The Hollow Queen

by Elizabeth Haydon

  He had been enthusiastically knobbing a less-than-enthusiastic camp-following whore when another soldier, drunk on spirits and the misconception that his own tarse was the only one that should ever reside up her skirts, had come upon them and had beaten her soldier-host body to death on the spot, not even having the grace to allow him to disengage from what he was doing first. As a result, the only option to spare Hrarfa’s true spirit form from an ugly death and disappearance from the world was to take on the prostitute as her new host, fleeing Canrif.

  And thus a new means of rising to power had come into her awareness.

  So the demon’s memories of Canrif were both reminiscent and horrifying.

  It seemed to her that it had taken a great deal more time to come to the place than it should have, however.

  The journey from the mountain edge of Sorbold into the no-man’s-land that was the southern edge of the Krevensfield Plain should have taken less than a sennight. Yet almost three weeks had passed since the army had moved away from the southern Teeth toward where she remembered Canrif being, and still they seemed to be wandering aimlessly, with no view in sight of the eastern mountains that were home to the Firbolg.

  Faron, she whispered cautiously. I think we are lost.

  As usual, there was no immediate reply.

  The stone titan came to a halt in the middle of the endless plain, the horizon visible from every side. It turned slowly, its enormous head making a careful sweep of the vista around it.

  Behind it, the invasion force of almost seventy thousand soldiers, twenty thousand on horseback, dragging with them the matériel and supplies for an assault on a mountain fortress, slowed to a halt as well. The field commanders were becoming used to the lack of any sort of forewarning or instruction from their massive leader and had put in place a system of largely silent communication to keep from crossing him.

  So, amid a minimum of squeaking from the wheels of battlewagons and the screeching of horse leather, the three divisions of the Sorbold army that Faron had commandeered rolled to a stop.

  * * *

  Hrarfa was growing frantic and angry.

  Faron, she whispered. Where are we?

  The stone eyes of the titan turned blue and piercing as once again it surveyed the open landscape, searching for a massive mountainous kingdom that had all but disappeared.

  You are the one who has been here, the sullen thoughts of the Faorina said finally. You are the one who has brought us here. Why do you ask me? How could you lose a mountain range?

  In an explosive burst of fury, the mind of the F’dor spirit screamed in rage.

  The body it had commandeered froze, the Living Stone from which it had been formed utterly rigid.

  After a long moment of silence, Hrarfa heard Faron’s voice, as deadly and serious as she had ever perceived it.

  If you ever do that again I will kill you. Even if I have to kill both of us to accomplish it.

  The intent could not be misconstrued.

  Quickly the demon set about making soothing thoughts, gentle vibrations she hoped would lull the primitive spirit back into calm compliance. After a few moments of attempting it, she realized her ministrations were having little effect. Finally a thought occurred to her.

  Do you remember how Talquist had you obscure the trade routes with your blue scale, Faron? Is it possible the Bolg have one, too?

  The stone titan stood deathly still, contemplating.

  In the fields around them, Hrarfa could feel the army factions growing uneasy.

  Peace, she said aloud to the battlefield commanders, keeping her screeching voice as low and palatable to the ear as she could. I am assessing.

  She thought she could hear relief in their silent response.

  She held her silence as Faron’s hand reached into the groove in the stone at his waist where his scales were kept. She could barely quell her building excitement as he withdrew his own blue scrying scale and held it up to his unnaturally blue eyes, making a slow circle around him.

  For the longest time she perceived nothing. Then she heard the titan’s thought.

  Green.

  I don’t understand, Faron—

  I can see nothing with the blue scale. But hanging, mostly invisible, in the air of this plain, just above the highgrass, is a mist of green. That I can see with my eyes if I look closely enough.

  Hrarfa’s excitement exploded. It may work the same way the blue clouds do, only on Earth, through grass, rather than water, obscuring the mountains the way you obscured the sea for Talquist.

  If such a thing is possible, we will be fighting blind.

  Hrarfa silently signaled agreement. We don’t need to see the Bolg armies, she whispered soothingly. We can find the Earthchild without using our eyes. We will wait until morning, and then we will follow the song of the Living Stone through the mountains.

  And them? Faron’s intention was crystal clear.

  He was referring to the Sorbold columns behind them.

  A wicked chuckle arose from the depths of the statue, a snide vibration that no one other than Faron could perceive.

  We never really needed them anyway, Faron. They are here to serve as a distraction, nothing more.

  Everything we need to accomplish our aim we have had all along.

  36

  SEASIDE BASILICA OF ABBAT MYTHLINIS, AVONDERRE

  Constantin stood outside the soot-stained doors of the enormous cathedral in the rain, thinking.

  There was devastation all around Abbat Mythlinis, the elemental basilica of Water. The cathedral had been built during the Illuminaria, the shining age in the first Cymrian era when the great buildings of the empire were being constructed—the five elemental basilicas, the buildings of state in the Orlandan provinces and Sorbold.

  And Gwylliam’s great masterpiece, the mountainous realm of Canrif at the eastern edge of the empire.

