughter; she stood with her arms wrapped about herself, a polished piece of obsidian hovering before her face. Maude’s own distorted image looked back at her as she stared into the polished stone.

  “Tonalpouhqui,” the woman with the black mirror for a face said, her voice like wet, slippery stone.

  The red-headed woman turned and it was Gran, younger, bloody from a fight, almost panting, wild-eyed and beautiful, maybe twenty years old. “What the hell took you so long?” Anne said, then laughed. “We’ve got work to do. Find Hell’s Belles, find the blood stone. They will help unlock the door to the Record. Find Hecate, find me. Hurry, girl, he’s coming for you. You are all that stands between him and reentering the city of bone. It has been sealed to him since its founding, and he has circled its walls like a hungry beast, seeking a way in. He knows you mean to stop him. He is coming.”

  Maude’s eyes slowly opened precisely as the dawn’s eye opened across the sea. A sense of peace filled her that she had not felt in years, a feeling of connectedness to everything, to everyone. A gull squawked; it was Gran’s laugh. The sea moved gently, waves rising and falling in the silent embrace of the hidden moon.

  * * *

  In her bed at the Pavilion Hotel, Itzel awoke, a sheen of sweat covering her lithe, nude body. She hurried across the suite to Amadia’s door, but the door came open before she even touched it.

  “What is it, Itzel?” Amadia asked. “What woke us?

  “It is the American,” Itzel said, a genuine look of fear and amazement in her eyes. “Maude Stapleton has looked into Tezcatlipoca, into the Smoking Mirror!”

  “I don’t understand,” Amadia said. “What are you talking about?”

  “She has nearly mastered what it took years of my life to do, to open tonalamatl, to open the Book of Fates! We have to act before she does so again, Amadia!”

  The door to the suite opened with a faint click.

  “Then it is good that we have arrived when we have,” Inna Barkov, the Russian Daughter of Lilith, said as she opened the door. Behind her was Leng Ya. “We’re here to claim the girl,” Inna said.

  18

  The Chariot

  Ife, Oyo Empire, Africa

  September 25, 1721

  They were greeted at Ife with the groan of the kudu horn, the wail of the Nyanga pipes, and the voices of hundreds of masked, dancing revelers raised in song. The masks the crowd wore were all different, some elongated, some fashioned as a sun or moon, an animal, or grimacing skull, some in the shape of a human head and face with an almost eerie detail and realism. They were carved from dark wood, others from ivory, a few adorned with gold, shells and jewels.

  Each mask, Adu said, was the face of one of the four hundred and one gods worshiped in this teeming city. There was celebration everywhere though the sun had not yet set when they reached the city’s main gates.

  “It’s fortuitous that we arrived on the day of a festival,” Belrose said, embracing a buxom woman who hugged him and handed him a gourd containing some unknown drink.

  “That’s most days here,” Adu said, hugging a stranger. “This many gods, you have pretty good odds there’s always going to be some kind of a party going on.”

  Belrose took a swig and grimaced at the taste and potency of the mysterious beverage. The woman retrieved her gourd and disappeared into the crowd. “I like this city,” the mercenary said.

  “What good can there be found in worshiping this many gods?” Nourbese said, waving away a well-wisher.

  “Well, you’ve always got someone to blame,” Anne said, taking a swig from another offered gourd.

  Anne, Adu, Belrose and Nourbese were at the front of a column of fifty Ahosi Amazons and bearers. The city guard, also masked, stepped forward to halt their progress somewhat hesitantly.

  The lead guard called out to the party in Yoruba as his fellow guards leveled flintlocks at the group. Adu raised a hand, smiling, and replied. There were several moments of exchange and then he walked back to Anne and the others.

  “We can enter. I told him we are part of an escort for you and Belrose and we’re here to resupply and be on our way. We won’t be able to do any business for the next two days because of the festival. Only ten Ahosi may accompany us inside.”

  Anne looked at Nourbese. “You were right about that. It was worth a try.”

  “The Yoruba fear my warriors,” Nourbese said.

  “I want you with us inside,” Anne said. “Pick nine of your people to accompany us. Make sure they are ready for anything. We still have no idea why the hell we’re here.”

