The Druid Queen

by Douglas Niles

  The flaming chariot swooped over the castle wall. Keane waving frantically to deter dozens of archers who seemed ready to let fly even without the command of their captain. Fortunately the tall mage was a familiar figure to these men, and they lowered their weapons to stare in astonishment at the enchanted transport.

  The chariot finally came to rest in the courtyard just as King Kendrick himself emerged from the great hall. His daughter Alicia trailed close behind.

  “Keane!” he shouted in delight, stepping forward to clasp the young mage around the shoulders with his good arm and hand.

  “Your Majesty … may I present Parell Hyath, Exalted Inquisitor of Helm!”

  The patriarch stepped out of the chariot with remarkable agility for a man of his bulk and bowed deeply to the king. If Tristan felt any surprise at the appearance of a priest other than Bakar Dalsoritan, he gave no indication, instead warmly welcoming the huge cleric. The High King graciously apologized for the humble nature of Caer Corwell’s surroundings, at the same time announcing that he held a real affection for this, his boyhood home.

  By the time they concluded the formalities, the flaming chariot had faded into nothingness. Robyn stood silent, back from the throng that had started to gather. She knew of Helm’s worship, knew that this cleric could not be an evil man and still remain true to his faith, yet she couldn’t dispel a nagging sense of unease. After all, life was much more than a simple matter of good and evil struggling for prominence. The central tenet of her own faith remained the Balance, the equilibrium of all things. She couldn’t bring herself to trust this man who, she knew, would be dedicated to toppling that equilibrium toward his own desires.

  Robyn saw her daughter approach the mage and began to feel more comfortable as the king led the cleric toward the widespread doors of the keep.

  “Welcome home,” Alicia said to Keane as the priest and king entered the great hall. “That was quite an entrance!”

  “It was quite a journey,” Keane agreed with a wry grin. “Somehow it’s a lot more nerve-racking to fly over an ocean than it is to teleport past it. Anyway, I’m glad I’ve got solid ground under my feet again.”

  “So am I,” the princess said quietly, but with enough meaning to draw her mother’s attention. Keane, too, heard the hidden warmth in the words. He looked at the princess sharply, as if he wanted to say something. Instead, he allowed her to take his arm and lead him toward the castle.

  “A moment, please,” Robyn said as they passed. She had to know something. “Bakar Dalsoritan …?”

  The shadow on Keane’s face answered her question before he spoke. “He’s … dead—murdered, as it happened, before I had a chance to speak with him. I’m sorry, my queen. I know he tutored you well and wisely.”

  Nodding absently, Robyn felt the news flow right through her. She wasn’t surprised, had even prepared herself subconsciously to hear this. Instead, her mind focused on questions and answers.

  “That’s terrible!” Alicia exclaimed, shaking her head sadly. “I haven’t seem him since I was a little girl, but he always seemed like a nice man. How did it happen?”

  “There’ll be time for details later,” Robyn interjected, knowing that the story would do little to soothe her apprehensions. “Let’s go inside with your father.”

  They found the king and the inquisitor engaged in a frank discussion beside the sweeping fieldstone hearth of the keep. No fire glowed there now during the heat of summer, but it was still a place where Tristan liked to go for discussion and contemplation. Attendants and servants stood some distance back in the great hall, allowing the two men their privacy.

  “Payment will be no problem,” the High King was saying as the trio approached. “Of course, my treasury’s in Callidyrr. If necessary, we can journey there beforehand.…” His tone clearly indicated that he hoped it was not necessary.

  “No need,” said the patriarch graciously. He stood and turned to face Keane and the two women. “Incidentally, your young ambassador here did a splendid job of recruitment. I set aside my other affairs only by dint of his eloquent persuasion.”

  “He’s a man I’d trust with my life—or my family’s,” Tristan agreed warmly. “Well done, Keane.”

  “Thank you, Sire.”

  “Now then, to this business.” The king raised his arm, showing the cleric the wound at his wrist. The cut had healed cleanly, with skin fully grown over the rounded stub at the end of his arm. “Do you have to make a lot of preparations?”

