Chaos Queen--Fear the Stars (Chaos Queen 4)

by Christopher Husberg

  And a man, head bowed, sitting still on the stone. After a few moments, when the forest around was silent but for the chirp of crickets and the distant sound of the few Odenites still awake, chatting and singing at firesides, the man slid down from the rock, and moved into the forest.

  It would be difficult to see what happened in the forest, given the darkness and the foliage cover, but anyone watching from a distance would have seen a man, average height, lean and muscular, features shadowed by darkness, trudge directly into the woods, neither searching for nor following a path, his boots crunching on leaves, twigs, and other detritus.

  Moments passed.

  Then, the crunching sound of boots on leaves and dead wood once more. The foliage parted, but the person who walked back into the clearing toward the Odenite camp was very different than the man who had walked out moments before.

  A woman, hair long and the color of spun gold, tall, with bright, piercing blue eyes. She seemed to carry her own light with her, her features much more discernible than the man’s had been. Nothing like the glow of the young girl’s eyes, of course, but a soft, faint radiance, hardly noticeable except in contrast to the previous man’s dark form. She wore a simple, light blue dress, and a long dark blue cloak, the hood down around her shoulders.

  “Canta forgive me,” the woman whispered, as she walked back toward the Odenite camp.

  But, of course, there was no one around to hear it, or to see her, and the night was none the wiser.

  41

  ASTRID CREPT THROUGH THE underbrush, keeping to the tree line. The gleam of her eyes would give her away if she moved out into the open, but she knew well how to use the shadows to her advantage.

  But when she reached the clifftop, Astrid stopped in disbelief. The tiellan army was gone. The camp that had once held over two thousand tiellan Rangers had been reduced to waste.

  Had the Legion gotten the drop on the tiellans? Perhaps someone had done her job for her. But there was no sign of combat; if anything, it appeared like the tiellans had simply… left. No tents remained, no bedrolls, fires had been extinguished. They’d left the siege engines: the colossal trebuchet had been dismantled, but the others—a few smaller trebuchets and a ballista or two—remained intact. And, curiously, the tiellans had left weapons: swords, axes, shields, and spears littered the ground—hundreds of them.

  Why would the tiellans depart—and leave so many of their weapons behind? They were winning the war, despite their small numbers. This must be a ruse, to lull Triah into a false sense of security before thrusting the knife deeper. But if that were the case, surely they had underestimated the Khalic Legion. And anyway, she could not imagine anything more devastating than their attack on the Eye. Why dismantle such a weapon?

  Then she noticed a figure standing alone, near the cliff’s edge. A woman, with a single long, thick, loosely tied dark braid trembling in the wind. Astrid had not seen Winter since that day in Izet, but her form was unmistakable.

  Astrid tensed. Whether the rest of the tiellans were here or not—and why they might have left—was beyond her, now. All that mattered was that Winter was alone. Unprotected.

  Her claws extended to their full length. She had not brought any other weapons, but she did not need them. With any luck, this would only take a moment.

  Astrid sprang into a sprint, but even as she did so, doubt clouded her mind. Knot had given her permission, but what did that really mean? Permission to do something she hated the idea of doing in the first place? What good did that do her?

  And what did her good matter when so many lives were at stake? Winter had proven her unpredictability; she had proven her disdain for life. Whether it was frost or Winter’s own nature no longer mattered. Winter was a threat to the Sfaera itself.

  Or she was a woman driven to the edge, fighting for what she believed was right. Funny how Knot actually giving her his permission was what made Astrid question the act all the more.

  Hadn’t Astrid proved her own disdain for life, many times over? Who was she to pass judgment on someone else for that reason? She had gone for decades completely past feeling, not caring who she killed or why. But, at some point, that had changed. She had started to care. She had started to regret what she had done. She had begun to seek redemption.

  What stopped Winter from experiencing the same change?

  Something was not right, she knew it as she ran. Winter should have noticed her by now. But Astrid was committed now, flying too fast and powerfully to stop, all of the momentum of the past few days—of the past few years—behind her, propelling her, and she leapt at Winter, claws extended, ready to make the kill.

