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The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three

Page 16

by Craig R. Saunders


  'I hope you know what you're doing, my love,' he said, for he already knew he was lost in Selana.

  'I do. The girl stays. The babe is needed. He is the focus.'

  'The focus of what?'

  'I say too much.'

  'You still play, then?'

  'No, my love,' said Selana...'But it must be done and I am the one to do it. Men play at war. Women learn to put away games long before. I do not play, Roskel. I do not play.'

  'We cannot win.'

  'Force of arms alone?' The Queen shook her head. 'No. But with the spells we weave already? Maybe... We have but one chances, and Rena and baby Tarn are it. Why do you think I brought them all this way?'

  Roskel, clothed now, leaned over the Queen. She was still naked under the bedsheets...a fact he was all too aware of.

  He kissed her, then turned away before he would not be able to leave her at all.

  He paused at the door.

  'I am afraid,' he admitted. 'I have lost so many men to this war already...and so many friends...'

  'Let me take the burden. You are my love. My lord. See to the swords. I will see to the rest. Though the end may be an unhappy one, we will prevail. Men will die. It is a war. But trust me, Roskel. Will you trust me?'

  Roskel turned and looked at his Queen as he stood at the open door.

  'I trust you with my life. But more. I trust you with my people's lives.'

  It was the right answer.

  *

  Chapter Eighty-Four

  Roskel stood alone atop the tallest tower in Naeth castle, looking out over his city. The tower was old, but in perfect repair. He realised he knew next to nothing about the castle. Never did he think of it as his castle, but it was his home. He had never troubled himself to learn its history, nor the intricacies of its halls and corridors and secret passageways. Remiss, perhaps, for a thief, but he was a thief no longer, was he? He was a bureaucrat. A man who squandered his time and his youth in meetings of the great and mighty.

  He longed for the rooftop chase, as he often did, but sighed. It was foolish to be entertaining such thoughts, faced with the sight below.

  All around the tower were shimmering lights and shining steel.

  The Hierarchy.

  The city was encircled. Roskel could not believe the size of the force that had been amassed on foreign shores. It dwarfed the entire might of Sturma. The armies of the Hierarchy probably dwarfed Draymar, too. For miles outside the city the enemy waited. Patient, perhaps, perhaps just mustering their forces, making plans to take the jewel, the capital, of Sturma. If Naeth should fall the rest of the country would soon follow, and the Sturmen would no longer be free, but vassals of an enemy state.

  And Roskel did not think there was anything he could do to stop it.

  Trust in me, said the Queen. And he did. But surely it was hopeless?

  In the distance, at the rear of the massed forces, he could just make out a vast pavilion.

  The seat of the Hierophant.

  The leader of the Hierarchy, and the key to the whole mess, with no way of getting to him.

  The enemy were truly before the gates, and Roskel was terrified, because all that was left between them was steel and witches' magic against ten thousand soldiers and a rain of fire.

  The fire would be coming soon. He had seen it once already. Then, his army had been able to flee. This time, they could not.

  Everything on the power of witches. Everything on his Queen. Roskel never gambled - he made sure the dice were loaded. This was truly gambling, a toss of the dice for a kingdom - perhaps a world.

  'Time to roll,' he said.

  *

  Part VII.

  The Lich King

  Chapter Eighty-Five

  Fire.

  The air was on fire above Naeth. It burned and rained down on the city. In the outer districts, the poorer districts, the wooden building and wooden roofs caught alight. Fire and smoke raced through the city until it was ablaze. The sky was brightly lit above and below, but smoke and ash filled the air, too, leaving a great trail of blackness across the vista.

  The flames of the Hierarchy had not the range to reach the castle. Untouched, Roskel and Selana stood above it all in the old tower, looking down on the carnage.

  How many dead already? wondered Roskel. How many soldiers died in their armour without even lifting a sword?

  It was a slaughter. Slaughter all over again. Roskel felt tears on his cheeks, running tracks through the grime on his face - smoke and soot and ash floating across the castle walls, even here, as high as they were atop the tower.

  The soldiers themselves ran through the city streets. This first foray was a shambles - yet Selana assured him once again that it was a necessity.

  To Roskel it seemed like nothing more than senseless death, sending even one soldier out into the inferno. Everything was in disarray.

  Selana took Roskel's arm. 'It is as it must be, Roskel. Outer Naeth cannot hold. It never could. But it is not done yet, my love... This is woman's work, and it will be done tonight. Trust in me.'

  'But so many dead...so many...' Roskel wiped his grimy face clear, smudging soot into his bare cheeks. His moustache, usually blonde, was black with all the detritus of the city that drifted on the wind - hard won houses, lovingly built furniture, wares from the small shops that peppered the outer districts...bodies. Soldiers, no doubt, their bodies roasting until their ashes, too, blew in the wind.

  'They must think they have won,' said the Queen, softly.

  'They have!'

  The Queen took Roskel's hand and squeezed it tenderly.

  'No. Not yet. And nor will they will the king lives. Tonight, my love. Tonight we fight.'