  “Very few, actually,” said the cleric. He looked around the great hall, with its smoke-stained beams and wooden columns supporting the broad ceiling, the long stone walls, and the broad hearth. “Perhaps we could find a smaller chamber—a bedroom or private apartment would be best. You’ll want to rest, I’m certain. As for me, I could use a bite to eat and a glass or two of wine—for my strength—and then we can get started.”

  “Splendid! We’ll use my library upstairs. Alicia, will you have Gretta send up some nourishment for the patriarch? I’ll show you the place. It should be perfect.” The three men left the hall, ascending the wide stairs to the family’s apartments on the second floor while Robyn accompanied Alicia to the kitchen.

  “Do you think it’ll work, Mother?” inquired the princess nervously after they had requested a tray and bottle for the priest.

  “I don’t see why not,” Robyn said, without conviction. “After all, an Exalted Inquisitor, so I’ve heard, is a rank achieved by no more than a handful of clerics at any given time. He must be very knowledgeable of his god.”

  “I hope so!” Alicia declared with passion.

  The two women joined the priest and the king in the library. Upon Hyath’s instructions, they pulled the shutters and shades across the window, darkening the room, while Tristan made himself comfortable on a long, bedlike couch. Meanwhile the patriarch enjoyed some of the salt meats, bread, cheese, and wine of Corwell.

  “If you three will wait in the next room, we’ll get started,” Hyath instructed them after he cleaned his plate and very nearly emptied the bottle.

  Robyn rose with noticeable reluctance, following Keane and Alicia into the adjacent anteroom. The inquisitor closed the door firmly behind them, and they settled down impatiently to wait.

  For a time, they heard nothing, and then Hyath’s voice emerged from the room. The priest performed some kind of chant, his voice following a precise cadence, rising and falling in pitch as he drifted, almost singing, through phrases that none of them could identify. Then his voice dropped again, though the soft murmur of verbal rites still came from beyond the door. Then even that faded into silence.

  For several more minutes, they listened but heard nothing, aching with curiosity, not daring to open the door. Robyn rose and began to pace, while Alicia clasped her hands before her and Keane sat in attentive silence, alert for any sound from the darkened library.

  The quiet broke suddenly with a sound of gurgling shock growing quickly into a scream of terror. They heard a crash, like a boom of thunder, and Robyn cried out in alarm.

  Keane reached the door in less than an instant, twisting the latch and throwing the portal open with a surprisingly powerful push of his shoulder. He stumbled into the room, waving his hands to clear thickening smoke from the air as the queen and princess rushed in behind him.

  “What … what happened?” gasped Alicia, racing to her father’s side.

  Tristan lay on the bed, blinking and shaking his head. He groaned softly. At least they could see that he was still alive.

  Only then did they notice the patriarch of Helm. The Exalted Inquisitor lay motionless on the floor, sprawled on his back as if he’d been knocked over by some shocking force. His eyebrows were singed, his face blackened, and his huge body displayed no sign of life.

  Alicia turned back to the king as Tristan raised his left arm. They both saw that the limb still ended in the blunt stump of his wrist.

  * * * * *

  The dwarven community proved
to have an exceptional number of well-stocked wine cellars—so many, in fact, that the hulking conquerors settled for plundering only a select few. Trolls, sinuous and flexible, searched the small houses while the giants waited outside. Several times trolls reported a solid door in the basement of one of the dwarven homes.

  Quickly firbolgs wielding axes and hammers smashed a path to the cellar door, usually by knocking out a wall and then collapsing the floor above the wine cellar’s hallway. The roof of the actual chamber, they quickly found, was generally sealed over with a heavy stone arch impervious even to firbolg strength.

  Thus they entered the wine cellars by the simple expedient of bashing down their metal-banded, heavy oaken doors. This was a sport where natural firbolg talent could excel, and thus it became a contest as one of the giants smashed his club, a foot, or perhaps a rock into the portal. If it didn’t collapse—and it never did before the fifth blow—another would try, and so forth. The firbolg who actually smashed down the door then crawled inside and earned the honor of sampling the first keg.

