Dragon Queen sk-2

by Stephen Deas

  The Regrettable Men of Vespinarr had a reputation second only to the Elemental Men themselves when it came to murder. The Watcher waited for understanding to take its course, for the grey dead to realise that he was a dead man walking. Patiently, to see what the grey dead would do.

  He wasn't disappointed.

  12

  The Queen's Road

  Berren the Crowntaker. The Bloody Judge of Tethis, that's who he was. He took the first of the queensguard from the flank. Stabbed the man's horse in the neck so it fell and then killed the rider while he struggled on the ground. He took the man's broadsword and battered away a swing from the next horseman to gallop past. Javelins scattered the road. He snatched one and threw it. Took one of the queensguard in the face then dived out of the way of a half-dozen more as they galloped past. The next javelin missed. He danced and parried between hooves and blades, looking for what he wanted. Damned body was slow, weak. It kept letting him down. He kept missing. A riderless horse, that's what he needed, caught in the flood of the retreat. When he saw one, thundering along the road with the rest in headlong flight, he hurled himself at it and leaped onto its back. His new legs didn't have the strength he asked from them and he landed short, almost fell off but managed to haul himself the rest of the way. Tore another muscle while he was at it. No one tried to stop him. The queensguard were wild and panic-stricken. His own men couldn't be far behind, not far at all.

  He gave chase, almost sliding sideways off the saddle as soon as he was on it as he snatched yet another javelin out of a corpse. He was among the last remnants of the queensguard now. He galloped after them, javelin in hand, turned a corner in the road and then pulled up with a roar of rage. He was too late. He'd found the rear-guard, nothing more. The Dark Queen, Gelisya, was long gone, and Vallas and her death-mages with her. He'd waited, standing out here all night, freezing cold, and they hadn't even been on the road. He screamed in fury as the last of them faded into dust, full flight, job done. Clenched his fists and ground his teeth and hurled his javelin into the ground. It stuck in the dirt, quivering. ‘Vallas! I'll find you, warlock! You hear me? Wherever you are, I'll find you! I'll find you!’

  The queensguard were gone. There was nothing he could do.

  No. There was something he could do. He bent sideways and snatched up the quivering javelin and turned, because there were more riders coming any minute, and if he couldn't hunt down Vallas Kuy then he could damn well have his army back. They probably thought he was dead. Well, he wasn't. He turned his horse across the road and snorted in the still dusty air. The sun beat down on his head. He felt naked without his armour and his helm.

  They were coming. He could feel them.

  At the side of the road, at the edge of the wood, a pair of crimson butterflies danced together over a patch of bright yellow milk-flowers. Birdsong fluttered between the trees. A stillness settled over everything, everything except the rumble of hooves coming closer.

  He snorted again, blowing the dry snot out of his nose.

  The first horses rounded the corner. They came straight at him. He held the javelin high overhead so they couldn't miss it. Ordering them to stop. He stared at them, willing them with his eyes to know him.

  They didn't even falter.

  The horse at the head of the riders. It was his. And as they charged closer, he saw it wasn't only the horse. His pennant. His helm. His armour. Him.

  He stayed very still because he simply couldn't move now. He couldn't think. Staring at his own body. It paralysed him.

  The riders stopped a dozen paces short. The man who was on his horse lifted his visor. His visor, and behind it his face. His own eyes looked at him. Beyond, more faces he knew stared coldly. Friends, damn them! Men who'd fought with him for years, some from the very start, and now they were looking at him as though they didn't know him. Like he was a rabid animal.

  ‘You're a bit ambitious for a warlock,’ said the man who wasn't him but who had his voice. ‘Brave though, I'll give you that. Or maybe just stupid.’

  Berren raised his javelin to throw in the usurper's face, then stopped. He was shaking. Not shaking with rage any more but shaking with fear. The man had his face! He'd just thought. . He just hadn't thought. Supposed he must have died on the battlefield and everyone thought he was gone and how pleased they'd be to find him again once he could make them understand what had happened, what the warlocks had done. .

  But he hadn't died. And they weren't pleased. And here he was.

  The other Bloody Judge stared back at him, the one who had his skin, wild-eyed and spattered in blood. He kicked his horse slowly forward until the length of the javelin was all that was between them.

