The Fiend Queen

by Barbara Ann Wright

  “You killed my love,” she said and felt nothing. She saw Katya clearly in her mind, but Roland had killed all the feeling in her.

  “And you’ve killed us all.”

  “Just you.” She used flesh magic to open a hole in his belly and then dropped the suppression pyramid inside, leaving it to heave among his guts. She focused and made it permanent, like she’d done with the light pyramid, before she closed the hole. He screamed and screamed as it repelled what he was from the inside out.

  “Keep him here,” she said. The others had gathered at the mouth of the cavern, watching Roland writhe and shriek, their hands over their ears. Starbride smiled at them. “We’ve got an army to save.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Katya

  Katya paused as tiny stones cascaded down the sides of the cramped tunnel. Not since the first one had they found a tunnel so unstable. The floor became littered with debris, digging in to her palms and knees. She could almost feel the rock overhead straining to crush her, but she made herself breathe. “Go carefully here.”

  All the bending and crawling continued to take its toll on Katya’s back and Redtrue’s ribs, and the suffocating feeling of being buried alive frayed all their nerves. It became harder and harder to get back into the tunnels once they’d broken through to another room.

  Whenever they encountered writing or the ruins of decorations and mosaics, Redtrue stopped and examined them. If they’d been in the palace halls, Katya would have chafed at the delay, but the prospect of another tunnel tempted her to say, “Take as long as you need.”

  At each pause, Katya lingered by the tunnel they’d come from, listening. If Starbride and the others came looking, Katya would have to crawl back the way she’d come, but she could deal with that as long as she knew Starbride waited at the other end. So far, she’d heard nothing. Maybe they hadn’t been able to break through or were still trying to find their way back to where Katya and the others had fallen. It couldn’t be easy with Roland dogging their steps.

  Or maybe Roland had killed them all, and there was no one coming to rescue her.

  Katya shook the thought away. “Let’s get moving.” She plunged into the next tunnel, trying not to think, keeping her eyes fixed on the gloom. After a few turns, though, she had to blink at what seemed like light coming from ahead.

  “Redtrue, hide your pyramid.”

  When darkness descended, it was a relief not to have to look at the rock. Katya blinked to adjust her eyes to the meager light coming from ahead. Steady and unwavering, it couldn’t be firelight, though it had a soft yellow glow. They crawled slowly until at last they broke into a large room. Light trickled up from a hole in the floor, but no sound came with it.

  Four columns rose to a ceiling at least twenty feet high, and a stone balcony stretched along the left side and then through the far wall. A door guarded the entrance to the next room, old but intact, unlike the floor-to-ceiling windows which were filled with debris.

  By the dim light coming from the hole, Katya noted an intricate mosaic under their feet, some fantastical beast that looked like a three-headed hillcat. She drew her knife as she tiptoed toward the hole, fighting images of what the people who lived in this dead city might look like as they dug their tunnels and whispered in the dark. They’d be huge moles with giant white eyes.

  But moles wouldn’t need the light.

  Katya peeked down and saw a large pyramid implanted in the floor of the room below. She gestured Redtrue forward.

  Redtrue stared at the pyramid before whispering in Katya’s ear. “It feels old.”

  They knelt and listened. Dawnmother crept to the door and put her ear to it. Katya despaired of just dropping down and then not being able to find her way up again. She glanced at Dawnmother, who shook her head. Katya pushed the door open slowly. She froze as it shrieked on old metal hinges. Well, there went secrecy.

  A large room lay behind the door, much like the first, but with a staircase that led to the balcony, and what had probably been a large front door now blocked with stone. Makeshift beds ringed this room, cloth-wrapped bundles of straw with furs sitting atop them. Katya doubted they had belonged to the original inhabitants but instead to the mysterious tunnel builders.

  Redtrue commanded her pyramid to glow again as she bent over one of the beds. She picked up a piece of fur that cracked, yellow with age. She let it fall and wiped her fingers on the hem of her shirt.

