The Queen of Lies

by Michael J. Bode

  Satryn stroked her cheek, but Jessa flinched. “Are you disappointed it wasn’t me?”

  “If I wanted you dead, you’d be food for the sharks, Mother.”

  Satryn rolled her eyes. “What could you do to me? Poison my wine? No, you wouldn’t even get your hands that dirty.”

  “I wouldn’t have to. I’d simply wait till you passed out from your drink and bash in your skull with the heaviest thing I could find.” Jessa folded her arms. “It’s a miracle you’ve managed to survive this long, considering how careless you are.”

  “You’re exceptionally moody today,” Satryn said. “Tell me, do you feel the roil of the Everstorm growing within your chest?”

  “That must be it,” Jessa said. “It certainly isn’t the frustration of your lies, or the unceremonious discovery that I’m the likely product of inbreeding, or the loss of my home, or the maddening politics of this Assembly, or the child that’s growing inside me. No, my mood is certainly the result of theurgy. What other thing could it possibly be?”

  “You do manage to surprise me sometimes.” Satryn’s eyes flicked across her daughter’s belly. “That certainly would explain your death rattle. The child bears your power, as you now bear mine. You feel the transition of power for the both of you.”

  “The father is an assemblyman,” Jessa said. “We’re in love.”

  “Good for you.” Satryn tapped her arm playfully. “I think motherhood would suit you. Or at least give you an appreciation of the sacrifices I’ve had to make.”

  Jessa blinked.

  “Oh, honestly, Jessa.” Satryn sighed. “Did you think I would be angry? It matters not who the father is. Your child is a Stormlord, for Kultea’s sake. The father could be the bastard of a deckhand’s bastard, and his pedigree would be worth more than all the breeding of the castrated Genatrovan nobility. I couldn’t be happier that you finally get to experience the unremitting hell of ingratitude and disappointment that parenthood brings.“

  Jessa turned away sullenly. “I don’t intend to keep the child.”

  “Then don’t!” Satryn exclaimed. “You really are exhausting sometimes.”

  Jessa headed toward the door. “You managed to teach me that, at least.”

  “Wait.”

  Jessa stopped.

  “Let me see your blade. You may provide some challenge for me now,” Satryn suggested. She reached out her hand and summoned the lightning to her fingertips. The electricity arced and within seconds solidified into a crackling scimitar of lightning.

  She gave the Invocari warden a look to let him know this was just a game. “We’re too close in power to hurt each other, and the room is already demolished.”

  The Invocari guard nodded silently.

  Jessa turned and held out her hand. At first the electricity was rough and crude—a shapeless, forking mass of blue light in the shape of a blade. But to her amazement, the energy condensed into a rapier, complete with cup hilt. It was delicate but elegantly constructed.

  Satryn put one hand behind her back then held out her own blade.

  Jess laughed despite herself. “It’s so easy to maintain.” She quickly flicked the sparkling rapier back and forth as her shadow danced behind her. She raised her blade and approached Satryn, her off hand resting against the small of her back.

  Satryn executed a series of slow, easy strikes, letting Jessa parry. The sparks flew from their blades like dazzling confetti. “You know, when I was pregnant with you, I swore I’d never be like my mother.”

  Jessa lunged, testing Satryn’s parry. “You mean bitchy and cavillous?”

  Satryn twirled her scimitar. “I barely knew her. I was raised by priests and an older sister who despised my very existence. The empress had no time for the folly of children.”

  “So she never came into your room in the middle of the night, drunk and raving about her sexual exploits? I pity you.” Jessa lunged again, this time harder. Her attacks were quick and angry but also clumsy and easily parried. She executed a flurry of strikes as Satryn effortlessly deflected them and stepped out of the way. She’s better than Sireen at least.

  “Mothers are supposed to feel connected to their offspring. I know this.” Satryn spun and slashed at Jessa as she twirled forward, bringing her blade high and low in alternating cadence.

  Jessa staggered back at first but managed to parry some of the blows as she caught on to the rhythm of Satryn’s attack. “Do you? Because you’ve said on multiple occasions that attachment makes us weak.”

