The Hollow Queen

by Elizabeth Haydon

  “So—what?”

  “So off center,” the First Generation Cymrian said with the gentlest tone of respect he could summon. “So—so—beside yourself. We prevailed, Rhapsody—the cost was atrocious, but we were the defenders here, not the aggressors. Stop pacing, m’lady, I beg you, and tell me what, atop of the shock and horror of battle, has you so rattled.”

  Rhapsody’s trek stopped in midstride.

  “This—this is not how it is supposed—to happen,” she panted, savagely unbuckling her sword belt and hurling it to the ground. “Each time I—know of, when the Kinsman call is answered—aid is able to be—given. Why—why did the wind bring me—here to just stand—and witness this? If I could be—of no help whatsoever—”

  “Perhaps the Lord Marshal needed to see you before—before—”

  “Before he died, Solarrs? Before he threw his life away? Before he was crushed to death, torn asunder, before both of our eyes? Before the life was stamped out of him by every bloody Sorbold in the valley? They tore his head off and ground it to dust—”

  Solarrs looked down at the sandy heath and sighed dismally. He turned away and walked back toward the rim, searching the ground, until he came upon what he was seeking.

  He bent and retrieved it, then returned to where Rhapsody was standing, running her hands violently through her hair as if she sought to pull it out by the roots.

  And held it up before her eyes.

  It was a bastard sword, one of modest manufacture, unadorned, battle-battered, bloodied.

  Anborn’s sword.

  Rhapsody’s frenzy abated. She stopped clutching her hair and stared at the weapon, breathing heavily.

  She recalled it from the time she had met the Lord Marshal, unaware of who he was, thinking him merely an arrogant rogue with a large weapon atop a beautiful horse on the forest path, callously coming close to riding down children who were playing in a spring warm spell. The mud from the road had ended up across his face, at her hand, and from that moment had begun one of the warmest, dearest, and most convoluted relationships in her life from the time she had come to the new world.

  She stood still and continued to stare at the sword.

  She recalled it sheathed across Anborn’s back as he appeared in response to her Kinsman call in a bitter winter wind, his black shadow atop the distant image of a black horse in the snow of the southern forest, rescuing her from freezing to death; remembered the sight of him, laying low the armies of the Fallen with it in the Battle of the Moot; and, though lame, riding down Michael’s henchmen who had come to kidnap her from atop his horse in the specially devised saddle, taking out a captain’s share of them before his mount was shot out from under him.

  And how she had left him in the burning forest, having spoken words of sleep and healing, knowing she was about to be taken.

  Anborn ap Gwylliam, live; live for me.

  In the farthest reaches of her mind, she could picture him still, bending down on one knee before her in the darkness beyond the celebration of her ascension to the Ladyship at the Cymrian Council.

  You have my allegiance, Rhapsody—my sworn allegiance—whether as the Lady Cymrian, the Lady of the Lirin, or just as a lady. My sword and my life are yours, for your protection and need.

  “I am well and truly honored,” she whispered, now as she had when he had sworn himself to her.

  Solarrs saw the look in her eyes change, and turned the sword over in his hands, examining it idly.

  “He threw it to the ground just before he charged down into the valley,” he mused, holding it up in the light of the campfires. “It was not a significant weapon, and Anborn was not a sentimental man; I suppose he just didn’t want to give the enemy the pleasure of taking it from him.”

  “No,” Rhapsody said. “No, he knew what would happen. He didn’t want to enter the Afterlife as a soldier, just as a man.”

  She thought back to the last discussion they had undertaken before the outbreak of war, on a rocky ledge in Ylorc.

  He had confided a secret that he said no one alive knew—that he had a wife long before, a woman named Damynia, and though he would tell her nothing more of the story, he made it clear that the loss of her had been what transformed him from the idealistic young soldier whom his First Generation friends remembered to the terror of the battlefield he had become in the Cymrian War.

  It was a memory so scarring that he had refused to ever say goodbye to Rhapsody without getting a kiss in return, a strange custom for a man who scoffed at the concept of marriage in the current day.

