The Queen of Storm and Shadow

by Jenna Rhodes

  “I would have to. He doesn’t leave me much choice. He treats with these Gods as if they were his playthings, and they are not. They are the very foundations of creation and destruction, and we are best off if they never notice us because we are, truly, no more than grains of sand to them. Still, like an oyster, they can feel irritation, and they do not like it in their sleep.”

  “Bregan says they’re already awake.”

  “Then we’ll tiptoe if we have to, until they sleep again.” He paused. “I wanted my destiny once, yearned to be what I was created for, and now I know that I’m capable of more. Trust me, Kerith is better off without Gods.”

  “Without kings, too.”

  “Sadly, though you meant it to be sharp and hurting, you’re probably right.” He moved his hand from her chin. “Dream for me. I need insight because I am blind on this, Ceyla, and I don’t like killing as the only option.”

  “Is that my king’s order?”

  “No. I wouldn’t do that to you. It’s a friend’s request, but it’s not being made lightly. I ask your aid.”

  Ceyla closed her eyes briefly. Normally she would see a flash of darkness, with the sunlight burning beyond it in the daylight, nothingness if it were night. This time, however, she caught a sense of figures moving, of color, and she could hear a murmur of sound. It waited for her, this vision, as though Diort’s words had called it up, out of her. How could she deny either?

  She opened her eyes and began to retreat into the tent which had become her home. She had begun to sweat. “Don’t awaken me. Have Mallen sit at the flaps, listen, and write. But don’t let him awaken me, no matter what.” Her skin chilled suddenly as the sweat evaporated off her in the dry wind. “No matter.”

  “Done, and let me thank you now.” He put his hand on her shoulder, bent, and his lips swept her cheekbone.

  Ceyla froze at the threshold to her own tent as he left her and she felt, for a moment, as if he had taken all the light and air in the world. She stirred, feeling light-headed, and entered her sanctum. She would have sworn she wasn’t sleepy, that she could never rest with the storm of thoughts tumbling through her head, and she would have been wrong, for she collapsed on her pallet and was asleep almost before her eyes even shut.

  • • •

  Mallen came as soon as Diort beckoned, dragging his stool and box of instruments and paper with him. The lord had told him to wait until he spoke with Ceyla, so he readied and consequently rested in place almost the moment Ceyla disappeared within her tent. He rolled his graphite stylus in his fingers, poised over the precious sheets of paper his king had purchased for him. Not as permanent as ink onto parchment or vellum, perhaps, but slightly less costly to obtain and easier to use. Mallen had, however, long ago become accustomed to the permanent ink stains on his fingers. They spoke to his position as a scribe, just as Diort’s facial tattoos spoke of his bloodline and training. They were both equally proud of their indelible markings.

  He heard a soft cry from within the tent and knew that Ceyla had already sunk deeply into her dreams. She would remember some of them and relate them when she woke, but they had discovered that it was even more beneficial to the oracle to have someone write what she called out—as difficult as it was for people to speak in their dreams, she had become adjusted to doing so, within the safety of Diort’s care. He listened, his writing instrument at alert in his hand.

  He is stooped and bent with age, hairy body gone nearly bald to expose his leathery skin. His tusks are yellowed. Children scream and cry with fear at him. He is viewed with disdain and suspicion, like all of his people, for being animal. But he is not. He is a friend of the high courts and warriors. He has fought beside the greats and he has come from his retirement among his people to fight one last time.

  Mallen cocked his head as the words fell to silence. He made a small note of his own beside what he had written: Bolger? She began to speak again, cutting short his own wonderings.

  Pastures once grazed now fallow. Streams fed with melted snow. Below lies the sickness of the Mageborn. Nothing good can come from here now.

  Two small children play on the grass. Their guard watches. Too much time passes.

  The Gods are speaking. Who are we to answer? What shall we answer?

  The Great Mouth opens. Its teeth march out, sharp though dark with rot. Its breath is smoke, its tongue is flame. Yet we allow the Mouth to open and stretch wide its jaws to snap at us! Why?

  Do not trust the heavens.

  The trader leads down a crooked path that must be followed and then judged. All will be shattered.

  After many lapses, broken by fitful speech, Ceyla falls into a deep quiet. Mallen stretches his hand for a moment, his fingers having gone tense and tight about his writing instrument. He scanned what he had been able to copy and fear tickles the back of his mind. Abayan Diort won’t be pleased with what he has to show, and the Oracle will not bear the brunt of that displeasure. Instead, he will face the questions: did he listen closely? Was there anything said that he could not transcribe in time? Did she utter words he could not translate or understand? Whatever flaws in the dreaming, he would bear part of the responsibility. Mallen sighed. He sat very still for a long time until he heard Ceyla rise and stumble about her tent, her dreaming done.

  He hated to relinquish his papers when Diort came to claim them, but Mallen did as expected, gathering up his little wooden case and instruments, bowing, and leaving. Behind him, Ceyla walked out of the tent to join the king. As the two of them bent over the papers, the last he could hear was, “I don’t remember what I dreamed. How could I know what it means?”

