They waded through the lake, the black shakes causing their skin to bubble and boil at the touch, but it did not consume them.
Queen Sotol waited for them amid the offering. Her once raven black hair was now ghostly white, her once black eyes now mixed with swirls of silver. She had always been pale-skinned, but now she was sickly so. Clutching her chest, she reached down with her claws and scooped up a handful of black shakes, slurping them down painfully.
“We must be careful,” Dev’in warned. “We cannot use up too many of the souls we have reclaimed, or all will be for naught when the night approaches.”
“Do not worry,” she coughed, wiping a drop of darkness from her chin. “I am monitoring the level carefully; we will not go below the critical levels.”
“See to it.”
Tigera stood with her, watching in concern as he stroked his beaded goatee. Dev’in didn’t trust that one. He was too patient, too blasé. He never spoke of himself, never offered an opinion. His eyes were like a predator’s, biding its time.
How in the world he managed to win the trust of a viper like Queen Sotol I’ll never know.
“It’s time.”
Queen Sotol waved her hand, and a black archway of liquid, screaming faces formed before them in the tar. The center folded in on itself and the image of the far end of the room shattered within. Now light poured in from a stone city square with a lovely vine and ivy shaped fountain, a statue of the Queen herself poised at the center.
With a yank of her claws, the arch passed over the four of them and all the food, and suddenly the air shifted.
Blair stretched his ear, equalizing the pressure with a popping sound. They were no longer looking at an image of the plaza, but standing upon it. Above, the magical shifting colors of the time-bending dome hung over them. Before them, the rising steps of the tower that was being constructed. It had grown a hundred feet since they had last seen it. Already it was the largest structure ever built, yet it wasn’t even half completed. It loomed overhead, a man-made mountain of stone and gold.
“Behold, gentlemen,” Queen Sotol boasted. “With this, we will harness the Night of Rebirth spell, making it perfect.”
“What was wrong with it before?” Tigera wondered aloud, marveling at the size of it. Even from a distance it was impressive, but up this close, it was truly awe-inspiring.
“Because our plan had a fatal flaw,” Dev’in said confidently, pleased with the progress.
“A flaw?” Tigera asked, shielding his eyes.
Dev’in nodded. “If we simply brought back Valpurgeiss, what would stop the rest of the gods from finding a new way to betray him?”
Tigera opened his mouth, but then closed it again. “I…guess I hadn’t thought of that.”
Dev’in nodded. “None of us had. Number Two was the one who thought of it, and provided us with the answer.”
Queen Sotol smirked in self-satisfaction.
Tigera looked at the three of them, awaiting a response. “Which is?”
“I’m afraid that’s above your pay-grade, Mr. Hissledorf,” Queen Sotol snipped.
“But, you don’t pay me.”
She looked him over hungrily. “I will.”
Men and women poked their heads out from clean and tidy houses. An entire community build around the base of the tower came to life as they realized they had guests.
“They have returned!” Willowood shouted, holding up his finely carved and decorated crutch above his head.
The men of Wysteria cheered. The people of the navy looked on cautiously.
Akar ran out ahead of the others to greet her, his eyes sparkling behind his crumpled broken nose. “Welcome back, Queen Sotol. May I show you the progress we have made on the east wall?”
She held up her hand. “Not yet. While it has only been five days for me, nearly a year has passed for you, and I wish to show my gratitude for your work and diligence.”
She stepped aside, revealing the barrels of lager stacked there.
“Please, enjoy yourselves.”
The men gave a mighty hoorah, and ran up to the stores, rolling, setting, tapping, and drinking them in such short order that it seemed she barely had time to step out of the way to avoid being trampled.
The men held up their beer and sang, clanging their carved steins together, shoulder to shoulder, and swaying about joyfully.
Queen Sotol backed up, pleased with herself.
“These Wysterians are amazing,” she whispered to Tigera. “I give them half rations, and they act like I’ve given them a feast. I give them stale beer, and they act like it is ambrosia from the gods. I give them a dirty old neighborhood, rotting from ruper spice addicts, and they receive it like a mansion. Sometimes I wonder why I bother with the navy rats at all. I could probably ask these men to finish the tower in half the time and they’d fall at my feet and thank me for the opportunity.”
Tigera studied her carefully. “You really get into the attention, don’t you?”
“What’s the point of being superior if it is not appreciated?”
Blair shrugged. “They’ll all be dead in a few weeks, why earn their gratitude now?”
Dev’in wasn’t sure he liked what he saw. “You’re getting softer towards them.”
Tigera’s brow came up knowingly.
Queen Sotol turned to Dev’in. “We don’t have the manpower to police and guard them, their gratitude is the simplest way to secure their compliance, that’s all.”
Dev’in folded his arms. “Is it?”
The Queen rolled her eyes in irritation. “You two are idiots.”
“What did you call them?” Blair snickered.
“She meant you two,” Tigera clarified.
Queen Sotol leaned in close and whispered. “Can’t you feel it? Don’t you sense what is about to happen?”
“Happen?” Dev’in’s dusty eyes flicked up to a window high in the plaza behind her, where there was a brief shimmer of polished metal.