  Abbat Mythlinis, like the other basilicas, had been constructed on blessed ground, making it a sanctuary for a storm-tossed people, erected on the site of the landing of the First Fleet from the wreckage of some of the ships that had carried the refugees from Serendair to safety in a new world. It had been fashioned to evoke the shape of an immense vessel, broken and grounded, jutting forth from the sand of the beach north of Avonderre Harbor. The wood of the trees of Earthwood, a forest that yielded a harvest of Living Stone, had been used in the construction both of ships and of Abbat Mythlinis, and even after the passage of Time and the wars that had been waged they had never rotted or crumbled.

  Nor had they burned.

  Looking around him at the destruction the attack on Avonderre Harbor and the western coastline had delivered, the Patriarch felt sickened to an even deeper level of his soul than he had felt up to this point.

  The manse of the priests who served and tended the basilica had been burned to the ground. Constantin could see a number of skeletons in the rubble, some beneath the timbers of the building, meaning they had been inside when the fire erupted. There were also the remains of bodies clogging the roof joists, as if swept there from the sea.

  All of Avonderre Harbor was exactly the same, buildings and quays, docks and ships in ruins. There were certainly enough soldiers and invading wastrels occupying what was once the jewel of the shipping lanes to have disposed of the corpses, which were beginning to stink in summer’s approach. Apparently the occupation force did not have immediate designs on rebuilding or reusing the harbor of Avonderre or the city around it, which had once been home to more than one hundred thousand adherents of the Patrician faith of Sepulvarta.

  Constantin closed his eyes, imagining the ruins of that city as well.

  Then he shook off the thought and opened his eyes again.

  Looking around him, he saw no soldiers approaching. The rain had begun softly enough but had grown into a full-blown pounding storm, making the normally placid harbor froth, as if with anger.

  Constantin seized one of the heavy basilica doors and hurried inside, clos
ing it carefully behind him.

  The towering ceilings of the cavernous basilica rose over his head, out of his range of sight. He had conducted services in this place on several occasions, the first time being the rites he offered just after being invested as Patriarch in each of the elemental basilicas.

  He had begun in Avonderre, because that was the place where the Cymrian colonization of the continent had begun.

  He had completed a circuit with each of the other elemental basilicas, ending, of course, in Lianta’ar, the basilica of the Star, in Sepulvarta, having offered humble prayers in supplication before the All-God that he be a worthy advocate for the people of the continent, adherents to the Patrician faith or not. He had felt a surge of power in reply upon offering his last prayer in Sepulvarta, a beam of light shining down upon him at the altar from the Spire itself, and a sense that each of the five basilicas had been resanctified, cleansing each of them from whatever taint had touched them by the hand of the F’dor demon killed in Ryles Cedelian by the Three.

  Making all five of them blessed ground again, something that a demon could not broach.

  Until a mortal man did.

  Talquist. The Merchant Emperor, whose atrocities dwarfed even some of those of demons.

  Constantin’s tired eyes now took in the sight of the great fractured timbers that had been the structure of numerous ships, repurposed into a different sort of building. Rhapsody had once said it looked to her like the fragmented skeleton of a giant beast, lying on its back, its spine the long aisle that led up forward, ancient ribs reaching brokenly, helplessly upward into the darkness above.

  The round porthole windows that sat in a line high on the walls let in little light; the rain pounded against them, much, Constantin imagined, as it had at sea.

  The long line of thick translucent glass blocks inlaid into the walls at knee height was allowing the blue-green radiance of the sea to gleam into the dark church, filling it with an eerie light, the only illumination present. That light, which customarily illuminated the entirety of the basilica to the point of daylight, even at night, had dimmed to the palest of glows, a sign of the diminution of the blessing that normally sanctified the now-vulnerable ground on which the basilica was built.

  The Patriarch made his way over the rough surface of the floor to the center of the building.

  At the midpoint of the aisle the ceiling opened into a tall shaft, a broad tunnel of blackness with small slits cut into the distant top of it. The wind and salt spray whistled through the slits and down the shaft, their howl echoing within the temple.

  Constantin stopped and looked above.

  The mast, or what had been formed to look like it, towered above the ceiling in the open wind.

  On the floor directly below the mast was a small, round fountain carved of blue-veined marble in the center of circular stone benches made of the same stone, and a series of larger basins opening into ever-wider circles specifically designed to catch the overflow.

  A stream of water, pulsing inconsistently, was bubbling in the font, spraying occasionally into the air and then subsiding in time with the rhythm of the waves pounding against the basilica walls outside in the part of the building that was partially submerged in the sea.

  This is it, the Patriarch thought as a violent jet sprayed forth, almost to the ring of seats around the fountain. This is the last of the places of elemental power, the last of the towers that will allow the Chain of Prayer to be reconnected, restored, to the Spire in Sepulvarta.

  He had been to each of the other places that had been built in celebration of the elements and was still accessible—the great brazier lifted high atop a pedestal above the well of Fire in Vrackna, the basilica in Bethany, and the bell tower of the winds that stood in the center of Ryles Cedelian in Bethe Corbair—to offer supplication and chant the invocation that would allow a rung on the invisible ladder by which prayers were channeled, together, to the All-God.

