The Queen's Viper

by Lesley Donaldson

  “My father sits there in judgement upon me, yet I do not know what he would decide of me.” Water pooled beneath Elizabeth. She faced into the room, eyes brimming with tears. “I hath killed nearly as many Catholics as did my bloody half-sister kill Protestants.” Goosebumps raised Elizabeth’s skin. Whether they were from the cold or her confession, Viper couldn’t say. “Walsingham and Burghley wish to create a Bond of Association, wherein they may arrest and torture any person who plots against me. With it, they will press me to execute my cousin, Mary Stuart of Scotland, a Catholic who covets my Crown. They would tarry my name with the death of a royal. My enemies are numerous, within and without.” Elizabeth rubbed her palms with unease. “Have you, too, come to kill the queen?”

  The deep hues of Viper’s skin lovingly reflected the warm candlelight. “I am returned to you, Elizabeth. My motivations remain my own. You may rest assured that you are my Faerie Queen.”

  “If I am to accept you, there shall be rules.” Elizabeth eased her grip on her herself. She appeared no less pale than she did outside.

  “’Tis understandable, my queen.” Still penitent, Viper cast her malachite eyes cast to the floor. Her ploy had worked.

  Elizabeth’s scowl dissolved into a broad smile. She looked no less attractive despite the several missing teeth at the back of her gums.

  “But the rules shall be broken, in earnest and very often!” Elizabeth darted towards Viper with open arms.

  Viper took a quick step back and lifted Elizabeth aloft with her elldyr creft. “I shall break any rule you ask Elizabeth, save for one. I cannot lay hand on your skin.”

  “E’en after all these years?” Elizabeth asked, her dismay palpable.

  Viper set her friend on the tiled floor with reverence, just beyond her own reach. “I would not see you wounded by me. I hath mastered the garen within me, or so I do believe. My hunger, however, would not be satisfied by a mere taste of your aeir.”

  “If Walsingham wishes to expose a threat to my person, he need only seek a Daoine Tor stalking the countryside.” Elizabeth laughed heartily. Viper’s brow knit with hurt and confusion. Elizabeth’s face softened in apology. Viper saw the innocent princess she once protected in the Towyr. “Now, good Viper, you must know that but I jest. Your youth hath been unchanged through these many years. Let not your timeless beauty become crestfallen and haggard. I do not suggest that you mean harm unto me. You may hath been far from my sight, but ne’er from my mind.”

  “Oh, that the wish of my flesh to give you an apology was stronger than my fear of your chastisement. I would bring myself herein sooner, if ’twas the case.”

  “Of that, then, we both carry guilt,” Elizabeth said quietly.

  Viper’s eyes narrowed. Elizabeth turned away and raised a hand to her hair, as if straightening one of her wigs. Elizabeth had aged. Her tell-tale habits had not. Viper recognized the subtle hint that an uncomfortable revelation burdened her Faerie Queen.

  “I hath allowed Master Dee to continue his research into ascrying with his Mort Lake Glass.”

  Viper’s blood froze in her boiling veins. “The man who did transport me from Dugan Bode? How could you allow him to pursue a means by which he could hunt me?”

  Elizabeth turned callous, a response Viper did not expect. “Not hunt, but find,” she said, her voice rising with anger. “You destroyed Dee’s laboratory, not I. I did not know where you were, or if you had been attacked by Annys. You yielded no quarter in my battle for your friendship.” Elizabeth pointed accusingly at Viper as she pressed the immortal closer to the door.

  “You may hath granted me the Crown, but I hath been master of my destiny since I claimed it. I hath given up my womanhood, my opportunity for love, and any hope of legacy through bearing children. If I were to let go of my friendship with you, something that no humaine would understand, then ’twould be my end. If you could not come to me,” Elizabeth swallowed and held her commanding chin high, “then I would have my sage bring you before me.”

  Viper paced around the room like a caged animal, trying to soothe her rising ire, until she blocked the altar. Henry, the egotistical man whose blood ran in Elizabeth’s veins, stared at the immortal challengingly, an expression Viper often recognized in his daughter. Viper was wrong. This queen could have no friend.

