Queens (The Wielders of Arantha Book 2)

by Patrick Hodges

  The captain's grip on his mount's reins slackened and the merych decelerated. By the time it slowed to a halt fifty yards down the road, the captain had tumbled from the saddle, dead.

  Elzor turned his attention back to his men, ready to leap to their aid, but the fight was over. Five Daradian soldiers lay motionless on the ground, their merychs ambling off in different directions.

  With a grunt, Langon cleaned the blood from his sword on the body of one of the slain soldiers. “Are you unharmed, my liege?”

  “Yes, General, at ease,” Elzor replied, returning his attention to the Vandan, who was staring at them with a mixture of bemusement and befuddlement. Blood still trickled from his nostrils, but he made no move to wipe it away.

  “Who are ya?” he said, rising to a sitting position. “'Cause ya ain't no Agrusians.”

  Elzor drew himself up with a scowl while sheathing his own blade. “Who I am is the very last person on Elystra you want to cross. Now, I know you Vandans have little concept of honor, but seeing as how I just saved your worthless life, I expect you to repay your debt to me. Otherwise, I'll gut you right here and take my chances with the next band of thieves we come across.”

  “'F I take ya ta Maxtar, much worse'll happen to me,” he grumbled. “Ya better make it worth his while, or yer heads'll decorate his wall.”

  “Let me worry about that. Will you take us to him?”

  Without taking his eyes from Elzor's, the Vandan clambered to his feet. He made a show of wiping the blood from his nose, then staring at the red smear on the back of his hand. “Ya broke my nose.”

  Elzor managed a humorless smile. “I figured you'd prefer that to a sword through the gut.”

  The man snorted. “So whadda I call ya?”

  “I am Lord Elzor.” He gestured to his men. “General Langon, Captain Brynak. And you are?”

  “Skart.”

  “How far are we from the Vandan border, Skart?” Langon asked.

  Skart glanced at the general, whose beard matched his in both length and unruliness. “Day an' a half. Two if ya wanna go outta yer way to avoid any more patrols.”

  Elzor nodded, and the three Barjans remounted their merychs. Firmly in the saddle, Elzor motioned in the direction they were originally traveling. “After you.”

  Chapter Forty-One

  The rain beat down on the Plateau, but many angry fires still dotted the Ixtrayu croplands and orchards. Once fertile, arable land had been reduced to ash and scorched earth stretching for a mile to both the Plateau's north and south. Maeve and Davin's adopted home sat in total darkness now that the sun had disappeared below the horizon.

  Maeve cranked the Talon's external lights up to maximum intensity, but it provided only a fraction of the illumination they'd need to assess the situation. All she could see through the ship's rain-splattered viewport was a deathly stillness. Nothing moved.

  Impotent rage boiled inside her, but she forced it down.

  Switching the engines to hover mode, Maeve swept the Talon around the perimeter of the Plateau. All she could see were bodies. She took great comfort in the sensors' readings that plenty of people were still alive, though their lack of movement meant they were most likely unconscious. A large group of people, which she took to be Elzor's army, was already several miles away and riding hard to the east. She wanted to pursue them, but the Ixtrayu was her top priority.

  Dozens, hundreds of charred, blackened corpses littered the ground on both sides of the Plateau. A terrible battle had indeed taken place. Some Ixtrayu had survived. But where had their enemies gone?

  None spoke a word as Maeve landed the Talon on the open tract of dirt between the burnt-out croplands and the ramp to the northern entrance. They remained silent as she powered down the engines and lowered the exit ramp.

  Runa struggled to unfasten the safety harness that held her to the copilot's chair. She thrashed for several moments, after which Davin reached over and activated the release. Runa immediately sprang to her feet, her usually stoic expression now one of desperation, urgency, and terror.

  Maeve reached into a small compartment built into the wall near the door and rummaged through it for a few moments. She pulled out a medcorder, a powerful hand-light, and a comm-unit she immediately strapped around her right arm.

  “I'm going first,” she told the others. “I think the immediate danger has passed, but I'm not taking any chances. Keep the communicators open. I'll let you know if the coast is clear.”