  The earthen cathedral, Terreanfor, had been sundered in a great earthquake and was not able to be broached, even if he could reach it within the borders of Sorbold, so instead he had made use of the Bolg king’s Lightcatcher to bring the element of earth into the mix. He had begun the effort in that place; now, in this last place, he would end it.

  Restoring the connection between All-God and man again.

  And resanctifying the ground beneath the Spire in the City of Reason.

  Sepulvarta.

  Braving the wind and rain that was sheering down from the thin openings in the mast above him, Constantin waded into the fountain. He stepped easily into the center, astride the bubbling fountain base, arranging his stance to allow for the occasional blast of sea spray, and looked above.

  Then he raised his hand on which the Ring of Wisdom rested, skyward, to the mast.

  And began to chant his supplication.

  Slowly, as if building the scaffolding that a workman would use to erect a building, the exiled Patriarch reached his chant out into the night air whistling around the mast above him, searching for any uttered prayer that an individual was offering up at that time, aimed at, by name, the local priest of that person’s province.

  At first he heard nothing in response to his uttered call but the silence of the basilica and the howling of the wind beyond the mast.

  Then, like bubbles of air as if from the fountain below him, songs and words, spoken ever so softly, began to whisper in the air around him.

  Tears stung the weary eyes of the Patriarch, who had heard no such utterances since the night the holy city had been taken.

  He increased the volume of his call, like a shepherd summoning sheep from hillsides around him. The prayers of the faithful grew louder, and higher above the ground, floating in the air around his waist. These were prayers from the priests of all the regions, pastors of villages and clerics in small towns, raised with somewhat more skill to their regional abbots, the men who sat in chancery, offering services at holy days and blessings at funerals and births.

  When Constantin could hear the priests’ intentions as solidly as a confident choir, he increased his volume again, and raised the pitch of his chant once more.

  At this level, gathering the offerings of the abbots was easier to do, as if they had been carefully prepared, like wheat that was lovingly threshed and cleared of all of its chaff. The song of the abbots wrapped warmly around his shoulders, invigorating the Patriarch and reinforcing his strength. For the first time since the night Sepulvarta fell, Constantin felt the underpinnings of joy, and they manifested in a small smile that spread across the dried leather of his wrinkled face.

  Finally, with the abbotsong firmly in place, he opened his arms wide and raised the tone once more, his chant resounding off the walls of Abbat Mythlinis, calling for the prayers that the living benisons of the continent and those across the sea in Manosse and in small missions around the world had gathered from their faithful.

  That song returned to him wholeheartedly, the singing of a glorious oratorio of millions of combined voices. It was a sound that never failed to bring the fragments of tears in the corners of his eyes to his cheeks, this man who had been raised in youth in the brutal battleground of the gladiatorial arenas of Sorbold, weeping openly as had been his custom each night when he had been serving the All-God at the altar of sacrifice in Lianta’ar.

  The song settled around his neck like the stole he had worn in those days, wrapping his throat in protection and making the utterances he was singing one with it.

  He was too enthralled, too transported with rapture, too wrapped in the light that had begun to shine brightly through the glass panes in the floor and from the mast above him, to hear the door of the basilica opening.

  37

  Nince and Jirunt, two members of the second landing party to deploy from Avonderre Harbor into the ruins of the city, were on the loneliest of security details, known comically as Checking on the Dead or Dead Check, which reminded the soldiers of Bed Check.

 
While the parts of the city of Avonderre farther away from the harbor required serious policing and virulent shows of strength against a populace that was cut off from the rest of the Alliance, whose garrison had fallen back in the rain of fire from the sky in the iacxsis attack, the landing party that was assigned to harbor detail was essentially monitoring a front in which none of the original populace was still alive.

  It was considered to be a duty that could be undertaken while one was essentially asleep, and therefore assigned to men whose limited capabilities were not needed somewhere essential.

  So it was surprising to Nince and Jirunt to come into what had been the harbor proper, on the street where the harbormaster’s office had once stood, to see through the black rain and wind an unmissable beam of light, radiating diffusely in the storm that was raging, pointed skyward.

  “What—what do you think is goin’ on here?” Nince said, squinting into the gloom.

  Jirunt, a man of fewer words, raised his crossbow and gave a curt nod of his head in the direction of the harborfront.

  They hurried through the empty streets, giving a cursory glance in each direction, but following the beacon in the foggy air. Finally they arrived at the basilica, which was north on the beachfront outside the harbor limits.

  The light was emanating from the spire of the cathedral, up through the mast on the roof.

  “Should we get others?” Nince whispered nervously.

  Jirunt shook his head. “Take too long,” he said curtly. “C’me.”

  The two soldiers hurried to the double doors, and while Jirunt covered the entry, Nince opened one.

  * * *

  Constantin, arms still spread wide, raised his hands high in the last stage of the Chain of Prayer, offering the combined praise and entreaties into the depth of the living universe, what the people of his faith called the All-God.