Above the plaza, Ellie looked down through her home-made spyglass. Her hair was down to her neck now, and she was a bit taller, with a fresh dusting of freckles from working day in and day out in the sun.
“They’re lined up, get ready to fire,” she whispered so softly it barely registered even to those standing right next to her.
Carefully, the handful of men and women from the navy with her cranked back the winch of the home-made war bow they had built. Slowly the composite arms bent, metal creaking in protest as the winch clicked farther and farther back.
As the spear-tipped bolt was lowered into place, Ellie watched as Queen Sotol leaned in to whisper to her companions. The nose of the war bow was lowered, placing the Kabal members squarely in the crosshairs.
Ellie raised up her hand.
“Ready…”
Queen Sotol spun around, looking right up into the window where they were hidden. Ellie lowered her spyglass in start, then jumped back in fright as the Queen appeared in the air outside the window, as if stepping through a doorway of black smoke.
“Um, fire, Fire!” Ellie yelped.
The war bow shrieked and snapped the bolt forward. So quick it was just a streak in the air.
Queen Sotol caught the projectile in her claws, then held it up appraisingly.
“Sharpened from a piston shaft, very clever,” she praised.
The men and women backed away as the Queen floated inside, her white hair floating around his like mist.
“Impossible,” Ellie squeaked.
The Queen settled to the floor, the wood warping and turning black where she touched it.
“Not exactly the welcome I expected,” she said menacingly, holding up her fingers. “And after all the ale I brought, too.
Ellie flinched, knowing what was to come.
The Queen snapped her fin
gers and the war bow dissolved into a pile of ash, the crew stumbling to their knees in surprise.
Ellie waited for the end to come, but it didn’t. Slowly, she opened her eyes and found the Queen standing over her, as if waiting.
“I would have you speak your minds to me,” she commanded.
Ellie furrowed her brow.
The men and women of the navy looked at each other oddly.
“You’re not…going to kill us?” one of the men asked.
“For what?” The Queen dusted off her claws. “Please don’t tell me you actually thought that weapon of yours would kill me?”
She looked around at their stunned faces.
“You did? Oh, that is adorable.”
She ran her claws over her raven-feathered gown sensually. “The truth is, this dress was a gift from Tigera and I just didn’t want to see it ruined with a hole thought the chest.”
She fingered the animal-tooth necklace she wore, savoring the terrible helplessness she saw in their eyes. “You obviously have a quarrel with me, so speak it.”
They looked at each other again, not sure what to think.
“All right,” Ellie said, rising to her feet.
She reached up and tucked some of her hair behind her ear. “We want to leave.”
Queen Sotol could not help but chuckle. “You are prisoners of war. Traitors to the League. Surely you don’t think you can just leave. You wreaked millions of tarries of damage to Boeth in your foolish insurrection. It would be unjust of me to release you before you have repaid your debt to us.”
“We know you need this tower for something,” Ellie inferred. “Work could be slowed, sabotaged, misaligned. That would surely put a crimp in your plans, whatever they are.”
A crooked smile crossed the Queen’s lips. “Oh, a threat! How bold you are, young one.”
She leaned in close and licked her black lips. “I like that in my prey.”
She motioned to the others, making sure she was heard. “People of the navy, your gods abandoned you, stripped you of your magic, left you here to rot in this prison. But, I ask you, is it really so bad in here? Have I really been as cruel and harsh as I could have been?”
She held up her talons, black electricity sparking between them. “If I wanted to, I could make things so much less pleasant for all of you.”
She clenched her fist and a dark band of void magic came to life beneath the skin on Ellie’s neck.
Ellie’s eyes went wide. She gagged and dropped to her knees, clutching at her neck.
The men and women of the navy backed away in fright.
“Wha…what is that?” one of them asked.
Queen Sotol raised an eyebrow. “Oh, didn’t she tell you? She is a member of the Kabal, same as me. What you see there is a mark of fealty given to new initiates.”
They looked at Ellie in terror. “You…you are one of them?”
Ellie wheezed, fighting against the pain coursing through her young body. “No I’m not!”
The Queen laughed. “Oh, don’t be coy, my dear.”
With a wave of her hand, the black band extended outward in a ghostly ring of darkness. The Queen reached in with her talons, rearranging the mist like puzzle blocks.
She leaned back and surveyed her work, then with a snap of her claws, the ring shrank back down into Ellie’s quivering flesh.
The Queen’s black and silver eyes flashed. “She is now my eyes and ears here in Madaringa. What she sees, I see, what she hears, I hear.”
She turned around, looking at the cowering navy people. “Ellie belongs to me, and she always will.”
Ellie fell on her side, her face turning blue. “No…I…don’t!”
The others backed away from Ellie in fright.
Ellie struggled for breath, reaching out to the retreating people. “No, you must believe me, I would never…Ahhhhh!”
Queen Sotol clenched her talons and the black lighting crackled stronger within her neck, forcing Ellie to writhe in agony on the ground.
Ellie’s eyes rolled back in her head. Just as she tipped on the edge of consciousness, Queen Sotol released her, and she collapsed, coughing and struggling for breath.
