The Destined Queen

by Deborah Hale

  “There.” She set down the cup. “Now, quickly, tell me the words.”

  His handsome countenance alight with satisfaction, Delyon lifted the scroll in one hand and the glowing greenfire twig in the other. Then he spoke a word or two in a language that sounded both foreign and vaguely familiar.

  “Repeat after me,” he prompted Maura.

  She chanted the strange words after him. Already the storeroom and Delyon looked farther away than they had an instant ago, as if she were retreating from them.

  Time seemed to slow and thicken around her, like sap over a moonmoth that lingered too long on the trunk of a hillpine. While she still had control of her voice, she fixed her dwindling concentration on the vital task of echoing Delyon’s words.

  “Well done!” he cried after what seemed like hours of the most difficult mental effort Maura had ever undertaken. His voice sounded distant, muffled and very slow. “I pray you will find what you seek within yourself.”

  Was she still sitting up? Maura wondered. Or had she crumpled to the floor? She could not feel her body, at least not in the way she was accustomed to. It was as if the spell had loosened the connection between her spirit and her physical form. Now her body seemed like a large empty shell over which she had no control. Was it taking in air? Was her heart beating?

  At least her ears still worked, after a fashion.

  Delyon’s voice reached her, echoing down a long tunnel that seemed to be growing longer and narrower with every word. “I hope you can hear me, Maura. I am holding you, but your body seems frozen.”

  The faint quaver of doubt in his voice chilled her.

  “Sink down into the depths of your memories,” Delyon’s distant voice urged her. “See what you can find there.”

  Poised between battling the potent forces that gripped her or surrendering to them, Maura sensed she must free herself from the reassuring ties of consciousness if she ever hoped to find the answers she sought. Releasing her fierce hold on her last link with the outer world, she plunged into a swirling, rushing darkness that shimmered around her.

  Color engulfed her in a thousand hues, each luminous strand flickering to the strange music of a thousand melodies that wove themselves into a soft, warm blanket of fragrant, delicious harmony. For a time, Maura forgot her mission, and almost everything else, as she reveled in this sweet, fluid mingling of pure sensation.

  Then she found herself thinking how perfect this endless moment would be if only Rath were here to share it with her. The only other time she had experienced anything remotely like this had been at the pinnacle of their lovemaking.

  All at once, she could picture Rath with an aching clarity far sharper than memory. His warm, wry chuckle caressed her as his whisker-stubbled cheek rasped against her face, redolent with the familiar scent of smoke and leather. When he turned his dark gaze upon her, it glowed with long-denied love and hard-won trust. Maura subsided into the haven of his embrace with a mute sigh of bliss.

  “Remember what you came here to do,” he whispered. “What only you can do.”

  This was not the real Rath, Maura reminded herself, pleasant as it would be to tarry here and pretend it was. Reluctantly she let go of him and slipped deeper into…wherever she was.

  Sorsha appeared—merry-eyed and bursting with innocent gossip from the village. Then Langbard strode out of their cottage, his blue robe swirling about his feet as the distant aroma of herbs wafted from the preparing room.

  “Don’t be frightened,” said Sorsha. “Think what an adventure this will be! I wish I could come with you.”

  Maura wished so, too. No feat would be quite as daunting if she had Sorsha’s courage and good sense to rely upon.

  Langbard cupped her cheek with a worn, loving hand. “Keep searching, but be careful.”

  Battling the urge to cling to him, Maura wandered on until she found herself in the bedchamber that had once belonged to her. Her mother gazed up at her from the bed, an exquisite face ravaged by illness, exhaustion and heartbreak.

  “What a fine young woman you have grown to be,” she whispered. “I knew Langbard would not let me down.”

  Maura longed to stay and ply her mother with all the questions she had hoarded in her heart since childhood. But Dareth Woodbury waved her on. “Another time, my sweet. Now you have work to do. Go with my blessing. But go quickly and do not dally where you have no business.”

