Queen's Hunt

by Beth Bernobich

  She took off the ring and laid it between them. “One day,” she repeated. “If I do not return before then, consider me dead, and do what you must.”

  * * *

  FOR VALARA BAUSSAY, it was as though she had carried a great weight this past year, one that grew heavier with every moment. Valara pressed both hands over her eyes a moment to regain her equilibrium. She still heard echoes of Daya’s bell-like voice within, but softer now. Soon I will be alone.

  “I must go in the flesh,” she said. “I can read the signs more easily that way.”

  Ilse nodded. Her hand had closed over the ring, but loosely. A cautious woman. Good. She would need to be.

  Valara seated herself on the sandy shore. She would do this properly, the way she had read in the old philosophers’ textbooks and journals. The oldest ones of all said that forms were irrelevant. That you did not need even word or thought to work magic. For herself, Valara took comfort in the ritual.

  Ei rûf ane gôtter. Komen mir de strôm. Komen mir de vleisch unde sêle. Komen mir de Anderswar …

  Her first journeys to Autrevelye had taken place with wrenching suddenness that left her ill and almost blind. This time, she felt nothing more than a subtle displacement, a momentary dizziness as her body accustomed itself to new surroundings. Then the rest of her senses caught up. Mantharah’s keening winds had vanished. The scent of magic was strong here, but nothing so intense as the steam rising from the Agnau. And less tangible, the sense that she was alone.

  She released her breath, opened her eyes.

  She sat in a darkened room that smelled of old stone and wet earth. Water trickled over the rough-cut walls. Strange how she had missed that sound at first—as if she had to relearn how to listen. The floor itself was smooth, worn to a velvet softness, as though many travelers had visited this chamber before.

  Expectations, she reminded herself. Autrevelye read them from her mind to construct itself anew each time.

  A plume of musk drifted past her. Shadows rippled away with its passage. The shadows turned upon themselves, revealing a lean dark wolflike creature. It curled around to face her. Its lips drew back from yellowed teeth in an unnatural grin. Rikha. Her first and only guide in this other world for the past five years.

  Rikha snuffed at the floor and growled. “You returned.”

  “I did.”

  “But without the emerald, without Daya. Did a thief overcome a thief, perhaps?”

  She felt a prickle of irritation, suppressed it. “I left Daya in safekeeping. Though that is not your concern.”

  “No.” It laughed softly. “Nothing concerns me, not even your fondest wish.”

  True enough.

  In her early days with magic and Autrevelye, Rikha’s presence had terrified her. Then she had attempted to treat the beast as one of her subjects. She had mastered her terror, but Rikha had only laughed when she gave it orders. Slowly, they were learning to deal with each other.

  “You want the sapphire,” Rikha said.

  She nodded. “And for that I need your help in remembering. I know about my brother, about his search and mine for the jewels, but that is not quite … enough. Can you help me?”

  Rikha tilted its head and regarded her with a clear implacable gaze. “Autrevelye never forgets, lady. Neither does your soul.”

  Her skin rippled at the tone of his voice. Of course. It was all a part of his nature, and Autrevelye’s. They only knew death and rebirth. Life itself was only a brief interlude between the two. Strange, how humans viewed everything in reverse.

  “I do not forget,” she said. “Please take me to where Leos Dzavek last captured me, when I was Imre Benacka.”

  “Do you order me?” he asked, his tone soft with menace.

  She smiled. “Of course not. I beg a favor of you, Rikha.”

  “Ah, that is different. Come, lady, and we shall find your past.”

  She stood and laid her hand on Rikha’s shoulder. They paced forward slowly, and with a few steps, the darkness ebbed away, the stone room faded into a bleak desert, then to a jungle of sweet-smelling flowers. In silence they passed through a grove of silver trees and crossed a river, skimming through the air just above the surging current. The sun above had stopped in the sky, and the air itself had turned still. In Autrevelye, in the outside worlds, time might be pouring into the future, but here it was frozen.