  “Attachment to weaker things, yes.” Satryn pressed harder, raining blows with greater quickness. “But I didn’t close myself off. I simply never had that feeling to give you. I wanted to feel it, Jessa. I really did. But even as you were growing inside me, all I could think about was how I was expected to treasure this helpless little parasite. How could I put your needs before my own happiness when no one ever had shown me that courtesy?”

  “Then why even give birth to me?” Jessa slashed viciously with her rapier, cutting through Satryn’s scimitar and forcing her mother to take a delicate step backward while she reconstituted her blade.

  Satryn crouched. “It was expected of me, and you pleased your father. He and I had a complicated relationship.”

  Jessa pointed her rapier at Satryn’s heart. “Did you kill him?”

  “He was a feckless ruler and an insufferable idealist, but I would have respected him enough to give him a king’s death rather than watch him waste away like he did.”

  Satryn charged and raised her blade in an uppercut strike. Jessa caught the edge of the strike on the handguard of her conjured rapier and thrust it down. It withstood the blow and stopped her momentum.

  “Everyone will betray you eventually, Jessa,” Satryn said. “Siblings betray you, parents abandon you, husbands die, friends leave, and children end up hating you. Even the goddess herself will turn a deaf ear in your darkest moments. You have only yourself in this world.”

  Jessa banished her weapons. Her eyes were wet with tears. “I wish you’d just tell me what you’re playing at. I don’t know what to do, Mother. Please, for once in your life, can you just—”

  Satryn gave a wan smile. “Do whatever the fuck you want, dear. You’re an elemental goddess among men now, and it’s high time you started acting like it instead of waiting for others to decide your fate. Just set a course and don’t falter. You can’t fail unless you abandon your conviction.”

  “Fine.” Jessa wiped her eyes. “I’m becoming a citizen of Rivern and disavowing my imperial ties. I’m abdicating the crown to Rothburn to spare my people the bloodshed of an extended war. And…I’m having this child.”

  “You’re your own woman now,” Satryn mused. “I won’t gainsay your choices, for they’re your own, and it’s your right to make them. We’re equals…of a sort anyway, and I can’t ask more of you.”

  Jessa looked confused for a moment. “What in the five hells are you plotting?”

  “I’m looking out for our family.” Satryn beamed. “I’m going to be a grandmother after all. Ugh. That makes me sound so much older than I am. I’m not ready for high-collared frocks and comfortable shoes. But I do have some ideas for names.”

  “You’re a disgraceful ruler and an awful mother,” Jessa sneered.

  “Mayhaps,” Satryn conceded, “but you’re lost, Jessa. Your contempt for me is the closest thing you’ve ever had in the way of a personality. I wonder how virtuous you’d be if it weren’t the one thing you could do to irritate me.”

  “As you’re fond of reminding me.” Jessa narrowed her eyes. “But if you really wanted to make me doubt myself, you’d give your approval. I can’t think of a worse recommendation than to be respected in your eyes.”

  “You’ve never had much of an imagination either.”

  Jessa blinked. “We’re done speaking. As acting regent, I dissolve your position and privileges. You’re no longer the sovereign ruler of Amhaven and no longer subject to the protections entitled
under Protectorate law.”

  “That’s hardly legal.” Satryn shrugged. “Besides I’m still the daughter of the empress and hold many titles in the Dominance, none of which you can revoke. But best of luck with that squalid forest that passes for a nation.”

  “A nation that defeated the Dominance.”

  “With the aid of the witches, which you no longer have.”

  Jessa spun on her heel and made for the exit to the warding chamber. “Good-bye, Satryn. I’ll make sure the Assembly replaces the furniture with something more suited to a lengthy incarceration.”

  “Let me know if you decide to keep your child,” Satryn called after her. “I think you should call him Noah.”

