The Born Queen

by Greg Keyes

  “Run,” he told the archers. “Back to the wedge.”

  Although, glancing that way, he wondered if there would be anything to retreat to.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  THE WAY OF POWER

  THE GRASS RIPPLED, shifting to trees and hills as Anne unraveled herself and moved like a cloud. She had been afraid at first of discorporation, but in the sedos realm, the body was more illusion than anything else. Once that deception was put behind, there was much fun to be had. She could twine like grapevines through massive forests or flow like rainwater down a hillside. She could choose another illusory body. She had played at being a horse, an eagle, a porpoise, a spider, a creeping lizard. They felt more welcome in her thoughts now, too, more easy. The more she used her power, the more secure her identity seemed to become.

  She had to remind herself sometimes that she wasn’t there just for simple enjoyment. She never wanted to leave and returned more and more often whether or not there was anything particular she was looking for.

  In fact, sometimes she forgot what she was looking for.

  But not today. Today she drifted back days and toward the south.

  She saw the army of the Church massed in the thousands at Teremené. That was nothing new, and already half of her army was marching to meet them. Looking at them now, she felt a coldness in her belly. Crotheny was caught in a vise; the Hansans were being held at Poelscild, but to attack with enough force to drive them back would mean letting the Church come to her gates, and the south was poorly defended. She had seen, too, a new fleet of strange copper-skinned men sailing down from the north, from Rakh Fadh, in the company of tow-headed Weihand raiders. That sailing hadn’t happened yet, and the results of it seemed inaugurable.

  And in the south the future was also unclear. Sometimes she saw massive carnage, sometimes an unhindered march, sometimes nothing.

  None of this was new, nor did it long hold her attention. She was looking for her friends.

  She already had seen Cazio, captured by the Church. She knew there was something missing, someone he had talked to that she could not focus on. But she also knew he and z’Acatto were free again.

  Austra had been the hardest to find.

  She imagined her friend’s face, her laugh, and the chagrined pucker of her forehead when she was afraid Anne was about to get them both into trouble.

  And there was something, a reflection, a flicker in the distance of leagues and also time. But as Anne moved toward it to peek up from the sedos like a groundhog from the earth, a current of sickening power caught and twisted her misty form, a massive flow against which she could not struggle. It slammed her into something, submerged her in pain and horror, and congealed her back into human form.

  Someone was cutting her. She smelled the blood, felt the pain. His stinking breath was in her ear, and she saw her legs all exposed and smeared red. She felt the fear, sheer panic, the certain horrible knowledge that she was going to die, the animal need to tear away and run and the impossibility of doing so. She couldn’t even think. She couldn’t scream. She could only watch as the knife peeled her white skin.

  Fight! she tried to scream. Stop him!

  When the echo came back, she suddenly understood that this wasn’t happening to her. The body being tortured was Austra’s.

  Fight, Austra, for the love of the saints! I can’t lose you!

  Something turned then, and Anne was yanked back out into the currents. For the first time she saw Austra’s face, her empty, horrified gaze, and then she was dwindling away, gone.

  Anne went frantically back, racing up and down, back and forth, but there was no longer any trace of her friend, and now she couldn’t locate Cazio again. But she didn’t give up; she had to find them. She had the power to find them, to bring them back from the dead if need be, and by all the saints, she would do so.

  She woke shivering and shaking, wondering who she was, where she was, the sense of losing herself as bad as ever. She was weeping helplessly, and although she eventually understood that it was Emily who had awakened her, she wasn’t able to respond. Only after Nerenai brought some of her tea was she able to muster the coherence to listen.

  “Again, Emily,” she murmured.

  “Majesty,” Emily said. “The army of Hansa.”

  She opened her eyes and saw the girl kneeling next to her.

  “What about them?”

  “You’ve been…gone for two days. We could not rouse you.”

  “What’s happened?”