  They stopped at last at the edge of a barren cliff. Ahead stretched a wasteland, a pale desert of sand and rock. The cliff itself was part of a stony ridge that divided the desert from an even more desolate mountain range. Valara didn’t need Rikha’s explanation for why he’d brought her to this place. She already knew—she’d come this way untold centuries ago as a different person, almost a different soul. Here, she had once fled, desperate, with Lir’s jewels in her hands. Here, Leos Dzavek had captured her, when her name was Imre Benacka.

  My brother, my king. The man who captured me, killed me, or nearly so, and revived me so he could take me prisoner and rip the truth from my throat.

  And here, just last summer, she had returned in her quest to rediscover her past.

  In that moment, the sun dropped toward the horizon. The golden plains turned dark red in its dying light. Blood touched the cliff face and the rocks behind her. “This is too much,” she murmured.

  “We’ve not begun to explore excess,” Rikha answered. He snuffed the ground and with his forepaw indicated a depression where dust had collected. “That spot.”

  Valara touched the soft red dust. She saw no footprints at first, then realized the prints were as red as the ground. Scarlet for eternity, she thought. Dzavek’s prints, she noted, were the silver gray of twilight. She dug into the dust with her fingers, tasted the salt of old tears and the metallic edge of panic. She heard snatches of voices she recognized—Dzavek and herself arguing loudly. Both called out words of magic. Valara felt a sharp stab and plucked back her hand. Immediately, the voices cut off.

  Future and past together. It was almost too unnerving to continue.

  Rikha sniffed at the ground. “The tracks lead on.”

  “Then we do as well.”

  It was a trail in opposite directions, a looping path across rivers and lakes, over bare hills and thickly forested plains. Two sets of prints—one laid down by Imre Benacka, one by Leos Dzavek. Several times the prints disappeared beneath landslides, or lay submerged where rivers had changed their course. She could see where Dzavek had broken off his search, only to return again and again. Rikha himself, a creature of Autrevelye, had to circle around with his nose in the dirt until he found the trail once more.

  Rana’s hiding place lay underneath a waterfall, hidden behind a cascade of water and mist. Wind and rain and water had smoothed the dirt; only a shallow pit remained where Dzavek had dug up the ruby behind the waterfall. Crossing back and forth over the area, Valara found her tracks leading onward, backward. Handprints covered the branches and higher rocks; footprints dotted those leading across the frothing water.

  “You tried to disguise your trail,” Rikha said. “You knew someone would follow you.”

  Memory returned, much stronger. Oh yes, she remembered that day. On the farther bank, she had climbed down the rocks from the next plateau. Valara followed, gripping the same rocks, hearing, as though her own self were just ahead, the uneven gasps as she eased herself down the sheer cliff. Above, the land stretched into a wide and even plain. Here the prints were spaced farther apart, as though she had come in this direction running as fast as possible, leaping ahead of pursuing danger. Valara ran the same path backward, matching leap for leap, each one longer and longer, until …

  The tracks disappeared.

  Valara cried out in shock and fell to her knees. Rikha hurried to her side. His muzzle wrinkled in surprise. “Where next?”

  Where indeed? She pressed her palm over the last footprint. Fear and urgency vibrated from its essence. The signs were clear. She’d run headlong over the packed dirt. But from w
here?

  She rocked back on her heels, willing herself to remember that terrifying day. Dzavek in pursuit. The sapphire clutched in her (his) sweat-slick hands. The knowledge that he had to break the trail, except that footprints and handprints in Vnejšek were not so easily hidden. He had to make a true break, to leap from the magical plane into the ordinary world and back, to an entirely different point. Only then could he escape Leos Dzavek.

  I remember now. I leaped into nothing. I dared him to follow me. He never could, my brother. He always wanted a sure victory.

  It was a gamble she could not refuse, could not resist.

  “Follow me,” she said to Rikha, “if you can.”

  Without waiting for his reply, she launched herself into a run, each stride lengthening into the next, each leap coming higher, until she took that last measured stride and, calling aloud to the gods, vaulted into the unknown.