  Davin nodded, but Runa moved determinedly forward. Her face was a mess of cuts, bruises, and swollen tissue, but her voice had a steely undertone. “I am going with you.”

  Maeve drew her pistol, pulling back on the slide with an audible click. “All right, but stay behind me.”

  The two women exited the craft, moving purposefully toward the stone ramp. Maeve swept the light in front of her, her nose wrinkling at the harsh smell of smoke and mud, fighting every instinct screaming at her to call out Kelia's name or announce their presence.

  Maeve kept her pistol gripped tight in her hand as she and Runa ascended the ramp. There was no noise but the pitter-patter of raindrops hitting the ground or trickling down the walls of the Plateau. Even the River Ix had ceased its flow.

  They passed through the entrance and Runa gasped in horror at the sight before them: a dozen Ixtrayu huntresses, sprawled on the ground, still as death. She ran to the nearest, a teenage girl with short dark hair.

  “Jara! Jara!” Runa shook the girl's shoulder and, to Maeve's immense relief, she began to stir.

  Taking care to keep the light out of the girl's face, Maeve holstered her gun and scanned Jara with the medcorder. “She's alive. Her heart took a big jolt of electricity, but she'll live.”

  “A jolt of what?” Runa queried, her eyes moving over the dozen other unconscious Ixtrayu surrounding them.

  “Lightning,” Maeve said, and then uttered a guttural Welsh curse.

  Of the twelve huntresses who had guarded the northern entrance, four were dead. Runa said choked prayers to Arantha over her fallen sisters as she crossed their arms over their chests. A tear fell from Maeve's eye as she recognized Jazia, Bika's mother, among the dead. One day ago, she had given her daughter away in a beautiful ceremony, but now …

  “Mom?” came Davin's voice from her comm-unit. “Are you okay?”

  “I'm fine,” she answered. “I don't see any sign of aggressors so far. However, we'd best be on our toes. Get up here, now. Bring the plasma welder.”

  Maeve gave each of the survivors a small dose of her healing power, hoping it would be enough to resuscitate them. Davin entered the village and, on Maeve's instructions, began lighting the wooden torches that lined the banks of the river with the plasma welder. Little by little, light returned to the Plateau, but there was still very little movement. The place felt like a graveyard.

  After sending Davin to the Room of Healing to look for Lyala, Maeve and Runa proceeded to the southern entrance, where they found twenty more huntresses' bodies. Six of them were dead, either from electric shock or from their enemies' arrows. Maeve's heart grew heavier with each Ixtrayu she couldn't revive.

  “I'm sorry, Ebina,” Maeve whispered. She carefully extricated the arrow protruding from the young huntress's heart before copying Runa's action and folding her arms across her chest. She'd only met the girl twice, during the training sessions, but she'd been friendly and cordial, eager to learn whatever she could. Maeve remembered wishing that she'd had more students like Ebina back in her days as an instructor.

  The last body she checked was Susarra. It took no time to determine she was gone too, her face frozen in a grotesque mask of death, her unseeing eyes staring up at the slit of night sky above them. She'd been a terrible grandmother, and had caused no end of trouble for Kelia, but at least she'd gone down fighting. Maeve wished her well in the next life as she closed the former Councilor's eyes.

  Runa made a quick inspection of the cave. She emerged with a look of b
arely-controlled despair and a head-shake. No words were necessary. Kelia's vision had come true, for the most part; Elzor's sister and his army had come for the Ixtrayu's Stone, and now they had it. Many Ixtrayu were dead, but not all of them.

  This puzzled Maeve. Rahne had briefly described the atrocities committed by Elzor and his followers, and Kalik had done nothing in their brief acquaintance to contradict any of it. It didn't seem right that they would leave anyone alive. Perhaps her timely arrival in the Talon had been the reason why?

  She and Runa assumed they would find Kelia and the other Wielders on top of the Plateau, and since the southern entrance was still iced over, they had to retrace their steps to the north side. Maeve saw Lyala, with Davin at her side, using her Wielding to fully revive the survivors. Lyala, too, had been knocked out by the energy wave, but she'd been inside when it hit, and thus hadn't taken the full brunt of it.