  “Patience is ne’er thy best trait when thou art desired of something.” The Daoine Tor used the address of thou, as one would to an underling, instead of the intimate you, to remind Elizabeth which of them had true power. “I hath said unto thee before, what seems as lengthy years for thee is merely a moment of my breath. How could thou, a simple humaine, understand how a godly immortal like me measures time?”

  Viper raised herself to her full height in front of the altar, blocking Elizabeth’s view of her father. Purple elldyr creft encircled the immortal, its implied threat more terrifying than the bruised emotions of Britannia’s Queen.

  Elizabeth took to her knees facing Viper, hands clasped together. “For my sins, I am forlorn. I would have your love and your guidance.”

  “I do not live to serve thy ego.”

  The garen pounded in Viper’s head and spread through her like wildfire. Elizabeth quivered below. The candle flames flickered wildly. The timber beams of the chapel cracked with the room’s rising heat. Viper bared her teeth, calculating the amount of pain she would have to overcome if she tore the Parhelion from Elizabeth and devoured her aeir.

  “Please,” Elizabeth begged of Viper, her voice and countenance broken, “forgive me the errors of my ways.”

  A boom ricocheted in the chapel. Red blossomed over Elizabeth’s heart. Her eyes rolled back into her head and she plummeted onto her side. Stray buckshot had impacted into the altar beside Viper, missing her body. Her head whipped up.

  Through the harquebus’ smoke, Viper saw a man in a black robe at the chapel doorway. With the garen’s rhythm in her ears, she had not heard his approach. Either it was too hazy for him to see her, or Viper was inadvertently glamoured, for he didn’t react to her.

  “Why confess your sins? You will rot in Hell, witch.” He spat at Elizabeth’s dying body and ran away, his black robe flapping as if to expedite his escape.

  “Elizabeth!”

  Viper’s shock resonated through the palace. Elizabeth’s hand was extended on the ground, slickened red with blood. The sanguine fluid had started pooling underneath her. Elizabeth didn’t answer. Viper watched Elizabeth’s aeir wane for the first time in her life.

  Viper knelt beside her dying friend and instinctively reached for the gunshot wound. The Parhelion flashed and repelled Viper to the wall. Her impact knocked over several candles. They ignited hanging banners embroidered with King Henry’s heraldry. A heaviness settled into Viper’s limbs. She laboured to get off the ground and crawled back to Elizabeth.

  A high-pitched noise from the Parhelion deafened Viper. She attempted to remove the amulet from Elizabeth’s body. Once again, its power repelled her.

  Viper surveyed her hands, crippled with pain. Faint elldyr creft burnished in her palms. She dug deep within herself for any reserves of magic that she had left. With a monumental effort, Viper cast a protective enchantment around herself.

  She cupped the Parhelion in both hands. Agony possessed her limbs until she could not feel them. Still, she held on to the talisman with screaming muscles. Viper tugged on the Parhelion, trying to break the chain from which it dangled. The necklace cut into Elizabeth’s faint scars, bleeding them anew. One link began separating. Black smoke rose from Viper’s hands and her black-tar blood dripped to the ground. The room smelled of charred flesh and desperation. With a grunt, she jerked the chain. It snapped. Viper hurled the Parhelion towards the portrait of Henry, where it imbedded in his robust torso.

  Fire ignited around them. With blistered, charred hands, Viper tore open the top of Elizabeth’s nightgown. The humaine’s blood pulsed from her chest, slower now. Viper laid her left hand on Elizabeth’s sternum, the other on h
er pallid forehead. Viper couldn’t stop the shudder in her hands.

  “I do not give you my leave to go,” she whispered to Elizabeth through hot tears. Viper’s runes glowed and projected into an interlacing pattern over Elizabeth’s body. Elizabeth’s aeir spun itself into the smallest of golden whirlpools. Trickles of Viper’s curative power found their way into Elizabeth’s body. With silver-red energy radiating from within, Elizabeth’s organs and tissues began regenerating from the inside out.

  Elizabeth’s body demanded Viper’s magic. The immortal became lightheaded. An unbearable pain jolted through her chest. Viper pushed herself onwards. She drove her elldyr creft into Elizabeth, crying, “I do not give you my leave to go!”

  The deathly pallor of Elizabeth’s face faded, replaced by a faint pink glow. The queen’s wounds improved, as did her breathing, in small measures. She had lost a large volume from her arteries, which Viper couldn’t replace. Elizabeth’s aeir fortified. She hadn’t regained consciousness.

