Queen of Thorns

by Dave Gross

  "So what's he going to do? Nip back to Iadara and—? Say, wait a second. 'Aiudara.' 'Iadara.' Am I saying those right?"

  "Curious. They are near homophones."

  "Also, they sound almost exactly the same."

  He looked exasperated. "Probably it is mere coincidence."

  "You're always saying not to trust coincidence."

  "Well, of course. But what could the similarity between the names indicate?"

  I shrugged. "All gates lead to Iadara?"

  He stopped walking. Arnisant sat at his heel and looked up as the boss brushed his little strip of beard with a finger. After a few seconds, his fingers rose up to pinch the bridge of his nose. At last he said, "You may have something there."

  "What's it mean?"

  "I do not know."

  "But you think it's something."

  "I think, as I have said on occasion, that you are smarter than you look."

  "I'd rather be pretty again. Can't you talk to Fimbulthicket about my nose?"

  He sighed. "Would it not be simpler just to mend your bridge with Kemeili?"

  "She's pretty sore."

  "Perhaps your famous charm will work better with her than it did on Oparal."

  "Hey, that wasn't my charm. My charm is plenty better than that. I've got charm you never saw. Anyway, she hit me. I didn't start it."

  "You provoked her," said the boss. "Otherwise I would have insisted she leave. If you simply hadn't kissed her, she might have apologized to you. What impulse drives you to antagonize the very women who find you most repellent?"

  "I don't know what you're talking about."

  "No? The last time I saw you make such a fool of yourself was also with a woman who beat you."

  "What woman? Nobody ever—" I realized who he was thinking about. "She never beat me."

  He raised an eyebrow.

  "Those were just friendly little chucks on the arm."

  He raised the other one.

  "Anyway, she wasn't a paladin."

  "She is the nearest thing to one. And she too saw you as a fiend when you first met."

  "That was different. I was all big and spiky when we met. And she worships Lady Luck, not that crazy crusader."

  "Do not disparage the Inheritor." He sounded grim, and I didn't think he was kidding.

  "Seriously? You're going to defend—?"

  "Iomedae was the herald of Aroden."

  "All right, all right."

  "And no less worthy of your respect than Desna."

  "Got it."

  Fimbulthicket and the ladies caught up with us, so we started walking again. It was funny to see tall Oparal, short Fimbulthicket, and regular-sized Kemeili walking side by side behind tall boss, shorter Arnisant, and me.

  That night, Kemeili sat near enough that I took it as an invitation to rub her neck. She leaned into it, but afterward she put down her blanket on the other side of the fire. That was all right. I know that game, and I can be patient even when my nose is out of joint.

  A day and a half later, we reached the spot marked "The Wandering Spheres" on the boss's map. At first glance it looked like the worst garden in the world, with crooked hedges and mossy boulders. Then I saw a glint of bronze under the pale green surface of what I'd thought was a rock.

  Giant metal globes lay all around the glen. Some were taller than the boss, and some of the shards lying about must've come from bigger ones. What I'd taken for hedges were curved metal bars the size of a ship's crossbeams. One looked like the kind of chain that runs through gears, only each link was big as a tavern table. I couldn't see what it had been, only that a long time ago something had smashed it to pieces.

  "It was once a vast orrery," said the boss. "A mechanical model of all the worlds in our solar system."

  "Slow down a second, Professor. I'm still trying to fit 'orrery' into my limited vocabulary."

  He knew I knew what an orrery was. One time I'd pulled Golarion off the one in his library to bean an intruder, and he'd left the planet dented to commemorate the occasion.

  Anyway, the boss stopped giving me words after our visit to the tombs. Graves always gave him a case of the mournfuls, even when he wasn't searching them for a lost relative. I wondered whether he was starting to worry we wouldn't find his old man alive.

  While the boss studied the giant orrery, Caladrel watched him with a little smile on his face. The ranger was holding himself back from saying something. Eventually, the boss caught a glimpse of his face.

  "What is it?"

  "You'll notice as you look more closely."