  Dimension vanished. Darkness. Nothingness. No direction. Falling. Dying. Living.

  A brilliant ribbon of light arced before her. Pale footprints dotted that ribbon, each one an impossible distance from the next. All around the wind hurtled past, the sky was an inky void, and she had nothing to guide her but a thin path and her own footsteps.

  Step. Leap. Fly. And live.

  The ribbon ended, and she tumbled through the centuries onto a desolate plain, where she lay gasping for breath.

  Body. I still have my body. I’m alive.

  She tried to scramble to her feet, but her knees gave way, and she collapsed into an aching heap. A dark red streak landed next to her. Rikha rolled onto his feet. “The trail continues,” he said. She tried to stand a second time and failed. Rikha merely nudged her with his nose. “Do not bother with walking. Time for you to ride.”

  With his assistance, she crawled onto his back and clung to his neck. “Go,” she croaked.

  A clear order. And this time Rikha obeyed.

  He galloped forward, her weight as nothing to him. The tracks led them to a narrow valley, where the high gray walls shut out the sun. Here the footsteps circled a bare patch of dirt. Valara could see two deep indentations. She dropped off Rikha’s back and dug into the hard ground, not caring how her nails broke or her fingers bled. Rikha pushed her aside and scratched at the packed mound, breaking it apart, while Valara scooped out handfuls. In her hurry, she nearly missed the small dark speck, the size of her thumbnail, which was half-buried in the loose heaps of dirt.

  Asha.

  Valara carefully extracted the sapphire and cupped it in her hands. Its color was much darker than she had imagined—a blue so deep it looked black, but when she touched it, indigo fire sparked at her fingertips, the lights echoing a complex melody of bright pure notes.

  With Asha, I could free my kingdom and hold it safe against the world.

  Briefly she saw herself at the head of an army. Her heart leapt up. Just as quickly the image faded and she heard Ilse Zhalina’s voice saying, We must make the right choice this time.

  Valara tore off a strip from her shirt and wrapped Asha securely within it. She would not lose this jewel again, even if Dzavek chased her through all Autrevelye. After tucking the bundle inside her shirt, she climbed onto Rikha’s back. “Let us go.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  IN ALL THE old texts, scholars spoke of the instant of translation, as if magic transported the body into the magical plane in an eyeblink. Like so much else, the phrase was poetical but not accurate. Ilse plainly saw Valara’s body shimmering in the air a long moment before the woman vanished from sight. Even then, whether by some trick of sight or expectation, the ghost of her figure remained, outlined in wreaths of mist and fog.

  On impulse, Ilse reached toward the spot where Valara had sat. A wayward puff of air broke the illusion apart. She stopped, exhaled. Suppressed the urge to follow Valara into the void. The other woman was right. Ilse would only prove a burden and distraction. Better that she remain here to safeguard the emerald.

  She glanced down at the ring in her hand. Again its weight surprised her and its surface felt unnaturally warm. Daya, Valara called it. A living creature, one who hoped, just as she did. A memory floated up from another life. She had held this jewel, or something like it, in her hands. She had relinquished it to another person. Out of duty? Relief that it would no longer be her responsibility? She couldn’t remember precisely, only an old sense of regret that she had done so.

  With some trepidation, she slipped the ring onto her finger.

  One more day. Less, if she could believe Valara’s claims. Ilse herself had no such confidence. She would have to start work now to assure her own survival.

  She checked her sword and her daggers. Both were in good condition, though she would need to clean her sword and its sheath. There were grasses on the plains, low trees, and patches of snow. She could wipe down the blade, cut switches to clean out the sheath.

  First, however, she decided to make a circuit of the Agnau itself. She did not want any surprises. Any more surprises, she reminded herself. The past five months had been filled with nothing but the unexpected.

