The Dark Queen

by Michael Williams

  Vincus approached reluctantly, already misgiving his hopes of renewing old friendships.

  Pugio was hard, almost stringy, and there was an ashy sallowness about his skin. He was scarcely a year older than Vincus, yet his hair was wispy and matted, and a long purple scar laced jaggedly across his right forearm. No more than twenty, Pugio looked three times his age, and the men with him were even worse for wear-toothless and scarred, but not past menace and danger. Vincus watched warily as the three men spread out, walking slowly toward him across the torch-haunted square.

  "Y'member Anguis," Pugio said, nodding at the man to his left. "And Ultion. Ultion done the games at the School under Angard."

  Vincus nodded and lifted his hand to both men. He remembered neither of them, though Anguis looked faintly familiar-a face recalled in the red light of Lunitari… something about knives.

  "Y'member us all, don'ya, Vincus?" Pugio asked, his street talk thickening the nearer he drew to Vin shy;cus. "Y'member us well enough for the handlin'?"

  The- handling. Vincus raced through his memory for the word.

  He remembered, shook his head.

  "Livin' high put you out o' thievin', Vincus?" Ultion drew back mockingly and asked with a faint, pleasant smile. "I hear of it happenin' when you got three square an' all. Nice clothes they give ya."

  Pugio and Anguis murmured in assent. "A one-timer?" Pugio asked. "Just an old-times handle on the rug merchant over to the Marketplace?"

  Vincus shook his head. The three drew nearer.

  "No?" Pugio asked, his voice filling with a steely coldness. "Then you'll be givin' us your food, I'm certain. You don't starve an old friend, Vincus."

  Suddenly chilled, Vincus looked into their eyes. They returned his gaze steadily, calmly, almost inno shy;cently, and then, when his guard descended slowly, when he thought that perhaps his suspicions had all been wrong, that they had been the good and loyal friends he remembered …

  Anguis glanced over Vincus's shoulder, a quick, flickering movement to his narrow eyes. Vincus saw it, and spun about…

  In time to catch the drunkard's club, as it descended with swift ferocity.

  For a moment Vincus stared his attacker face-to-face, saw the man's eyes widen, smelled the stale wine…

  Then, with a strength born of life and health, of steady sleep and three squares, he pushed the man aside and, spinning with a fierce, desperate lunge, brought his fist crashing into the face of Ultion.

  Ultion fell back with a cry, but the others leapt greedily onto Vincus. Strong fingers probed his throat, and a blinding punch, hurtling out of nowhere, struck him firmly on the side of the head.

  He turned toward Anguis, but the air itself seemed to resist him, and one man hit him, and then another. The silver collar snapped and dropped from his neck, and Vincus fell to his knees on the cobbled square, the drunkard stalking toward him, club raised.

  Suddenly, his assailants scattered. Shouts fol shy;lowed them from an alley, a rushing column of torches.

  The Istarian Guard, Vincus thought. I am safe.

  He looked down at the collar, the heavy silver bro shy;ken in two neat crescents at his knees. If the Guard caught him here even Vaananen could not help him.

  Vincus crouched on the roof of the building, peering down like a bruised gargoyle onto the milling soldiers.

  He had snatched up the collar and run, only steps » ahead of the torches and shouting into the nearest alley. The window into the adjoining brewer's shop was boarded, but not well. In less than a minute, his strength doubled in the desire to escape, Vincus had pulled down the boards and scrambled into the darkened brewery. Dropping into a stack of empty barrels, he clattered and rolled into the warm, yeast-smelling darkness, lying still until the torches and shouting passed.

  Then he ascended the stairs to the attic, and, stack shy;ing barrel on barrel, he clambered through cobweb and rafter to the trapdoor in the ceiling, firmly bolted from the inside against acrobatic trespassers. Vincus threw back the rusty bolt and climbed to the roof, where he could see by starlight the dark maze of streets beyond the receding torchlight of the guardsmen, as far as the Old Wall, the settlements on the shore of a great lake, and on into the black foothills of a distant mountain range.

  He had never ventured outside the walls, not even in thought or imagination.