  “Fifteen thousand more of the enemy arrived two nights ago. They attacked yesterday morning. They’ve just breached the canal and are surrounding the keep.”

  The keep surrounded. Austra and Cazio dead. The Church, the fleet from the north…

  Too much. Too much.

  “Where’s Artwair?”

  “Outside.”

  “Get my dressing gown.”

  She heard a lot of clattering in the hall. When she emerged to meet Artwair, she saw that it was filled with her Craftsmen and Sefry.

  “What’s all this?” she asked.

  “Just a precaution, Majesty,” he said. “There is a chance the keep will fall. We’ll want to get you out of it.”

  She nodded. Let Artwair take over. Get Faster, ride away, and never look back. Find Cazio; he may still live…

  She felt everything in her buckling. She didn’t want this. She thought of Austra, of the horror of her torture, of how someone could do that to her friend, and was sickened. Was Austra dead? Probably. And now death was coming for her.

  But where would she ride? Where would she be safe?

  “No,” she said. “Wait.”

  “There isn’t much time, Majesty. They’re already in the city.”

  “I said wait.”

  “Majesty,” he replied stiffly.

  She fought down the claustrophobia seeking to swallow her. “Take me where I can see what’s going on and explain it as we go.”

  “Majesty—”

  But he saw her glance and cut himself off.

  So they made their way to the now-familiar tower.

  The sun was just a hemisphere in the east, and mist lay heavy on the earth. The air had the cool scent of autumn that brought feelings of nostalgia even when one was ten years old.

  The keep was indeed surrounded except for the area around the southern gates, where a wall of pikes kept the Hansans back. It looked like an island in a stormy sea.

  “That’s where I’m supposed to make my great escape?” she asked.

  “It’s your best chance,” Artwair replied.

  “So the keep will fall.”

  “If we can hold out for two days, reinforcements will arrive.”

  “Two days. Can we do it?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  It seemed to Anne there was a bit of a reproof in his tone.

  I was trying to find my friends, she wanted to protest. But she knew what his answer to that would be, whether he had the nerve to say it out loud or not.

  “I can’t see everything in advance, you know,” she told him. “There is so much to keep my eye on.”

  But her negligence was all around her now, and she knew that if Hansa won, she would never live to claim the sedos throne. She could never set things right, free Crotheny from terror, avenge Austra, extinguish the Hansan threat for all time.

  Her hubris had doomed her.

  No.

  “Step away from me,” she said. “Get below, all of you but Nerenai.”

  When they were all gone but the Sefry, Anne closed her eyes.

  “You can do it, Majesty,” Nerenai said.

  “If I don’t, we’ll all die.”

  “That’s not how to think, Majesty. Fear and worry will only hinder you. You must be confident. You must be strong for strength’s sake, not to achieve an end.”

  “I’ll try,” Anne replied, swallowing. Her mouth was bone dry.

  She felt at the moment very much the girl. Why was this he
r burden? Why had the saints laid this on her when all she wanted was to ride her horse, drink wine, gossip with Austra, maybe fall in love? Why was she denied all of that?

  I miss you, Austra. I’m so sorry.

  Thinking that brought the anger she needed, and Anne slipped into otherwhere.

  Arilac.

  At first no answer came, but then a shadow lifted from the green and wavered like smoke before her, grudgingly forming into the pale image of a woman.

  “I need your help,” Anne said.

  “I’m nearly consumed,” the arilac replied in dissipated tones. “I may not be of much help.”

  “What’s consuming you?”

  “You are,” the arilac replied. “This is how it is.”

  “Who are you?” Anne demanded.

  “You’ve asked that before.”

  “Yes, and you’ve never answered. Who are you?”

  “What was. What will be. I was never merely a living person. I was born here, created here.”

  “Who created you?”

  The arilac smiled wanly. “You did.”

  And with those two words, Anne suddenly understood, and everything fell into place, and she was ready.

  “Good-bye,” she said.