  Before she could ask what that meant, Maura found herself enveloped in a swirl of snow. Just then a slender figure lurched toward her from out of the shadows. The hood fell back to reveal her mother’s red-brown hair and haunted gaze. This time she did not seem to recognize Maura.

  “Help me, please,” she gasped. “I do not deserve to live…but take pity on my child.”

  With those words she swooned into Maura’s arms.

  “Langbard!” Maura heard herself call. “Help! Please!”

  She kept calling until Langbard appeared, bearing a lantern and looking younger than he had only a moment ago.

  “I will see to her.” He set down his lantern on top of a shorn tree trunk and hefted Maura’s mother into his arms. “Keep going. You have far to travel and not much time.”

  She watched him leave, wanting to follow, but two long strides carried him out of her view and she found herself peering into a dimly lit cavern. Against the flickering glow of a small fire, a man and woman clung together in an embrace Maura recognized as hungry passion. The sight of it made her long for Rath with fresh urgency.

  She tried to draw back, embarrassed to spy upon them in such an intimate moment. The man had his back to her, his head covered by a hood, so she could tell nothing about him except his towering height. But the rich red-brown cascade of the woman’s hair drew Maura’s gaze even as she tried to look away. The woman seemed to sense her presence, for she stirred from her lover’s embrace and cast a furtive glance toward the mouth of the cavern. Her eyes widened and her features contorted in a look of alarm.

  Mother? No question it was her. Which must mean the man with his back to Maura…

  Before she could move to get a better view of Vaylen, her mother broke from their embrace and dashed toward Maura. “Go! This is not what you are looking for!”

  True, it was not what she’d been sent to discover, but it was something she’d been desperately curious about her whole life. Maura tried to peek past her mother for a glimpse of the man as he turned toward her.

  “No!” Her mother pushed her backward, sending her tumbling deeper into the well of her memories.

  More and more swiftly the scenes shifted as she visited events in the lives of her foremothers. It felt like what she had experienced during the ritual of passing with Langbard, only faster and more intense.

  Knowledge that had slumbered unsuspected within her suddenly woke to life. Maura struggled to make a place for it all. Bits of spells and lore Langbard had never taught her now became hers to call upon.

  She would like to have taken the time to absorb it more slowly, but some powerful force beyond her control drew her deeper.

  “So, one has come at last.” With those muffled, echoing words, a richly robed woman held her hand out to Maura.

  She wore the carved ivory circlet Maura recalled from her crowning ceremony over a tumble of thick dark curls. “Abrielle?”

  The woman nodded. Her features were not those of a great beauty, but of a strong ruler who had learned courage and wisdom from the harsh lessons of adversity.

  “Come, daughter. You have not much time.” She beckoned Maura to follow her. “And the need must be great if you have risked this search to find me.”

  Maura followed the long-dead queen through archways and chambers of a castle she had never seen before, but which looked hauntingly familiar. They descended a steep staircase and made their way down one long, dim hallway, then another. At length, Abrielle opened a hidden door and led Maura through a narrow passage to a cavernous room full of tall straight columns. Or was it a grove of
towering trees?

  Suddenly, the Staff of Velorken appeared before her. It looked as tall as a man, its shaft of tawny wood carved with ancient symbols like those on Delyon’s scroll. The top of the staff had been carved from ivory, now yellowed with age. The head of a sunhawk had been crafted with such skill Maura half expected its glittering golden eyes to blink and its beak to open with a shrill, piercing cry.

  Abrielle held the staff out to Maura. “Make certain it is wielded with care, my daughter. Wishes can be powerful and dangerous things.”

  As she reached toward the staff, Maura felt herself borne away, over miles and years and through lives. She heard a voice calling her name.

  “Can you hear me, Maura?” Each word grew louder, closer, more distinct. And more anxious. “Have you found anything yet? Maura? Perhaps you had better come back…if you can.”

  The packed dirt of the floor felt hard and cool beneath her, and the beat of her heart, faint but steady. She sucked in a deep breath of the cellar’s musty air. Her eyelids fluttered and she glimpsed Delyon’s face, his features clenched with alarm.

