The Hollow Queen

by Elizabeth Haydon

  “Welcome back, finally,” he said as he wiped his mouth clear of spittle with his linen napkin. “I don’t believe you have ever been this late in returning from a journey before; I hope all went well.”

  “Swallow your tongue,” Dranth replied darkly as he crossed to the sideboard beside the fireplace, seizing the bottle of brandy with hands that shook and splashing the ruby liquid into a crystal glass. “If you need help I can assist with that.”

  Yabrith’s eyebrows rose into his hairline, but he said nothing. His jaw clenched shut with a resounding pop.

  Dranth turned his attention to emptying the decanter of brandy, after which he heaved the glass into the fireplace.

  Yabrith knew better than to comment. He brushed the glass fragments surreptitiously from his doublet and waited for the guild scion to speak. He sat quietly while Dranth paced in silence in front of the glowering flames, finally dropping into the armchair at the head of the table.

  Yabrith continued to wait.

  At last Dranth looked up.

  “The others are dead,” he said. His voice was hollow. “Like bottle flies.”

  Yabrith exhaled, still saying nothing, but clenched his intertwined fingers together even more tightly than they had been since the guild scion’s first order of silence.

  The three men who had ventured forth with Dranth into Ylorc, the mountainous realm of the Firbolg monsters, were the most skilled members of the Raven’s Guild. Trentius, known for merciless interrogation that bordered on artistry, was said to be part bat, able to hang upside down in the darkest of alleys and caverns until a victim passed by below; Sandon, an albino who was all but invisible in direct sunlight and an unerring marksman with everything from a crossbow to a throwing knife; and Dhremane, a mute who had successfully erased all sound from his passage, and all odor from his flatulence, who could stand, undetected, for more than eighteen hours, in plain sight—each of them a master dispensary of death.

  Gone.

  Yabrith would have sooner believed the sun would voluntarily refuse to rise than those men be lost to the guild, their expertise unmatchable, irreplaceable.

  “Who—how—?” His words trailed off.

  The guild scion interlaced his long, thin fingers and pressed them to his lips.

  Yabrith waited nervously.

  “It was the ruler of the Bolg himself, our most grievous enemy, the man the rulers of Roland call the Assassin King,” said Dranth, finally breaking the silence. “The target of our mission. At least for us—the emperor of Sorbold was expecting us to retrieve the Child of Time and its mother, whom Sandon was able to paralyze with a dart shot, but the Bolg king killed him and everyone else—I alone escaped.”

  Yabrith swallowed dryly.

  “There was no possible way he could have known we were there,” Dranth continued, uncharacteristically talkative. “I watched our three other guildsmen conceal themselves, as well as the two that came from Golgarn, and even I could not find them once they took cover. When I saw him kill Sandon before his crossbow had even stopped reverberating from the dart shot, I knew we had no prayer of a chance.”

  “Lucky you were able to escape.”

  “You have no idea how much.” Dranth’s sallow face was glowing red in the firelight, either from the heat or the drink. “Pack for a journey. We are leaving at foredawn tomorrow.”

  Yabrith nodded. “Where are we going?”

  “Back to Sorbold, to Jierna’sid. I need to return to our friend the emperor, report that our attempt did not go well, and ask him to help me find another way into the Bolglands.”

  Yabrith could not suppress his shudder.

  “I imagine Talquist will not be pleased with this news.”

  “No, he won’t,” Dranth agreed. “So I will need to bring him a gift to mollify him. Fortunately I have one.”

  He rose from the table and left the room without another word.

  4

  HIGHMEADOW, NAVARNE

  Seventeen-year-old Gwydion Navarne stood nervously outside the door of the library next to the chamberlain, who looked even more nervous than he did. The tray in the man’s hands was shaking so violently that the young duke felt the need to seize it and remove it from the chamberlain’s grasp before its contents shattered onto the floor.

  “It’s all right, Manus, you may return to your tasks,” he said, trying to approximate the tone of voice his late father or his godfather might have used, and failing miserably. “I’ll take the Bolg king his after-dinner cordial myself.”