  Stars stood out in brilliant relief above Cambro as the chill of the night seemed to sap every bit of cloud and vapor from the air. The chieftain stood beyond the circle of buildings, near the impenetrable darkness beneath the forest canopy. He watched the pillage dispassionately, trying to dispel the worry that continued to nag at him. Where were the dwarves?

  Thurgol pulled his cloak around him, grumbling about the unseasonal chill. More logs, as well as a few scraps of wooden furniture, added their fuel to the blaze in the center of town, and the bonfire surged higher and higher, challenging the darkness of the sky itself.

  The firbolg heard increasingly raucous laughter, a gruff and bawdy song. Still discontent, Thurgol wandered around the village, peering anxiously into the shadows beneath the looming trees.

  Harsh words barked above the din. A firbolg insulted the nose of a troll, calling it “short as a corncob.” Immediately the chaotic festivities doubled in volume. Thurgol heard bets wagered, with odds going two to one in favor of the giant, and cheerful insults tossed in from the crowd. He returned to the circle of his comrades somewhat heartened by the prospective entertainment of a good brawl. Quickly seizing the keg from a small troll, the chieftain shouldered his way through the tightly packed throng of firbolgs and trolls to get a good look at the fight.

  The firbolg participant was Hondor, a great brute of a giant-kin with tiny eyes and a perpetually confused expression on his drooping jowls. Though he couldn’t be certain, it seemed to Thurgol that the troll was Essekki, a treacherous, gawking member of his clan who did in fact possess a very undistinguished proboscis. Now the two brutes, almost equal in height, though the firbolg weighed nearly double his opponent, circled each other menacingly. The first clasp had come to a draw, and they gasped for breath as they prepared to close again.

  Essekki backed carefully away from the fire, which had temporarily died to a great mountain of glowing embers. Fire was the thing feared above all else by trolls, for the burning of their flesh was one type of wound that even their amazing regenerative powers could not heal. Thus the troll took great care not to leave himself vulnerable to the sizzling danger. Growling wolfdogs circled the fight, their eyes and fangs gleaming in the darkness. They wouldn’t attack, Thurgol knew, but the fervor of combat agitated them just the same.

  Hondor ducked in again, bashing sideways with a hamlike fist that somehow connected with the troll’s head. Essekki flew through the air, crashing to the ground in a heap. In another moment, the firbolg leaped onto his stunned opponent’s back, grasping the troll’s nose and skull and twisting his head brutally. The snapping of the beast’s neck shot through the night, silencing the crowd for the briefest of moments.

  Then the din erupted again as winners demanded payment from losers and the latter protested vainly that the troll would regenerate. Thus, they claimed, the fight might not be over yet. It was an argument that had raged after hundreds of such fights since the trolls had come to Blackleaf. As always, the prevailing rule was applied: Once the troll died, the fight was over. If he wished to resume the contest upon regeneration, which rarely happened, the brawl would be considered a new fight.

  Once again the band settled down to drinking and arguing. Thurgol took his place among them, allowing the warmth of fire and companionship to dispel the chill of the night. He ignored the whispering voice of concern, which in any event had changed its monotonous tune. Instead, he tried to console himself with the suggestion that the alert wolfdogs would hear anyone approaching through the woods, barking an alarm before any serious harm could be done. Indeed, as the rum flowed and the fire grew, it seemed that the threat of danger drifted farther and farther away.

  No longer did his internal voice caution him that the woods were full of dwarves. That was a vague and distant worry. Instead, however, it tried to make him think by asking persistent questions. What should they do next? Where did they go from here?

  Then the miracle began.

  * * * * *

  Amid the sacking of Cambro, as Garisa watched the male trolls and firbolgs cavort and posture around the raging fire, the shaman grew increasingly irritated by the frenzied and mindless chaos, which could only drag the tribe to ruin. Beside her was the mighty Silverhaft Axe, though she still didn’t quite believe that the tribe had actually regained it from their despised enemies. But her mind, exceptionally alert and active for a firbolg’s, was already looking ahead, trying to imagine ways that this remarkable turn of fortune could be used to propel the tribe in a proper direction.