  Out came the journal. The boss sketched for a minute before stalking off to the next pile of wreckage. Arnisant heeled after him, so I split off and climbed a nearby heap. From the top I could look out at the entire glen, hundreds of feet across.

  I let my pack slide off my shoulders and shrugged off my jacket. Much as I liked my new leathers, the summer heat was starting to melt me. I wasn't used to getting overheated. That was one thing I missed about having that devil hiding inside me, waiting for enough fire to let him out.

  I leaned back and listened to the birdsong.

  Hearing birds meant we could relax. After Caladrel pointed it out a couple weeks back, it seemed obvious. If demons or any big predators came by, they'd go quiet. That wasn't so different from the streets of Egorian, where I'd learned to listen not just for the sounds but for the silences. The forest was turning out to be more dangerous than Eel Street, but at least it smelled better.

  "It's not our system!" shouted the boss. "Do you know what that implies?"

  Caladrel laughed, but he sounded more friendly than mocking. He and Fimbulthicket joined the boss, giving him an audience while he worked out the meaning of what he'd seen.

  I stayed where I was. It wasn't that the boss was really boring, usually. I just couldn't get as excited as he did about every little detail of history or nature or magic or whatever happened to catch his attention. I preferred hearing about stuff that mattered to us right now. If he found something to do with his father, I'd want to hear it.

  The sun stared straight down at me, and I began to sweat. I rolled up my sleeves. For no reason I could guess, I felt fidgety. I wanted something to do with my hands. Time was I'd have lit a pipe, but I hadn't felt the yen for tobacco in a while.

  Come to think of it, I hadn't wanted a smoke since my devil died. That didn't make sense, though. I'd enjoyed a cigar now and then even before the changes came on. Well, "enjoyed" might be overstating it. I smoked when the other Goatherds smoked, and later I lit up when I wanted to annoy the boss. Maybe I'd never really had a taste for the stuff.

  An unbirdlike whistle grabbed my attention. Below my perch, Kemeili looked up at me. Oparal stood beside her. Seeing them together made my gut shrink. The last thing I needed was them teaming up on me.

  Kemeili cupped her hands around her mouth and shouted up at me. "We came by to tell you that Oparal is as stupid as a troll and twice as ugly."

  My jaw dropped.

  "Isn't that right, Oparal?"

  The paladin nodded.

  I gaped wider, but covered by saying, "You don't say."

  "She wants you to know she doesn't want to sleep with you. She's taken a vow to surrender her virginity to the first orc who defeats her in combat."

  "What the what?"

  Kemeili plucked Oparal's elbow. "Did I get that right?"

  Oparal nodded. "That is my vow."

  "So she wants you to know she's sorry to disappoint you. She says you're ugly, just not ugly enough."

  The back of my neck itched. I got the feeling someone else was watching me. Looking around, I spotted the boss and Arnisant with Caladrel and Fimbulthicket. A pair of yellow birds chased each other across the glen before disappearing into the forest. Far behind the girls, something moved among the trees. I caught a glimpse of slender brown legs.

  "No hard feelings," I said. I knew it was some kind of joke but couldn't understand how Kemeili got Oparal to go
along with it.

  "Now she'd like you to throw down your pants so she can mend the tear in the crotch."

  Oparal looked around as if she'd heard something in the woods. At a nudge from Kemeili, she nodded and called up to me. "That's right."

  "Very funny," I said.

  "I mean it." Oparal frowned. "Are you mocking me?"

  "No, I am definitely not mocking you." I pointed past her, at the edge of the clearing. "Say, what's that?"

  When she turned, I shot Kemeili a warning scowl. The way she flinched and covered her mouth with her hand, I knew she was doing some mischief. I drew a thumb across my neck, Knock it off.

  "What did you see?" said Oparal. She shrugged her shield off her back and put a hand on her sword.

  "I don't know," I said. I wanted to get rid of her and ask Kemeili what she was doing. "Maybe just a deer."

  "I will make sure." She drew her sword and marched into the woods.

  I grabbed my stuff and climbed down. As I pulled on my jacket, Kemeili shook with laughter.