  *

  Chapter Eighty-Six

  Fire burned all day. Everywhere left standing in the city stank of defeat. Even now, with the fall of night and the cessation of the rain of fire, the outer city glowed with heat and a soft orange light. Pockets of the city still burned, but most smoldered. The wooden buildings had burned fast.

  Selana strode through the halls of the Castle of Naeth, her eyes burning with a different kind of power. Tomorrow the armies would come. But if she could win...if her kin could win this night... Sturma stood a chance, still.

  Though the rain of fire from the sky had ceased with nightfall, it was still light, though the false light of fire.

  Selana had protected most of the citizens of Naeth in the best way that she was able - by taking them into her world - the tunnels below the city. She had protected what people, and soldiers, that she could.

  Homes could be rebuilt - people could not. She may have been a terrible mistress to the city, and deadly, but she loved people in a way that they would never understand. Most would never see her, nor her hand, in affairs. To many she was merely a rumour, and to those within the Thieves' Covenant and others in the know, she was just a mortal, dangerous Queen.

  Few knew the truth of her immortality. And her powerful heritage.

  She may be powerful beyond mortal ken, but she was under no illusions about the size of the task before her and her sisters.

  And yet, through the fire and the death outside the walls of the castle, the day's loses were nothing. She, alone, perhaps, knew that they fought not just for Sturma but for Rythe herself...

  And one day, the return of Caeus...? She thought of her brother, her terrible brother. It was, perhaps, one of only two things she feared. The return of Caeus, and the return of the Sun Destroyers.

  She shuddered, and pushed it from her mind. She had time yet...time measured in centuries...if...

  If she and her sisters could win this night.

  It was a big if.

  *

  Chapter Eighty-Seven

  The boy was the focus of the spell the witches called forth, and Rena. Rena, the woman...a mere girl of twenty years in truth, too.

  Everything rested on the shoulders of the son of the Outlaw King, Tarn, one year old, and Rena, the lover, and l
ater wife, of the boy's father.

  Rena felt the power in the room. Her hair practically stood on end. Her baby sucked at his thumb, something he had never done, and was wide-eyed in the face of so many people. And what a gathering.

  Rena feared for herself and her baby, but she was set in her course.

  You must risk that which is most dear to you. She remembered the price that the old witch, her friend, Tulathia had demanded of her. Once, she had thought it meant Tarn, her husband. She had risked him. She had lost him.

  She would not lose her baby, for he was, now, the most important thing to her.

  Selana entered the great hall where the witches had gathered. There were no men present and Selana's clothing was, for once, demure. She wore a simple red dress, tight, perhaps, but with little flesh on show.

  The great hall had held feasts and councils. The old King had been murdered in this hall by Hurth, the rogue Thane. Now the hall was full of more power than it had ever seen since the castle had been built, and burgeoning with that power now that Selana was present.

  Selana walked past the seated witches, waiting in silence, and sat at the head of the Covenant. Rena was in the centre of the assembled witches. A gathering of more than a hundred of the most powerful witches on the continent.

  There was no time to waste. The spell was hard, and required all their power. It would be a long night, and the work needed to be completed before the suns rose and the assault on the wall.

  'With me,' she said. No speeches. No inspiration. These women were not frightened soldiers. They were power.

  The spell began with a gentle kind of chanting, which was quiet at first.

  Mist began to rise outside the Castle, mingling with the smoke. Soon, the mist turned to fog. No mere natural fog, but the essence that filled the place between this land of mortals and the land of the dead.

  Rena watched in awe. Her teeth ached from the feel of the air in the room, and with her new and remarkable sight she watched the auras of the witch kin grow in power and luminescence, until she wished she could close her eyes against the sight. But of course, she had no eyes to close. The light was too much for her. She turned her sight, instead, to her baby. He looked frightened, and she shushed him and held him and rocked him, looking at nothing but him. She wished, over and over again, that no harm would come to him from this spell.

  It was an awful spell. It demanded blood. The King's blood. Just a nick on the baby's thumb, but a blood spell was the worst kind, and a dangerous power to play with.

  But of course, the witches were not playing. Witches did not play.

  Deathly serious, the night's work. They called forth the most terrible power of all as they broke through the plains of the dead, and called a man back from beyond Madal's Gates. They called forth the bridge between this world and the next. The chanting slowed, but louder now, reaching it zenith, until with a voice no mortal could ever forget, the Queen bellowed fit to wake the dead.

  'I summon forth the bridge!' she cried out, and the halls, the fog, the very land of Sturma trembled, for that was precisely what they had done.

  Woke the dead.

  *

  Chapter Eighty-Eight

  'What is this unnatural fog?' said the Hierophant. He lounged in a great pavilion, eating the flesh of an orange, imported from his own shores. Juice squirted as he bit into the fruit, rind and all.

  'I know not...some magic unknown to us. Perhaps witch magic. It is of little import,' said one of the mages who had been called into the Hierophant's pavillion.

  The mage did not shake, though he knew he stood in the presence of Death himself. The Hierophant coruscated with strength, both in his will and his wizardry.