  Part of the staircase had been buried under debris spilling from the windows that ran its length, making it impassible, but a door underneath led back into the house. As they passed through, Katya stopped in surprise. The outer wall in this small room bore another tunnel, but this one reached a little more than half her height, and had been reinforced by thick wooden pillars. The remains of a torch lay at the mouth as if someone had tossed it there passing by.

  Another wall in the small room had collapsed, but someone had cleared it out enough to punch a hole in the floor and reveal a stone staircase going down, wan light filtering up it.

  Katya stepped carefully down into the five sided room that held the pyramid. When no mole people dashed from the shadows, she stopped and stared in wonder. Each wall had been carved with two intricate figures, surrounded by the same blocky characters Katya had come to think of as ancient Allusian.

  Each pair stood joined at the back, the one facing left male, the right female, both faces tilted to look at the sky. The first pair was dressed in intricate plate armor, both with high, peaked helms, a halberd strapped to their shared back rising up between their heads. She had a sword at her waist, and he a knife at his thigh. A long ribbon led from the top of their helms and curled down to entwine near where their hands nearly touched.

  The next pair wore robes that swept the ground. Their arms were angled over their chests, fingers curled protectively around books. Hats covered their hair completely before sweeping up over their skulls and leading to points over their faces.

  Another pair wore tight clothing, and both balanced a ball on their fingertips while knives dangled from their nearly touching fingers. The next pair wore nothing but a gauzy ribbon draped over their bodies, and their fingers entwined. Their free hands turned upward toward the carved stars glittering overhead. By the time Katya turned to the last pair, she knew what she would see: each figure balanced atop a single egg, though the scales they carried and the masks on their faces were new to her.

  “The ten spirits,” she whispered. The spirits had no history that she knew of, not as real people; they existed as myth, as she suspected Horsestrong and his brother Darkstrong did. But how the people that had lived here before her people arrived had come to know them, she had no clue.

  The pyramid in the middle of the floor seemed attached to the stone, and she bet it had sat there for a millennia, installed when the room had been built, though it had probably been brighter then.

  “It’s like a chapterhouse,” Katya said, “a country chapterhouse where they don’t have enough room or the population to build each pair of spirits their own space.”

  “Did your people only begin to worship them after you’d conquered this land?” Redtrue asked.

  “No, Vestra spoke about them in her journals as if she’d worshiped them all her life.”

  “Then these people and yours communicated well before they fought,” Dawnmother said. “Maybe they all came from the same place.”

  But Vestra’s journals mentioned nothing of the people who’d lived here before the Farradains came. If they’d been trading partners or something, surely she would have said. Her journals spoke of the original inhabitants as if they were nothing except an obstacle to overcome.

  “Can you read any of this?” Katya gestured to the words that surrounded every pair of spirits, encircling them like a frame. She had never seen the spirits carved this way, except for a few things commonly associated with them. Best and Berth did not normally go about armed and armored, but almost naked and always muscled. They wre
stled or acted as pillars, holding buildings aloft.

  And Jack and Jan were more playful than this dangerous pair. As Katya stepped closer, she saw that the balls were dotted with lines as if covered with tiny blades. And this representation of Ellias and Elody were almost interchangeable, both lithe and youthful. Each had long hair that mingled with the other. In the representations Katya had seen, Elody usually had wide hips and large breasts, but this pair were androgynous, told apart only by a slight difference in their jaws and shoulders. The only female spirits on this wall who seemed well endowed were the strength and wisdom spirits, and their male counterparts had barrel chests and larger bodies.

  “The words are difficult to decipher,” Redtrue said. “I’m no scholar, but I remember seeing something like this before.”

  “In school,” Dawnmother said, nodding. “I remember it, too. It does look like ancient Allusian, though I remember nothing from those lessons save that they were only a small part of the history book.”

  Katya held her tongue. The prevalence of any books in Allusia was due to the Farradains’ introduction. Before the Farradains came, only a few Allusians had lived in settlements like the one that preceded Newhope; most had been happy being nomadic. Moving frequently and quickly left books out of the question.