  "What did you do?" I said. "No, don't tell me. It was some spell to make Oparal hear something different from what you were saying to me."

  "As Varian says, you're smarter than you look."

  I didn't like her picking up that line or using his first name, but whatever she'd done was a nice trick. The boss and I used hand signs, a code word now and then. This was the kind of spell he'd love to cast. Too bad it came from a goddess instead of a book of spells.

  "It was a good one," I said. I changed my tone to let her know I was serious. "What was she really trying to say to me?"

  Kemeili started to put on her little-girl pout but let it go. That stuff works only to a point, and she knew it. "She wanted to apologize for hurting you when we fought that demon at Erithiel's Hall."

  That was better than I'd hoped. "What about for breaking my nose?"

  "I don't know what's wrong with you. You brought that one on yourself."

  "How about you? Now that you've had your laugh, think you can fix me up?"

  "I don't know." She trailed a finger down my chest, plucking open the last of the laces. "I could be persuaded, if instead of flirting with that golem you put that silver tongue to better use."

  "Copper tongue."

  "What?"

  "Never mind," I said. The old nickname from Zandros was his backhanded compliment for the way I used to talk my way out of trouble while remaining a cheap crook. "I wasn't flirting with her."

  "So you weren't serious about kissing her?"

  Desna smiled, and the boss shouted for me from across the glen.

  "Got to go."

  By the time we reached him, the boss was lost in his own monologue. "—not only other worlds but other stars. The distances alone must be incalculable. I must speak to one of the elven astronomers. The first matter to address is—"

  "Perhaps your father can answer your questions," moaned Fimbulthicket. "He is an accomplished astronomer."

  "You told me he was devoted to the Green."

  "Life is not limited to the surface of the world. It encompasses the seas, the skies, and all the land beneath us. Our whole world and all the countless others are a part of the Green."

  The boss's eyes widened. "The entire sea of stars...of course."

  "You begin to understand," said Fimbulthicket.

  Caladrel pointed at a tree stump beneath the shell of one of the metal worlds. The shattered globe gave it shelter from the rain. "What's this?"

  "More of Variel's journal," said the boss. "He came here some after his studies at the Walking Man."

  "What was he doing?"

  "Judging from what he wrote here, I surmise he was studying this ruined orrery to determine whether it had some defensive as well as scholarly value."

  "Could it have been a weapon?"

  "Perhaps," said the boss. "These notes are incomplete, often difficult to understand in context."

  Fimbulthicket nodded. "That's because they weren't left for us. Variel wrote these notes as reminders to himself. He often did that when we roamed the forest."

  The boss nodded, as if he'd already guessed that much. "That must mean he intended to return."

  Fimbulthicket nodded.

  "Then why didn't he come back?" The words were out of my mouth before I realized the obvious answer was that he was dead.

  Kemeili covered for me. "It is not such a long time. A decade seems like a long time only to you humans."

  I could have kissed her for that. That was the second time somebody in Kyonin had called us human.

  The sour face on the boss told me he didn't consider it so much a compliment. "It's possible that what Variel learned here led him to some other site, as it did earlier."

  "So where'd he go next?"

  The boss shook his head. "I see no hints in the notes. Fimbulthicket?"

  The gnome looked down at the elven script on the tree stump. "No," he said, almost whistling the word. "It looks as if he left before finishing this last entry."

  The boss turned away from Fimbulthicket. "Let us spread out and search for any other sign of Variel's visit."

  Arnisant stuck to the boss, and Caladrel and Fimbulthicket struck out together. As we set off in our own direction, Kemeili grabbed my butt and squeezed.

  "Not now, sweetheart." I frowned away the phony pout she put on. "Say, where'd Oparal run off to?"

  "You worry too much about her," she said.

  "I kind of sent her on a wild goose chase." Or had I? I wondered. Was that a deer I'd seen?

  A voice called out from the forest, but I couldn't make out what it said. "Listen."

  Kemeili froze and cocked her head. No matter how much she liked distracting me, she straightened up the minute there was trouble. "It's Oparal," she said. "She's calling for help."