  She whispered his name.

  “Thank the Giver!” Delyon expelled a deep sigh. “You were so still for so long, I feared you might be…Was it as I said? Did you uncover those buried memories? Did you find out where the staff is hidden?”

  “I…think so.” It took a great focus of will to make her mouth form the words. “I saw it. Deep under…the castle. In a grove of…tall trees.”

  All the newly wakened memories swirled in Maura’s mind, hampering the proper movement of her thoughts. Her head felt as if it might burst to contain all the new knowledge that flooded her thoughts—the way the melting snow of spring made the waters of the Windle swell and churn.

  “Under?” repeated Delyon. “Are you certain? We have scoured the lower levels of the palace for days now. And what did you mean about tall trees? There are no trees under the ground.”

  Maura lurched to her feet, not certain what made her rise or where she intended to go. “I recognized the place…parts of it. At least I thought I did.”

  Perhaps if she went out now, while what she’d seen was still fresh in her thoughts, she could find it. She shuffled toward the door and pulled it open. Wandering out into the dim passageway, she searched for anything she had glimpsed in her memory-vision of Queen Abrielle. In a daze she turned this way and that, paying no mind to her direction. Behind her she heard Delyon calling her name in a frantic whisper, but she did not answer.

  Meaning to turn, she stumbled into a shallow alcove off one of the passages. As she paused a moment, trying to recover her bearings, a sliver of light caught her eye. It shone through the corner of one sidewall.

  Maura reached toward it. But when her hand made contact with the stubbled stone of the wall, it met only the slightest resistance. She pushed. The chink of light widened. Where had she seen a false sidewall like this before? In her vision? Perhaps…

  She pushed harder and the false wall swung inward on quiet hinges to reveal a steep stairway. Though they did not look like the stairs down which Abrielle had led her, Maura followed them just the same. Any hidden passage must lead somewhere important.

  Hemmed by solid stone walls on each side, the steps led deep into the bowels of the earth beneath the palace. At intervals, small hollows held clear crystals that glowed just brightly enough to light her way. After making two sharp turns, the stairs ended in a chamber that looked to have been hewn out of solid rock.

  A giant crystal, which might have been the parent to the ones that lit the stairs, rose from the middle of the floor. Like them, it gave off a pale glow, but not a steady one. Rather it pulsed in an irregular rhythm. A man stood with his back to her, his hands pressed against two facets of the crystal. He wore the black robe and hood of the Echtroi.

  Maura’s daze had lifted enough that she knew how dangerous it would be to linger here. Stifling a gasp of dismay, she turned to flee. At least she tried to.

  Something forced her gaze to linger on the death-mage. A wrenching sense of familiarity haunted her and she could not think why. In the past months she had seen more of his ilk than she would have wanted to in a lifetime. In those dark robes, hoods and masks, one looked much like another. Why did she sense a particular connection with this one?

  It did not matter. She must get away. The Staff of Velorken was not here. Not in this chamber. Not anywhere in this palace. The certainty of it jolted Maura.

  Then a hand settled on her shoulder.

  She screamed and ran from whatever had crept up behind her.

  A shudder went through the death-mage and his hands parted from the crystal as if they had been pushed away. He spun about and his gaze locked on her.

  He could see her! Maura did not need to glance down at herself to know the invisibility spell must be fading, exposing the first ghostly view of her to enemy eyes.

  Even as she fumbled to reach the pocket of her sash that held the last of her genow scales, Maura feared it would do no good.

  She was trapped in this small space with someone who had seen her. If he set his mind to catch her, she would not be able to evade him for long. Especially if he called for aid.

  But the death-mage did not.

  Instead, the gaunt features visible below his mask contorted in a look that might have been fear.

  “Dareth?” The word retched out of him as he took a stumbling step toward Maura. “Why do you haunt me?”

  17

  W hich staggered her more? Hearing her mother’s name from the mouth of a death-mage…or realizing that he had spoken in Hanish, yet she could understand his words?

