The Queen of Sorrow

by Sarah Beth Durst

  Getting to his feet, Bayn growled.

  Shooting the wolf a look, Renet said in a sharper voice, “Llor, come back right now.”

  “But, Father, I’m fine! I can do this—”

  An air spirit dove through the canopy. Its leathery wings hit the branches, knocking off bright red, orange, and yellow leaves that swirled in its wake. Seeing a flash of a long, sharp beak, Bayn bounded across the branch toward Llor.

  Llor was screaming when Bayn plowed into him, knocking into his stomach so that the boy tumbled over him onto the wolf’s back. He felt wind from above as the spirit hurtled toward them. Launching himself forward, Bayn crashed down hard on the end of the branch.

  Crackle, crackle . . .

  Crack!

  They fell.

  The spirit’s talons brushed his fur, just missing them. The boy was screaming, but Bayn landed in a crouch on the branch below and was running a second later.

  Above, though, the girl was in danger.

  Hoping the boy had the sense to hang on tight—and from the grip around his neck, Bayn thought that yes, he did—the wolf leaped from branch to branch until he was back up to where they’d been having their picnic. Erian was jabbing at the spirit with her knife while her father was pounding on its back with a branch the size of his arm.

  The spirit pivoted its head and snapped its bladelike beak at Renet. The man stumbled backward, and then his foot stepped onto open air, beyond the branch. He fell, arms flailing, screaming his daughter’s name as the air spirit turned back to Erian.

  Bayn had a quick decision: save the girl or save the man.

  It was a simple choice.

  You save pups.

  Always save the pups, for they cannot save themselves.

  He barreled toward Erian. As soon as they reached her, Llor slid off Bayn’s back into his sister’s arms, and the wolf launched himself at the air spirit.

  The spirit was twice his size, with that vicious beak and talons. But Bayn was fast, strong, and far more intelligent. He feinted for its neck and then clamped hard on the tendons in its wing, ripping backward as the air spirit pulled away. He tasted its blood—crisp mountain air, the tang of pine, and the acrid bite of soil choked with stone. Not the usual taste of the spirits of Aratay.

  There was no time to consider what the odd flavor meant, however. Behind him, Erian cried, “Bayn, watch out!” Turning his head, he saw she was pointing at the sky.

  Five more spirits streaked toward them. Alone, he might have fought them, but he couldn’t risk Queen Naelin’s children. Baring his teeth, he crouched low and jerked his head, hoping the children understood what he wanted.

  They did. Llor and Erian climbed onto his back. As the air spirit he’d injured shrieked to the others, Bayn tensed all his muscles and then sprang away from the branch. He sailed through the air in a graceful arc, landing smoothly on a branch of the next tree—if anyone had been watching, they would have been shocked to see a wolf travel through the trees this way, but both Erian and Llor were too young and too scared to question it. He felt them through his back, shaking, tense, and terrified, but he didn’t dare pause to comfort them.

  He jumped from branch to branch while the spirits streaked through the air after them. Instantly, he knew he’d made a mistake—if he’d fled east toward where Queen Naelin was visiting Queen Daleina’s childhood village, Naelin would have known her children were in danger and could have compelled the spirits to stop, but instead he’d run west.

  Or more accurately, he’d been driven west.

  Maybe they’re not as stupid as I thought.

  And they were proving that. Every time he tried to switch direction, one of the spirits would cut him off. He raced down the trunk of a fallen tree and hit the forest floor. Running faster, he weaved between the bushes and the roots. Crying to one another, the spirits chased him, skimming over the bushes and zigzagging between the trunks. He saw one out of the corner of his eye, pacing him.

  No longer screaming, the children were whimpering into his fur. He smelled their fear in their sweat, and it made him run faster. He covered one mile, then two, then three, farther and farther from Naelin and safety.

  The spirits, he realized, were trying to trap him against the border of the untamed lands. He’d seen this hunting technique before. In fact, he’d used it himself.