  Gaping, marveling, still shaking, Vincus lay down upon the roof and looked into the wheeling constel shy;lations.

  There was a place where the city ended. Vaananen had told him so, talked about the way past those far shy;away mountains and into the desert. In the towers, all you could see was the city, and Vincus had always believed that Istar extended to the end of sight, and that the end of sight was the end of the world.

  The collar, now two slivers of silver moon, lay cold in his dark hand. The breaks were clean, like they had been cut. Right through the letters of his name.

  Dabbing at the cut over his right eye, Vincus held the pieces up before the lightening sky, so that his name was whole again upon them. The metal was deeply notched but for a hair-thin edge at both breaks. Let alone, the collar would have dropped off by morning, long before he could have made his way to the gates. Now he understood the druid's parting words.

  "The rules are broken. . . . You have served well, Vincus. Well done."

  Vincus smiled slowly and looked through the sil shy;ver circle to the wide country beyond the city. Here was a freedom and a country greater than any of his imaginings.

  He would see if Fordus was real, too.

  Chapter 18

  The Old Wall faded into the darkness behind him as the first of the lakeside camps came into view.

  For a moment Vincus stopped in the shadows, baffled.

  The camp looked like Bywall, or Westedge, or Pierside-one of the sprawling communities of pau shy;pers that dotted the shimmering marble of the inner city. The tents were there, and the lean-tos, the banked fires, and the barrels set on their sides to house the poorest of the huddled poor.

  For a brief, disorienting second he imagined he had somehow turned himself about in the city, retracing his steps unknowingly.

  But no. Behind him was the Old Wall. If he stepped back from the camp and looked carefully, he could see the outline of the ancient battlements, the crenels jagged and crumbling like the rotten teeth of an ancient animal.

  Through the camp the ragged people moved, dodging in and out of the firelight. Perhaps what he had seen from the brewery roof was illusion.

  Perhaps the world was all city, all Istar.

  All of a sudden the country ahead of him, glimpsed only fleetingly from the starlit brewery roof, seemed like a murky maze again, its whorls and corridors leading nowhere. And yet the mem shy;ory of the lake, the dark waters and the vaulting horizon beyond rose foremost in Vincus's mind as he passed from camp's edge to camp's edge on his way toward the shore.

  It is only an hour's journey, he told himself. I will reach the lake in an hour.

  But it was longer than that.

  Twice in the early morning, when the campfires behind had settled to ashes and the road before him lay at its darkest, he had slipped behind tents to con shy;ceal himself from a passing squadron of the Istarian Guard.

  "Rebels," they muttered. "Fordus."

  Once in the rumble of voices and rattle of armor, he thought he heard the druid's name. He leaned forward, wrapping himself in musty canvas, and lis shy;tened intently for more, but the name and the noise and the squadron passed on into the night, and scarcely three breaths later, Vincus leapt from behind the tent, running to keep himself awake and alert, his hands silently saying an ancient protective prayer.

  It must have been prayer that protected him on the last occasion, scarcely an hour before dawn, when a company of Istarian cavalry rode by, their commander so lost in thought that he never looked above, to the branches of a blasted vallenwood, where Vincus perched like some huge, outrageous bird, newly flown from its cage.

  Finally, in th
e purple dawn, the tents and ruins gave way to the cemeteries, the great funerary grounds that bordered the south of Istar. Now, beyond the scattered white monuments burnished by the rising sun, Vincus saw shimmering blue ris shy;ing out of the darkness and smelled the waters of Lake Istar-the lake of his rooftop vision.

  It is true, he told himself, leaning against a marble stone. There is a lake out here, and there are moun shy;tains, beyond the buildings.

  And Fordus is somewhere beyond the edge of sight. I am glad I kept believing.

  And he rested, free from fear and Istar, for the first time in years.

  At nightfall, Vincus found the coracle Vaananen had left tied to a willow by the lakeside. Slowly and clumsily, for it was his first time in a boat of any sort, he steered the craft into midlake, where he circled aimlessly, rowing ever more frantically as a distant bell tolled and the night turned.

  He could not be found here in the morning. He had to get across the water.

