Queen of Thorns

by Dave Gross

  "Zuldana, be reasonable."

  She gave him a look I'd seen on the faces of wives whose husbands talk too much. She plucked the ring from her finger.

  Her hair lifted up all around her, as if she'd just plunged into water. The strands merged to form wings as her body grew. Tiny scales appeared on her skin. At first they were the tiny points of a pox, but a second later they were green coins. She kept growing, her neck stretching, her arms and legs swelling with muscle.

  When she was ten feet tall, she threw herself backward through the open window. She rose into the air, green wings beating the air. Her voice sounded garbled when she spoke: "I want to talk to these unexpected guests. Send them to me."

  She rose, turned, and glided down toward the amphitheater we'd spotted earlier. She was still growing as she vanished into the shadows, and I knew she was the same dragon we'd seen the day before.

  Arnisant stood in front of the boss, his head drooping with uncertainty. I'd never seen him so scared. The Shadowless Sword clattered on the mouth of its scabbard before the boss managed to put it in place. He folded his shaking hands behind his back. The others looked too scared to talk, and I knew just how they felt.

  "I'm not going first," I said before anybody else spoke up.

  "I will," said Caladrel.

  Kemeili shot him a dirty look and said, "I'll go second." Excitement gleamed in her eyes.

  Oparal and Fimbulthicket exchanged a look. Maybe they were annoyed that they hadn't spoken sooner. That's when I realized that the others had been waiting for this moment. These past weeks, they hadn't been helping the boss to find his father.

  They'd been using the boss to find the dragon.

  Chapter Fifteen

  In the Manor of His Father

  Varian

  Caladrel departed at once. His eagerness to speak with the dragon was palpable, as was Kemeili's. I perceived no hint of a hidden agenda on the faces of Fimbulthicket or Oparal, which only piqued my suspicion the more.

  "There are comfortable rooms nearby," Variel said. "Please make yourselves at home while I talk with ..."

  I did not understand his hesitation until Fimbulthicket supplied my name.

  "Varian," repeated Variel. Despite the overwhelming visual evidence of our relation, I still struggled to think of him as my father. He appeared to suffer no such difficulty as he beamed at the similarity of our names. "She named you Varian."

  "You may abandon the pretense." My voice broke, releasing the anger that had lodged in my heart. "Do you expect me to believe you sent me the Red Carriage and never knew my name?"

  "The Red Carriage?" He appeared confused. I searched his face for any hint of pretense, but he revealed none. "I didn't send it for you. Until now, I did not know you existed. I sent the carriage as a gift to your mother."

  "But she— Fimbulthicket said he sent it—" The words escaped before I realized that the gnome had never said that I was the intended recipient, only that he had seen it dispatched to Egorian. In an instant, I understood that it was only natural that my mother should tell me the gift was meant for me. She gave me everything else I possessed: breeding, education, status, wealth. On my sixteenth birthday, she also gave me the illusion that my father thought of me.

  "You want me to stick around?" said Radovan as Oparal and Kemeili slipped out of the bedchamber Variel shared with the dragon.

  "No, thank you."

  "I'll be right around the corner." He scratched Arnisant under the chin before stepping out. The hound stayed with me.

  Fimbulthicket remained by Variel, staring up at him in abject adoration. Variel stared at me, similarly astonished. I glared at the gnome, silently willing him to realize he was intruding on what should be a private conversation.

  "Varian, I promise that if I had known ..." Variel lifted a hand in a helpless gesture. "But I didn't know."

  Either he was a skilled dissembler or he spoke sincerely. In either case, I had no idea how to respond. A lifetime of absence followed by a journey with uncertain allies through a demon-infested forest leading to an illusion-shrouded city filled with all manner of monsters including a dragon who was by all appearances my father's lover ...it was all too much to assimilate.

  Once more, Fimbulthicket bridged the silence. "Varian brought the Red Carriage to me in Omesta, but it's a complete wreck. You're the only one who can repair it."