  Marshaling her wits from the shock, Maura pulled a tiny pinch of powered scale from her sash and concentrated on recalling the incantation. If the death-mage tried to capture her, she would not make it easy for him.

  She knew the instant she disappeared again. Not because she felt any different, but by the way the death-mage staggered back, his pale eyes widened with alarm that even his sinister cowl could not disguise. Just to be certain, she took a step to the side. But his gaze did not waver from the spot where she’d been standing before.

  His hands began to tremble and he sank to his knees. “I am not going mad. I am not going mad!”

  He seemed to cling to those words, as if they were a slippery rope suspended high above Raynor’s Rift.

  But how could she understand them, Maura wondered, when he had spoken in Hanish? Did she truly grasp his meaning or was her mind playing tricks on her? One thing she knew without doubt, though it puzzled her as much as any uncertainty—the death-mage had called her by her mother’s name. Why?

  Her deeply ingrained sense of caution told her to fly while she had the chance. Remembering the hand she’d felt on her shoulder, she glanced toward the stairs with fresh alarm. But no one was there. Had she only imagined it?

  With no obvious threat, curiosity got the better of her wariness.

  “What is Dareth to you?” she whispered, amazed and mildly disgusted to hear her words come out in Hanish. “What did you do to her that she should haunt you?”

  Killed the father of her child? Tortured him to death before her eyes? Broken her spirit and her will?

  When the death-mage lifted his head to gaze in the direction of her voice, Maura moved again—nearer the stairs this time, in case she needed to make a fast escape.

  “What did I do to her?” The death-mage staggered to his feet. “Ask what she did to me. Bewitched me, then betrayed me!”

  Betrayed? Maura shook her head. Perhaps she did not understand Hanish after all.

  “Fool that I was to be taken in by her lowling wiles.” His gaze swept the room. “I am going mad. First seeing Dareth, now hearing voices. Worse yet, answering their cursed questions!”

  He turned and fled up the stairs as if chased by something more terrifying than Maura could imagine. Half against her will, she followed. The death-mage’s answer had not satisfied her curiosity—on
ly roused it more. With the image of her mother so fresh in her mind from her vision, she could not let it go until she had found out more…somehow.

  Halfway up the stairs she slammed into something solid and warm. Before she could cry out, Delyon’s voice calmed her, though he sounded anything but calm himself. “We must stop the Echtroi before he tells anyone what he saw! I tried, just now, but he pushed me away. You go back and fetch the staff. I will follow him.”

  “There is no staff here.” Maura shook off Delyon’s hand and continued up the stairs. “Not in this chamber. Not in the whole palace. I doubt the death-mage will tell anyone what he saw. He thinks he’s going mad.”

  “How do you know?” Delyon’s voice followed her. “What did you say to him? I thought you could not speak Hanish.”

  “I couldn’t until you put me in that trance.”

  At the top of the steps, the false wall hung agape. At the end of the cellar passage, Maura spotted the death-mage scrambling up from his knees. He must have tripped and fallen in his haste.

  “If the staff is not here,” whispered Delyon behind her, “then where is it?”

  “I think I know,” Maura called as she raced down the passage. “Go back to the storeroom. I will join you shortly and explain everything. But there is something I must do first.”

  Hitching up her skirts, she sprinted after the death-mage. Perhaps he heard her footsteps behind him, for he kept turning to glance back.

  On he ran and Maura followed, gradually gaining ground. When a young night guard issued a challenge and barred the death-mage’s way, she almost barreled into them both, but managed to curb her headlong rush at the last moment.

  “Out of my way, fool!” barked the death-mage. “I…have urgent news for the High Governor.”

  “Your pardon, great one—” the guard stepped aside “—but the High Governor’s quarters are that way.” He pointed in the opposite direction.

  As Maura caught her breath, trying to be quiet about it, she marveled at being able to comprehend the two men’s exchange in Hanish. Their tones and gestures matched so perfectly with what she supposed they were saying, she could no longer doubt her sudden baffling ability.