The Queen's Viper

by Lesley Donaldson

  A towering wave pounded Viper. The undertow buried her deep, even as the liquid chains melded into the turbulence. Viper felt a rush in her ears and her vision narrowed. The pounding of Clare’s hands on the dome resonated through Viper’s slowing heartbeat.

  If Viper had any hope of saving herself, she had to ignite what little oxygen remained in the dome. Her fight for freedom could be her last. Viper clawed for the standing stone when her hands grazed its surface. She hauled herself above the waterline, her body ablaze with elldyr creft.

  “Damned be thy power!” Viper exploded into flames. Clare protected her eyes as Viper’s magic flared. Annys’ avatar dissipated with a deafening sizzle. Clouds of steam saturated the interior of the dome.

  “Viper!” Clare ran around the perimeter, seeking a point of entry. The heavy fog refused to unveil its secrets. “Viper! Are you still in there? Show me you’re OK.” Clare pushed against the barrier with open palms.

  Viper slapped glowing hands on the boundary between herself and Clare. The immortal sagged to her knees, desperate eyes cast upon the human girl.

  “So brave, and yet, so foolish.” Annys’ voice drifted in the straggling vapours. “Even if you evaporated all of the water on this hill, you couldn’t stop me. Don’t you understand?” The thick haze organized itself into fingers that gripped Viper’s throat from behind. “Fire can be extinguished. So long as there is water on this planet, I can reach you, and you can’t hurt me.”

  “Don’t let her win, Viper! Please,” Clare begged, ragged and hoarse. “Fight back!” The young woman kept her hands against Viper’s palms. “Tell me what to do.”

  Viper’s eyes, a hint of malachite lost in a dark cave, met Clare’s. “I beg you forgive my weakness.” Viper hoped she conveyed her sincerity in the words the girl lip-read. Clare’s streaming tears lifted from her face, unwittingly reinforcing the dome. “Run,” Viper said. “Cannot fight. Run!”

  The fingers around Viper’s neck further solidified as the avatar’s hands and arms took shape. Viper mouthed Now! to Clare. Before her head drooped, Viper saw Clare escaping in the direction of Soester.

  A high-pitched boom produced ripples in the dome. A second sonic pulse fired, closer this time. Both the dome and the avatar collapsed with a monumental splash around Viper. Armed soldiers in camouflage fatigues swarmed Dugan Mound like ants. Electrified netting confined Viper, thrown from a helicopter hovering above the hill, and a cannon-like projection pointed at her from its open side door. Soldiers dangling from the chopper trained guns on Viper, while others escorted Clare to the far side of the hill, steering well clear of the electrified puddles. Viper clamped her hands to her head and screamed into the mud around her. Clare wouldn’t need her cochlear implants to hear Viper’s agony.

  20: The Sage of Mort Lake

  June 21st, 1570.

  Dugan’s Bode, Kent.

  The blazing reflection of the setting sun turned the River Medway into a flame that snaked through the Kent valley, where the chalky hills of the North Downs met the river. Fields of hops and barley had flourished after a recent run of wet days, their colour the same lush green dominating Viper’s preoccupied eyes. Before the sun set, she had a choice to make. She could enter Dugan’s Bode and live forever safely hidden from mankind, as did the Sisters of the Maiden Stone, or return to Elizabeth and face the risk of combat with Annys.

  The midsummer solstice bathed her purple body in hues of warm marigold orange and honey yellow. Viper’s long, moonlight hair clung to her naked body like a lover. She’d left her traveling clothes on the thick flowering gorse, steps away. She didn’t want to ruin the last gifts given to her by Elizabeth.

  Viper drummed her nails on the nearest of four trilithons in the outer ring of the dual-ringed henge crowning Dugan’s Bode. The rhythmic tapping calmed her nerves. The electrifying power within the stones hewn by the Sisters’ elldyr creft raised the hair on her arms and made her rune-scars shimmer.

  Ancient humaines built large sarsen stones of their own in the valley around Dugan’s Bode. However, none of their constructs escaped the ravages of time and humaine occupation as did the magic-imbued stones of Dugan’s Bode. To the west of the river lay the unshapely rock heaps of the Coldrum and Addington Long Barrows, disused and abandoned. The Chestnuts prevailed, upright and intact, but the plain rocks remained silent. On the east side of the river, not far from Dugan’s Bode, lay Katigern’s Coty and what had come to be called The Countless Stones.