  "Get the boss," I said. "I'll go after her."

  "No, I'm coming with you."

  There was no time to argue, so I ran into the woods. "Boss!" I yelled, hoping the others hadn't gone too far. "Caladrel! Fim ...bulthicket! Over here!"

  In twenty steps, Kemeili got ahead of me.

  The afternoon light slanted through the trees. Something too small and quick for me to see leaped from branch to branch way above our heads. I thought about the squirrels in Oddnoggin's noodle, but these sounded like something bigger.

  "Oparal!" Kemeili called out now and then. There was no answer.

  "Maybe she circled around."

  Kemeili hesitated before nodding. "Maybe."

  I realized all the birds had gone quiet.

  "Over here!" Oparal's voice rang out farther away, beyond a stand of elms. I headed over. Kemeili followed. I couldn't see the paladin anywhere.

  "Where are you?"

  Nobody answered, and I felt my hackles rise. I searched the ground for footprints, broken branches, anything like that. Either I couldn't see the things Caladrel would spot right away, or Oparal hadn't come this way.

  Kemeili ran a thumb around her belly tattoo. She waved her hand, looking ahead at the ground yards ahead of us. "There," she pointed at a mark beside some crushed fronds. "Hoofprints."

  "Deer?"

  "Maybe," she said. "If so, they're big ones."

  Something big ran away from the elms. Before I could see what it was, it disappeared behind a wall of ferns.

  "Over here. Help me, Radovan!" called Oparal—or her voice, anyway. That didn't sound like something she'd ever say. Despite my bad feeling, curiosity drew me to the sound. If I was wrong, then she was in trouble.

  Kemeili hung back. "Radovan, wait. Something isn't right."

  I couldn't help myself. I kept moving in the direction of the voice.

  "Snap out of it!" she said. Hoofbeats retreated ahead of us. I ran after them.

  Kemeili's whip caught me on the ankle. I fell forward, barely breaking my fall. "Dammit, we've got to find her!"

  As I pulled the whip free, Kemeili ran up and jumped on top of me. "You're charmed!"


  I shoved Kemeili aside. "Maybe. And maybe she's in trouble. Go get the others."

  Without turning to see whether she obeyed, I sprinted through the woods. Now and then Oparal's voice called out, leading me on. I caught another glimpse of the animal I'd seen before. It was built like a stag but without the antlers. Its back was striped brown and black.

  I heard other hoofbeats in the forest, just far enough away to stay under cover.

  I couldn't catch the four-legged beast, but I pumped my legs hard and got close enough for a good look. It had a stag's legs and haunches, but its upper body was all predator. It grinned at me.

  It laughed in Oparal's voice. "Is that far enough? Are we all alone now?" It had the jaws of a bear trap, with sharp bony ridges instead of teeth.

  I threw it the big smile.

  The monster reared up on its hind legs. I liked seeing all that soft white underbelly, but I veered off to avoid its sharp hooves. It leaped after me, so close I could smell the stench of its body, equal parts animal musk and filth.

  "My pack has scattered your herd," it said. Its breath was worse than its body odor. The way its animal lips formed human words made me queasy. "Alone, you are weak."

  I slapped my shoulders, filling my hands with blades, and threw them at its face. It ducked, splaying its forelegs like a dog at play. Two darts sank into its hunched shoulders. It spat like a baited badger.

  I grabbed the big knife and tensed to stab when it lunged. When I felt the hot mass of the thing closing, I changed my mind. Rolling back, I barely evaded those bony jaws. They tore into a root the size of my thigh and ripped it out of the ground.

  Getting back to my feet, I heard Oparal's voice cry out from another direction. "Help me, Radovan!"

  "Oh, Radovan," her voice called from another direction. "You're the only one who can help me!"

  Two more of the damned things stalked forward, grinning while the first one barked with laughter. More hoofbeats approached. I was in big trouble.

  The newcomers moved to flank me. I put a tree behind myself and the first monster, half-expecting to see a fourth coming up from behind. Instead, a gray blur charged past me. It crashed straight into one of the monsters, head-to-head like rams.