  The chamberlain, new of hire at Highmeadow, looked relieved and bowed. “Thank you, m’lord.”

  Gwydion nodded politely and watched as the house servant scurried away back to the buttery, then sighed. He tapped ever so lightly on the library door, and, hearing no response, quietly let himself in.

  The fire that had been blazing merrily on the enormous hearth when he left to obtain the cordial glass had burned down to sleepy coals while he had been away, working up the courage to come back into the room.

  In front of that fire at a small portable desk sat the previously mentioned Firbolg king, a man known in the common tongue as Achmed the Snake. Gwydion was aware that among the Bolg king’s subjects, the ferocious race of demi-human beings known as the Firbolg, he had other titles too—the Glowering Eye, the Merciless, the Earth-Swallower, the Night Man, and a host of others that Rhapsody had humorously shared with him long before—but as King Achmed sat at his godfather’s desk, an empty plate and neatly folded napkin beside the large open ledger he was studying, the young duke was certain that to his Firbolg subjects, the comic names were signs of the utter respect and sheer terror in which they held him.

  Given that the Firbolg were themselves the stuff of nightmares to the human population of the continent, Gwydion was loath to disturb him.

  In silence, therefore, he placed the brass tray down on the lower table between the great leather settees and took the glass, with its three fingers of dark gold liquid catching the firelight, over to the Bolg king’s desk.

  And waited respectfully.

  For far longer than he wanted to.

  Finally the Bolg king spoke, not breaking his gaze away from the ledger.

  “You’re a generous man,” he said in his strange, sandy voice. “That vintage is remarkable; the bouquet has a pleasant sting to it. Is it from Canderre?”

  “Marincaer,” Gwydion corrected. “It was one of my father’s favorites.”

  “If that be the case, it was worth you risking disturbing me with it. Thank you.”

  “I am sorry if I’ve disturbed you,” Gwydion said, his nerves rising again. “I will leave you to your reading once more.”

  The Bolg king did not look up, but gestured impatiently at one of the settees. “Sit.”

  The duke of Navarne complied.

  When nothing happened for a long stretch of moments, he ventured a question.

  “Have you found anything of use in Ashe’s notes?”

  “Yes.”

  Gwydion made himself more comfortable on the settee. His discomfort was not at the presence of King Achmed, a man he had an extraordinary fondness for while much of the Middle Continent found him either intimidating or terrifying, but rather at the memory of what had transpired a few hours before.

  The Firbolg king had arrived unexpectedly earlier that night at Highmeadow, the central military fortress of the Cymrian Alliance and home of Gwydion’s godfather and namesake, Gwydion of Manosse, his late father’s best friend. King Achmed’s presence in the western lands of the Great Forest between the provinces of Navarne and Bethany was a shock from which Gwydion had not yet recovered; the Bolg king had an almost pathological aversion to traveling in the human realm, and with the war beginning to spread across the continent, Gwydion knew that only the most severe of necessities would have brought him out of Ylorc, the name by which the Firbolg called their mountainous kingdom.

  Gwydion had remembered, just before dinner was about to be served, that
before Ashe left he had asked for the request to be made of Achmed to assess a prisoner being held under the tightest security in the stockade. The Lord Cymrian had declined to name the prisoner, but requested that Achmed try to determine if the taint of demonic possession could be discerned on that prisoner, if the Bolg king ever happened to be at Highmeadow.

  Gwydion Navarne had made the request, and the king had agreed to do so with only the slightest of annoyances obvious in his reaction.

  Gwydion had accompanied him down the stairs, carefully sprung the seven-lock trap, and waited for the guard to open the door.

  He could not believe his eyes when the man in the center of the cell turned around.

  The prisoner was none other than the Lord Roland, Tristan Steward, regent of Bethany, his own first cousin once removed and the highest-ranking noble in Roland behind the Lord Cymrian himself.

  He was just beginning to recover from his surprise when the Bolg king seized the guard’s crossbow and fired a bolt into the Lord Roland’s forehead, cleanly bisecting his brow.