  Viper gasped when her body adopted Elizabeth’s injuries. The immortal ripped off the bottom hem of her tunic and pressed it into the wound that now bled on her own chest. Lines of black blood trickled down her own back from the assimilated entry wounds. Viper’s ability to self-heal made the damage less egregious than they had been for Elizabeth, save for the pain.

  The immortal clutched one hand to her chest and dragged Elizabeth to safety beyond the chapel doors on the creek’s bank with the other. Each motion felt like a javelin tearing through Viper’s lungs. She heard a woodpecker tapping on tree trunk, atypical for a bird normally active in the daytime. Viper clenched her jaw with disgust. The Sisters observed her struggle through the bird without intervening. When the bird caught Viper’s eyes, it flew away.

  “If you will not help, then why witness?” she yelled between raspy breaths at the retreating spy.

  Alarmed shouts for water alerted her to the approaching courtiers. Doubled over, Viper raced back to the blazing chapel. She staggered to the middle of the room, her hair and eyes wild. The effort of rescuing Elizabeth from the fire over-powered Viper’s ability to overcome her inherited wounds. She had to stop her own hemorrhaging or she would die.

  “Fire! I am thy Mistress. Come unto me and cease this bleeding.”

  The roaring flames coalesced into a swirling column that crashed into Viper, becoming one with her. The heat cauterized the irregularly shaped open wound in her chest and the smaller entry wounds in her back. Over time, Viper’s body would heal. Unexpectedly, the fire rekindled her magic. As long as she had power enough to stand, she had magic enough to hunt Elizabeth’s would-be assassin.

  She blasted apart the chapel wall with a mixture of fire and elldyr creft. Viper scaled the chapel exterior searching for the aeir of the unknown man. He hadn’t run far. She spotted the gunman in the forest behind the chapel, where a herd of deer scattered in front of him. He tripped, stumbled, then hollered in shock and discomfort. Viper hoped he had broken his ankle, for it would give the advantage she needed to surpass his head start.

  She negotiated the forest with ease and reached him as he tested his weight on his injured foot. Viper hauled him into the air by the scruff of the neck before his toes touched the ground. The man cried out at the immortal in front of him, taller than him by a head. Viper clamped her hand over his mouth. His pleading eyes darted to the forest beyond.

  “Thou hast conspirators?” she asked the struggling assailant. The panic in his face answered her, and inflamed the garen. “I will make short work of thy friends,” she sneered, so close to his ear that she could bite it off, “but not before they see what I shall do to thee.”

  The dense trees concealed her approach to a clearing with four other men. With Viper’s hand firmly over his mouth, the assassin couldn’t warn them. They paced nervously, candle lanterns rattling in their hands. Sleepy horses, saddled for riding, milled nearby. Viper had expected to see the Spanish-trained assassin-priests Turstin had described. Beneath their black robes, these men wore the fitted, embroidered clothes of English petty nobles. None of them were priests. Their faces were hungry with ambition.

  Viper lobbed the man she carried into the middle of the clearing. He landed on his arm with a loud crack and yelped in pain. The horses whinnied and reared up in fear.

  “To arms!” The leader of the group tracked the tree line nervously. “Atticus spoke true. Elizabeth’s demon is here.” He unsheathed a rapier sword. Beside him, one of two men grabbed an arbalest crossbow, and a second man raised a musket. The last of the four men fumbled with his long dagger from beneath his cloak.

  Viper vaulted into the air, fully possessed by the power of the garen. At the peak of her ascent, she revealed herself. Her elldyr creft draped from her arms like wings of purple fire. She descended upon Elizabeth’s assassin, driving her knee into his sternum and her fist into his face. Both shattered with sickening crunches.

  Viper scowled at them from her crouched position, eyes flared black with rancor. “I am no demon.” She came to her feet, her elldyr fire looming. “And when I kill, I hide behind no god.” The dead assassin’s boiling blood dripped from her fingers.

  Dagger-man traded his weapon for reins and fled through the woods on horseback. Viper blasted the remaining men with her magic. One smashed his head into a thick oak tree. A red smear stained the bark and lay on the ground, immobile. The leader fell to the ground, his rapier strewn several feet away.

