The Hollow Queen

by Elizabeth Haydon

  The spire had been fashioned by the sea wind itself, whipping for centuries uncounted around and through the mountainous regions of the island. It was said that the obelisk absorbed all of the vibrations carried on the wind across the wide world, bringing news and information to Gaematria, where, until the Cymrians of the Second Fleet came to live there, it was heard only by passing birds and sea lions. The Sea Mages had learned to harness that information, allowing them to keep apprised of the events of the world around them without having to make contact with it.

  The obelisk formed the central tower in the Citadel of Scholarship, and the man-made architecture was designed similarly to echo its shell-like form.

  Something akin to hope, almost unrecognizable to him, began to pound in Ashe’s chest as he followed his escort. The White Ivory tower was the primary reason for his journey to Gaematria; while he would be grateful for the counsel of the Sea Mages themselves, in truth much of their discernment was made possible by this instrumentality.

  Finally, he thought. This is what will provide answers, a new vision. This is the day the tide will begin to turn.

  In spite of having briefly been to Gaematria twice before in his youth, Ashe had never been allowed inside the White Ivory tower, but he had never expected to be; only the very most senior of the Sea Mages, the men and women who were the elders of the academics of Gaematria, were deemed worthy to enter the building. It was the closest thing to a religious sanctuary.

  Llauron, his father, had brought him to Gaematria for the first time as a young boy, upon the death of Edwyn Griffyth’s spouse, a gentle, thin man named Raeymik, to attend the funeral and commitment to the sea of his ashes. Ashe had met Raeymik before at Days of Convening on the continent, and had always been fond of him; Raeymik alone among the Sea Mages had both an affinity for and an interest in children, attributes that even his own uncle did not possess.

  Raeymik had told him stories of the White Ivory tower: how the wind had carved it from the precious porous stone, how the great telescope atop it, through which the Sea Mages could see the faces of the stars and planets in the black night sky above the island, was powered by the tower, and how within it was the power to heal, to see across wide vistas, to know things that were otherwise unknowable. Ashe had remembered the tales long afterward, and when Rhapsody told him of Achmed’s plans to rebuild Gwylliam’s Lightforge in Canrif, repurposing it as a Lightcatcher, the description of it rang a chime in his memory.

  It made him realize that the Sea Mages had their own version of it.

  And, in spite of that, they had sent Jal’asee, their ambassador, all the way to the continent to discourage Achmed from pursuing the rebuilding of it.

  He shook his head, trying to contain his excitement.

  The Lord Cymrian was led rapidly through the Citadel’s streets to the Hall of Scholars, a magnificent building beautifully appointed with fulsome libraries, lore collectives, and laboratories, as well as meeting rooms and observatories. He jogged quickly up the stairs that led to the front doors, passing his escort, seized the handles, and dragged the doors open as the men who had found him on the beach stared in shock.

  He hurried into the Pathway of Knowledge, an entrance hall lined with academic frescoes and high ceilings, where he almost ran into his uncle, who was waiting impatiently there.

  Edwyn Griffyth eyed him suspiciously.

  The High Sea Mage appeared exactly as he had the last time Ashe had seen him, at his wedding to Rhapsody. A more portly, softer version of his brother Anborn, Edwyn had the same piercing azure-blue eyes, hooked nose, and solid jawline as could be seen in the paintings of their father, Gwylliam, Ashe’s grandfather, that Ashe had seen in the Cymrian museum and in countless other places across the lands of the Alliance. The unmistakable mark of brilliance was evident in his eyes, almost as evident as was his displeasure.

  “How did you get here?” he asked, acid in his tone. “Where is your ship?”

  “Good day to you as well, Uncle,” Ashe replied, a similar edge in his voice. “I came on no ship. I walked.”

  “Through the sea?”

  “I had no choice. It was in the way.”