  Everything stopped.

  Or, at least, Astrid did: she hung frozen in midair, claws extended toward Winter’s neck. She struggled against the force that held her, but none of her muscles responded. Even her eyes refused to move, locked straight ahead on her prey.

  “Hello, Astrid,” Winter said. Her voice was… small, as if she were speaking from the bottom of a very deep hole. “You may know that telesis is not able to move living things.” She turned slowly, observing the razor-sharp claw so close to her neck. She met Astrid’s frozen gaze. “But then, vampires are not living things, so we are told. And telesis seems to have some effect on you, wouldn’t you say?”

  Astrid managed a low moan. She strained her muscles, but it was as if they were no longer her own; they refused her commands, and she remained there, stationary, levitating above the clifftop. Winter began pacing a slow circle around her.

  Beyond her alarm and confusion, Astrid was not afraid. There was no animosity in Winter’s dark eyes. But, as Winter came to stand in front of her once more, she did see fear in the tiellan. Astrid had learned, over the years, decades, and centuries, to recognize fear. The quickening of the pulse, dilated pupils, the sheen on her skin—and a particular smell that accompanied fear-sweat, something sickly sweet, almost as intoxicating to her as the smell of blood. But beyond all of those things, there was something else altogether that she had learned to sense: a change in the air around someone who became afraid, dark and crackling and volatile. Astrid sensed it all around Winter.

  Winter had Astrid at her mercy; what in Oblivion did she have to fear?

  “I will not kill you,” Winter said. “I know how much you mean to him.”

  Astrid dropped to the ground, her muscles suddenly back under her control. She fell in an undignified heap with a short squeal. She jumped up, dusting herself off. She didn’t pounce. Her appetite for murder had gone.

  “Do what you came here to do, Astrid. I have to imagine Knot would condone it, given my last conversation with him.”

  Astrid didn’t move.

  “Do it,” Winter’s voice cracked. The fear that Astrid sensed around the woman grew.

  Do it. This was what she had come here to do, after all. Kill Winter Cordier, the Chaos Queen. End the conflict, hopefully save the Odenites and countless lives in the process.

  And yet, she hesitated.

  “Do it,” Winter said again, her voice wavering but louder.

  Astrid took a step forward, one clawed hand flexing. “You… want this?”

  “Kill me.” Winter raised her chin, baring her neck.

  Astrid could sense the blood pumping beneath Winter’s skin, could almost smell the sickly sweetness of it… but it was hardly a temptation.

  Her claws slowly contracted.

  Winter noticed, and her fear and anger grew still more. “Do what you came here to do! Kill me!”

  Slowly, Astrid shook her head. “I’m not going to do that,” she said quietly, not even sure if Winter heard her.

  “You want to make me suffer? Fine. Torture me? Fine. Just do it, Astrid. End it.”

  End it.

  “I…” Astrid hesitated. “Winter, I know what you mean to Knot. I cannot do this to him. It doesn’t matter whether he agreed or not; if Knot won’t be selfish once in a while, someone has to do it for him.”

  �
�I can’t live any longer,” Winter gasped. “I can’t be this. I don’t want to be what I am.”

  Astrid, for all the anger she felt at the injustices to the Odenites, to the innocent lives lost, could understand that much, at least.

  “And… what do you think you are?” Astrid asked.

  “A murderer.”

  “You’ve killed a lot of people,” Astrid said.

  “And I deserve to die.”

  Don’t we all?

  “You have all this power,” Astrid said. “You’ve become a leader. You’ve caused all this pain, you’ve felt all this pain, and yet you don’t know the first thing about it.”

  “What do you know about my pain?”

  “I’ve felt pain, too. If you think you’re alone in that, you’re mad.”

  “But—”

  “Yes, just like you’ve felt it,” Astrid said, anticipating her protestation. “Believe it or not, Winter, there are a lot of people who have lost fathers, mothers, husbands, friends. A lot of people who’ve lost themselves to addiction, or felt trapped. A lot of people who felt helpless in the face of oppression. None of this is new. This is life. Some people take their entire lives to figure it out; others never get there at all.”