  The man with the crossbow managed to remain standing. He loosed an arrow at her. The projectile ripped across her outer thigh. She charged him and grabbed his throat. His carotid artery pulsed rapidly beneath her fingers. She tore out his windpipe and held it to his dying face.

  Behind her, the leader raised his recovered blade. “What manner of monster are you?”

  She hurled the dead man into him without answering. His blade plunged into the body. The leader let go of his sword hilt as if it burned him. Viper bound him with coils of magic. She prowled towards her prisoner, her lean body showing through the burnt out patches in her dress.

  She leaned in to his face and grabbed the corners of his jawbone when he recoiled. Viper sucked on his lower lip, tasting humaine flesh for the first time.

  “I am V’Braed, and for whatever that doth make me, thou hast made me a seelie wicht with a reason to hate mankind.” Viper’s blackened eyes bore into his mind as she showed him the tortures she intended for him. The man yelped and lost control of his bladder. Viper dug her nails beneath his jaw, preparing to tear his mandible from his skull. She heard the crunch of forest underbrush moments before stag antlers erupted from the man’s chest.

  The stag who had entered the clearing from behind the leader yanked him from Viper’s grip. The man convulsed and died. The mighty animal tossed his head to the side and the leader’s body flopped into a heap on the ground.

  “Damned be your meddling!” Viper screeched at the animal. “He was mine to kill.”

  Unmoved by Viper’s offense, the stag galloped forwards and pinned her to a wide tree. A white glow emanated from his antlers. He snorted at her in consternation as she struggled against him.

  A doe with a white star-shaped whorl on her brow entered the clearing and sniffed the dead bodies. Dagger-man draped over her back. He gazed upon Viper with dreamy, spell-bound eyes. The animal bent her neck, setting the humaine on the ground.

  A warm wind passed through the trees, and with it came the voices of the Sisters. “One’s guardians hath heard. The Herd will not let the garen wound One anew.”

  The doe raised her head, ears turned to the swishing sound. She bleated at her mate, who restrained Viper. He resisted. The doe nudged the stag with her nose. He stamped the ground. She repeated her demand with fervent tones. With a short bark of contestation, he freed Viper from his antlers and their magic hold.

  Viper threated him with a glowing hand. The doe’s shaking head made her stop. With a soft hoof, the doe rolled over the dazed man she had returned to the
clearing.

  His aeir floated above him. The stag prevented Viper from killing the leader with her garen fueled rage. Now, these unusual animals, from some unknown Herd, offered her another humaine life. Understanding shocked Viper into compliance. She was meant to feed upon Dagger-man to repair herself, not fuel the garen. She collapsed against the tree trunk under the watchful eyes of the stag and doe wondering how close she had come to losing herself in the garen and being like Annys. The immortal buried her face in her hands and cried until she felt numb, her distraught emotions unrelenting. By the time Viper calmed, Apollo guided his chariot across the sky. She extended her arms over the living conspirator, ready to address the wounds caused by the assassin’s bullet, and of her failure.

  25: Under the Underground

  The London Underground.

  June 5, 2012: early afternoon.

  The older layers of earth belched forth decades of coal dust. Viper’s Faerie Queen had used coal in the fireplaces of her palaces to keep the hearth hot long after the wood burned into ash. The immortal choked on the nostalgia the odor evoked in her. She had never been so happy to be underground.

  Using her innate ability to sense humans in the darkened passage, she chose to keep watch for pursuing soldiers from the back of the group. Graeme took the lead, flashlight in hand. Dhillon followed behind, guiding Clare forwards, the beam of his light aimed in front of her.

  Clare crinkled her nose. “This place smells.” Without her cochlear implants, she spoke louder than usual. She kept the crystals bundled in the red military uniform close to her chest. “Where are we?”

  Dhillon slowed his pace and shone the light to his face allowing Clare to read his lips. “These are service corridors from the original Victorian underground trains. Owain sealed them off during renovations decades ago. Nobody knows they exist.” He sounded proud of the old man’s ingenuity.

  “We’re heading towards Aldgate station,” Graeme announced over his shoulder, “and we’re not stopping until we get there. Five minutes longer, as the bird flies.” Viper marked his ease of authority.