Queen of Thorns

by Dave Gross

  After Fimbulthicket assured the boss it wouldn't upset the Fierani if we took a look around, we started climbing the Century Root. The gnome led the way through a wooden canyon with cliffs lined with mushrooms and pools filled with slime. I got some nasty yellow stuff on my kickers, but I kept my jacket clean.

  We came to a place where rot had eaten away a ramp leading to the top of the stump, which the boss called its plateau. About half of the plateau was flat. It looked like some god had struck the old tree one blow with a giant axe, letting the rest fall away to form a range of splinter-peaks. I wondered where the rest of the tree had fallen.

  We found Oddnoggin by the side of a green pool. A little forest of other Fierani stood together on the opposite shore, but none of them came near him. When we got close, I understood why.

  The tree-man had only one eye, and that one squinted shut with a solid trail of sap oozing from the corner. Where his other eye should have been was a pit the size of a salt barrel. A bunch of brown squirrels swarmed out of the hole, leaping onto the branches that sprang from his head. They shrieked and chattered at us.

  Arni lost his cool, barking and jumping up on Oddnoggin's trunk.

  "Down, Arnisant," said the boss. "Fimbulthicket, would you please ask this Oddnoggin to control those pests and speak with us?"

  Fimbulthicket was the only one who didn't seem to mind the racket. He cocked his head, raising his curled fingers the way the squirrels held their paws close to their faces. He chattered back at them. They shut up and listened.

  Oddnoggin came closer. The Fierani's head and shoulders had thickened up with knots and rills of fungus in his—what was it? Flesh? Wood? Oddnoggin had more than a goofy name in common with Fimbulthicket. He was a good eight feet shorter than the other Fierani. He looked so top-heavy that I worried he was going to fall on us as he moved in, but instead he knelt down, bringing the squirrel nest closer.

  "Oddnoggin can't speak for himself," said Fimbulthicket. "Ages ago, he suffered a terrible wound while driving demon-sorcerers away from the Century Root. A family of squirrels nested near his ...Let's call it a brain. Their offspring were born close to Oddnoggin's thoughts. At first they could only dream what he was thinking, but each new generation was born closer and closer to his mind. Now they know his every thought."

  "They are his voice," said the boss.

  Fimbulthicket nodded, and I was glad. Pointing out a little detail like that was all it took to slough off some of the boss's grump. I realized what was irritating him: He hated not being the translator. Ever since I'd known him, he'd been as proud of his collection of languages as he was of anything he owned. Once or twice I'd seen him talk to a foreigner through a translator, always with the boss ending up in a snit because he couldn't do it himself.

  Oddnoggin bowed his head, causing a ruckus among the squirrels. His skin looked like brown bark, but when he moved it looked as supple as snakeskin.

  "His injury makes the other Fierani shun him," said Fimbulthicket. He was quiet for a moment, and I reckoned he was thinking the same was true for him, with the gnomes of Omesta shunning him on account of his Bleaching. "Fortunately for us, it makes him more inclined to speak with outsiders—at least those who can speak with the creatures of the forest."

  "Ask him what Variel sought here."

  Fimbulthicket nattered back and forth with the squirrels. The squirrels ran into their nest in Oddnoggin's trunk. They were quiet in there for a minute or so. The boss began to pace. At last the squirrels jumped out and chattered back at Fimbulthicket.

  "He was looking for something lost. He knew it existed, but he couldn't find it."

  "That's it?" said the boss. He looked disgusted.

  "What did he seek?" asked Caladrel. "Was it a weapon?"

  The boss glanced at the ranger before looking to Fimbulthicket for an answer. The gnome shrieked at the squirrels. They shrieked back. They went to their nest. Eventually they came out, and they shrieked some more.

  "Something old," said Fimbulthicket, holding up a hand to hold off questions while the squirrels continued their racket. "Something to help bring together ..." He screwed up his face, trying to understand. "'More than the forest' is the closest to what he's saying."

  "All of Kyonin?" asked Caladrel.

  "Maybe." Fimbulthicket tilted his head left, then right. The motion made him look like one of the squirrels. "It could be."