The Queen lifted up her talons and blew on their hot, steaming surface. “I tell you what. Since the rest of you have met your quotas and resisted sedition up until today’s…incident, I will cut your remaining sentence in half.”
This surprised them. They looked at one another in disbelief.
“You heard me right. Instead of another twenty years, you now owe me only ten. Continue working faithfully, and I may cut it in half again to five.”
She glanced back at Ellie, pitifully jerking and thrashing on the ground.
“Or you can follow her and share her fate. Your choice.”
With a superior sniff, she walked away confidently, disappearing through a doorway of smoke, leaving the people of the navy in shocked disbelief.
As Queen Sotol reemerged back down in the plaza, Blair looked on disapprovingly.
“I don’t understand why you did that,” he whispered.
Queen Sotol pinched the bridge of her nose. “Oh, it pains me to have to explain it to a simpleton.”
Blair laughed. “Oh, how marvelous to be truly insulted. I love the sensation of outrage, it makes me feel so alive.”
She dropped her hands down. “There’s no pleasure in it for me if you enjoy being insulted that much.”
Dev’in stepped in. “What is your method, Number Two?”
She motioned over her shoulder. “That girl was the leader of a handful today, in six months she would have lead hundreds against us, in a year, thousands. Now, they will never trust her again, nor any that take her place. Dead, she would have been a martyr, a symbol for them to rally behind. Now, she exists as a living deterrent. Every time they look at her, their resolve will weaken. They will spend at least the next year struggling with whether it would be best to fight or wait out their sentence. That’s when I’ll announce their sentence being cut down to five. That should buy us another year or so on top of that.”
“So, you don’t expect this to quell them for long?”
“Of course not. Sooner or later they’ll realize that letting them go would be a meaningless gesture. Outside this time prison the world is still ending unless they do something to stop us.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “I’d say we have three years, maybe four at the most. Then we’ll have to cull the herd.”
“Cull?”
“The nicer we make it in here, the more they’ll come to rely on this place. In fact, I think we should increase their amenities. Get them more books, hold festivals, build a stadium, that sort of thing.”
“I’m afraid I don’t follow.”
The Queen looked around. “Outside this place, the world has only weeks left, but in here, time stands still. They could live out a lifetime in peace and safety here, a lifetime that would be denied them beyond this dome. They’ll become more and more dependent on this prison, more hopelessly paralyzed by their fear of leaving.”
She looked over at the Wysterians as they drank and sang, her eyes sparkling. “Given enough time, they’ll even fight to defend their imprisonment.”
Blair threw his head back and cackled. “Oh, how deliciously bitter, you plan to turn them to our side.”
Queen Sotol patted him on the chest condescendingly. “We’ll return in three years and separate out the ones who remain defiant. We could always use a few more gallons of black shakes, just in case.”
“At the rate you’re drinking them up, that might not be enough.”
Suddenly, there was a crack like thunder, and the ground shifted. Everyone fought to keep their feet as the stone of the plaza cracked. The top of the tower swayed dangerously, unsecured blocks falling and punching through roofto
ps and splintering scaffolding.
The prismatic dome above them cracked, and the flow of time from the outside spilled in. As it splashed over them, the frozen people in the outer city came to life, running and screaming, ducking for cover as buildings toppled and walls collapsed. Airships capsized from the shockwave still passing over them, the floating docks threatening to come apart.
Dev’in struggled to his feet, looking out into the capital beyond the dome. A pillar of black smoke rose up from the financial district, the fires already spreading to the surrounding houses.
“What happened?”
Queen Sotol grabbed Blair. By the collar. “Go get King Dolan. Have the time dome recast immediately!”
Blair exploded into a black skeleton, his flesh reforming into the form of a great eagle. Feathers sprouted, a beak formed, and he flew aloft into the air, slipping out the ruined roof of the dome.
Tigera rose to his feet and dusted himself off.
“What was that?” he asked, watching the pillar of smoke rise.
Queen Sotol’s black and silver eyes narrowed.
“We’ve been attacked.”
* * *
Privet’s suit was worn, the patches covering the bullet holes contrasting darker against the faded fabric. Athel’s dress was ill-fitting and tacky, Mina having loaned it to her so she wouldn’t have to wear her navy uniform for the ceremony.
The banquet table was sparse, the arrangement crude, the guests somber. No music filled the air, only a handful of flowers lined the pathway scratched into the dirt that lead up to Deutzia’s trunk.
And yet, from the smile on Privet’s face, Athel could tell that none of that mattered to him. He glowed, happy beyond compare as he was wheeled up alongside her. It had been so long since either of them had taken the time to really dress fancy, she had forgotten how well he cleaned up. His strong cut chin, his broad shoulders, his deep eyes, he really was strikingly handsome, and she felt her heart flutter a little in her chest when she saw him. He reached out to her with his strong arm, the muscles rippling clearly even through the layers of fabric.
Athel did her best to smile back. She wanted this to be special, she had dreamed about this for years, but try as she might, she just couldn’t shake the fact that it felt like a funeral to her. She placed her hand against her chest, feeling the deep, jagged scar that ran across her heart.
Isle of Wysteria: Throne of Chains Page 14