  No one ever went into the untamed lands. Not even if they faced death. He’d taken down prey within inches of the border, tearing them to shreds when they’d stopped, terrified, their deeply ingrained fear of the untamed lands overwhelming their fear of a predator.

  And now he was the prey.

  He sensed the spirits, flanking him, so he dodged right. The children held on as he veered around the trunk of an oak tree and then plowed through the underbrush. Two spirits darted in front of him. He ran left. Another spirit shot forward, forcing him to swerve again.

  I am not fast enough, he realized.

  Soon, they’d have him corralled.

  Ahead, he caught a glimpse of the untamed lands. Through the branches, it looked like the haze above a waterfall. It shimmered and darkened, and Bayn had a brilliant and terrible idea. Switching directions, he did what no ordinary animal would do: he ran toward the border.

  Caught off-guard, his pursuers faltered for a moment before chasing after him.

  Once more, he heard the whimpers of Erian and Llor. He felt the crunch of fallen leaves beneath his paws. If I can just reach it, the spirits won’t dare follow. . . . Ahead, he saw the haze trembling and shifting as, beyond the borders of the known world, mountains rose and fell, trees sprouted and died, and streams flooded and dried. He heard Erian cry, “Bayn, no!”

  But before he could reach the border, two of the spirits broke from the others and attacked from above. He felt Erian and Llor being pulled from his back. He heard them scream. Pivoting, Bayn leapt and snarled, but the other four spirits closed around him.

  He was driven back, as the two spirits carried the screaming children up toward the canopy. Fighting, he tried to run after them—but it was impossible. The other spirits cut him off. He retreated, losing inch by inch, backing toward the untamed lands.

  As the two spirits carrying Erian and Llor burst through the canopy, he knew he’d lost. Oh, Great Mother, he prayed, I’m sorry my best was not good enough. And then to the children, he thought, Stay alive. Until we meet again.

  He broke off fighting and did the unthinkable.

  Turning, he ran without stopping, without slowing, without even hesitating. Behind him, he felt the spirits pull up short, watching, as he plunged into the untamed lands.

  And the haze closed around him.

  Chapter 4

  Another queen would have said yes.

  But Queen Naelin had no problem with saying no—not to her children when they asked for something ridiculous (such as “Mama, can we please climb to the top of the canopy without safety ropes or adult supervision, where we will imperil our lives by recklessly daring gravity until inevitably we plummet down, breaking all our bones on multiple branches before we crash onto the forest floor to be devoured by wolves, bears, and wolverines? Please, Mama?”).

  And certainly not to the villagers when they asked for her to summon spirits in order to build them a new library.

  “You can build one yourselves,” she told them. “You have hammers and nails.”

  Shifting in their seats, the villagers whispered to one another. Naelin raised her eyebrows at them, waiting for them to argue. She did not come all the way out to the farthest northwest corner of Aratay to add improvements to their already very nice trees.

  “Summoning spirits draws their attention,” she said, for what felt like the hundredth time.

  “Your Majesty, forgive us,” a woman began—she was younger than Naelin, with a baby swaddled against her hip. Judging by her pressed apron and the starched scarf holding back her hair, Naelin guessed she was the village laundress. Redleaf was larger than Naelin’s old home vill
age, which wasn’t saying much—East Everdale hadn’t been more than a few disparate huts tucked into the trees. Redleaf was large enough to have a laundress—not to mention a baker and its own schoolteacher—all housed within multiple trees that had been grown and shaped by candidates during the last heir trials, back before nearly all of them had been killed in the Coronation Massacre. Today, nearly a hundred villagers had squeezed themselves into the town meeting hall, a chamber hollowed out of the middle of the largest tree. “The spirits already know we’re here. Why not use them for good?” The laundress ducked her head and bobbed in a half curtsy. The baby at her hip gurgled. “Please forgive our presumption for asking.”

  Naelin waved her hand. “Nothing to forgive.” She was never going to get used to people groveling at her. It was ridiculous. Before Champion Ven had plucked her from her quiet, happy life, she’d been no different from them.