  TWENTY-THREE

  The Dolmen

  HEATH AND SWORD

  MY BRETHREN AND I are a handful of beings who can say we walked the ancient streets of Sarn. (Aside from the Travelers, who are never forthcoming with anything, we may be the only ones left.) Given that they’re a generally taciturn lot, and not known for their intellectual curiosity, it falls to me to relate my experiences in hopes of enlightening modern scholars who wish to plumb the great mysteries of the Second Era.

  Now it is true that theurgy was abundant in those times; in fact it was overabundant in many cases, which caused no end of problems. It wasn’t simply that after the wizards eliminated hunger, aging, disease, and ugliness there was no need for industry. The theurgies became self-aware and self-sustaining to the point that there was no need to even study wizardry.

  The Aeromancer Guilds, once a highly sought-after posting in the mid-Second Era, faded to near obscurity by the end. Who needed to spend decades learning how to raise another floating city when cities already were floating? Who indeed needed to master the calculation of teleportation magic when portal engines were abundant throughout Creation?

  Magic was instead put toward different applications—there was no currency, but some approximation of wealth and status was devised to approximate an economy. In Archea and Maceria, it was called “merit,” and in Sarn it was called “liberty” (or a loose translation that included both the freedom from obligation and the freedom to perform certain actions without legal consequences).

  The Long Night saw an end to those long-standing theurgies and the loss of the few who remained capable of understanding them. It is for the reason of their overdependence that these nations fell so quickly (though they did not fall completely).

  The modern Archeans, while preserving traditions, have no doubt lost much of their founders’ arts. It’s doubtful they know how to lower their impractical city to earth, even if they were so inclined.

  —PREFACE TO QUILL’S THE FALL OF NATIONS, VOLUME 1

  HEATH PAUSED FROM digging mud out of the heel of his boot. He’d never been fond of leaving the city, and the boggy terrain and undergrowth of the marsh had set him in a foul mood. The Harbinger’s flask had given him Sword’s memories, and those memories pointed to the dolmen near Reda. It was hard to look at his friend the same way, knowing what it felt like to become other people. Going from a crazed, tortured fire mage to Catherine had been a jarring juxtaposition. Sword’s current, and mostly carefree, Fodder body seemed even more alien.

  “I had a family once,” Sword said offhandedly. “Started out with me and a barmaid I knocked up coming back from a war I can’t remember. Raised the kids, passed myself down to the oldest son. I kept it going for three generations before the Bloodfangs sacked our village. Then I was a Bloodfang.”

  “Wait,” Heath said. “Your own son?”

  “Would have taken ’em all if I could have, but only one host at a time.”

  “But when you take people, they stop being themselves. Their lives as individuals effectively end.”

  Sword shrugged. “And when you die, you stop being a person altogether. What’s your point?”

  “I don’t know,” Heath said. “Why would someone even create you?”

  “People had a lot of free time in the old days.”

  “But you never talk about the old days,” Heath chided. “Look, I understand keeping secrets. And I certainly understand lying about the past. I’ve never asked you, but I need to know—what are you?”

  “I don’t want your stupid soul…if there even is such a thing,” Sword said indignantly. “My invented purpose wasn’t to enslave humanity. I was meant to preserve the memories and battle prowess of the House Crigenesta’s champions. They weren’t blade thralls; they were rightful owners. I was never built to be like this.”

  He continued, “The Sarnians had fucked-up rules about ownership—that’s why they put curses on everything. I’m not some insidious monster trying to fuck your head into thinking I’m your friend. I’m a fucking theft deterrent. No one in his right mind would steal the sword of House Crigenesta or the Arrow of House Dulcorda, because they’d find themselves bound to the service of the house.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Heath stopped him right there. “There’s an arrow like you?”

  “Right pompous prick he is too,” Sword said. “There’s a whole arsenal like me.”

  “How does that even work? Don’t you have to be within a hundred feet of your host or else they die? And if you shoot you at someone…” Heath was still thinking about the arrow.

  “I never said the Suzerains were practical. Besides the hundred-foot bond was only to make sure the weapon couldn’t be forcibly removed to get out of the Geas. If you weren’t the rightful owner, the only way out was to return to the house and have them release you. Only there’s no one left to do that.”

