The Queen of Swords

by R. S. Belcher

  Anne lowered her fists. “It’s all a lie? Another test.” Oya nodded, placing her hand on Anne’s shoulder.

  “Not a lie, not entirely. The treasure here is knowledge, and power. When Adu saw you in the slave market, do you recall what you wanted to do when you confronted the slavers?”

  “Stop it,” Anne said. “Make them stop.”

  “You wanted the power to do that,” Oya said, “to defy their guns and shatter their chains.”

  “You could read my mind?” Anne asked.

  “No,” Oya replied. “Anyone with eyes and knowledge of a good heart could divine it.”

  Anne laughed. “I’ve no good heart, Oya. I’ve killed, lied, cheated and stolen, oh, so much stealing!”

  “That you have,” Oya said, guiding Anne back in the direction of the lake and the hut, “and every time a cause that pulls at your heart, at your true nature, has gotten in the way of all that, you’ve pursued it, fought for it, stood until the bitter end, and that’s cost you time and time again. You put your full heart into whatever you believe in, whoever you believe in. That is rare, and a fragile thing, easy to break, easy to lose. You know the definition of a hero, Anne? It’s someone who keeps their head about them for five minutes longer than everyone around them.

  “You stood against the slavers, you bested a mighty enemy in the war chief of the Amazons, and with your mercy, made her into an ally. You had only to choose a god, any god, to pay lip service to, as most people do, and you would have had a much easier time of it in Ife, but you refused to bend a knee to any king or to any god that you didn’t respect. Finally, you, and you alone, faced your darkest fears, and refused to let them devour you. Instead, you used them to make yourself stronger. You burned down the forest of fear, rather than become lost to it. I hate to break the news to you, Anne Bonny, but you have all the makings of a hero.”

  “In my experience, heroes usually end up with tosh,” Anne said.

  They walked toward the hut for a long time in silence. Finally, Oya spoke. “Long ago, when humans had only walked upon the land for a short time, Kauket, the primordial darkness, created creatures, torn from the void, to do its bidding in the world. The most powerful of these beings was Typhon. Typhon and his brother fell to Earth, and began to war upon all life, everywhere. They slaughtered and destroyed everything in their path.”

  “Just two of them,” Anne said. “Didn’t someone try to stop them?”

  “Many took up arms,” Oya said, “and were annihilated by the brothers. Then, the monsters were joined by a third; some call her the first woman, the first rebel against the will of the gods. She is known by many names in many lands: Echidna, Ayza, Ix Chel, Anuket, Pandora, Lilith. Her exile had made her bitter and angry, and she joined with Typhon to hurt those who still stood in the gods’ favor. In time they became as husband and wife. They spawned an even greater army of inhuman banes to torment, tempt and exterminate the human race, to end all life, everywhere.”

  The hut was in sight now and it was near noon.

  “I’ll make us something to eat,” Oya said. “Then we’ll rest. It will be hot today. This evening, I’ll tell you the rest of the story.”

  Anne was restless, and though the thought of a long nap appealed to her body, especially after the meal of something delicious and filling called koshari, her mind couldn’t still itself. She sat on the banks of the lake, skipping stones and watching the clouds drift in the most flawless sky she had ever seen. She wondered about Adu and the others. Were they waiting for her, mourning her or had they marked her off as dead and just moved on? The sun began to dip toward the horizon and it gleamed gold and white off the lake water, casting sparkles of blinding light. She thought about her son. Perhaps it was cruel, even selfish, to bring an innocent soul into a world that was full of so much evil and injustice, so many monsters. She believed Oya’s tale. She had seen enough in her young life already to be open to the possibilities, and in the last few months she had seen even more.