  Now Istar and the mountains seemed equidistant-

  dark, looming forms against the darker shores. Worn out with rowing, with spinning, with trying to steer by stars that ducked in and out of the clouds, Vincus lay down in the coracle.

  Just a few minutes, he promised himself. An hour at most.

  When he awoke, it was nearly noon. The craft had drifted to the far side of the lake, and the foothills lay in front of him, inviting and solid and wonder shy;fully, delightfully dry.

  Vincus thanked whatever gods had taken charge of the water and the fools who ventured onto it, and, giving the craft a kick he hoped would send it on its way back to the Istarian shore, he scrambled up a narrow path and, by midafternoon, found himself at a great height-at the mouth of the Western Pass with a distant view of the city.

  Of the three passes leading through the Istarian range, only the Western Pass was free of the sterim- the harsh winds off the desert that seemed to gain force as they climbed. Had Vincus traveled through either the Eastern or the Central Pass, his chance of survival would have been slim.

  Vaananen had known, Vincus thought. Those hundreds of times he rattled on about it-they were all for this. For by the time he had wakened on the southern shores of the lake, Vincus was so turned around, so disoriented, that he was not quite sure if the path he followed led to the Western or the Cen shy;tral Pass.

  Then he saw gentian and edelweiss-hardy moun shy;tain flowers, but not stormfast-at the mouth of the pass. It had to be the Western Pass, Vincus concluded, and he set out through the treacherous mountains by the lone safe route, congratulating himself on his new shy;found mountaineering skills.

  Three days later, he emerged on the southern side of the mountains. Thinking that the hard part of his journey was over, he trudged merrily southward, his last day's food his only baggage besides the precious book.

  As sunset overtook him, he crested a rise and looked down into a quiet, shadowy valley, where felled and stunted trees littered a gray basin in the midst of the plains. To Vincus's city eyes, it seemed like the area had been touched by fire or high wind in a distant time; the dried boles of trees, already crusted with sand and salt and a shimmering opales-cence, were a pleasant change from the grasslands' monotony.

  Vincus lay down amid the sheared remains of a vallenwood grove. Branches of elm and willow lit shy;tered his campsite, and he gathered some of them to build a small fire in the twilight.

  He would travel by night from now on, he decided. It was easier, he had seen, to steer by the stars and to avoid discovery.

  With a smile of contentment, he rested his head against the blackened trunk of a willow. All of a sud shy;den he was weary, and his thoughts strayed over the road behind him and back to the city.

  What was it called?

  Istar. That was it.

  For a moment it seemed to Vincus that something was not right, that he should have remembered the name quickly, more easily. But his mind drifted from this brief, pointless worry, and he began to drowse.

  It seemed as though the collar was back around his neck.

  Vincus stirred uneasily.

  The collar tightened, and tightened again, and the young man sprang into wakefulness.

  The dead branches of the willow had closed around his neck, gripping, clutching, and strangling.

  A rare carnivorous plant, the black willow masked itself as log or tree and preyed on hapless creatures it lulled to sleep beneath its spreading, branchlike ten shy;tacles.

  A child of the city, Vincus had never seen such a monster, and when the willow grabbed him, he struggled vainly against its grip and his own grow shy;ing drowsiness. The plant seemed to sing to him, an eerie and menacing lullaby, and despite his fright, the young man found himself listening.

  No. From his robe he drew half of his silver collar, a ragged crescent that glittered in the moonlight. Desperately, his strength and senses failing, Vincus sawed at the largest branch with the sharp metal edge until black sap, sticky and cold like the blood of a reptile, dripped over the tendril and onto his chest.

  The willow let out a shrill, hissing scream and, for a brief moment, released him. But a moment was all Vincus needed. He rolled away from the monster, snapping two thinner branches that remained around his shoulder. Springing clear of the grove, he crouched in the dry grass for a moment and gath shy;ered his breath, rubbing the long, fresh lashes on his arm where the pliant wood had whipped and cut him.

  He had seen everything now, he thought.

  The country itself could kill you.