  “I remember a bit of the alphabet,” Dawnmother said, “though the writing was mostly pictographic.” She pointed to the drawing of Best and Berth and the lettering closest to them. “But nothing in here looks like a B.” She scratched a symbol in the dust that covered the floor. “This is our B now, and something like this”—she made another mark—“was a B then.”

  “So they called the spirits by different names,” Katya said. “That makes sense, but I can see that they’re the same.”

  “Perhaps.” Redtrue pointed to the pyramid embedded in the floor. “But what of this? Your chapterhouses and your pyradistés remain quite separate, yes?”

  “But anyone can hire a pyradisté,” Katya said.

  “Is that so? Hmm. The adsnazi have never been for sale.”

  “Maybe a long time ago,” Dawnmother said, “the adsnazi were actually helpful. Maybe they just gave these people a pyramid for their chapterhouse.”

  “A hidden chapterhouse.” Katya gestured toward the staircase. “Whoever unearthed this had to dig through the floor, which meant there was probably a secret way to get down here, like a switch that opened the staircase. Who would hide a chapterhouse?”

  “You hide that which is forbidden,” Dawnmother said.

  “Or that which is reserved for the privileged, like your palace passages,” Redtrue said.

  Katya knelt by the pyramid as if it could give her some answers. “If this place was secret, they couldn’t have just hired a pyradisté.”

  “Strange,” Dawnmother said, “that we would have forgotten these spirits completely. If these people were early Allusians, then they were at one time joined with our ancestors.”

  “Perhaps we wanted to forget them,” Redtrue said.

  “Yes,” Katya added, though she couldn’t get past the feeling that everything in front of her was wrong. “Or maybe you had to.”

  “What do you mean?” Redtrue asked.

  “We’re not going to figure anything out just by staring at it, and this will still be here after we get out,” Dawnmother said.

  Redtrue glanced at the pyramid. “I could cleanse this.”

  “Why bother?” When Katya told her father of this, she wondered if he would let the knowledge monks descend on this place. That would put them close to Yanchasa, but as long as there were no adsnazi or pyradistés in their midst, she didn’t see how they could detect Yanchasa’s presence. The whole kingdom knew of Fiends by now, but they were still ignorant of the fact that most of the Umbriels bore one. Perhaps she’d have to stand guard at the capstone, letting the explorers see everything but that.

  Her mother would have insisted upon such a thing. Katya’s heart lurched, but she buried the grief as deeply as she could.

  “We should leave a mark,” Dawnmother said as they trooped back up the stairs. “In case the others come looking for us. Though they’ll have a hard time tracing us if they’re still dealing with the Fiend king, the usurper, whatever you want to call him.”

  Katya snorted, not caring what anyone called him until they could call him dead.

  “Maybe when we climb up the pyramid, they’ll hear us and help dig us out,” Dawnmother said.

  “If not, we’re going to have to find a way through the stone.” Katya glanced at Redtrue. “Can that pyramid you use to put out fire help us?”

  Redtrue cocked her head, thinking. Katya hoped she wasn’t about to have to listen to another diatribe, but finally Redtrue shrugged. “We will see.”

  Katya guessed that moving rock out of the way must not be against the world’s natural flow. Spirits knew just about everything else was. Redtrue grew quiet, though, and Katya knew she was thinking about the room they’d just left. Once they started down the larger tunnel, having to stoop instead of crawl, Redtrue muttered to herself in a way Katya knew Castelle found charming, but at the moment was just annoying.

  “Out with it,” Katya finally said.

  “I could not make out most of the writing,” Redtrue blurted as if she’d been waiting for someone to ask. “Some of it, I could decipher, and it’s not what I expected to see. The figure in armor had a Y in its name.”

  Katya shrugged. “So does mine.”

  “Maybe it’s supposed to be you, then,” Dawnmother added.

  Katya gave her a wry look. “That must be it.”

  Dawnmother chuckled. “I knew a Youngstrong once. Perhaps it’s him.”