  She wished she could blame all the sickness, all the wrongs in this world on the things chittering under the bed in the shadows, on some omnipresent bastion of evil, but she couldn’t. There were plenty of grubby, petty, little evils that belonged to no one but humanity …

  The world wasn’t a fairy tale, or a tragedy, or a comedy, it wasn’t even a ripping adventure tale. It was an unfinished work, she mused, that moved on relentlessly, seeking a good enough ending, killing characters, introducing new ones, and always finding itself lacking. The only resolution, Anne decided, sitting at the edge of the blue-green waters of the Chad, was the one you made for yourself.

  She lay on her back and watched the cloud-castles drift like ethereal continents on oceans of sky. She heard the water kiss the earth, gently, relentlessly, and finally, she slept.

  * * *

  “It is unknown what changed within Lilith,” Oya said, picking up the tale again. They were sitting by the evening fire crackling outside the hut again. The wasteland had become much colder at night, a partner to the sweltering day. “Some think she realized her anger was at the gods and not those who lived beneath them, who were created by them. I like to think that is the true tale.” The old woman smiled and looked wistfully into the fire. “Whatever the reason, she parted ways violently with her husband, Typhon, his brother and the countless monsters they had brought into the world. Lilith went into the wilderness and wished no company for a long time. Finally, she sought out the people. At first they did not trust or believe Lilith, but in time they saw her change of heart to be true and they rallied to her. Lilith took the women of many tribes, many lands and taught them her secret ways, her magic, her power. They were the first of the Daughters of Lilith, sworn to counsel and protect all humanity. I am proudly one of these Daughters.”

  “So you’re not a goddess?” Anne said, sipping more banana beer.

  “‘Oya’ is a title,” the old woman said. “I have carried that title and its responsibilities for over three hundred years, but I am but one voice in a chorus of women who have been Oya, who have guarded the secrets of Carcosa, dating all the way back to the first Oya, who fought alongside the first Daughters against Typhon and his armies of the night. The name I was born with is Raashida.”

  “Three hundred years…” Anne said, and whistled.

  “You don’t have to say it like that,” Raashida said, running a preening hand through her tufts of gray hair. “I’m not that old, you know, and I am still very active. I … get about.”

  Anne touched Raashida on the shoulder, “No offense intended. I doubt I’ll look any better at three hundred, rotting in a hole somewhere.”

  Raashida took a sip of her beer and continued. “The Daughters of Lilith, the Mother herself, all the human allies that could be brought to bear, and Adu, and many of his brothers and sisters—the first humans—stood together here, in these very lands. This desert was once a great grassy plain in those ancient days.

  “Against them stood all the world’s monsters, countless fiends, nightmares wrapped loosely in tattered flesh. They were led by Typhon, Father of Monsters, and his brother Carcosa, Father of Ill Dreams. The war lasted for time out of time, and the very fabric of space and thought was rent by the combatants. There are stories of the war between the gods, between the powers of light and darkness at the beginning of time all over the world, and in virtually every culture. They were all born here.

  “When the war ended,” Raashida said with a smile, “the human race endured. The night terrors and horrors scattered to the corners of the Earth, like whipped curs, leaderless, their army shattered. Carcosa—his hideous form the size of mountain ranges—lay dead on the field, slain by the Daughters of Lilith. With Carcosa’s death, mankind won the freedom to dream as they wished, to dream of anything, to dream greater things than even gods.

  “What became of Typhon is unknown; seeing his brother slain by mere mortals, he fled the field, vanished, swearing his vengeance on the Daughters and on all life, every
where.”

  “What happened to Lilith?” Anne asked.

  “Lilith was weary of war and hatred and strife,” Raashida said. “She was sick with the burden of all the horrible things she had released into the world. She retreated from the world to rest her weary soul. Before she did, she gave the surviving Daughters a commission, entreated them to go forth into the world and fight evil wherever they found it, to counsel for wisdom and peace among all men, to gird the loins of those who must fight for their freedom. It has come to be known by the Daughters as Lilith’s Load.”

  Raashida stood. She looked into the night sky and faced the moon. She began to speak, her hands raised to the cold, burning orb.