  Runa grabbed a flaming torch from its sconce. She and Maeve made their way up the stone staircase to the top of the Plateau. There, they found more huntresses, all alive.

  Maeve broke into a jog as she spotted three more figures who had fallen close together near the edge of the overlook. The jog became a sprint as she recognized the smallest of the three. “Nyla!” she screamed, instinctively placing her hands on Nyla's forehead and chest. Closing her eyes, she called upon her abilities, sending a stream of healing energy into the young girl's body.

  Nyla's eyes sprang open, and she brought her hands up, tiny flames dancing on her fingertips. Maeve grabbed her wrists just as the flames tripled in size, and she wrenched her head back to avoid the searing heat.

  “Nyla!” Maeve shouted, bringing her face within inches of the young Wielder's. “Stop!”

  Nyla blinked a few times, shaking her head as if clearing the cobwebs out. “M-Maeve?”

  “Yeah, it's me. Calm down, the battle's over.”

  Nyla closed her eyes, and the flames flickered and died away. She took a few deep breaths, and Maeve felt the tension melt from the girl's frame.

  Then, as if a switch had been thrown, Nyla's breathing quickened, and her eyes nearly jumped from their sockets. “No!”

  She scrambled to her feet. Maeve made a move to stop her, but Nyla batted Maeve's arm away. She staggered to the edge of the cliff, looking down into the darkness. “Your light! Give me your light!” she cried, panic lacing her voice.

  Maeve handed Nyla the light, and she immediately trained the high beam straight down. Maeve peered over the edge of the Plateau, and her heart turned to ice as the beam shone bright upon another body, lying splayed out on the rock below. Her limbs were twisted at unnatural angles, and what little blood hadn't been washed away by the rain had pooled around her head.

  Sarja.

  Oh God.

  A keening wail of gut-wrenching intensity issued from Nyla's mouth. Runa, who had been tending to a barely conscious Yarji and Zarina, came running. She looked over the cliff's edge as Nyla continued to scream hysterically. Nyla doubled over, clutching her stomach and squeezing her eyes shut.

  Runa didn't move. She stood there, motionless, staring down at the broken, lifeless body of her daughter. Even her breathing seemed to have stopped. She staggered, just enough to topple off balance, but she regained her footing right away. Somehow, in their shock, Nyla and Runa found each other's arms. They held each other close, Nyla burying her face in Runa's shoulder, sobbing openly. Runa, her eyes hooded, simply held her.

  Maeve, already numbed by the day's events, drifted away from them. She moved to Yarji and Zarina, infusing both of them with her healing energy. As the two young Wielders drifted back to a state of awareness, Maeve grasped both their hands. No words were spoken as the three of them watched Nyla purge every last tear from her body. Maeve knew they would be watching for a long time.

  Eleven Ixtrayu, dead. The Stone, taken. And Kelia, nowhere to be found.

  They thought they'd had plenty of time, that their enemy was far distant, that they'd adequately prepared themselves for battle. If only she and Davin had made their trek across the desert one day earlier. If only Zob's injury hadn't slowed them down. If only she'd had her wits about her.

  She could have, should have been here, to use her Wielding, her superior technology, to ensure victory. But she wasn't. She'd failed to protect the people she cared about, again.

  Maeve sat down, buried her face in her hands, and cried. She cried for Earth, and for the hellish fate that had befallen the human race. She cried for eleven brave huntresses who had given their lives to protect the only home they'd ever known. And she cried for a sweet, innocent girl who would now never see her fifteenth birthday.

  * * *

  It took Maeve and Lyala several hours to restore the surviving huntresses to a level of strength where they could walk upright without collapsing. Despite the emotional and physical exhaustion, no one slept. Davin graciously helped the huntresses carry their dead into the Stone-less cave, after which the bodies were covered up with lyrax-fur blankets borrowed from several homes.

  Nyla was far too weak to Wield, so Maeve summoned Davin to use the plasma welder to melt the ice barrier covering the southern entrance, thus allowing Runa to scoop Sarja's body into her arms and carry her back to their home. No one dared stop her or speak to her as she disappeared inside.