  Variel gasped. "I wove sustaining spells into every inch of that carriage. What in all the Green did you do to it?"

  "What did I do? I survived an attack that hurled the carriage down a mountain ravine. It was only by the wink of Desna and the generosity of a local peer that I recovered its fragments."

  "Did you drive it into war? I never built it to face such mistreatment."

  "I was visiting Ustalav, where certain obscure parties did not wish me to locate a missing colleague."

  A quizzical frown creased his brow.

  "A Pathfinder colleague."

  "You are a member of that ...organization?" His tone shifted from disdain to amusement.

  "In fact ..." I was about to point out that I was not only a Pathfinder but a venture-captain. In light of my superiors' recent neglect, however, I was no longer certain I wished to advertise my status. "I have been known to aid the Society from time to time."

  "I see," he said. His impenetrable eyes revealed nothing, but from his hesitation I inferred that he too strained to find the next words. It occurred to me that I had had weeks to prepare for our meeting, yet he apparently never anticipated the revelation that he had a son. At last he said, "How is your mother?"

  Astonished at the stupidity of the question, I snapped, "Dead these seventy years."

  "Varian," snapped the gnome. "There's no need to be cruel."

  "Fim." Variel's hand rose to his chest, where he touched his breastbone as if to soothe an injury. "Let us speak alone."

  "All right," said the gnome. "I'll be nearby if you need me."

  "I always need you," said Variel. He knelt and kissed Fimbulthicket on the eyelids.

  "It's so good to see you again," said the gnome. The crinkling of his white cheeks expressed a long-absent joy.

  Variel smiled as he watched his friend leave, but his expression was tainted with sorrow at the news I had spat in his face. I regretted my intemperate response. All the childish resentments I thought long dead had only lain dormant, waiting to erupt at the slightest provocation.

  Variel saw a hundred questions reflected on my face. "We know nothing of each other," he said. "When we first met, Zuldanavox questioned me for three days before she would allow me to rest. Strangers fascinate her, and you've just presented her with six. Let's use the time until she sends for you to become acquainted."

  "And when she sends for me?"

  He drew a deep breath. "Let's pray she likes you."

  I flinched at the implication.

  "I jest." He said it with a smile, but doubt soon clouded his face. "For the most part, I jest."

  He offered me a seat facing the western window. The southern and western walls had been removed, the ceiling reinforced with the vine arches I had come to recognize as Variel's handiwork. From the vines grew plentiful leaves to redirect rainfall away from the floor.

  Variel poured two goblets of yellow wine, passing one to me before raising his own. "To Pontia Jeggare and all she has given us—including the gift of our long-delayed meeting."

  On first sip, I found the wine young and sweet, but not cloying. I thought of the empty wine cellar and realized anything he had discovered there could hardly have been fit to drink after so many centuries abandoned. "Do you make this?"

  He nodded.

  "I hold a number of vineyards in western Cheliax."

  "I don't suppose you brought any with you. I'd wrestle a bugbear for a decent red."

  "Alas, I have been away from home for some time."

  We sipped wine and exchanged trivialities as we gazed out upon the city. Gigantic seed pods drifted through
shafts of moonlight. Bats hunted among the insect swarms, and the will-o'-wisps trailed predators in the darkness, plunging into the shadows to feast on their prey's fear.

  Beside the manor stood the amphitheater, cracks webbing its stone shell. As the silver light of stars and moon shone down from above, so did the warm glint of gold glitter up from below.

  "Zuldana keeps her hoard down there," Variel sighed. "She likes to tempt the city's denizens, but even the most avaricious have learned not to steal from her. Now she leaves the gates open, tempting them with freedom. She loves learning more than anything, except sometimes the chase."

  "What does she have down there?"

  "The wealth of the entire city, which once rivaled Iadara in prestige and power. She leaves all the valuables we've salvaged down there under that leaky roof. At least she lets me keep the books up here in the library."

  "Books?"

  His eyes lit up as he heard the interest in my voice. "All the lore we believed lost in the Retreat."