  Then King Achmed had handed the weapon back to the stunned guard, instructed Gwydion to leave the body there for several days to make sure that no demonic detritus would be passed to anyone else, signaled impatiently for the door to be closed and locked again, then trotted back up the stairs, intent on returning to his study of Ashe’s research materials regarding the emperor of Sorbold.

  Several hours later now, Gwydion was still shaking. He took a deep breath, deciding to risk the Bolg king’s ire again.

  “So what did you find?”

  Finally Achmed looked up.

  “Ashe has done a credible job of assessing and enumerating the reasons that the armies of the Alliance should not launch a frontal or flank attack on Sorbold.”

  Gwydion nodded. “He allowed me to review the intelligence reports and battlefield communiqués with him almost every day,” he said, squeezing the arm of the settee to try to quell his trembling. “Each time I did, it was more and more apparent that Talquist and the basic terrain of the empire have insured that the realm is invulnerable to our armies. Anborn will have a busy enough time defending the Middle Continent from their legions.”

  “True enough.”

  “Then what is it that you’ve decided to do?” Gwydion asked, struggling to keep the panic out of his voice.

  Achmed picked up the cordial glass. “I’m going to enjoy this libation you’ve kindly provided.”

  “And then?”

  The Bolg king took a deep draught, then looked the young duke over with his mismatched eyes.

  “I understand you saw combat recently.”

  “Yes.”

  “How did that go?”

  Gwydion sat up a little straighter. “It was terrifying, but rather successful. And surprising.”

  “Surprising in what way?”

  “Well, given that it was my first experience in battle, I suppose it’s fair that anything would be surprising. I am certainly glad to have lived through it. But Anborn seemed, well, a bit confused by it all.”

  “Confused? Anborn? Interesting. Would you care to explain?”

  “The garrison he had quickly established was nothing more than a series of farming settlements barricaded and manned by eight thousand or so volunteers, recent recruits, and civilians, mostly the inhabitants of those settlements. Some of these were even children, boys younger than me. Ashe has been training and conscripting continental garrisons, mostly deployed in the major citadels and provinces—” His voice trailed off suddenly. “I beg your pardon, Your Majesty,” he said sheepishly. “You clearly know all this.”

  “Of course I do. Why do you think Anborn was confused?”

  “The battle turned far too easily,” Gwydion amended. “There was absolutely no reason for the army of Sorbold to be defeated so cleanly and quickly, given how vastly outnumbered we were and the fact that they had iacxsis with them. Have you seen these beasts in person?”

  Achmed took another sip of his drink. “No, but I’ve seen the battlefield reports from their attack on Sepulvarta.”

  The young duke shuddered. “Wingspan of about fifteen feet, part lizard, part bat, it appeared, seemingly carved from stone. Jaws like a plague locust. Terrifying.”

  Achmed waved his hand dismissively. “You had two ancient elemental swords with you—Daystar Clarion and Tysterisk—that alone could have stood to eradicate Sorbold’s advantage numerically. You also had the Iliachenva’ar bearing one of those swords, and she is competent with her weapon, even if you are new to yours. And of course you were under Anborn’s command. I don’t find your victory surprising or confusing.”

  “Nonetheless, the Lord Marshal said that it was far too easy.”

  “That’s because Talquist was baiting him. That attack was merely for show. It’s a shame the soldiers who were committed to it on their side did not know that. But in the end, that deception will be Talquist’s undoing.”

  Gwydion rubbed his temples, trying to ease the headache that had crept behind his eyes. “I don’t understand.”

  For the first time since he had arrived, Achmed smiled slightly.

  “Wars are won by will, by individual determination. Not soldiers, not even generals, but don’t tell Anborn that if you are within range of anything he might throw at you. It is will that powers an army, will that wins a sea battle. Will is the heart of any conflict. If you can destroy the will, the conflict will end.