  Maeve returned to the Room of Healing, where she watched Lyala hand Bika a mug of tea. The young huntress, who had survived not only the energy wave but an arrow wound to her shoulder, downed the tea in three gulps before falling asleep in Zarina's arms.

  With nothing else to do before sunrise, Maeve stumbled back to the three-room abode the tribe had provided for her and Davin. Her son's resounding snores rang in her ears as she passed the threshold and stumbled into her own bedroom.

  She didn't even bother getting undressed. She collapsed onto her pile of lyrax pelts, silently praying to every saint she could think of for a dreamless sleep.

  * * *

  Every muscle, every bone in Maeve's body screamed at her to stay in bed, to resume her much-needed slumber as dawn broke over the Plateau. The wounds she'd sustained the day before had healed completely, but her overtaxed body still felt sore as hell. Between the grueling ride across the desert, the beatings, and having to use her Wielding well into the night, she felt just as ragged as when she went to bed.

  She decided not to wake Davin, who'd more than earned the extra sleep. After changing into a clean tunic—one mercifully not caked with her blood, or anyone else's—she made her way back to the Talon. She was not surprised to find Rahne and Rabin asleep, stretched out on two of the bunks lining the walls of the crew quarters.

  After rousing them, she broke the grim news of the Elzorath's victory and of Kelia's disappearance. Rahne's headache had returned, not in full force but enough to be a nuisance, so Maeve used her healing power to alleviate it, assuring him that the pain would go away in time. They both offered to help with the aftermath, but Maeve turned them down; emotions were still raw among the survivors, and two unfamiliar men striding through the village would likely get torn to shreds despite their good intentions. She then told them that they would be allowed to leave—probably—once she'd had a chance to explain their assistance in the mountains to the Council. They fumed for a few moments, but Maeve mollified them by using the food synthesizer to produce two hearty breakfasts, which they ate with considerable gusto. She then synthesized a huge mug of black coffee for herself before locking them in again.

  Maeve gathered every able-bodied Ixtrayu, and a bleary-eyed Davin, in the dining area, where she passed out what little had been left behind in the tribe's food storage. Runa was not among them and, unsurprisingly, no one volunteered to summon her. Nyla sat apart from the others, staring into space.

  After swigging the last drop of coffee from her mug, Maeve rose to her feet and faced the crowd. She pulled her Stone from her jacket pocket and held it up for all to see. Keeping her voice calm and even, she began to speak.

&nb
sp; “I'm sure you all know what this is. My son and I,” she gestured at Davin, “found this in the mountains ten days ago. It is one of three Stones of Arantha that exist on Elystra. A very … bad man named Elzor wants them, and he will kill whomever he must to get them.” She went on to recap what had happened the night before, and why their return had been delayed. “Does anyone know what happened to Kelia?”

  The assembled huntresses shook their heads.

  Maeve held out her Stone to Nyla. “Are you up for consulting Arantha? I'll help augment you …”

  Nyla shook her head.

  “This can't wait, Nyla,” Maeve pressed. “You're the only one here with divinatory powers.”

  “I know.” Nyla lowered her head, then met Maeve's eyes. “I just need some time, all right?”

  “All right.” Maeve faced the huntresses. “Who was the last person to see her?”

  Gruta raised her hand. “I was on top of the Plateau, watching the Protectress and Proda's daughter outside the north entrance. They spoke for a few minutes, but I didn't hear what they said.” She cast her eyes to the ground.

  “Go on.”

  “They fought. The Protectress used her air-Wielding to lift the other woman off the ground, but she broke free and fell down, hard. I thought the Protectress had won, but then there was this huge blue flash, and …” She sighed. “That's all I remember.”

  “What do we do now?” asked Yarji, pressing a wet cloth against a wide red burn mark on her neck.

  “What if the Protectress is dead?” Gruta added.

  Maeve shot a glance at Nyla, who still hadn't moved. The young Wielder did not react to Gruta's rather brusque comment.

  “Come with me, all of you,” Maeve said, walking toward the north entrance.

  She led the huntresses down the ramp, where all of them gawked at the massive, majestic hulk of the Talon, parked casually right on their front lawn. Even Nyla seemed to break out of her grief-induced stupor to marvel at the sight.