  “The spirits holding the books had a name starting with L that seemed to have two parts. Do your spirits have two names?” Redtrue asked.

  “Like surnames? I don’t think so.”

  “Surnames are not an Allusian custom,” Dawnmother said.

  Katya shrugged. “I think we’ve proven that whoever lived here, they weren’t typical Allusians, if we can even call them that.”

  “This second name was similar to ‘smart’ or ‘wise,’” Redtrue muttered.

  Dawnmother nudged Katya. “Perhaps we should just let her think out loud to herself. She’ll tell us when she’s ready.”

  “Perhaps it was an Allusian name,” Redtrue said, “ending in wise. Somethingwise.”

  “The spirits’ parents got their wish, then. Matter and Marla are the paragons of wisdom,” Dawnmother said.

  “The embodiment,” Katya said. “And I don’t think they had parents. They just are.”

  “Even Horsestrong had parents.” Dawnmother said. “That’s the way of things. I know your education is not that lacking.”

  Katya had to chuckle, but she kept to herself her doubt that Horsestrong even existed. The idea that the spirits had alternate, Allusian names was intriguing, though. Perhaps the Allusians weren’t native to present-day Allusia either, and at one point, they’d come this way, leaving some of their fellows behind before finally settling. She wondered why they’d left the spirits behind, or maybe they’d left most of their history in their tracks and combined the ten spirits into two people who were far easier to remember, even if they were both men.

  *

  When they found another room with writing upon its walls, Katya called another break, a short one, though Redtrue spent it in study.

  “Fiends,” she said, tapping the stone.

  Dawnmother and Katya peered over her shoulder. “Are you certain?” Dawnmother asked.

  “Look? Has it changed much?”

  Dawnmother traced the markings. “No, I remember from the books where Fiends were children’s tales.”

  “Perhaps these people harbored Fiends just as some of the Umbriels do,” Redtrue said. When Katya stared at her, she returned a haughty look. “Just because I didn’t get the entire story from you doesn’t mean I didn’t ask the others, especially since you seemed despe
rate to keep me blinded. Some of your fellows do not have lips as tight as yours or your mother’s.”

  “Castelle,” Katya said with a growl, but Castelle didn’t know everything.

  “And then later, the young lord.”

  “You badgered poor Hugo?” Dawnmother asked. “Shame on you.”

  “I pretended to know more than I did, and he was happy to have someone to talk to. The object of his affection was otherwise engaged.”

  “Devious,” Katya said. “So based on one word, you’ve decided that these people knew about Fiends, creatures native to mountains thousands of miles away, and maybe bore their Aspect, as my mother does. Did.”

  Dawnmother gave Redtrue a sharp look, and Redtrue had the grace to grimace. “I’m sorry to bring up your pain, but I’d already guessed that your family is afflicted based on the necklaces they wear. Castelle and Hugo just confirmed it. Though why Brutal does not have to wear such a device, I do not know.” Katya just stared at her until she rolled her eyes. “Not stupid,” she said slowly.

  “But this wall doesn’t tell us anything except that these people knew about Fiends, just like both our peoples do.”

  “How was the great Fiend summoned?” Redtrue asked.

  “I’m not a pyradisté.”

  “You said this Vestra kept journals. May I see them?”

  Katya barely held a straight face. “Certainly. I’ll ring for a servant.”

  “Some wine, please,” Dawnmother said, “if someone’s going.” She gestured to the tunnel. “Shall we?”

  “Why do you want to know how the creature was summoned?” Katya asked as they walked.

  “Because I wish to know if the Farradains used the pyramid they found here to summon the Fiend, or if they brought another with them. If they used the capstone, then I must ask, what was its original purpose? Did the Farradains have to retune it in order to use it, or did it have something to do with Fiends in the first place?”

  “From the stories,” Katya said, “the original inhabitants of this land seemed surprised to see a big monster stomping around in their midst. If they knew of Yanchasa, why didn’t they summon him first to repel the invaders?”