  Every time Viper passed The Countless Stones en route to the Sisters’ home in Maidstone, she changed the number of boulder fragments. Humaine endeavours to make a record of the number of stones never rendered the same final number. Local superstition held that ill fortune would befall anyone who successfully repeated their count. Other humaine-made henges and megaliths had been lost beneath the soil long ago.

  Viper raised her hand against the sunset. She blew a sorrowful kiss westwards to the queen she left behind. The answers to Viper’s origin, the ache of which she could no longer deny, would not be found in the company of mankind. She had to renounce her present friendship to understand the past.

  Four trilithons of grey sarsen stone defined the perimeter of Dugan’s Bode. Pairs of narrow black onyx marked the points on the outer circle where the sun passed through Earth’s summer and winter solstices. Triplet white quartz indicated the peak moment of Daoine Tor magic. At the heart of the henge, four wide bluestone boulders, thicker than a triple hand span and taller than two men, surrounded a red, fire opal pillar. A late afternoon rain gave the Welsh bluestone a blue-grey hue. The three foot high fire opal could only be activated by the elldyr creft of the V’Braed, when the solstices of the black onyx and the triplet of white quartz aligned.

  Viper had waited years to wield her elldyr creft at the Bode and uncover that which the Sisters would not tell her.

  She stepped between the twin onyx stones and blocked the fading summer solstice light with her body. Waning sunlight warmed her back. She laid her hands upon the top of the onyx and triggered the Sisters’ protective enchantment. White aeir curled around the onyx and Viper’s arms. Winds rushed from beneath the arches of the outer trilithons towards the middle of the circle, carrying with them scents from different lands. Her hair streamed forwards, sucked to the middle by magic. Had she been humaine, Viper would have been pulled across the circle, into a trilithon on the other side, then thrust through it into another part of the world.

  The bluster of wind calmed. Viper collapsed on her hands and knees, spent. For long moments, she paused, the hammering of her heartbeat the only sound. She braced herself upon the onyx to rise to her feet, then stumbled towards the bluestones. The Welsh bluestones had not moved.

  “Why do you not let me wield my power?” she cried, tears layering her face. “Hath I not suffered long enough without answers?”

  Viper felt a searing pain through her torso. A bolt of white light burst from her sternum into one of the centre boulders. The bluestone tilted towards her like a drawbridge until it came to a rest on the ground. The other three likewise retracted and spread into a platform around the fire opal. Multi-coloured inclusions in the opal glowed, despite the oncoming night. Viper swore she could make out faces in the iridescent illuminations.

  Glyphs projected from the surfaces of the rectangular bluestones. The symbols twisted together like gears and she felt a tremor beneath her feet. Viper leapt back as the flat boulders began to spin, slowly at first, then with unbelievable speed. Clumps of sod flew from the ground as the stones descended like an auger. The opal formed the axis of a descending staircase.

  A breeze the smell of fresh grass, sent by the Sisters, coaxed her forwards. Viper lit her path with an elldyr creft flaming hand. She began moving down the steps.

  Nothingness ate her foot.

  The darkness raced up Viper’s leg to her pelvis. She grasped for the fire opal, breaking off fingernails. The immortal tried lashing her magic around an outer trilithon to hoist
herself out of the widening gulf. She failed. When she cried out for help, blackness bubbled out of her mouth and swallowed her head. The stars vanished.

  Viper lost complete sense of her body. She screamed soundlessly. A pinpoint of white popped into existence on the left side of her. Or, perhaps it was her right. She moved with what she thought was a turn of her head. The glow danced ahead, then behind. Her eyes burned as the light grew in size. She ran and her feet carried her nowhere. The brightness dot exploded into a searing flash and Viper guarded her face.

  The ringing in Viper’s ears subsided and Viper heard Elizabeth’s voice.

  “Magnificently done, Master Dee!”

  Thick, rapid thumping followed. Viper instinctively used her elldyr creft to hide herself from humaine sight. She opened her eyes, unable to see through the grey smoke that smelled of rotten eggs. The immortal blinked with watering eyes until the haze in the room cleared. Something had transported her to a humaine dwelling crowded with all manner of contraptions and a greater number of books than she had ever seen in one place.