  The stooped and elderly matriarch sat, somewhat removed from the press of raucous males, on a bench made from a dwarf’s bed that had been dragged into the street. Here she received some of the most tender meats and the sweetest wines among the entire band’s booty, for even if they overruled her opinions, the giant-kin still showed their old shaman a measure of dignity and respect.

  Yet these facts were no consolation as she watched her kinsmen dance and whoop in the harsh light of the towering fire. She saw that even Thurgol, who for a brief moment had displayed a modicum of character and leadership, now returned to the fire, betting on the fights and drinking like any mulish adolescent.

  Something, Garisa decided, had to be done, and as usual, she had some idea as to what that thing should be. Carefully she pulled an old blanket over the axe, concealing the gleaming haft and the brilliant diamond blade from observation.

  Slowly, subtly, the stooped female rose to her feet and shambled forward from her bench. A pair of hulking trolls, eyeing her suspiciously, nonetheless stepped back to let her pass. The crone’s sharp walking stick had more than once been employed to open a path between slow-stepping humanoids. The same applied to a great wolfdog, who had somehow snared a place near the roaring blaze. The great canine bounced to its feet and slinked out of the way as the shaman approached.

  A young firbolg, his eyes blank and his jaw slack from the effects of many hours of drinking, blinked stupidly as Garisa snatched a massive bowl, foaming over with stout ale, from his hands. She sniffed the beverage, then tasted a gulp or two, smacking her nearly toothless gums in appreciation. The young warrior went off in search of an easier drink, and the old shaman nodded in satisfaction.

  Setting the empty bowl on the ground, Garisa reached into the pockets of her apron with her two gnarled, yet surprisingly nimble, hands. Feeling through an assortment of bulbs and roots, pouches of herbs, and bundles of dusty powders, she found the two that she wanted—a touch of ground spice coupled with a moist bit of crushed grub.

  Carefully she watched to see that the festivities progressed uninterrupted around her. Several shoving matches drew the attentions of the crowd, and the shaman finally felt certain that no one watched her.

  Swiftly she pulled forth her hands, mingling the powder with the mash of crushed grub and casting the entire glob into the fire. A whoosh of force sucked the air from the clearing for a moment, bringing every argument to a s
top. Stunned into silence, the humanoids of Thurgol’s army gaped at the image that slowly floated upward from the fire.

  At first they could see nothing more than a shapeless form in the mist, yet even in this vague outline, it had a certain solidity that belied its gaseous nature. Slowly the vapor drew together into a white form that seemed to glow like a full moon in the darkness of the night air.

  Not a sound escaped the lips of a single dumbstruck firbolg or troll as they stared at this intangible message from they knew not where. Slowly, gradually, the white shape grew firm and solid, taking on an obvious image … the image of a snow-capped mountain summit. A rocky crag jutted sharply upward, surrounded by steep shoulders of sweeping icefields and long, precipitous cliffs.

  “The Icepeak!” breathed a firbolg. Garisa didn’t see who made the identification, but she had known that one of her tribe would do so. After all, the towering mountain, capstone of Oman’s Isle, had long been attributed as the birthplace of the giant clans. There was no other mountain in the firbolg realms that loomed so high, or bore such a distinguishing crown of snow upon its summit.

  Then the image began to waver and change. Slowly the picture of the mountain faded, returning to its shapeless circle and then, ever so slowly, forming another likeness, an object that appeared so solid that it might really have floated over the fire before the awestruck watchers.

  This time they saw the picture of a monstrous axe, its huge, double-bitted blade nicked and scarred by combat so that the runes inscribed upon its broad surface were all but unintelligible.

  “An axe!” gasped the same firbolg who had spoken before, this time quite unnecessarily.

  “The Silverhaft Axe!” Garisa broke the silence with a sudden screech of definition. “Such was the blade borne by Grond Peaksmasher at the forging of the clans!”