  “Can’t say I’m too sad to hear there aren’t any more left,” Heath said. “As an occasional thief, I’m glad that practice fell into obscurity.”

  “I was proud to serve House Crigenesta. Couldn’t feel any other way about it, even if I wanted to, but they were an all right sort…for their time anyway. Probably wouldn’t be too popular in the Protectorate, but they had a sense of humor.”

  “So how did you get free? Was it during the Long Night?”

  “Centuries before.” Sword sighed. “Factional power struggle. The houses were slaughtered along with the champions. The Suzerains killed the last survivors and just made new Great Houses. We were made by the Artifex, so destroying us would’ve been like burning an art gallery. So they did like they’d done with all their most dangerous artifacts—put us on display in the forum. In Sarn it’s not like treasures were locked up or kept out of sight, you know? You put them out in the open as a show of strength and dared anyone to steal them.”

  “Why would anyone pick you up then?” Heath asked. “The permanent bond to the sword and loss of free will seems like a pretty serious downside.”

  “If you had the stones to beat the curse, the thing was yours. People got cocky and greedy, and over the centuries, they got stupid. Some kid, not even fifteen, picked me up on a dare because he didn’t know his history, and his ‘friends’ wanted to have a laugh. The Sarn I awoke to was a shit hole. The new Great Houses were just families of inbred warlocks living off the legacy of theurgy left to them by the old. So I told the Suzerains and the houses where they could stuff my pointy end, and I left.”

  Heath mused, “I know what it’s like to see an institution you’re a part of betray every principle that made it worth believing in.”

  “That orphanage thing was right fucked, mate.”

  “Yeah.”

  “So…”

  “We should get moving.”

  THE DOLMEN SAT in the center of a circle of barren stony earth. Four eroded stone pillars supported a circular rock with a hole in the center. Dead trees, covered in hanging moss and vines, surrounded the circle like bleak sentinels between the soggy marsh and the tainted ground. Even in the bright midday sun, the place felt sinister to Heath.

  These dolmens were the source of pact magic, where dark bargains were struck and sacrifices made. They were often in remote locations, though they sometimes moved. This one had been here as
far back as the histories went. Whatever Dark Magic flowed through them made them impervious to any attempts to destroy them.

  Heath and Sword approached cautiously and took separate paths around the perimeter, examining the ground for tracks or any signs of recent use. They saw wax drippings on some of the rocks, but none of it looked recent, or it was impossible to tell.

  “It’s rained here,” Heath said offhandedly. “Ashes would be our best bet, but it’ll be hard to find anything we can use.”

  Sword sighed and unsheathed his blade. “I was afraid of that. Time for the backup plan?”

  Heath sighed as well and opened his backpack. “I don’t like this. But I brought the materials to do the lesser invocation from the Grimoire of Hecuba. Maybe the spirits of this place will tell us something. But we’ll need to wait till nightfall.”

  “Let me try something first…” Sword swaggered over to the pillars of the dolmen and shouted, “Oi! It’s me—Sword of fucking Saint Jeffrey! We need to talk to you!” He swung his blade and hacked into the stone repeatedly. The metal rang through the quiet empty clearing as it struck the pillars.

  “Sword,” Heath said with a laugh, “you think that’s going to work? It’s broad daylight.”

  “It don’t matter, mate,” Sword said, wiping his brow. “These things were called Memento Mori back in the old days, before the Corruption. It was a place you could chat with the dead, or their echoes anyway. Didn’t take a fancy ritual to work.”

  “I doubt most people tried to cut it down, but subtlety was never your thing.” A stout woman stepped out from behind one of the pillars. She was nearly fifty and handsome for a woman, with a mane of blond hair she kept back in a ponytail. She wore chain mail and a yellow tabard. Strapped to her back was a bastard sword set with heartstone.

  Sword stared at her, mouth agape.

  “It’s strange to be lookin’ at yourself, isn’t it love?” She smiled warmly.