  Your undeserved faith in me has awakened something in me I thought long dead; I am remembering again a time when life’s ideals and aspirations actually meant something to me, when camaraderie and valor and love of land and kin were the reasons to pick up arms, not wanton violence and the rage of revenge. It’s sparking in me a rebirth of a sorts, a hope of absolution, making whatever sacrifices, whatever efforts in the coming war worth something meaningful; you cannot imagine how important this is to me, after a life as long as mine, time which I have passed, dead inside, until I met you. I have sworn allegiance to no one since Gwylliam, and when I did that I was unrecognizable as a human being. I am not understating this, Rhapsody; you are right that it is a good thing we did not meet in earlier days, because you would have hated me, as the entire empire did. You are well aware that my freedom is what I prize above most other things, but I am not certain you made the connection that my sworn allegiance to you was a voluntary surrender, a limitation on that freedom, that wherever you are, your safety, your need, is my happiest priority now. It is because of that allegiance, and because of you, that I wade back into this fray as the man, the leader I was born to be—unlike the villain I was because of Damynia.

  “If only I could cry, perhaps I would feel less—less—”

  Solarrs waited quietly.

  “Lost,” she finally said.

  The ancient scout exhaled deeply.

  “We will all be trying to find our ways out of this loss for the rest of our lives,” he said simply. “A man like Anborn comes along but once in a lifetime; it will be a long time before we will heal. The best advice I can give you is to take comfort in your memories; in the end, they are all that any of us who share an unwieldy longevity have left to comfort us.”

  He put the sword down gently on the ground and walked away.

  Rhapsody waited until she could no longer see his shadow, then reached out and touched the weapon. She heard Anborn’s voice on the wind in the distance, speaking the words he had uttered just before he had gone off into the teeth of the war.

  Buck up, m’lady; there’s no need to be weepy. You are the mother of a fine, strong son who lives and thrives, all predictions to the contrary, even mine. It’s a bright morning, with fair weather, and it turns out your husband was heeding my warnings after all, so a worthy fighting force with Right on its side is gathering as we speak, coming to the rescue of an Alliance well worth saving. It’s quite a glorious day to be alive. Keep out of harm’s way as much as you can, and call me on the wind, Kinsman to Kinsman, if you are ever in need.

  His eyes had twinkled; he turned away and started down the mountain pass to the steppes of the Krevensfield Plain below. He had gone a score of paces when he stopped and looked back over his shoulder.

  Goodbye, Rhapsody.

  Just as he had called to her before the Sorbold army swallowed him.

  Rhapsody hung her head for a moment longer.

  Then she rose, brushed the sand and the grit from her dragonscale armor and trousers, and went back into the encampment where the wounded awaited her ministrations.

  58

  MOUNTAIN HEATH ABOVE THE RADASHAJN PASS, VORNESSTA, SORBOLD

  The line of injured soldiers stretched into the darkness, beyond the radiance of the torchlight that surrounded the encampment.

  The Lady Cymrian, attired in the same black full-body apron and blue headscarf that the other medics wore, was in the open a
ir tending to the walking wounded, having sung songs of extreme healing to those most critically injured to varying degrees of success. She was bandaging a young man from Anborn’s regiment when Solarrs and Knapp appeared, one almost immediately after the other, looking for her.

  “M’lady, they are bringing in a high-level prisoner,” Knapp said, signaling to several soldiers to light additional torches that were propped around the encampment and gesturing to other guards to fall into formation in front of the Lady Cymrian.

  Rhapsody exhaled and finished tying up the arm of the bleeding soldier in front of her.

  “He or she will have to wait until I am finished with the wounded, Knapp,” she said crossly, “unless there is some urgency that you—”

  Her words ground to a halt.

  Standing in the flickering radiance of the torches just coming to light was a man she recognized, an older man with a fulsome beard and the heavy furs and primitive armor of the cold lands beyond the northern border of the Alliance. He was surrounded by a party of guards with their weapons trained on him.

  Hjorst, the Diviner of the Hintervold.