  'Nothing? Hmm...perhaps. But double the guard nonetheless. Under an ill fog such as this dark deeds are done,' said the Hierophant. 'And something...yes...I feel something...'

  The Hierophant did not finish his sentence, because what he felt could not be...

  It felt like the most powerful of all magic. To him, there was a gentle aroma on the air...like a fine wine to a human's senses, perhaps.

  This was blood magic.

  And he felt something else, too. A tear in the planes - a rent none but a Hierarch could make.

  But if there were no magic on Sturma...who could possess such power? Who could tear a hole in the planes? No one, he knew...and yet something was coming through. Something other. Something of the other side.

  The Hierophant smiled and finished his fruit. He did not need subjugates to protect him. He felt something coming, indeed. And at last, a challenge to his power?

  He hoped so. He sincerely hoped so. All these years, hunting the Line of Kings to near extinction. All the death, all the machinations and plans. All leading toward this final moment when his work would be done and the path for the Return could be set in place.

  It was almost an anti-climax. For a being of such strength as the Hierophant held, it was...tedious. For all this to end with nothing but the destruction of the city.

  He could not see the child - the last of the kings - but he could feel him. Feel him within the city.

  Part of him wanted to crush the life from the child with his bare hands. But why sully himself? His soldiers and his mages would wipe all life from the city before him. He would know when the last king died. His seers would know. They would see a shift in the future. Where once the line had been hidden from magical sight by a power unknown to the Hierophant, its absence would be obvious in the eyes of a seer.

  The Hierophant did not have the talent to see the future. It was his only weakness, but he had mages that could perform the feat for him.

  All the loses, all the death - the slaughter at the pass still rankled - but, yes...an anticlimax.

  The city burned in just one day. In the morning, his soldiers would take the city and kill every man, woman and child within.

  Something was coming tonight, though. The Hierophant smiled at the feel of it, the anticipation of whatever the thing they summoned against him was...the taint in the unnatural fog...the feel of another of power coming against him. He smiled and it was an awful, sickening smile.

  'At last,' he said. 'At last...'

  He let his power grow. Waiting. Waiting for whatever was coming through the fog.

  *

  Chapter Eighty-Nine

  A great crack rent the air and a storm raged through the assembled witch kin with such sudden force that all the witches, bar one, were blown across the grand hall.

  Selana herself slumped. Her eyelids fluttered, for an instant.

  Even she was shocked at what their power, together, had wrought. Alone, not even she could rival her brother Caeus, but together they had performed a feat which even her brother would have marvelled at.

  An unnatural wind howled through the room, pushing the fog from around the stunned witches. When the fog cleared, Selana saw her sisters slumped here and there across the room. Some were sitting up, now the winds had gone. Some did not move. One witch - a young girl, she saw, would not move again. The power of the spell had been too much for her to bear.

  An awful price. Awful. Yet Selana felt no remorse. Sometimes you had to be a terrible mistress to see things through. For an instant, her stony expression slipped, however, thinking of the poor girl. But then it was back in place. She could afford no weakness. Not now. Now the end was so close. For good or ill.

  She almost laughed. Whatever the outcome, what they had wrought this night was nothing but ill.

  Sometimes, though, you have to fight fire with fire.

  She saw the babe still lived, despite the release of dread power. Rena crawled across the room to the babe, who alone among them had been untouched. Baby Tarn, for his part, put his thumb in his mouth and snuggled into his sobbing mother's shoulder. He looked tired, thought Selana, watching with a softening of her face, because she held a soft spot for all children of women. And well he should be tired, because he had been the focus, the epicentre, of the magic t
hat the witch kind had unleashed this night.

  She hardened her heart once again against the sight of those few of the witches who would not rise again. She allowed herself a moment to drift, more tired than she had ever been, and wished she could sleep like baby Tarn would - the sleep of the just...even for an hour. But sleep was a human luxury, and the Queen was far from human.

  Drifting still, stunned a little herself, she realised as her thoughts wandered unbidden, she noted Rena carrying her babe toward her.

  'Did it work?' asked Rena, and the Queen's heart almost broke at the very mortal fear and hope in the girl's words.

  But she had to be cold, because there were hard deeds ahead yet.

  She smiled, a Queen's smile.

  'Yes, child. Yes.'

  Then she called the men into the throne room to wait, and sent a messenger to Durmont, too, for Durmont held the most important artefact of an age within an unassuming hessian sack.

  *

  Chapter Ninety

  The strange, fey mist covered the landscape for many miles. Beasts howled and gnashed within it, and the cries of children could be heard in the countryside even further out than the amassed Hierarch army. Within that mist, a heavier mist, something almost sentient, roamed. The call that the witches had put out. The mist coalesced into something more solid, but still ethereal in its making.

  A great, curved, unnatural bridge. A bridge in reality and thought, composed of magic and of the God of Death's will. Madal's Gates were breached.

  The bridge shifted and wavered, one end tethered to the castle, the other swerving and swaying like a snake's body...searching.

  Searching until it found what was needed. Found its purpose.

 

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