  “Talquist has been putting this invasion, this worldwide conquest, in place for a very long time. I have not yet traced the roots of every betrayal, every complicit deception, every nefarious dealing he has undertaken in setting up this monstrosity. There is no question in my mind that he has made alliances with those who have similar intentions of conquest, but what I wonder more about is who has been deceived, who is part of his coterie by accident or by deception. It matters little; once the war began, all mercy, all forgiveness was off the table for anyone who joined the wrong side by accident, who was deceived into believing what they are doing is right. But there’s an art to knowing where the will really is in a war.

  “Those that defend a continent, an alliance, a people, even a family are blessed to have will already on their side. But the will that leads an evil man to destroy nations, enslave populations, make deals with demons—that is a will that needs support to survive, to triumph. It is like a chain with many links. Such a chain can be incredibly strong, and when the will to conquer is joined by similar will, that sort of support can be formidable. But when that support has been coerced, or misled, or intimidated, there is sometimes an opportunity to cause a break in the links of the chain. If you can determine what part of that chain was made under false pretenses, sometimes those links fall away on their own.”

  He drained the rest of his cordial and set the glass decisively down on the desk again.

  “Then, of course, you can always go for the manacle first.”

  “The manacle?”

  Achmed rose and began to gather Ashe’s materials into an organized pile. “The head of the chain. The reason it was formed in the first place.”

  Gwydion blinked. “I’m sorry, I don’t understand.”

  “Talquist must die.” The Bolg king opened one last scroll.

  “Understood. How do you plan to bring that about? Especially since you’ve already acknowledged that it would be a mistake for our armies to attack Sorbold?”

  Achmed spread the scroll out and weighted it down at the edges. “I said nothing about armies. I’m going alone.”

  Gwydion swallowed the bile that had risen in the back of his throat. It took him a moment to form calm words.

  “While I have no doubt that you know what you are doing, it would be highly enlightening to hear how you intend to do so.”

  “Do you see this?” The Bolg king displayed what Gwydion saw was a detailed map of the terrain surrounding Jierna Tal, the towering palace in which the emperors of Sorbold had reigned for centuries uncounted
, and pointed to the mountainous surroundings that served as natural defenses to the city of Jierna’sid, Sorbold’s capital seat.

  Gwydion nodded.

  “What exactly do you see?”

  “A place designed by the All-God to be unassailable,” Gwydion said.

  Achmed snorted softly. “If you say so.” He ran his leather-gloved finger across a particularly savage-looking part of the mountain range, where jagged peaks ringed a vast chasm that had been carved by an ancient river in a long-forgotten age, separating the inner part of the highlands from the guardian ridge at the edge of the Krevensfield Plain with a seven-league-wide gulf two thousand feet deep.

  At the top of the inner ridge of that gulf stood the palace of Jierna Tal, its fabled thousand-foot-high tower facing the southwestern vista.

  “Truly brilliant planning,” Achmed said. “Position a tower on the edge of an interior chasm two thousand feet deep, the tower itself a thousand feet high, the only place in the land that needs no human guard, because the terrain is so forbidding. Inexpensive to guard, but a vast view if one is needed.”

  He smirked at the blank look on Gwydion’s face.

  “Send me your best leathermaker, a tanner with an eye for color.”

  When Gwydion’s expression turned quizzical, Achmed handed him a sheet of parchment on which the strata and geologic compositions of the Sorbold mountain range had been carefully annotated.

  “Have you studied the rock formations of the Teeth?”

  “Modestly,” said Gwydion. “Why?”

  “The bedrock of those mountains is sedimentary—limestone, dolomite, and silica.”

  Gwydion nodded. “Pyrite and metallic copper as well,” he said. “Some of Sorbold’s greatest treasures are the minerals that slaves are mining at this very moment. Anborn and I saw great ships full of them being off-loaded in the Nonaligned States, in Windswere and the like, ships and wagons containing entire cities full of people.”

  “Indeed. Back now to the rocks. In the fireborn strata of those mountains, feldspar and mica are plentiful. Granite, slate, and serpentine bands make up the Inner Teeth. Are you familiar with the colors of these rocks?”