  Now, though, the crown she wore put distance between them.

  As did the power she could wield.

  But power came in many different forms, and in this case, it was more important to display restraint rather than give in to these ridiculous demands. She worked out a way to say that more . . . queenly.

  “It would be irresponsible of me to command the spirits for any reason but dire emergency,” Naelin explained patiently. “They’re conscious beings, not tools, and using them as tools only fuels their hatred of us. Do you truly want all the nearby spirits to hate you more?” Naelin fixed her gaze on the gurgling baby. “To hate your children more?”

  The laundress cradled her baby closer.

  One of the woodsmen, a grizzled older man with a scar that split his left eyebrow, shrugged. “Begging Your Majesty’s pardon, but we already live in constant danger. Be nice to live in constant comfort too. ’Sides, we can’t spend the manpower or supplies to build it ourselves. We aren’t city folk here. Everyone already does what we can. All we want is a little something special for the children.” He waved at the baby too, who cooed, unaware she’d been elevated to be the metaphorical stand-in for all the children of Redleaf. “You could do it, we heard. You don’t have problems like the other queen.”

  Naelin felt her eyebrows shoot up as she fixed him with the same look she gave her children when their mouths moved without consulting their brains.

  He was immediately shushed by the nearest villagers.

  “Long live Queen Daleina!” one shouted. And then quickly, “Long live Queen Naelin!”

  Naelin felt a headache form between her eyes. “I will consider it.”

  A few cheered. A few looked worried. Sweeping out of the town meeting hall, Queen Naelin fled as gracefully as she could. Outside the heart of the tree, she inhaled fresh air. Ven was waiting for her—he’d been standing guard outside while she met with the villagers.

  “Go well?” he asked mildly.

  “Shut up,” she told him.

  He grinned at her. “You’re their queen. In their eyes, you work a dozen miracles before breakfast and eat rogue spirits for lunch, on a crisp bed of lettuce.”

  “I expect that kind of behavior in the capital, where they can call on the queen anytime, but out here? So far from the palace, where help can’t come quickly?” She strode away from the hall, passing by the shops and market stalls that clustered on a platform in the center of the village. In a few minutes, she was beyond the town center, out on the thinner branches—homes dangled from them as well, a few built but most budded directly out of the tree itself, but it was blessedly quieter.

  “I thought you handled them well.” Ven still looked amused, and she wanted to wipe that little smirk off his face. He thought it was funny when the villagers treated her like some sort of all-powerful wish granter.

  “I didn’t stay firm.” When she was far enough that she could no longer hear the buzz of voices from the meeting hall, she plopped down on the branch. Her silk dress poofed around her. She flattened the skirts down and wished she’d worn more practical clothes. But the palace caretakers had insisted that she pack ridiculously voluminous dresses—skirts send a message, they said, that the queen is unafraid and will not flee from danger. People needed to see their queen in finery to help them feel safe. Absurd, she thought. No one is truly safe in Renthia.

  Amazingly, the head caretaker was somehow able to veto the queen, and now here she was, feeling like a fool. Acting like a fool.

  “You heard me. I don’t know what possessed me to say I’d think about it. Classic error.”

  “You could do it, you know,” Ven said, sitting beside her.

  She glared at him.

  He grinned broader.

  And Naelin laughed.

  She wasn’t even sure why she felt like laughing. Ven was just capable of making her happier simply by being with her. Leaning closer, she kissed him. He gathered her to him, his arms wrapping tight around her, and she clasped her hands together behind his neck. She felt his heartbeat through his shirt and hers. His mouth roved over her lips and down her neck as her fingers caressed his hair. At last, when they stopped, the air tasted sweeter, the sun felt warmer, and the day seemed better.

  Sometimes Naelin thought Ven had a special magic all his own.

  “I could build them a library,” she conceded. “It’s at least not a frivolous request.”

  “The last village wanted a merry-go-round,” Ven reminded her.