  ‘Who are you?’ Berren croaked. The muscles in his arm twitched.

  ‘Who am I?’ His own voice! For the love of the sun! Holy moon, his own voice, his own face! ‘Who am I? I think you know very well who I am, warlock.’

  He couldn't move. Couldn't speak. Didn't know what to say.

  ‘Well?’ He couldn't tear his eyes away. His own face watched him, unblinking. Did he really look so hard, so harsh, so cruel? But still, it was his face.

  From so close the javelin couldn't miss.

  ‘Are you going to throw it or not?’

  His own face looking back at him! Dear gods, his own face! ‘Who are you?’ Inside he kept screaming it, over and over.

  ‘You know that, boy. I'm the Bloody Judge. I'm Berren the Crowntaker, the killer of kings. Now put that javelin down before I kill you too.’ The Bloody Judge frowned. He wrinkled his nose and sniffed in disdain. ‘Fish! So you are a warlock. Got a name I can put on your grave?’

  Berren's blood surged. Somehow that broke the spell. ‘I've got a name for you. It's Berren!’ He threw the javelin hard and quick. The Bloody Judge ducked sideways, lightning-fast. The javelin screeched off the battered metal on his shoulder and veered sideways and up and speared a tree far down the road. The Judge shook his head and drew his sword, the blade of glittering black moonsteel. His sword, the one he'd held in his hand only a day ago. The moonsteel came arcing at his head and he was already ducking because he knew how the first blow would come, and for the next few seconds he could see, in every movement this pretender made, how he fought. How they both did. How they were the same. And that road led to a dark place of icy cold where he wasn't who he believed with all his might that he must be. .

  He threw up his broadsword to block another swing and the moonsteel edge cut it in two. He hurled himself wildly aside, slipped, cried out and fell off his horse. The Judge jumped to the ground after him, grabbed him as he rose and smashed him in the face with an iron gauntlet. He staggered and fell, dazed, eyes ringing, ears full of stars, and then the Judge had him, sword point at his throat. He seemed more puzzled than angry. He poked with his point. ‘Well, you're a strange one. So who are you really?’

  Rage and fury and screaming panic boiled together. ‘Who are you?’ Berren howled. ‘Who are you in there?’

  The Judge shook his head. His sword twitched back, ready to strike. Berren clapped his hands around the blade and slammed its point down into the dirt beside his cheek. The Judge lurched down. Berren bucked and arced a kick over his own head, straight into the Judge's face, was on his feet in a flash but still not quick enough. The Judge caught his shoulder and sprawled him a second time and a boot smashed into the side of his head. The edges of the world turned black and shrank and all he could see was a bloody face peering down at him.

  ‘Knock a tooth out, did he?’ laughed someone, and he could have sworn the voice was Tallis One-Eye. Well One-Eye could just fuck off.

  ‘What do you want us to do with him?’

  The world shrank smaller still. The Judge spat. ‘Queensguard. Same as the rest.’ Then Berren's eyes closed. The world turned red and the darkness had him.

  Days passed. Skyrie knew he was dying. The village men had done what they could but his leg was lost. The damage was too deep and now the rest of him was fadi
ng as well. He shook and shivered in his bed, torn apart by the weakness and the pain. They came to see him, to sit with him, taking it in turns. There was always someone there. They thought they were being kind but he wished they'd just go away and leave him in peace to die.

  Time passed again. Alone, finally, with the last of his strength, he hauled himself out of his bed and onto the floor. Outside, the night sky was filled with stars. He heard laughter and dancing and the crackling of a large fire and smelled its smoke. He crawled and dragged himself out of the hut that had been his home, inch by inch out of the village he'd never left, to the reed beds on the edge of the lake where he'd been born. He was going to die tonight and he wanted it to be outside under the stars, not in the dark. He reached the water's edge, rolled onto his back and waited. One by one, the stars winked out. Tears filled his eyes. He wanted to live, not to die. He wanted to live but the choice had been taken away.

  A man stood over him. Skyrie blinked. He hadn't heard the man come, hadn't seen him. He was just suddenly there. The man's face, where it wasn't lost among the shadows of his cowl, was pale. One half was ruined, scarred ragged by disease or fire with one blind eye, milky white. He wore pale hooded robes the colour of moonlight.