  The Agnau measured several miles in circumference. Its shores remained low and smooth, covered with the same black sand she found at the entrance. Once a few hundred yards beyond the Mantharah’s entrance, however, the cliffs rippled inward then outward, like folds in a cloth, nearly to the edge of the lake, so that she had to edge carefully between them and the seething magical substance of the lake. From time to time, she knelt and sifted through the hot black sands, thinking that she would find more clues to her past, or the world’s, but she found nothing. These were as barren as these cliffs stretching upward to the sky. And yet, a millennium or more ago, life had poured out in a season of love and life.

  You and your beloved Toc have loved beyond life and death, Tanja Duhr once wrote. You have loved beyond the imaginable. And so we poor humans cannot imagine and so must stumble through our lives, more blind than Blind Toc, more alive to grief than Lir herself.

  She needed barely an hour to finish the circuit.

  One hour. And you have not returned.

  But their agreement was for an entire day.

  Ilse wanted to shout, to send her spirit soaring into the void after Valara’s. An unprofitable venture, she decided.

  After carefully scanning the plains with sight and magic, she ventured down the slopes and scouted the immediate area. The wind had died away, and the afternoon was fair and chill, the sky a hard gray. She found ice and snow packed into crannies and fissures around the base of the cliffs. The snow was old, granular, but clean enough to drink. If she had to, she could strain the water through her shirt. She packed her helmet full. A flicker of movement caught her eye—a hare or other small animal darting through the grass. That reminded her. She could braid the grass into snares, as Galena had taught her on their journey from Osterling.

  At the thought of Galena, her eyes stung with tears. She swiped them away, angrily. I must not mourn her too soon—none of them—or else I won’t be able to carry onward.

  Onward. Yes.

  She gathered an armful of grasses and returned to the Agnau. She stowed these in a shallow bay with an overhang, a few yards in from the entrance. Sheltered from snow or rain, warmed by the lake, it would make a perfect sleeping spot.

  Another expedition yielded a small quantity of pine twigs and peat, cut from the earth with her dagger. She also discovered wild oats growing in a gully. Farther on, a patch of plantain. The leaves were tough, but they would make a drinkable tea. Her two prizes were a hollow stone that could serve as a cook pot, and a block of frozen snow for water.

  It took her several trips to carry everything back to camp. She drank off her water and built a fire. Scrubbed the cook stone clean with snow, and set the plantain leaves to simmer. The oats she spread over a flat stone next to the fire. By the time she finished the sun had reached the midpoint in the sky. Exhausted, she sank to the ground and took up a fistful of grass to scour her swo
rd, but the effort proved too much. She leaned back against the cliff wall and stared upward.

  Noon. Valara had crossed into the magical plane at least two hours ago. She should have returned with the sapphire before now. Valara had spoken with absolute certainty of her ability to do just that.

  She misjudged the time, Ilse told herself. But she will return with the jewel. Then we shall make our next plans.

  Without thinking, she rubbed the wooden ring. Magic ran beneath its smooth surface, reminding her that Daya was no man-made thing, but a being created by the gods. Ilse closed her eyes and focused on the point between the ordinary and the magical planes. Yes, she could hear its voice, a silvery stream of minor notes, like the wind keening through the rigging of a swift-moving ship.

  You told Leos Dzavek where to find us, she said. You stopped his brother from running free to Morennioù. Why?

  For several moments, she heard nothing but a faint humming, then, Because he, because she, they lied. They would keep us bound. And she learns too fast this brother-sister-cousin. She remembers her magic. She would know as he does, as the brother does, how to bind me stronger.

  Its voice blurred into music again, as it spoke about the centuries in Anderswar, hidden. Working through plans, though its nature was not given to such. Absorbing magic. Thinking that if it had one chance, it would break from its prison. But not alone. Ilse heard three strong chords, followed by a long, long note that vibrated through her bones.

  You must deliver us, Daya said at last.

  I know, Ilse whispered. I promise.

  She rested her head on her hands. The ring felt heavy on her finger. The strong green scent of magic filled the air, the sweet fragrance of wildflowers and new grass, an impossible contradiction to the frozen plains outside the Mantharah’s walls.

  Death and rebirth. The eternal contradiction of magic.