  “Ahosi are always ready for anything,” Nourbese said, walking away from Anne and back toward her troops.

  “She always makes things a little brighter when she’s around,” Belrose said, glancing back at Nourbese.

  “She’ll warm up,” Anne said. “She knows her job and she does it very well.”

  Once they had seen that the map was leading them to Ife, it had been decided that the majority of the Amazon troops would remain camped outside the city. Anne had asked Adu numerous times about why they were coming to Ife.

  “I can’t discuss it,” Adu had said. “It might influence the trial, how you handle it.”

  “Was it influencing the trial to go and pick a fight for me back in Abomey?”

  “Stop your complaining, it’s unbecoming of the leader of the Ahosi and future queen of Dahomey,” Adu said. “Besides it all worked out for the best.”

  “‘For the best’?” Anne said. “I had to practically sneak off with my knickers in my hand in the dead of night to keep from getting noozed, one way or another. It was a lovely time, a fine jig and all.” Anne snorted. “But queen … no thank you.”

  Ife was laid out in rings, concentric circles of sacredness and cosmological power. The political and spiritual center of the city was the palace, which was called the Oke-Ile, the High House, and resided on a hill far off in the distance.

  “This is where the world began,” Adu said. “This city is built at the womb of creation. At least that’s the Yoruba’s version of things. They have employed their mysticism in their architecture. This whole city was constructed to gather and amplify spiritual power. Quite an accomplishment, and they didn’t even ask for my help.”

  “Nice to know there’s a few things you don’t have a hand in,” Anne said as they walked. “So if you won’t tell me what I need to do here, how do I figure out what I should do?”

  “Rest tonight,” Adu said. “I know an excellent quarter where we can set up camp and we should be unmolested. Tomorrow we’ll figure out the rest.”

  They were able to make camp in a grassy clearing with a few sparse stands of marula trees to provide shade. Several other groups of visiting merchants and pilgrims from as far away as Sao Salvador and Timbuktu shared the site with Anne’s company. The early part of the night involved shared fires, food, song and tales. Eventually guards were posted and everyone slept.

  * * *

  Anne awoke to the sensation of eyes on her. She sat up in her tent, her flintlock at the ready. The kite was perched on her ditty bag, beside he
r bed mat. The bird made a sharp, disapproving churk sound, looked at her with what she assumed was bird-contempt, and flew out the now-open flaps of the tent into the darkness. Anne followed the bird. She pushed past the canvas curtain of her tent and found herself in a vast and brightly lit gallery. A woman’s voice spoke to her and Anne was sure it came from the kite.

  “The Iyaami are the women who guide Olodumare, the supreme power of all creation, which sets all the forces in motion in the universe, even death,” the voice said. “Oduduwa is the mother, the womb, it is the power of omnipotence, the power to create and, by creation, to act and change this world and the other worlds. The Iyaami are the daughters of Oduduwa.”

  The gallery’s walls were like glass with a warm, soft, milky light gently radiating from within. The walls were covered in masks, thousands of them, faces of bone, ivory, iron, silk, fur, feather, gem, silver and gold. Some were human, others alien, and each had dark, empty shadows for eyes. Anne walked along the gallery, her fingertips brushing the faces as she passed.

  “Olodumare is man, Olodumare is not man,” the voice said. “Oduduwa is woman, Oduduwa is not woman. It simply is and all being is, by the simplicity of being. It has no master, is no master. It is, as the sun is burning, and the night freezing, it is.”

  As she touched each mask a voice hissed out of their empty mouths.

  “I bring you good fortune…”

  “I bring you victory over your enemies…”

  “I bring you those you desire…”

  “I bring you joy in the afterlife, so that you never need end…”

  “The Iyaami move in secret and they are often known as Aje, or witches, by those who do not understand, who blind themselves with limitations,” the kite said.

  “Me,” the masks pleaded.

  “Me…”

  “No, me…”

  “They are untrue … me!”

  Anne saw a glimmer, a burst of brilliance, at the end of the hall and moved toward it; each mask she passed called out a promise, a threat, a feeble plea.