  “I carry within me the clock of the moon,

  “The clock of nature, inviolate, unerring.

  “I carry within me the secret of God.

  “The power of a new life in a universe of darkness and death.

  “I carry within me the most powerful of swords.

  “For my will can overcome any steel forged by a man.

  “And my suffering can overcome any trial of pain or sadness.

  “For my blood is that of the first woman, she who would not bow down to the tyrant of Heaven and was cast out, called the mother of beasts. She who would not be bride to either Heaven or Hell, but walked her own sharp, lonely path.

  “It is my birthright, these gifts, this pain, this wisdom.

  “It is my privilege to understand them and in doing so understand and love myself.

  “It is my load to carry them, to protect them, to use them in the defense of the worthy and the weak.

  “And to teach this to others of the blood who live in chains of shame and guilt and fear forged by men and their gods, shackled to them by their own limited comprehension of their divine nature.

  “This is the secret. This is the load you must bear alone all your days upon this earth. This is the price of truly being free.”

  Raashida looked down at Anne. “Freedom, Anne, true freedom. Power to make a difference. What do you say?”

  Anne stood. “You want me to be part of the Daughters of Lilith? What do I call you, Raashida or Oya?”

  “Your choice,” Raashida said, “and yes, but not a part of the Daughters, a Daughter. We each stand independent, to operate as we see fit, travel where we are needed. We only come together in the most dire of emergencies.”

  “I … I don’t even know what to say?” Anne stammered. “It sounds like such a big responsibility, and I’m not the most responsible lass you will ever meet.”

  “You have everything it takes, Anne,” Raashida said. “Life isn’t about achieving perfection, life is about doing your best with whatever you have at hand. No one becomes a hero, or someone who will change the world out of doing or not doing something, they become it by being. They live, they stumble and they rise. Sound familiar?”

  Anne looked across the fire to the old woman who carried the name of a goddess. She looked into the fire, and held this moment, this frightening, intoxicating moment, inside her for as long as she could. Something scratched at the back of her mind. It was a voice, calling to her. It was not Raashida’s voice; it was someone else, talking to her, calling out to her. It didn’t seem to belong there and she turned it over in her thoughts, and then smiled. She looked over to Raashida. “I’m in,” she said. “Just remember, I warned you. You’re going to teach me how to fight like you do?”

  Raashida smiled. “I’m going to teach you how to live. Some parts won’t be easy,” she said. “Most Daughters begin learning when they are about half your age.”

  “I don’t think my education is going to be typical, anyway,” Anne said. “I’m actually sure of it. Tomorrow I need to head to Carcosa.” Raashida frowned.

  “Child, Carcosa is a week’s journey north of here into the deep desert. Often the desert buries Carcosa whole, depending on its mood. I told you, there’s no treasure there for you.”

  “I know,” Anne said, “but she wants me there.”

  26

  The Empress

  Charleston, South Carolina

  May 23, 1871

  Maude saw herself on the wrecked floor of the mansion. She was looking down on her own body, covered in plaster, crumbling stone and blood. She felt very calm, though, and it didn’t seem to bother her that her body was no longer breathing. An ever-widening pool of her blood spread out from her body.

  There was a warm, brilliant light above her and then all around her as she floated higher and higher. She could only vaguely make out the details of the room anymore, could barely hear Amadia’s voice calling to her as she knelt by Maude’s body.

  She was in the radiance outside the Record again. Another presence was there with her, but whoever it was stayed at a distance. Maude couldn’t make out the other’s features. A woman’s voice spoke to her.

  “Your heart is stopping, Maude,” the woman said. “You are at the doorstep of death.”

  “Yes,” Maude said. “Who are you?”

  “I want to try to help you,” the woman said. She sounded like she was Maude’s age, her voice strong and clear. “Do you remember when Gran Bonnie buried you alive in that tiny cave with all the heavy rocks placed over the opening?

  “No,” Maude said. “I don’t think so.”