  And it takes some people a few lifetimes, Astrid realized.

  “But if you can,” Astrid said, “Then your life is worth saving. Even if you think it’s just a possibility, then you’re worth keeping around.”

  Winter looked down at her hands, her face pale, eyes dark.

  Oblivion take it, Astrid thought, and moved toward the woman. Perhaps she moved too quickly, because Winter started, her head snapping up to look at Astrid, perhaps thinking she had changed her mind, that she actually was going to kill her.

  Surprise, bitch. Tentatively—Astrid was not about to throw her arms around the woman, this wasn’t exactly a family reunion—Astrid took Winter’s hand. Winter stared at their hands, her dark eyes wide, Astrid’s small fingers holding hers. Astrid squeezed once, and then Winter’s facade—the one Astrid had hqqqoped was there, had hoped she could penetrate— finally crumbled, and she began to cry.

  “I understand,” Astrid said, and she meant it.

  Winter pulled Astrid in toward her. Astrid felt the woman’s arms around her, and stood there uncomfortably for a moment before she made herself return Winter’s embrace.

  They remained that way for a long time—Goddess, at least it felt like a long time to Astrid, but when she looked up, the hazy bright spot in the clouds where she knew the moon hung in the sky had hardly moved at all.

  “So,” Astrid said, extricating herself from Winter’s arms, “now that we’ve decided neither of us is going to kill the other, I have to ask you something.”

  Winter laughed, but the sound still seemed forced, sad, and she wiped some of the tears from her cheeks.

  “Erm… what happened to the rest of the tiellans?” Astrid asked.

  Winter looked back at the tiellan camp vaguely. For a moment Astrid wondered whether she’d noticed the other tiellans had left at all.

  Winter pursed her lips. “I might have made a poor choice,” she said.

  Astrid frowned. Don’t make me regret not killing you.

  “I sent them away.”

  “Away where?”

  “I did not specify. I simply told them they could not be here.”

  “And why did you send them away?”

  But Winter was looking over Astrid’s shoulder.

  “You need to leave, Astrid.”

  Approaching from the forest was a tiellan man, perhaps a few years Winter’s senior, leading three humans: a noblewoman with a pink bow in her hair, a tall, sinewy elderly man with sunken eyes, and a very old woman with long wiry hair, who muttered to herself as she walked.

  An odd assortment, indeed.

  Winter’s aura of fear had grown even larger, spreading out from her like an ocean, flowing in every direction.

  And, Astrid was surprised to find, she felt a twinge of fear, too.

  There are daemons even daemons fear.

  “Go, Astrid. I must handle this myself.”

  Winter meant what she said. Without thinking of refusing, Astrid bolted east, along the cliff face, carefully avoiding the strange group.

  She did not look back.

  42

  WINTER TURNED AWAY FROM the green blur of Astrid’s eyes as she streaked away in the darkness. She had Daemons to face.

  Ghian came first, his visage torn between Azael’s terrible smile and Ghian’s own terrified, pale mask.

  “You are doing the right thing, Winter,” Azael told her. Ghian whimpered, but Azael shut that down quickly. “This is how you become the hero the Sfaera needs.”

  “Let’s get this over with,” Winter said. She didn’t look directly at Azael after that first glance. The dark, burning skull, even after all this time, still terrified her, although it also filled her with an immense sadness.

  But now she saw more movement behind Azael-Ghian and their followers. Four more humans emerged from the trees: a short merchant, his eyes shifting back and forth, a beautiful woman with thick red hair, a hugely fat fellow, and a Cantic priestess, her robes soiled and filthy, her brown hair disheveled in a frizzy halo about her face. When they saw the priestess, the noblewoman and the tall, wiry man grabbed her by the arms, holding her tightly between them.

  “What is this?” the priestess said, blinking, as if she had just awoken from a dream. Her eyes came to rest on Winter. “Who are you? Where am I?”

  Her gaze must have taken in the lights of the city far below behind Winter, and her eyes widened.