  And the arilac was gone, and her limbs pulsed with power, and the power remembered itself in her.

  She stepped halfway so that otherwhere shimmered around her, but so did Newland and Andemuer, the keep and the host of Hansa.

  She looked over the teeming thousands bent on her destruction, the enemies who had ripped her out of the life she wanted and made her this, and felt a cold, determined hatred rise up in her that she never had known before.

  She liked it, and the power in her had felt that hatred before many times, and it knew what to do.

  Artwair was still pale bells later when he came to see her.

  “You’re not going to vomit again, are you?” she asked.

  “No, Majesty,” he replied. “I’ve nothing left in my stomach.”

  “I’m surprised at you,” she replied. “With all you’ve seen.”

  He closed his eyes and nodded. She saw the apple in his throat bob a few times.

  “There were a few survivors,” he said. “What will Your Majesty have done with them?”

  She thought about it for a moment. “How many?”

  “About a thousand.”

  “So many,” she said.

  “There were fifty thousand this morning, Majesty.”

  “Well, kill them, I suppose. I want Hansa to understand that if they attack us, they can expect no quarter.”

  “May I remind you that your mother is their hostage?”

  “Yes, and Marcomir has given the order for her execution. What more can I do but show him the price he pays for affronting us? How else can I save her?”

  “May I make a suggestion, Majesty?”

  “Of course.”

  “Show mercy. Let them return to Hansa and tell what they saw here. What army will attack us when they know what could happen to them?”

  There was something in his tone that it took her a moment to understand.

  “You feel sorry for them,” she accused.

  “Saints, yes,” Artwair said.

  “They would have killed all of us,” she pointed out.

  “Auy.” His face was as if cast in iron.

  “I don’t want to be cruel,” she finally said. It seemed the thing to say. “Do you really think letting them go is the right thing? Or is this just sentiment talking?”

  “Majesty, for me this morning was all confusion. But the Hansan survivors speak of the sun blotting out, of blood and serpents raining from the sky. They saw their comrades’ steaming entrails writhe out of their bellies like boiling eels. I think that story from a thousand lips will be more valuable than their deaths.”

  “Very well,” she sighed. “See to it, then. And now that we’re done here, I should like Copenwis back.”

  “That shouldn’t be a problem now,” Artwair said. “Will Your Majesty be accompanying us?”

  “No,” she said. “I think you might do this with the army, Artwair. I should like to return to Eslen for a time. But rest assured that when we march on Hansa, I will be with you.”

  “March on Hansa, Majesty?”

  “I don’t see any reason to let them try this again, ever. Do you?”

  “I—no, Majesty,”

  “Right. Tell my bodyguard I’ll ride to Eslen in two bells. And send word to Cape Chavel that I want him to join me there when he’s done with the army coming down the Dew.”

  “There’s still the army of the Church in the south,” Artwair said.

  “They have already withdrawn,” Anne said. “I’m not sure why. But send a few of the Hansan captives to them. Tell them that if they cross our border again, I’ll come do the same to them.”

  Artwair nodded, bowed, and left.

  Riding to Eslen, she met cheering crowds, but in the first few leagues it seemed to her there was an uneasiness in their plaudits, as if they feared she would kill them if they did not cheer. The nearer she got to Eslen, however, and the farther she got from the charnel fields around Poelscild, the less ambiguous the applause seemed. By the time she entered the city, she felt their joy and enthusiasm as absolutely genuine. Some were shouting “Saint Queen Anne,” and others were calling her “Virgenya II.”

  She bathed and rested and the next morning took her breakfast with John in her solar, where he rattled off various household matters and gave her a sheaf of documents for her seal. He then sat back, looking a bit uncomfortable.

  “What is it, John?” she asked.

  “You’ve received a number of letters, Majesty, some important, most not. But there is one that I believe needs your immediate attention.”

  “Really? Who is it from?”

  “Our former praifec, Marché Hespero.”