  “Oh, yes, because it’s so sensible to make five-year-olds dizzy when they’re a hundred feet above the forest floor.” She’d said no to that very quickly. People are ridiculous. “After Erian and Llor are back, I’ll do it. But only a very basic, utilitarian structure. No turrets. No frills.” Erian and Llor should return with Renet in another hour or two. That would still give her a couple hours before nightfall to construct the library.

  Ven frowned out at the trees, as if he could pierce through the branches to see the children at their picnic. “How far did they go?”

  “I don’t know,” Naelin said. She’d stuck firm to her decision not to have spirits watch over them—that would only draw the spirits’ attention to Erian and Llor, and she didn’t want that. Besides, with two queens controlling the spirits, the forests of Aratay were safer than they’d ever been. And Bayn could handle all other threats.

  Of course, it was hard not to worry about them anyway.

  She’d feel better once they were just an arm’s reach away again. “I told them to stay close.” She’d even drawn them a map, though Renet had claimed to know exactly where they were. She was pretty sure she’d seen Bayn roll his eyes at that.

  Ven kissed her forehead. “Stop worrying.”

  “I can’t.”

  “Your children are lucky.”

  She patted his cheek. “Oh, I worry about you too.”

  “You know I can take care of myself.”

  “That has nothing to do with it.” She kissed him again. There were benefits to having her ex-husband and children away for a few hours. It was hard enough trying to balance being queen and mother, let alone lover. She felt pulled in three directions, always disappointing someone. She wished she knew how to be everything all at once. I used to be one person, needed only by my family. She’d known how to be that person—mother to her children—but she didn’t know how to be mother to them and mother to the world. Naelin sank into Ven’s arms—

  Footsteps pounded behind them.

  Sighing as she pulled away, Naelin stood and smoothed her skirt. Another villager who wants a miracle, she thought. I’m getting tired of saying no—

  “Your Majesty!” A woman was running toward them. She was a forest guard, dressed in brown and green with a knife strapped to her waist and a crossbow on her back.

  Ven’s hand went to his sword hilt as Naelin thrust her senses out, touching the nearby spirits. All seemed calm. She didn’t sense any increase in hostility from the local spirits.

  Calling over her shoulder, the guardswoman shouted, “She’s here! This way! I found the queen!”

&nb
sp; “What’s wrong—” Ven began.

  Then Naelin saw Renet. Held between two woodsmen, Renet was hobbling toward them. His hair was stuck to his forehead with bright-red blood. His pants were ripped, and his leg was gashed, deep enough that the skin had curled back. Naelin cried out. “Erian? Llor?”

  “Gone,” Renet puffed. “The wolf . . . Spirits attacked . . .”

  His words felt like knife thrusts to her stomach. Gone, missing? Or gone . . . dead?

  “Gone where?” Ven demanded.

  “West.” Renet pointed. “I don’t know—”

  Naelin didn’t hear anything else. Her mind was already sailing away from the village, westward. She touched the spirits, diving into their minds, rifling through their thoughts, looking for memories of her children. Distorted through their eyes, she saw that Ven had begun running west, leaving the village and leaping through the forest.

  A spirit, as small as a songbird, with a wooden body, leaf wings, and only a few thoughts in its mind, gifted her with one vivid image: her children and the wolf on a branch. She seized control of the little spirit and forced it to fly toward Ven, leading him farther west, toward where it had seen her children. Through the eyes of the birdlike air spirit, she saw Ven follow and knew he’d understood.

  She widened her mind, reaching out to grab other spirits. There were few nearby but—there! An earth spirit! She felt its terror. She couldn’t sense the source of its fear, though. Just . . . Other. It repeated that word, “other,” over and over in her mind.

  Other? Other what?

  As she touched dozens of minds at once, she pieced the images together: an air spirit with leathery wings and a sword-sharp beak attacking, the wolf saving Llor, Erian trying to defend herself and Renet trying to help her, Bayn saving Erian and Llor as more air spirits attacked; Bayn running away . . . She tracked them, through the fresh memories of tree and earth spirits. The little spirits of Aratay had hidden from the “other” spirits, but they’d watched.