  "Surely you exaggerate."

  "Well, perhaps. But you would not believe how much I have found already. Every month I discover something new, often forcing me to reevaluate everything I thought I'd learned about this place. There are terrors as well as wonders, so I proceed with caution. You may have noticed that I've sealed some of the buildings. In most cases it is to deter intrusion. In others, it is to prevent escape."

  I shuddered to think I had considered opening those buildings. "Why did you come here? How did you detect this hidden city?"

  "I'll answer any question you like," he said. "But first, indulge me. Until this night, I did not imagine you existed. I've no other children—well, I suppose I can't say that with confidence anymore—and here you stand before me full of nearly a century of stories. Tell me something about yourself."

  Suppressing my impatience, I sketched out my life in reverse. I recounted our pursuit of Variel's trail in Kyonin—omitting my error at the Walking Man—before outlining the year I spent among the peoples of Tian Xia. I described my ill-fated expedition to Ustalav, omitting the more dangerous facts and glossing over the compromises we had been forced to accept.

  Still he was not satisfied, so I told him of the years in which Radovan acted as my bodyguard while I solved the riddles of my peers' misfortunes and infidelities. As I related the tale of my first meeting with the street thug who would become my confidant, Variel rose to refill the wine decanter. Only then did I realize I had been speaking for hours.

  "This Radovan is more than your bodyguard, isn't he?" said Variel. "You are close?"

  "Certainly not as close as you and Fimbulthicket appear to be."

  He smiled until he saw that I had not intended a joke. Then he chuckled. "You are so very Chelish."

  "What is that supposed to mean?"

  "It's just that humans, especially Chelaxians, even apart from their desperate grasping for former glories ...You have to admit they are—shall we say 'repressed'?"

  "I confess that my peers would look askance at me should they discover my father shares his bed with a dragon."

  "That's exactly what I'm talking about! But you're the last person who should object to unorthodox relationships. If your mother and I had never fallen in love, you would not exist."

  "My mother was not a dragon."

  "No, but she had every bit as much life in her as Zuldana does. Pontia was so vivid and full of dreams." His smile faded. "You say she died seventy years ago?"

  I nodded, regretting both my earlier outburst and the implied invitation to inquire about the evil days surrounding my mother's death. After sufficient silence, Variel accepted my unspoken rejection of the subject.

  "I understand now why she came to me, that last day. I wanted to surprise her with an invitation to visit my family—our family, yours and mine both—in Riverspire. In high summer, the spray of the waterfall chills the orchard plums. We would have danced among the dryads and teased the fairies at hide-and-seek ...Alas, I was not the only one who had a surprise that day. She asked me to return with her to Cheliax."

  "And you refused."

  "You have probably known elves living among humans. In some ways we are not so different from them, but we crave more life than one finds in their cities of dead stone and timber. It is worse for those elves raised among humans, the Forlorn. They are like..." He sought for a word and found it. "Amputees."

  I thought of something Fimbulthicket had said. "You need the Green."

  "Just so. Even those elves who don't pursue their Brightness through the Green can feel the absence of its purest energy, which flows more freely through elves and the unsullied land than it does through humans and their crude creations. Those who stray too long from Kyonin and the other elven holdings begin to change. Though not truly Forlorn, they lose the joy inherent in their connection to the world through their people."

  Again I thought of Fimbulthicket. "Like gnomes who succumb to the Bleaching."

  "A valid comparison, but the physiological effects are not so profound." Variel grimaced and looked at the door. "Fim looks like a sketch of himself."

  The gnome's condition was exacerbated by the absence of his beloved friend. I sensed Variel recognized his culpability in the matter. Despite my lingering resentment toward him, I had no wish to aggravate his misery. "Enough of this," I said. "Tell me how you came to find this city."

  "First, tell me one more thing. Why did you seek me out? That story about the carriage might have fooled Fimbulthicket, but he has a fond and open heart."

  "The story is true." As he began to protest, I held up a hand and added, "But I understand your suspicions. I found it strange that the queen granted permission for me to roam Kyonin freely on such an errand."