  “What in the world were you thinking?” Edwyn Griffyth demanded. The High Sea Mage’s voice was trembling alternately with rage and alarm. “If you want to speak to me, next time send a diplomat. You’ve never been shy about using them before, although you seem to be perfectly capable of ignoring the summonses and commands of mine. Jal’asee reported utter failure of his mission last year to convince your confederate, the king of the Firbolg, of the danger of the research he was undertaking.”

  “Jal’asee also failed at getting Anborn to make use of your gift of the walking machine you designed and had made for him, so his trip was unsuccessful at all levels save for the opportunity for him to attend the investiture of my namesake, Gwydion Navarne, as duke of his ancestral province. I hope at least that undertaking received a favorable report from him, since that new duke is standing in for me as Lord Cymrian while I have undertaken to report personally to Gaematria and Manosse that we are at war.”

  Edwyn’s face turned an unhealthy shade of purple.

  “What are you babbling about, nephew?”

  “Surely you must be well aware, Uncle, that the sea between your lands and mine is blockaded with every possible type of vessel, from armed fishing trawlers to ballistaed warships,” Ashe replied mildly, “though apparently that gargantuan military buildup has managed to escape the notice of Manosse.”

  “What are you talking about?” Edwyn Griffyth demanded again, a thunderous tone in his voice that Ashe knew bespoke shock and surprise, two states which he had rarely if ever seen displayed by his uncle before. “I have received nothing but positive messages and reports from you, including the one that was delivered yesterday.”

  “Then, like Manosse, your vaunted wisdom and unassailable security have both been compromised as well,” Ashe answered. “You have received no such happy tidings from me, nor apparently have you received any of my orders and payments for warships or pleas for assistance. Any positive messages you may have received from me have been counterfeit, I assure you. Talquist’s grip on all commerce and information is unassailable.

  “The blockade actually consists of three layers, stretching across the shipping lanes. While the layer closest to you is a deceptively persistent flotilla of merchant vessels, seemingly plying the sea in their usual commerce, the central layer is in fact a well-organized route of pirate ships, some of which are actually receiving the goods being off-loaded at sea by that merchant fleet for delivery to less savory ports.

  “The inner layer closest to the Middle Continent is a formidable blockade of the western continent’s entire coastline, from Avonderre in the north to Port Tallono in the southern Lirin realm, by most of Talquist’s non-merchant ships, the military vessels he inherited from the empress upon her death, those of the navy of Golgarn, which Beliac apparently has ceded to him, and every captured ship he has taken custody of in his regency year, while he was playing the humble nominee of the Scales to the throne of Sorbold.

  “I cannot understand how he was able to deceive the Sea Mages, who I thought made it a point to keep track of all of the comings and goings across the Wide Central Sea at least, not to mention the rest of the Known World. Perhaps if you had been more interested in keeping on top of your own traditional responsibilities and guardianships, rather than insisting that the Bolg king cease production of the one instrumentality that has kept the Alliance apprised of anything nefarious, you might have noticed that the Known World is essentially on fire.”

  Edwyn’s well-defined jaw snapped shut with an audible click. The livid purple of the High Sea Mage’s face was replaced by the utter absence of blood as it drained from his cheeks, leaving him pale and shaking.

  “How? How is this possible?” he whispered when he could speak again. The arrogant confidence was gone, replaced by what Ashe recognized, with a twinge of sympath
y, as the terror of having failed in one’s stewardship.

  “I have no answers to that question,” Ashe said in return. “I came here hoping you could provide me some. Take me into the tower.”

  Edwyn’s brow darkened.

  “Is that the command of my sovereign?” he asked testily. “Or the request of my upstart nephew? ‘Lord Gwydion the Patient,’ as you are occasionally referred to around here—shall I assume it’s as much a misnomer as the names the Cymrians gave to your grandparents—Gwylliam the Visionary? Anwyn the Wise?”

  “You would be wise to refrain from comparing me to Gwylliam and Anwyn,” Ashe said quietly, the air growing drier and the multiple tones of the dragon in his words. “You can believe, Uncle, that I would not have crossed the sea to come to this place, its unrivaled reputation for warmth and hospitality notwithstanding, had I not been bringing the direst of news with me. Now take me to the bloody tower.”