  She stopped with a scone halfway to her mouth. “You’re kidding,” she said.

  “I’m afraid not.”

  “Let me see it, then.”

  He handed her the folded paper with the seal of Crotheny’s praifectur.

  “Took it with him, I see,” she said. Then she opened the letter. It was written in a beautiful flowing hand.

  To Your Majesty Anne I, Queen of Crotheny,

  I hope this letter finds you well and in good keeping with the saints.

  Time is pressing, so I must be blunt. I know I have been implicated in certain matters and that a general order for my arrest has been issued. I will not here argue the charges against me—I will save that for a later time. What I will tell you is that I have information you need. It concerns the power you no doubt feel growing in you, and most particularly it has to do with the emergence of a certain throne you may have heard of.

  I also believe that it is important that there be peace between the Church and Crotheny, and healing. By the time you read this, you will find Church forces have all withdrawn beyond the Teremené. I await the pleasure of meeting with you personally. I am prepared to come to Eslen with as few companions as you name, or alone if that is your command.

  Marché Hespero

  Anne fingered the page, wondering if it might be impregnated with poison. But no, John had handled it before her.

  “When did this arrive?” she asked.

  “Yesterday, else I would have had it sent to you.”

  She studied the words again, trying to figure out what was going on.

  She had trusted Hespero growing up, had gone to him for lustration and advice. He had seemed wise, not particularly kind but not unkind, either. Even when her father had gone against him in naming Anne and her sisters heirs to the throne, he had remained polite and nice to her.

  But then she had learned things. She had seen a letter from him that made him responsible for the unholy slaughter in Dunmrogh. He had colluded with Robert against her mother and tortured Cavaor Ackenzal, the court composwer, nearly to death. He’d left Eslen before Anne�
��s forces had recaptured it and hadn’t been seen or heard from since.

  And now he wanted to talk. It didn’t make sense. The Church had turned its bloody resacaratum into a holy war against her, and now suddenly Hespero wanted to be friends and help her claim the power the Church so vehemently named shinecraft?

  She closed her eyes and tried to find Hespero out in the sedos realm, to see where he was and what he was about, to find some inkling of the consequences of meeting him.

  But as with the Hellrune, all she found was a quiet, dark place.

  And then she knew.

  “It’s him,” she told Nerenai later that day. The Sefry was weaving a shawl, and Anne was pacing in her quarters.

  “The man who attacked me in the wood of the Faiths, the one who threatens me. It was Hespero all along.”

  “How can you be sure?”

  “He has power like me, like the Hellrune. Only someone with art like that can go within the sedos unsummoned. Who else could it be? I thought once it might be the Briar King, but from everything I’ve heard about him, I no longer believe so.”

  “What will you do? Will you see him?”

  “He tried to attack me,” Anne said. “I’m certain he was at least partly responsible for the murders of my sisters and father and the other attempts on me. Yes, I will see him, and I will find out what he knows, and then he will pay.”

  CHAPTER NINE

  TWO REASONS

  NEIL STARED at Brinna for a long few breaths before responding. He felt as if he were somehow outside of the world, looking in from a great distance away.

  “Why would you say that?” he finally managed.

  “The world is poisoned, Sir Neil,” she said. “Poisoned by two thousand years of unchecked use of the sedoi. That’s what ultimately made breaking the law of death possible. Were the world in better health…” She looked away. “But it wasn’t. The monsters—the greffyns and such—those are all symptoms of that coming death, of a very ancient being trying to reclaim the world, but without the power to heal it. Then there is—was—the Briar King, who did have the power to restore it but who is now dead. That leaves your queen and two others to fight over the sedos power, to take it when it reaches its peak. But that power, you see, can’t be used to mend anything. It can only corrupt. And in this moment coming very soon, the sedos power will be so strong that all other puissance in the world will fail before it. Life and death will cease to have meaning, as will chaos and order. It will all become the dream—the Black Mary—of the one who takes the power.”