  A jubilant Elizabeth stood in front of Viper, clapping leather-gloved hands with enthusiasm. The flames of a few dozen candles twinkled in the jewels appliquéd on her white silk bodice, embroidered in black. Annys’ attack had scarred Elizabeth’s throat. To hide the marks, she wore a high, frilled neck ruff of fine lawne linen, and painted her skin impossibly white using ceruse, a lead powder and vinegar mixture. Ground black kohl lined her eyes and red vermilion brightened her lips. England’s queen had become a living marble statue of Diana, or of the Virgin Mary, depending upon which pantheon of gods her subjects cast her. Most humaines had forgotten the island’s original gods.

  As Elizabeth turned to speak to the man in the room, the swirl of her brown damask skirt brushed over several scorched glyphs on the wooden floor that encircled Viper. Two rows of these symbols lead from her feet to a polished obsidian oval, as high as a child, mounted into the floor. Between the obsidian ascrying stone and Viper, was a glass convex circle with an uneven surface held in a frame of metal straps and wires. A small plate on a wooden box rested between the glass and the obsidian, upon which lay smouldering saltpeter ash.

  The strange man Elizabeth addressed measured the residue on the plate with calipers. Ghost-white handprints dusted his black scholar’s robes. He retrieved an oblong piece of solid copper, split through the middle for one half of its length. The sage murmured to himself as he tapped the obsidian and glass lightly with the object. Each time, he held the forked metal to his ear and listened to the sound it made. He consulted the sextant on the table behind him and recorded his observations in a chart. Several glass bowls of different sizes containing varying amounts of water clustered around his notes.

  Viper opened her mouth to question Elizabeth. The mortal queen held up a finger to shush the immortal, and said, “Doctor Dee, did not you hear my words?” Elizabeth coached the older man to pay attention to his queen. “My seelie wicht is here. Your experiment hath succeeded.” The muted gleam of the Parhelion showed from under Elizabeth’s outermost layer.

  “Here, and yet, not here, Your Majesty,” John Dee replied. Since he didn’t wear the amulet, Dee couldn’t see the immortal. “The flash of saltpeter did not make your seelie wicht visible to my eyes. It is not truly an accomplishment if I cannot see the being of whom you speak.”

  Viper didn’t need to recognize the man’s pale narrow face and long nose to know his identity. Dee was the only one of Elizabeth’s courtiers who loved the pursuit of the unknown over the loyalty he bore the Crown. He was Elizabeth’s advisor in matters related to science and the occult. Viper originally thought him harmless, since he preferred quenching his thirst for knowledge in the four thousand books at his home at Mort Lake over the lavish life Elizabeth offered in her Court.

  Dee stroked the wiry beard that was twice the length of his face. “I must need another elemental factor for better regulation of the ascrying process.” Deep crow’s feet, from hours of squinting through manuscripts, spawned from the corners of brooding eyes. Flecks of red spotted his cheeks. His tall lean body showed no signs of manual labour in his forty-three years, although substantial dirt existed under his split nails.

  He intently surveyed the glyphs in the floor around Viper, without seeing her, and said dreamily, “To behold a Daoine Tor with each of my senses…” His face lit up and he threw his splayed hands into the air. “Atticus! Atticus spoke of using the senses in his response to Praeparatio Evangelica.” He muttered among densely packed codices, searching for something.

  Shadows taunted Viper from each corner of the room as Dee rambled in and around the maze created by his precariously balanced treasures. The man’s ability to control her actions, and his unknown intention, made Viper’s skin crawl with revulsion.

  Books and strange objects packed the room, stifling the air with the smell of parchment and leather. Crystal balls of differing sizes and set in ornate holders lined his bookshelves. Dee pushed papers off a heavy, black chair with a sturdy, boxy base and placed a large candle in its holder upon the exposed seat. He settled himself on the floor with a sizeable, bound manuscript. His fingers traced scribbled glosses of red ink in the sidebars.

  Elizabeth twirled in the only wide space of the congested room with a bottle of wine. She stopped, took a heady gulp, and then caught Viper’s eye. The disgust in Viper’s glare was as stark as the nakedness of her body.