  She stared at him in utter silence, with only the crackling of the campfires and torches joining the howl of the night wind. Finally she spoke.

  “You came with your men? Fought alongside them?”

  The Diviner nodded silently.

  “Which citadel did you attack?”

  The bearded leader remained silent.

  “He and his forces were defeated and taken in Yarim, m’lady,” said Solarrs.

  “I see.” She turned her attention back to the Diviner. “I cannot tell you how surprised and disappointed I was to discover your Icemen in Bethany and the other citadels of Roland alongside the forces of Sorbold. I had been under the grave misconception that you were a friend to the Alliance, Your Grace. The Lord Cymrian gave you a tariff-free grain treaty that could only be described as generous; I gave you plantings, helped you with your agriculture. Did you not write to me and tell me that your harvest two years ago had all but doubled in volume?”

  When the shaman finally spoke, his voice was terse and raspy. “I did.”

  “This is an interesting way of expressing thanks and friendship in return.”

  “That was before I became aware of your husband’s plans to invade and occupy the Riverlands.”

  The Lady Cymrian’s eyes narrowed. “What are you talking about? There have never been any such plans.”

  “I saw them with my own eyes.”

  “I have no doubt that your eyes were not deceiving you. That, unfortunately, is exactly what Talquist has been doing—deceiving you.”

  The Diviner’s heavy brows drew together as he lapsed into silence again.

  “Does it not seem odd to you, Your Grace, that you and your soldiers have all been captured within the provincial capitals of the Alliance, defeated by armies of women and children left behind to defend those cities, if we were in fact planning to attack and absorb your southern Riverlands? Have you, on the other hand, seen any of our forces north of the Tar’afel or the Erim Rus? In your lands? Half of our soldiers are deployed in the southern part of the Middle Continent, along the Threshold of Death, defending our own breadbasket lands—”

  “You have been starving my people for more than a year now.” The Diviner’s voice was shaky with a combination of bravado and creeping realization. “The grain promised in your husband’s treaty either never arrived, or was poisoned with rat droppings and mold.”

  Rhapsody eyed him sharply.

  “And, while I’m sure that was infuriating to the point of wanted vengeance, perhaps did it occur to you that the responsibility for that may have been in the hands of the one who was in charge of transporting that grain to you—or interdicting it, so that it never arrived?”

  “I—I wrote to you—I demanded an explanation, and was met with silence—”

  “Did you send those missives by ship?” She swallowed as Hjorst’s face went slack. “Do not blame yourself, Your Grace—the deception with which Talquist manipulated the Known World into a war that could win him the continent and the lands beyond it is true artistry, if you admire that sort of thing. It was a long-planned conquest, making use of a lifetime’s work, connections and trade alliances built over decades, like his association with you, and an impressive control of the seas which gave him dominion over a good deal of the ability to communicate between nations.

  “The natural tendency of the rulers of lands to demean the merchant class is what allowed it to happen; when the Scales of Jierna Tal named him emperor, it never occurred to anyone that merchants have had their thumbs subtly on scales from the beginning of Time. The only one who saw it coming was the Patriarch, because he knew well what sort of merchandise Talquist regularly traded in—human lives. That is why Talquist attacked Sepulvarta first; because Constantin knew that he was a slave trader, who used his armies to decimate towns, villages, and nations and drag their citizens back as captives to work in his iron mines and linen factories and other foundries and sweatshops that provided the weapons and armaments for his war.”

  Even in the dim light of the torches, Rhapsody and the soldiers could see the Diviner’s frost-browned face pale noticeably.

  He had been given a tour of the occupied holy city by Talquist himself after the emperor’s coronation.

  Rhapsody’s aspect hardened. “Anborn knew it would happen, too, I suppose—he always felt war in the air, though even he could not have foreseen the extent of Talquist’s ruthlessness. On the day he learned of the deaths of the empress and the crown prince, he told the Lord Cymrian what would come to pass.”

  She closed her eyes, remembering his words, which had floated into the cool darkness of the carriage in which she had lain, roiling in the throes of the nausea of what must have been early pregnancy.