  "Variel was not simply exploring," said the boss. "He had a mission. He had a purpose. You traveled beside him for decades, and you have no idea what it could have been?"

  "How many times must I tell you—?"

  "Where did Oddnoggin tell him to go?"

  Fimbulthicket talked to the squirrels. Either the question or the answer turned out to be complicated. Squirrels, gnome, squirrels, gnome, squirrels, nest. Oddnoggin rubbed the bark beside his mouth for so long I thought he'd start a fire. The boss paced and crossed his arms. The squirrels popped out and chatter chatter chatter.

  No matter how much Fimbulthicket told him, the boss was never happy with the answer. I couldn't blame him. A lot of it was pretty poetical stuff. Fimbulthicket said, "He sought a secret no one could be told, a memory no one could remember."

  They did that a few times. It was all a lot of stuff like that.

  The rest of us took a breather while the boss crabbed at Fimbulthicket for better answers. Caladrel listened in and gave us updates. "Variel was one of many elves, including my rangers, who searched Kyonin for unrecovered sites of cultural or strategic value. We've always known about some of them, like the Walking Man and Erithiel's Hall, but those were deemed too dangerous or unpredictable to disturb."

  "Is that what they're saying now?" I asked. Something about the way Caladrel spoke made me think he was telling us stuff he'd known all along. I wondered whether he'd told the boss any of it. If so, I wondered why the boss hadn't told me.

  "I'm inferring some from what they're saying, some from what I've heard of Variel Morgethai. A few explorers, I assume Variel among them, searched for sites that had been lost, forgotten, or intentionally obscured."

  "Ah, the boss is going to love that." I looked over at him, and sure enough he was leaning forward, interrupting Fimbulthicket with questions before he'd finished translating the last answer. "Turning up that kind of stuff is what he lives for."

  After a while, Fimbulthicket said the squirrels had enough. I think they were scared to have Arnisant so close. He obviously wanted to eat them.

  The boss still seemed dissatisfied. Maybe he didn't get the answer he'd hoped for after all. He came back to us as Fimbulthicket continued chattering at the squirrels. The gnome turned to call after him. "Wait!"

  Oddnoggin opened his mouth and moaned. What rumbled up out of his trunk was a nightmare version of the Fierani talk, mournful and menacing. The other Fierani picked up his song. Soon it echoed through all the hollows and ravines of the Century Root. When it began to fade, the tree people all turned. One by one, they lifted their leafy limbs and pointed more or less to the darkening eastern sky.

  The boss fumbled through his satchel and fiddled with his navigating gadgets. After he'd figured out where they were pointing and scribbled down his results, he put his hand on his breast and bowed to Oddnoggin. "I thank you."

  We put a few more miles behind us before making camp. When everybody started in on chores, the boss made a point of coming with me to collect deadfall. We didn't need the fire except we were all getting used to having Fimbulthicket's nettle tea at night and a hot bowl of porridge in the morning.

  "I want you to extract some information from Kemeili," he said. "If the opportunity arises, see what she knows about Variel, his past associates, his relationship to the queen. Surely she's heard something."

  "Sure," I said, but I wasn't sure how I felt about it. "I asked her some of that stuff before, but I don't think she knew him."

  "Nevertheless, try again."

  "Why don't you ask her?"

  "I shall, bu
t I expect she will lie to me. You might catch her off guard while her attention is ...diverted."

  "Yeah, yeah. I got it. How about the others? Caladrel seems to like you pretty well."

  "Indeed, perhaps too well. Did you notice what he asked Oddnoggin?"

  "A weapon." I'd noticed, all right. "But doesn't it make sense that your dad would want to bring a weapon back to the queen?"

  "No one mentioned a weapon before. In fact, no one has told me much of anything. I feel any or all of those who have come to help us might have ulterior motives." He paused to look at my expression. "By 'ulterior,' I mean—"

  "Yeah, yeah. I know 'ulterior.'" I looked close to see whether he was joking, but I couldn't tell whether that was a smile lurking at the corner of his mouth or just a shadow from the sunset. "So who can we trust? Fimbulthicket? I know it sounds crazy, but how about the paladin?"