  17

  The High Sea Mage stared at the Lord Cymrian for a long moment. Then he took a step closer to his nephew, his dark eyes burning with the fire of rage.

  “You clearly do not understand what it is you are requesting,” he said softly. “For more than a thousand years, no one has set foot inside the tower except for members of the High Council, the elders, and even then those men and women have undergone purification rituals to prepare them for the experience and to maintain the sacrosanctity of the tower. In all due deference, my lord, you are not prepared to do so.

  “Had you chosen to forswear the ways of your father and uncle, putting their military training aside and dedicating yourself from an early age to the pursuit of knowledge, as the residents of this place have, you would still not have achieved enough wisdom or years to even approach the tower, let alone summit it.”

  “Apparently you have not been hearing me, Edwyn,” Ashe said in a similarly soft voice reeking with the same threat that his uncle’s had carried. “I have left behind everything I love, and everything I am sworn to protect, because the forces that are massing against the Middle Continent eventually have their sights set on the domination and destruction of the Known World, of Life as we know it, and the Afterlife beyond that.

  “If it were merely a political squabble, if the only thing at issue were a throne, a crown, I would yield my title to any even marginally qualified replacement in a heartbeat, abandon the Lordship, and go build a goat hut in the woods for my wife and son. But given that it is likely a demonic element is involved, that Gaematria has been kept in the dark somehow, most likely Manosse as well, that Talquist’s forces have taken Sepulvarta and have begun committing atrocities in sanctuaries for orphans and against nations, enslaving entire populations, I thought perhaps it wise to come to the repository of all ancient knowledge and lore, the place where the most gifted of sages and wielders of nautical magic have been sequestered for centuries, studying the mysteries of the universe for just such a moment as this.

  “You have an instrumentality that could reveal the answers to the mysteries, could show us what Talquist has done, is doing, can help me find a way to end this blockade. I need to know how he plans to attack the Bolglands, where his army is going next. So while it never occurred to me that I would have to explain any of this to you, and while your hesitation appalls me to the very core of my being, I apologize most deeply for my impatience and ask you once again to take me to the blasted tower.”

  He looked back to see Edwyn staring at him blankly.

  “Son? You have a son?”

  Black rage exploded inside Ashe. He seized the Sea Mage by the shoulders and shook him forcefully.

  “For the love of God, the One, the All, take me to the tower! You alone may have knowledge that will make the difference in this war. There isn’t time to argue about this. Help me, Edwyn; help me. Time is growing short.”

  Edwyn Griffyth pushed him away angrily.

  “Unhand me,” he commanded, his tone deadly. “The only reason I do not cause your brain to swell and shatter your skull with a single word is that you by yourself are the last generation of Gwylliam’s line. It would be a little bit like killing the last mosquito in the world; while it’s tempting to eradicate the annoyance, the task should be left to one who has made a career of death, not scholarship.” He smoothed his robes and glared at Ashe again.

  “I will in fact go to the tower, but not until you have left this place, m’lord. Gaematria may be a party to the Alliance, but we are not under your command when it comes to revealing our secrets or allowing those who do not know those secrets to make use of sacred instrumentalities.”

  Ashe stood in silence. After a long moment he spoke.

  “Then you will not help me? You will give me no aid in this matter?”

  Edwyn waited in similar silence. Finally he shook his head.

  “No. Not in this. I am genuinely sorry, nephew. But I can put you on a ship to Manosse, to your lands there, to your mother’s family—”

  The Lord Cymrian waved him into silence. “You haven’t been listening. A ship cannot get twelve nautical miles past this place without being blown to bits. Your offer amounts to a suggestion of regicide. But it doesn’t matter; the death of my respect for you is sufficiently devastating without allowing you to kill me outright as well. It is a sad day on which one learns that the greatest scholarly minds in the Known World, including one’s own uncle, would prefer to sit on their secrets rather than share them in the attempt to save the Known World and the world beyond it. Your ridiculously long life of study, and the lives of those who have shared this place with you, have amounted essentially to nothing.”