  ‘Are you death?’ Skyrie asked, but the words never came out.

  ‘I carry the Black Moon.’ The stranger's one good eye bored into him.

  Hands reached under his arms, hauling him along the road and then slinging him over the back of a mule. They tied him up, good and tight. His wrists tingled and his fingers turned slowly numb. For a while he danced in and out of consciousness. The plod plod of the mule lulled him. Maybe he fell asleep. Maybe he dreamed, or maybe they were memories. Of a man with a ruined face and one milky eye.

  He woke again when they pulled him off the mule. He tried to see but his eyes were swollen almost shut. His head pounded like a busy blacksmith's hammer. The brightness of the day made him wince. His mouth tasted of his own blood.

  The men around him were soldiers. His soldiers. Fighting Hawks. They tied him to a post beside the road and left him slumped there, groaning. The air smelled of mud and sweat but the sun was higher than he remembered and at least he was warm now. He rolled his head. Other men were tied to more posts around him. Queensguard by the looks of them, and they were on the edge of a field beside the road. Not in the trees any more. When he twisted to look behind him, he saw a farmhouse, but he couldn't look at it for long before the pain was unbearable. He gasped and cried out but no one even looked his way. He knew where he was, though. He'd been here before. Not far from the battlefield.

  A steady stream of wagons and horses moved along the road. His supply train from Galsmouth, following the rest of the Fighting Hawks into Tethis itself.

  His Fighting Hawks. His supply train.

  Past the road all he could see was another field and then sky. They weren't far from the coast. A mile straight west and he'd reach the cliffs and the sea. Not that he had the strength.

  A pair of soldiers moved past him. The Judge's men. He closed his eyes but he heard one of them whisper to another as they passed, ‘Let the Taiytakei have the lot of them. The boy's a murderer. Killed a couple of his house guards as well. Not a man you'd miss, but you know how touchy the Crowntaker is.’

  His head sank to his chest. Pain, pain, pain, everything hurt, but nothing as bad as his head. There were holes in his memories. Hundreds of them. Like the rotten wood of an old barn so riddled with wormholes that inside its skin was nothing but dust and what was left crumbled to the slightest touch. Crumbs. Whole from the outside but on the brink of collapse.

  The world drifted. He saw ships. He didn't know who he was. He'd had a name once. Maybe two. Sometimes he remembered one, sometimes the other. Sometimes he forgot them both.

  The Bloody Judge. Berren Crowntaker. Remember!

  Early in the afternoon they cut him down, him and the queens-guard, and dragged them over to a dozen cage-wagons and threw them inside. By then he was too delirious to even walk. He barely knew what was happening. They threw him in like a sack of onions and, if it hurt, he didn't notice. The wagons rolled and bounced over the roads, shaking his bones, adding to the hammer in his head. The rain, when it came, soaked him, and for a while his wandering mind thought he was at sea.

  Berren Crowntaker. Remember!

  He'd spent two years at sea once. A skag. The lowest of the low, scampering through the rigging, hating every moment of it, but he'd deserved it for what he'd done.

  The rain grew heavier. Slowly the cold brought him back. He huddled in the corner of his cage, shivering as the road turned to mud. The wagons began to struggle. The soldiers turned out the prisoners from one of them to push the others. Some ran. He watched the soldiers chase them and cut them down. If they'd let him out, he'd have run too, except he wouldn't even have been able to stand. He felt sick.

  A bit later he threw up. By now the pain in his head was like being crushed under a mountain.

  They passed the Dark Queen's castle. His army hadn't yet forced its way past the last few cohorts holding the palisade. Wouldn't be long though. He almost smiled. He knew the secret way in and he knew the queensguard didn't watch it. No one else knew it now. No one else left alive. They'd all died in Tethis when the madness of the Thousand Knives came.

  All of them except him.

  He should have killed the Dark Queen that day. Should have tried. Should have faced the last three men she had left to her and cut them down, even if one was a friend, and put an end to her. But the world had seemed different then. Brighter. He'd had a son. He'd had Tasahre — no, not Tasahre. Tasahre belonged with Deephaven. Fasha — that was the one.