  “Goddess, are we on the Cliffs of Litori? Are you taking me to the Chaos Queen? Please, she wouldn’t want anything from me, I can—”

  “That’s enough,” Winter said, stepping forward.

  “I give the orders here,” Ghian said, but she ignored him and looked at the others, the seven who seemed to have no qualm with being here, atop the Cliffs of Litori, at night, with the Chaos Queen herself. She could guess who they were, pieced together from what her experience, research and spies had told her: they were avatars. The tall, elderly man would be Hade, defeated on the island of Arro almost an entire year ago. The mumbling woman was Nadir, defeated in Maven Kol only months before. Between the fat man and the merchant, one of them must be Iblin and the other Samann. The beautiful woman was Estille, and between the noblewoman and the Cantic priestess, one would be Bazlamit, and the other Luceraf, but she was not sure which.

  “This is all of you?” Winter asked. She couldn’t help but notice there were only eight of them; perhaps Mefiston’s death had been final, after all.

  “They are all here,” Ghian said, his voice hard, the echo of Azael’s running beneath it.

  The priestess stared at Ghian. Perhaps she had heard the echo, too.

  “Our mistake was taking people of power as our avatars, thinking to use their stations and abilities,” Ghian said, but Azael’s voice grew more and more loud as he spoke, the deep, harsh sound of fire. “We failed multiple times, for that.” His eyes darted to the remains of the War Goddess. “And now we need a place of power, such as that—endowed only recently by you, my dear. And, by your leave, tiellan blood, from a tiellan queen.”

  Winter drew a dagger from her belt, and the noblewoman whimpered. Also at her belt was a pouch full of faltira, nine crystals to be exact. She hoped that would be enough.

  Ghian looked at her expectantly. The old muttering woman could hardly focus on anything at all, while the old man’s eyes were completely unreadable, sunken into the dark pits below his forehead. Winter half-wondered whether Hade had eyes at all.

  She closed her eyes.

  Chaos was there, huge and black. A shiver ran down Winter’s spine. She tried to mask the quake it sent through her body.

  When she opened her eyes, Ghian was no longer smiling.

  “If you do not do this, we will find someone—”

  “I’ll do
it.” She raised the dagger. The priestess cowered as Winter recited the words Ghian had taught her.

  “My blood for the blood of Aratraxia. My blood pays the price of passage, from their realm to ours.” She slid the blade across her palm. “My blood for the blood of Aratraxia.” She smeared the blood along the noblewoman’s forehead.

  “Yes,” Ghian said, but the voice was completely Azael’s now, echoing over the cliff face.

  Winter turned to Ghian, and ran her bloody palm along his forehead, too. She caught a flash of Ghian—just Ghian, not Azael—and saw his eyes darken with horror, but there was nothing she could do for him. She did the same for each person there, the looks on their faces ranging from anticipation to confusion, to terror.

  Nine of them in total, including the frightened priestess.

  The moment she smeared her blood along the forehead of the last person—the priestess—the air around her crackled and sparked, but with light and heat that she could neither see nor feel.

  Bursts of dark light surrounded her, issuing forth from each person. The priestess screamed, a few of the others moaned, but the faces of the rest were silent, contorted masks. Ghian’s eyes pleaded without words, until blackness completely took them over. His mouth opened wider and wider, and inside housed neither tongue nor flesh, but a gaping, horrific darkness. Ghian’s jaw snapped and his mouth expanded, far past the point it should be humanly possible.

  The darkness swallowed Ghian whole, and in his place towered the cloaked figure of Azael, the Fear Lord.

  His cloak was of a deep, infinite darkness that consumed everything that came near it, absorbing the light that filtered down from the overcast night sky above and the city below. The cloak fell in long jagged torrents over Azael’s arms, spilling to the ground in a black mist.

  When Winter had seen Azael before, his presence had been closer to a nightmare than reality. Now she felt the same unreasoning, unstoppable fear and knew it was real, a relentless weight threatening to crush her into the ground, into the cliffs below her, or an impossible heavy blanket that had just been thrown over her, dragging her down and down into the earth below.