  Forewarned and wary, he slipped the silver cres shy;cent-an excellent weapon, he had discovered- back into his robe. He would make good on his plans tonight, traveling sleepless by moonlight. Surely he would be safe as the desert slept.

  Many months ago, at Vaananen's insistence, Vin-cus had scanned a map of the plains. Meticulously, the druid had moved the small meditative stones in the rena garden-red Lunitari representing the mountains, white Solinari the plains beyond. Slowly, precisely, Vaananen had traced the safest route with his finger, and then, standing over Vincus, had urged the young man to mind it all.

  Now, Vincus wished he had minded more closely. Was the army southwest of the city, or had Vaananen said go south-southwest? Was the camp five miles from the desert's edge or six miles?

  He could not remember.

  Vincus scrambled to a little rise, a high point in the featureless landscape. Prairie stretched all about him, endlessly and shapelessly, the warm wind rustling and rattling through the dry grass. Even from this vantage he saw nothing but plains.

  Unless it was the floating shadow on the farthest southwest horizon-a cloud, perhaps, or a mirage, but at least something amid the sea of grass. Vincus shielded his eyes and stared long and hard, but he could see nothing more than the shifting, formless gray.

  When the night came, it was cloudy. Solinari and Lunitari darted in and out of the clouds, the only luminaries in a slate-gray sky.

  Vincus knew that the tail of the constellation Sargonnas "was his guiding star, that it would point him due into the heart of the desert. But glimpsed fitfully in the early hours of the morning, the constellations seemed different, almost alien. Vaananen's neatly plotted drawings of the heavenly maps were gone now, and in their place was a chaos of faint and wavering light.

  The morning's red sky restored the east, and Vin-cus found that he had turned in the night, had wan shy;dered due west on the indefinite plains. His hands flickering a mild oath, he sat down on a small cluster of rocks and, chin cupped despondently in his hands, watched the horizon shimmer and recede as another day of uncertainty began.

  He felt famished. He breakfasted on the provi shy;sions he had brought from Istar, and the grimness of his situation dawned on him.

  Soon he would have to forage for his food, for meat and roots and water in this inhospitable coun shy;try. Armed only with a dagger and a schoolboy's knowledge of edible plants, he faced even greater hunger in the days to come.

  That is, unless the Istari
ans caught him.

  Vincus drew his new dagger slowly, scratching idle designs on the dry earth. Istar and slavery almost seemed better now. A sudden anger at Vaana-nen fluttered briefly through his thoughts-at that druid with his intrigues and fond ideas.

  Fordus, indeed! Vaananen had conjured the rebels out of sand and stone. They were no more real than…

  Than Vincus's freedom.

  He looked down at his feet. Absently, numbly, he had sketched Vaananen's five glyphs on the hard, grassy ground.

  No. He had come this far.

  It was then that the hawk shrieked overhead, and Vincus looked up.

  Lucas had been circling for an hour, aloft on the morning thermals. His red feathers glowed in the sunrise, and his angular wings tilted smoothly as he circled.

  His mistress had loosed him to forage and scout in the early hours, whispering a song of return in his ear. Over the plateau he had arced, then east over the Tears of Mishakal, gliding swiftly in a low flight before gaining altitude and sailing into the grass shy;lands, where the hunting was good and the Istarian army ranged uneasily.

  The solitary man seated in the midst of the grass shy;lands was something new. For a while Lucas watched him curiously.

  Not enemy. Not a soldier.

  When the man took a small scrap of meat from his pocket, Lucas noticed immediately.

  Noticed as well the jagged pieces of silver in his hand as they caught the sunlight.

  It was something more than instinct that made the bird circle and call, made him skim the high grass and pass not five yards from the seated man, his hooked wings banking gracefully as he rose again, turning and returning, circling and calling, through all of his actions urging the man to follow.

  Once in his motioning, the bird had swooped near enough for Vincus to hear the bells on its jesses. Vincus stood and followed.

  The bird had surprised him with its circling and cries. South and north it sailed, south and north, shrieking as though in signal and warning.

  Vincus had laughed at the thought. Too long in the wilderness, he told himself, when a bird becomes your messenger.