  "No one, of course. All of them were sent to us, except Fimbulthicket. And we were sent to him."

  "Well, you know you can count on me," I told him. "And Arni."

  He clapped me on the shoulder and smiled, but as we gathered the last of the firewood, he had his brooding face on.

  "What's eating you, boss?"

  "The direction the Fierani indicated leads to none of the sites on our map, although it is between two locations that might have interested Variel."

  "What kind of locations?"

  "The farther is the ruin of a scholarly monument. That one does not trouble me."

  "Yeah? What's the other one?"

  "A tomb."

  Chapter Nine

  The Endless Cairn

  Varian

  Torchlight fluttered as another noisome gust erupted from the lower crypts. My tourmaline shed ample light for our search, but the flames provided a modicum of warmth against the damp chill. While we stood on dry marble, only a few floors below us, the mausoleum sank into the swamp. Over centuries, the elves had continued to build atop the subsiding foundation, even as the deepest tombs became submerged beneath the marsh.

  Radovan crouched beside the tomb and held his brand close to the stone: "Lanliss Morgethai, His Blood Restores the Land." He traced his finger over the graven name. He could recognize only a few words in Elven, but one of them was Variel's name.

  "At least it's not him."

  "Variel's not dead," moaned a spectral voice. "I told you that."

  Oparal whirled, nearly dropping her torch before her light revealed Fimbulthicket lying on a nearby bier. He had taken off his shoes again, pressing his bare soles and palms to the stone. With his colorless skin, he looked at home among the dead.

  "Desna weeps." Radovan shuddered. Kemeili put a hand on his shoulder as he stood up. For a moment, her seeming youth and diminutive stature made her appear almost childlike beside him. Radovan took a deep breath before casting me an imploring glance.

  I could do nothing to arrest the gnome's increasingly strange demeanor. No one could. Most gnomes who succumbed to the Bleaching simply perished. Fimbulthicket was one of the fortunate—or unfortunate—few who lingered on in a state of spiritual and physical limbo, neither dead nor undead, but not truly alive either. He had become a bleachling.

  "Was this Lanliss close kin to Variel?"

  "Your father," said Fimbulthicket, rising to sit upright. His slow grace was eerier than his hollow voice. "You should call him your father."

  I fought an impulse to argue the point. It occurred to me that I had only the word of this strange gnome that Variel Morgethai was indeed my sire. The other evidence—Fimbulthicket's knowledge of my mother's visit to Kyonin and later my gift of the Red Carriage—remained circumstantial. I wondered whether Fimbulthicket was cunning enough to play upon my family history to manipulate me to his own ends. If I had fallen prey to some scheme, had it originated with him or with some faction of the elven court?

  "Do you know this Lanliss?" I insisted.

  "No," he said, drawing out the syllable like a hesitant ghost.

  "The Morgethai family is the largest in Kyonin," said Caladrel. "They have their own dedicated genealogists."

  So do the Jeggares, I thought, although the human side of my family was less concerned with inbreeding than with disadvantageous matches, like the one between my mother and Variel Morgethai—assuming for now he truly was my father.

  "Variel did not come here to die," said Fimbulthicket.

  "Of course not." In truth, I had considered the possibility that Variel had come to inter himself within the Endless Cairn remote at best. Of the sites included in Oddnoggin's vague gesture southeast, this vast tower of crypts was both the nearest and the most intriguing.

  Elves seldom die peacefully. Those who escape death through mishap can live for thousands of years. Perhaps this fragile longevity is the reason they fled after Earthfall, when life on Golarion became inexpressibly more dangerous. Yet they returned to defend the last bastion of the Sovyrian Stone, whose value must have far outweighed that of the countless elven lives sacrificed to win back the territory usurped by demons. Thus the all-too-common epitaph: His Blood Restores the Land.

  "There is nothing more to learn here," I decided. "Let us depart."

  "I will stay a while," said Oparal. "I wish to pay my respects to the crusaders."

  "Very well. We will wait for you."

  "No," she said. "I prefer to be alone."

  "As you wish." I nodded at Radovan, who offered Oparal his torch. Hesitating long enough to cast him a disparaging gaze, she accepted the brand and descended deeper into the gloom.