  "Perhaps not so freely. She sent an interesting group of escorts. I know Caladrel, Amarandlon's loyal right hand. What do you know of the others?"

  "Kemeili is a Calistrian, one of their inquisitors. She took a liking to Radovan at the Midsummer Masque. Naturally that was a charade to insinuate herself into my company."

  Variel nodded his approval of my conclusion.

  "Oparal's purpose remains obscure. She is, as you would call her, Forlorn. She grew up in Cheliax as a paladin of Iomedae, but she returned to Kyonin and pledged her sword to Queen Telandia. She may be just what she seems: a servant to the queen."

  "At least we can trust Fim."

  "Can we?" Even as I spoke the words, I wondered why I should trust Variel or he should trust me. Until the previous hour, we had been strangers. "Whoever directed me to Fimbulthicket must also have known of my relation to you, yet I was allowed to discover the connection as if by chance. The ruse would have been difficult to effect without Fimbulthicket's complicity."

  "That doesn't mean Fim knew of a plot."

  "No, but his condition makes it difficult for me to discern his motives, especially since he succumbed to the Bleaching. The real question is why I have been manipulated, and by whom."

  "Whom do you suspect?"

  "Either Prince Amarandlon or the queen herself arranged for my journey. It is possible that one of them has also been manipulated, perhaps by the Calistrians or another party."

  "The queen has long known where I am and what I am doing here."

  "Then Amarandlon or the Calistrians. But to what end?"

  "To force Telandia's hand. The prince is wise in war, but he grows weary of commanding a legion of skirmishers. He dreams of recovering a mighty weapon, one that would allow the forces of Kyonin to do more than hold the demon horde in abeyance."

  "Zuldana?"

  "It is better that you call her Zuldanavox. She permits me to contract her name only because she has grown fond of me over the decades. Once I made the mistake of calling her Dana. After the quarrel that followed, I spent the better part of a decade repairing the damage we caused to the temple district."

  "You fought her?"

  "Only until her temper cooled."

  "I mean, you survived a figh
t with an ancient dragon?"

  "Be careful not to suggest she is a day over nine hundred years. Unlike others of her kind, she's queerly sensitive about her age."

  "But she is enormous!"

  "That's another remark I'd suggest you not repeat in her hearing. In fact ..." He stood to peer down at the amphitheater. "We're probably all right so long as she's still talking with the others, but she can spy almost anywhere in the city."

  His casual demeanor only increased my astonishment. "You fended off a wrathful dragon? Fimbulthicket says you are powerful in the Green, but ..." I could not imagine any lone elf surviving such a contest.

  "If she had meant to kill me, I would be dead. I'm no match for her, spell to spell or otherwise."

  "Is she so powerful that she could be the weapon Prince Amarandlon seeks?"

  "If the prince thinks so, then he is a great fool. You must know enough about dragons to realize she would never willingly serve. Besides, I doubt Amarandlon knows of her existence. More likely he hoped to discover this city or something in it."

  "Zuldanavox could be a powerful ally against the Witchbole."

  "I agree, but such a relationship could occur only after a long and careful period of diplomacy."

  "Which is why you are here."

  Variel nodded, smiling.

  "How did you overcome the wards concealing the city?"

  "Ah!" He stood and retrieved an oaken quarterstaff leaning against a table. Its gnarled head resembled a clutching hand. A large turquoise slowly turned, suspended between the wooden digits in an effect reminiscent of Telandia's staff. "Shall I show you?"

  "Please do."

  We moved to the window, and Variel once again looked down at the amphitheater. "These interviews are passing more quickly than I'd thought."

  Kemeili emerged from beneath the structure's domed roof. A trio of will-o'-wisps appeared, bobbing like balloons in her wake. As I reached for a riffle scroll, Variel said, "Don't worry. They seldom attack, and never so close to home. Some always lurk near Zuldana's lair to savor the fear in the city residents she occasionally summons for a good grovel."