  “Oh, Viper, you are like to whine, yet I have wine to like. Throw off your scorn and toast to the Doctor with me.” Elizabeth ignored both Viper’s disapproving stare and her lack of clothes. Viper, unaccustomed to being so openly addressed by Elizabeth in front of other humaines, didn’t reply. “Be not offended by his inattentiveness. He is bewitched with bewilderment,” Elizabeth said with a girlish giggle.

  Elizabeth’s flippancy didn’t impress Viper. “What is this magic your sage hath cast upon me, Elizabeth?” Viper’s elldyr creft flew outwards from her and knocked over the device that brought her to Mort Lake from Dugan’s Bode.

  The shockwave shoved Elizabeth into a table. Her bottle thumped the furniture without shattering. Dee scrambled from the floor. He rushed to his apparatus and righted it in earnest.

  “Be at ease, my friend,” Elizabeth said to Viper. She gestured to Dee that she was alright. She picked up a goblet from the table. “You forbade me to ascry on my own, and so hath I taken your words unto my heart.” The bottle clattered on the drinking vessel as Elizabeth emptied the contents. She offered the glass to Viper, who refused. Elizabeth shook her head at the rejection, then drank the entire glass. She flicked her glass with her free hand. “Oh, how I would that our friendship hath such perfect clarity as that sound.” Dee halted his fumbling in the wake of the crystal’s hauntingly soft reverb.

  “Friends request a visitation,” Viper said through gritted teeth. “They do not command.” She ignored the sage’s newfound interest in the different tones of crystals and water-filled vases. She turned her back on Elizabeth, unwilling to move in case the sage would apply some other magic.

  “I command who I wish to befriend, and I befriend whom I wish to command,” Elizabeth said, her scathing words disguised in coy timbre.

  “Your rhetoric works magic on your courtiers, Faerie Queen. It hath not any power to make me fawn over your affection.”

  “For my affection? Your words are rich-laden.” Elizabeth’s shrill laughter made Viper face her in surprise. A storm flashed up in Elizabeth’s face. “Long has it been since you hath sought my companionship.”

  “Why speak you so unfairly? It has been naught but a short season.” Viper’s mind raced as she tried to remember when she last came to Court.

  “You hath been away from me for ten years. You left, intent to ask the Sisters if they knew a way to prevent Annys’ pox. When I neither saw of you, nor heard from you, I afeared that I could no longer count upon your assistance to thwart my enemies, be they man or monster.”

 
“Elizabeth, you know time is of little consequence to me. You had your new spy Walsingham and Lord Burghley to keep you safe from humaine plots. With the Parhelion to defend you, your Court to love you, and me far from your presence, what hath you to fear?”

  “I was lonely!” Elizabeth blurted out. She adjusted the wig on her head even though it needed no alteration. “I rule over my Court, yet cannot rule over my heart.” Elizabeth paced in the room, as much as the narrow paths among the clutter would allow her. “My Court complained that I was too much awake at night. They did not know that, in secret, I wished for your company.” She laid her hand over her bodice and the hidden amulet. “Three years ago, a new star formed in the night sky. I asked Master Dee to Court for his observations.

  “I remember,” Dee said, partly to himself and partly to Elizabeth from his table, “a sign of good fortune, to be sure.”

  Elizabeth continued, “Doctor Dee chanced upon me when I was alone and crying. ’Twas then that I confided unto him of my wretched solitude. Your time with me stayed much of my melancholy. Without your company to hand, I was distracted and uninterested in the business of my kingdom. I left much of the workings of my politics to my Privy Council and spent many hours sequestered from my Court. Distraught beyond measure, I confessed unto Master Dee my familiarity with a Daoine Tor. He was most interested to observe you, and I had not the means to bring you before him. Thus, I set him a task to find and deliver you.” Elizabeth smiled grandly and held her arms open wide to Viper. “And through the use of his Mort Lake Glass, and this marvellous invention, here you are!”

  Dee addressed the empty space adjacent to Viper. “If you would show yourself unto me, ’twould be a confirmation of my proposition. I believe there are other planes of existence beyond this realm and you are my proof. Perhaps, we can be of help to each other?”