  The High Sea Mage looked suddenly older. When he spoke, his words were measured.

  “God, the One, the All, whom you have named in the manner by which we address him, unlike those on your continent, has provided our citizens with the appreciation of knowledge for its own sake. His gift to us may be incomprehensible to those in the everyday world you occupy, but I assure you, such study is every bit as holy as anything in your late father’s nature faith, or the Patrician religion of Sepulvarta. I’m sorry you didn’t come to understand this in the brief time you spent here in study. You can’t blame me for the woes of the rest of the world.”

  “I absolutely do blame you,” Ashe said bitterly. “You and every vaunted academic who have lived out your endless lives isolated here, on this island of rare beauty and immense power, in your Citadel of Scholarship. Two thousand years of research and learning, the pursuit of magic as a science, unmolested by the reality of the world, and what have you done with it? What have you done with all that knowledge, what single ounce of good have you achieved?

  “My father was a flawed man in his youth, misguided in his support of your mother, but after the War, rather than seizing power or resting on his considerable laurels, he put all the things he learned in his travels and in his conservatories to excellent use, teaching half a continent better planting practices, medicine, and healing for people and the livestock they raised, harvesting techniques that let almost nothing of use go to waste. What have you accomplished with your life, Uncle? Scholarship and academia mean nothing if they are not applied. The Sea Mages have collected in their time one of the greatest treasures of the world—knowledge—what have you done with it?

  “You build the finest ships in the world, and you sell them for a pretty price, but what is your contribution to the improvement of the practice of navigation, of shipbuilding in the world at large? You take great pride in your pacifism, in the peace that those who came to live here by accident found two millennia ago. Had it ever occurred to you that you might be able to share that peace with the world at large had you come down from your towers of ivory stone and either welcomed the people you share the world with here to learn it as well, or at least gone out to their lands, bringing the knowledge you acquired with you?

  “No; instead you sit, sanctimonious, elevated in your own minds to godlike stature when those of us who live down in the muck, who struggl
e to end wars, feed populations, and make the world better one seed, one grain of sand at a time, do the real work of God, the One, the All. You speak as if you and He are intimate friends. Well, spare me your sanctimony—I sincerely doubt you and He run in the same circles. By your very definition, He would not be allowed into your blasted tower.

  “History taught me to believe that you were a man of principle, refusing to be Gwylliam’s heir, rejecting the titles, the glory, the riches, the power and stature to make a peaceful and happy life with your spouse, may he rest happily in the Afterlife. Part of me still wants to believe this. But that you could turn a blind eye to the impending disaster that is in part a legacy of our family—your parents, my grandparents—and the death that it will visit on this world, and the next, proves to me that you are no hero, no sage. You’re just a selfish old man who will design an ingenious machine to allow his own brother to walk again, but sees no need to benefit anyone else with such technology, because, after all, there are no other cripples in the world.

  “I am sorry for you, Edwyn. You will never know the true meaning of life, which is that it is a blessing, an honor, to spend the time that you have been given protecting everything that you love, and anyone and anything that needs your strength and wisdom, with everything that you are, until there is no more life left in you. You are far more dragon than I ever imagined, hoarding your knowledge like a wyrm in his rotting lair. May it keep you warm as the world grows cold and dies in the emptiness of the universe you have so carefully mapped and seen through your telescopes.”

  He turned and strode angrily in the direction of the massive doors. When he reached the threshold, he turned one last time to the High Sea Mage, who appeared to be trembling with fury.

  “Oh, by the way,” the Lord Cymrian said flatly, “condolences on the death of your mother, which has finally come to pass, permanently this time. And, for the record, the pursuit of knowledge for its own sake is not holy, it’s just another form of masturbation. Goodbye, Uncle.”