  “I’m not surprised, it was horrible. You cried and had nightmares for months afterward. She said it was part of a Buddhist ritual to help you understand death. You were in there for forty-nine days. Try to remember, Maude, please, it’s important.”

  There was something happening to Maude’s mind. The memories of her life, her experiences were slipping loose from their emotional contexts. It was like being in a gallery of living sculptures, each memory an event that Maude could look at now, divorced of feeling.

  “Yes,” Maude said, and she tasted the cold, crumbly dirt on her lips. Her hands couldn’t reach her mouth to brush it away. The bone-aching cold that turned to numb pain and eventually went beyond pain. She felt the bugs crawling over her skin, her eyes, in her nose, biting, feeding on her in tiny portions. “I was twelve.”

  Maude had a stray thought that she hadn’t had in decades: perhaps she was still in that grave, and all these years of living had been a brief hallucination brought on by a starving mind, clawing for anything to keep it sane in the unfeeling darkness.

  “No,” the woman in the light said, “it’s all been real.”

  “That’s only true if you’re real,” Maude said. “I can’t see you very well. Who are you?”

  “Right now I need you to please trust me,” the woman said. “We know each other, but there are no good memories of me to build an image for you. Maude, you have to begin using the exercises Gran taught you to survive in the grave; you have to slow your breathing, slow your heartbeat, slow your blood flow. If you don’t, you will die. Please! You can do this!”

  It was hard to feel the connection to her body anymore, and her mind, her memories were crystallizing as part of the Record, merging with all the other lives, other memories that touched upon her own, those who had already passed on. Gran’s vast life crashed over her like a wave and she nearly drowned in it. She saw … things … understood things, if only she could hang on to them, like revelations born of dream and lost in a waking haze.

  “Maude Claire!” the woman in the light said, her voice forceful, powerful, but not angry. “Focus on your body now! Slow it, Maude, slow it as you were taught. The cells, the nerves, they are still working, still alive. Lilith’s blood is still trying to help you endure this. Fight, Maude, fight!”

  She willed her body to slow to a metabolic crawl. It was easy this close to death; the trick was to keep all the systems working, moving, providing a sip of oxygen to her cells, to her brain, slow … slow … almost stopped … there. Her life balanced on the edge of a single ragged breath.

  “Good, Maude, very good,” the woman in the light said. “I know it was hard to get moving, to keep moving, but you have to
, darling. You must. Now you’re going to do a little trick that’s in the Record, you can do it, it’s easy. Your heart has stopped, and we need to get it going again. You are conserving oxygen and keeping your brain alive, but we must get the heart going again. Do you understand?”

  “Yes,” Maude said. “I can almost see you, can you come closer?”

  “I can’t, love,” the woman said. “This is all you have of me to work through. I’m sorry, I dearly wish there was more. I’m thankful you have this bit, though, that some part of you hung onto a tiny piece of me.

  “Maude, a Daughter named Khutuln perfected a technique to restart her heart when she was poisoned by an enemy. We’re going to take the subtle fluid, the electricity in your brain cells and in your nerves and we’re going to agitate it and use it to shock your heart back into beating. There is a tiny charge in every cell in your brain, Maude. I need you to direct the slow-moving blood to your brain and then concentrate on sending a bolt of lightning from your mind to your heart. You can do this.”

  “I’ve never, I don’t understand how,” Maude said.

  “No,” the woman said, “but Khutuln does. So find her in the Record, follow the trail of the Mother’s blood like a burning red road. Find her, and talk to her, train with her. Time is nearly meaningless here. Find her … She can teach you how to wake up your heart.”

  Maude found the pulsing thread of the blood, glowing like a hot brand, twisting and turning all throughout the record of human life. She followed, and drifted past so many Daughters she never knew of—Tomoe Gozen, Pantea, Arteshbod, Onomaris, Boudica—until she found Khutuln, a warrior princess of the line of the great Khan, Genghis.