  Mark this moment in your mind, nephew; this is the day when the war that is to come began.

  When the emerald-green eyes opened again, they were full of rage.

  “And now he is dead, ground to dust and buried in a mountain of slag and the bodies of men and horses—my sworn knight, the Lord Marshal of the Alliance, whom a thousand years of battle could not take down. Part of the cost of you deciding not to at least ask what was happening with your grain is too great to be borne, Your Grace. Talquist may have controlled all contact by sea, but a simple messenger sent to Haguefort or Highmeadow might have averted the War of the Known World. It is a shame that a man blessed with foresight, who divines the Future, missed such blatant manipulation.”

  “I have paid dearly for it,” the Diviner whispered, suddenly gray. “I have lost my second-eldest son.”

  The Lady Cymrian eyed him without sympathy.

  “That is unfortunate,” she said. “You and tens of thousands of other fathers. Highly unfortunate.”

  Solarrs and Knapp, standing by as she spoke, looked at each other in surprise. There was not even a hint of gentleness in her voice, so unlike the comfort they had always heard there. They watched as she continued to stare at the prisoner, no mercy or forgiveness apparent in her face.

  And were cheered by that absence.

  “I am at a loss for words,” the Diviner said finally. “Anything I would say now would be woefully meager, incommensurate with what I have done. Do unto me what you will.”

  The Lady Cymrian nodded curtly. She turned to the Lord Marshal’s men-at-arms.

  “Knapp,” she said, her tone brusque, “bring me Anborn’s bastard sword.”

  The First Generation soldiers exchanged a glance; then Knapp nodded and ran to retrieve the weapon.

  “Kneel, Your Grace,” Rhapsody said as she saw Anborn’s man returning, the long battered blade in his hand.

  The Diviner sighed silently and removed the enormous war helm on which the lifelike image of an arctic tiger was engraved. He slowly got down on one knee and bent his head.

  Rhapsody took the hilt of the weapon as Knapp outstretched his arm and ran
her fingers over the blade, stained with gore and clotted blood that had not been let in battle, but clearly come from bodies that had fallen atop it.

  “This will not do,” she said aloud, more to herself than to the others. “It should be clean, at least. That’s only proper.” She pulled her waterskin from her leather baldric, doused the blade, and wiped it off with her cloak. Then she pointed the blade, tip down, to the ground before the averted eyes of the Diviner at an angle where he could see it.

  “This was the sword of the Lord Marshal,” she said solemnly. “A common blade, one of dozens, perhaps scores that he wielded over time—”

  From the edge of the encampment an uproar broke out.

  In response to Rhapsody’s surprise, the flames in the torches roared with life, then settled down into a seething burn again.

  From outside the encampment a din was growing, and a swell of humanity was moving forth to where the leaders were standing with their prisoner. There was hooting and cheering as a man in chains was shoved along at the head of the processional, with arms trained on him at all times.

  Dysmore, a lieutenant in Anborn’s elite force, was shepherding the prisoner along.

  “M’lady!” he shouted. “M’lady, by your leave, look!”

  The Lady Cymrian stood straighter and gestured for Knapp and Solarrs to help the Diviner rise.

  Amid a veritable thunderstorm of cursing and spittle from the soldiers accompanying the captive, a tattered soldier could be intermittently seen, shielding his head and face from the blows and shouting that were aimed at it as best he could with his shoulders. The man seemed young, though Rhapsody could see very little more in the twisting and inconstant firelight of the torches.

  When Dysmore and his prisoner reached the center of the encampment, the lieutenant shoved the chained captive forward, into the presence of the Lady Cymrian. The guards who had been assigned by Knapp to protect her closed ranks around her, aiming their missile weapons at the prisoner so that he was surrounded on four sides.

  Now that he was nearer, Rhapsody was certain that she had never seen him before, but there was a familiarity to him that she could not discern. It was apparent that he was a Sorbold, dark of hair, eye, and skin, with a neatly trimmed beard and a tall, broad-shouldered frame. She signaled to the guards before her to step aside and came forward, Anborn’s blade in her hand, her face set in a studied look.