  As we turned to ascend, I contrived to touch Radovan's shoulder. He did not react, but he understood the sign I traced there. To facilitate his task, I stepped past him and took Kemeili by the arm. "Tell me more of the burial customs of Calistria."

  She leaned into me, a faint turning of her head supporting my expectation that she welcomed the opportunity to test Radovan's jealousy. "We celebrate life rather than death," she began. "But few followers of the Sting would wish to leave their mortal remains shut in a place like this. Far better to be returned to the loam or to the trees."

  We passed the monuments of elves dead a hundred years, then ninety, and so on until we returned to the ground floor. Above us the ramp rose several stories higher. From the walls protruded ranks of sarcophagi three rows high, the upper biers "flying" above those below. These were not the oppressive stone boxes of human tombs but rather sculptures of such natural beauty that one might be forgiven for mistaking the place for the interior of a gigantic insect nest. Most of the tombs resembled the cocoons of enormous larvae, with intricate designs sweeping along the edges. Others looked like great folded leaves or elaborate acorn caps with carvings of sleeping fey inside.

  The legends of the dead appeared on the wall beside the coffins, sometimes beneath a bas-relief of the deceased, sometimes with a song or poem inscribed upon the stone. Each remembrance was unique, and the variety of expression endless. I had sketched several of the most outstanding specimens in hopes of having them reproduced for display at Greensteeples.

  I focused my attention on keeping Kemeili distracted until we reached the ground floor of the building and emerged into the swamp. Behind us stood the tower of the Endless Cairn, its white marble veined with blue and pink.

  Those who mock the folly of placing such a building amid a swamp forget that the structure was ancient before the elves departed Golarion. Doubtless the land had originally provided a firm foundation, transforming into its present marshy state only after a period of millennia. The elves had built up a circular island around their mausoleum, although it too floated on the surface of the mire rather than providing a true foundation. It sole purpose appeared to be as a comfortable landing for visitors to the cairn.

  Arnisant sat up at attention as we returned to our campsite. I went to the eroded stone plinth I had made my desk and opened my journal.

  "Where's Radovan?" said Kemeili.

  I pointed beyond the cairn with my pencil. "I asked him to
scout out the other side of the island."

  "Oh." She frowned for a moment before pouting like a child. It was difficult to estimate an elf's age, but I would have been surprised to learn that Kemeili was younger than I. I could only imagine her apparent immaturity was a ruse to gull the sort of men who find it appealing. It was a stratagem completely wasted on me. "I'll find him."

  As she dashed away, Caladrel drew near. For a moment he admired my previous sketches of the cairn upon the island. "I hope your man is careful. If Oparal notices his spying on her, her response is apt to be ..." His hand sketched a vague gesture.

  "Disproportionate?"

  He nodded.

  "Even if he has forgotten the slap, I doubt he has forgotten the wound."

  Caladrel fixed his gaze upon me, hesitating as if uncertain whether he should utter his thoughts. Before I could prompt him, he said, "What do you make of her?"

  It was a good question. Caladrel smiled as I considered it for a moment before answering. Neither of us wished to speak ill of someone who might report to Queen Telandia. "Her devotion to the Inheritor seems genuine, but her animosity toward Radovan is problematic. On the other hand, she is a great help to us. There can be no question of her prowess."

  "No, definitely no question," said Caladrel. His smile softened for a moment, and I imagined he admired more than the paladin's strong sword arm. He perceived my reaction and guessed my thought. He chuckled. "No, it isn't that. I value the passion with which she dispatched the demons we encountered."

  I thought of his thrumming bow, his flashing red blade. "Her capacity for mayhem is no greater than yours."

  "Thank you. Driving the last demon from Tanglebriar is my path to the Brightness."

  Many elves sought to find an activity or state of mind leading to a transcendent perception of the world. The path to this Brightness was unique to each individual, and many never found it. For some it was as simple as practicing meditation, while for others it was the expression found in art, menial tasks, or even ambitious pursuits such as Caladrel's. "What do you imagine is Oparal's path to the Brightness?"