  His mind spun in loops. Secret way. Somehow that made him shake with laughing — that's how he knew who he was. No one else knew the secret way. He could show them so. .

  He could have killed the queen that day. Should have. Ten years of bitter feud and he could have wiped them all away with a single cut of his sword.

  The wagons went round behind the castle, over the High Bridge and down the steep-sided valley into Tethis itself. The rain stopped but rivulets of water still ran between the cobbles, pooling in puddles outside doorsteps. The streets were empty, quiet. People were hiding. Could hardly blame them for that. Just like the day the Thousand Knives had come. Yes, he remembered that. How empty it had been.

  Not that the wagons cared for what he remembered. They rolled steadily down through the town, past dirty grey stone walls and peeled-paint doors whose colours had faded years ago. Grime streaked everything, all the way to the sea and the docks and the old warehouse where Vallas had lived, back when Vallas had called himself a soap maker. Years later the Dark Queen had built it into a prison.

  His own soldiers dragged him out of the cage-wagon. He staggered and tried to pull away but he was as weak as a child and one good cuff knocked him down. He lay there in the puddles, too empty to move, while they manacled him to a line of six queens-guard, and it was they who helped him to his feet. One of them let him lean on his shoulder and he almost cried. A piece of kindness, and yet he still hated them. They were the enemy, after all.

  In the prison they left him for days with no food, just a bucket of river water brought in each morning. His soldiers, men he'd fought beside for years, and now they simply didn't know him. When his head finally stopped pounding, he tried to tell them who he was but no one wanted to listen. They just laughed and kicked him until he was quiet, but he felt their contempt and disdain worse than any beating. They despised him. Good men. Strong, brave, he even knew a few of them by name, but when he called out they spat in his face And each day more ragged prisoners were dragged into the warehouse. Queensguard, mostly.

  He slept a lot. In his dreams he was someone else. In his dreams he lay beside a lake in the dark and he couldn't move and something was terribly horribly wrong and the stranger with the one eye and the half-ruined face stood over him as his life ebbed away. Fingers traced symbols, an
d where the fingers passed the air split open like swollen flesh under a sharpened blade. Black shadow oozed out of the gashes left behind.

  What will you give to live? the stranger asked, tracing ever more symbols, slowly filling the sky.

  Anything, he replied.

  He woke up weeping. The tears flowed freely. He hung his head. Words faded into the depths of his thoughts. Xibaiya save me. As the sun rose on that last morning the doors burst open and there was the Bloody Judge himself with all the faces Berren had known for years: Tallis One-Eye. Gaunt the knife man. Lia the Mountain Fox who loved him and hated him all at once. The false Judge pulled out a knife. Its hilt was gold and carved with a pattern of a thousand stars. Its blade shimmered. The Starknife, old as the world, peerless, imbued with a fragment of something vast yet sleeping. One of a pair and Berren had seen them both. One in a box on the thief-taker's desk in Deephaven, the other in the hands of Saffran Kuy the warlock on the day Kuy had cut out a piece of his soul. He'd never known which was which but he'd carried one of them at his own side ever since that day in Tethis, ten years past.

  The false Judge held up the knife and looked about. ‘Who knows what this is?’ His eyes roamed from face to face. Slowly, from one to the next to the next. He stopped at Berren and stared long and hard and then moved on. When he was done, he pointed to two who had once been warlocks. ‘Him. And him. They've seen it before. Take them outside and hang them.’

  Tallis pointed at Berren. ‘And him. He knows too. I saw it in his eyes.’

  Too much. Berren lunged in his chains. ‘Tallis One-Eye, I am Berren! Not him. That's some usurper! He's a trick the warlocks are playing on you. Can't you see?’

  One-Eye and the Bloody Judge looked at each other. They both started to laugh. Berren's voice rose shrilly over them: ‘I can prove it, One-Eye. I know things only I could know. I know about the secret passageway from the ravine into the pit under the castle. Has he showed you that? Or did he let good men die for no good purpose battering at that palisade? No one knows that passage exists any more, no one except me. You can't even find it unless you know exactly what to look for. It's hidden by a-’