  “If you don’t remember, then I have to act upon my own judgment.”

  “You’d still put him down.”

  “Like I would an animal suffering a mortal injury? Out of necessity and care? Yes, I would.”

  “Then go,” she told him. “Go and see him now. Don’t do anything until you go and see him, and report back to me. Then, if your mind is still fixed, do what you must.”

  He straightened, his back as tight as if he’d a spear fastened to it, unyielding length pressing his spine rigidly.

  “You challenge me.”

  Ceyla tore her gaze from the papers she held and smiled faintly. “I’ve no need to do that. You challenge yourself. It’s one of the many things I love about you.” And she looked back down to the prophecies in her hand, frowning as she thought to decipher them.

  The Gods speak, indeed. He might as well go try to understand what it was they might have said. He left her and went in search of Bregan. He found him without too much trouble on the outskirts of the camp, and the trader tilted his head, noting his arrival.

  “They are sunk into the very bones of the earth.”

  Diort halted short of where Bregan sat on the ground, his legs spread wide as a child might sit, his fingers grubbing about aimlessly in the dirt, pulling up bits of grass and pebble. Diort paused but a moment before responding. “The Gods.”

  “Of course! Who else?”

  “One might think you speak of the dead. Or of the gems and minerals we pull out of the ground. Or even drops of rain, sunk deep enough.”

  “Ah.” Bregan scratched at his neck. “I didn’t think of that.”

  “So you are deep thinking without philosophical depth.”

  Bregan ignored him as he squinted about, eyelids narrowed to near closing, wrinkles about them clenched, fingers curled. “I can hear them dreaming.”

  “Do they say anything of interest or do they merely snore?”

  Bregan twisted to face him. “You are mocking, guardian.”

  “Yes. I could be. The question that vexes me, however, is wondering if it is you who mock.”

  “Me?” Bregan repeated, in outrage.

  “You. I sit you with teachers and you ignore them. I could understand if you wished to shar
e this philosophy of yours with them, or if you argued with them outright about past history as you know it, or you challenged them . . . but you ignore them as if they did not exist. How can you learn if you do not learn to ask questions and listen to answers? What use is it to try to teach you?”

  Bregan’s expression fell. He combed his grimy fingertips into the dirt. “The noise of the Gods fills my ears. I can’t always hear.”

  “You must hear something.”

  He looked away. “Sometimes.”

  “And?”

  “I . . . don’t listen.”

  “And we’re back to the beginning of our discussion.” Diort squatted, a position he could hold for hours, a stance drummed into him as a youth when all his people were nomads and rested that way at the fireside or the tent. He would know he had indeed grown old when his body refused to lower and raise him. “You don’t listen. You will not learn. Tell me if I am wrong—do you know everything you need to know about being a Mageborn?”

  “I don’t know anything.” Bregan’s lip twisted. “And neither do they.”

  “Then I should find you new teachers.”

  An upward glance. “There are no Mageborn to find.”

  “There are librarians and historians who have studied the old Mageborn. Perhaps the ones I brought you aren’t expert enough. All theory and no practice.”

  “No one knows.”

  “You do.”

  Bregan’s nails dug violently into the soft dirt. “I’m not learning it right. Nor do I know it well enough.”

  “If you know the history, you might find a way to tap what is inside you. A caravan master needs a map and a destination, but he doesn’t always have to have traveled the route to navigate it successfully.”

  “You’re upset by what I did to Tolby Farbranch. You’d be far more upset if I brought the Gods of Wind to an entire city and laid waste for their blasphemy.”

  “Unless you’ve studied, you have no way of knowing if it is true blasphemy or not. Do you?”

  A shake of the head for an answer.

  “You attacked Tolby because the Gods urged you to?”

  “They spoke to me. A whirlwind carried me.”

  Abayan drew a small symbol in the dirt with his index finger before wiping it out with the side of his hand. “Men often hear voices that speak no good to them. I can’t, however, explain away the whirlwind.”

  “See—”

  “Unless you called it up yourself.”

  “I don’t know how!”

  “But the power to do so might reside with you, untapped. We don’t know. We are not likely to know until you’ve studied a bit. Gods exist, good and ill, and there are demons which are always ill. How can I know which you talk with, and which you believe, and whose word you will act upon? How can I trust you if you are not learned?”

  “You can’t.”

  “No. And if I cannot trust you, if you persist in turning away all the guidance I try to make available to you, that trust will never develop. You become a wildfire upon the grasslands, one which I must put out, before all is consumed. Do you understand?”

  Bregan tossed his hand outward, scattering dust to the wind. “You’ll kill me.”

  “I will execute you, yes. For the safety and well-being of my people.”

  “How is that different?”

  “To you, it isn’t. To me, it means I did it because I judged it, and weighed it, and tried to find recourse around it, and could not. It was the only viable decision.”

  Bregan cackled. “Death is not viable.”

  “No.”

  “Either way, I’m still dead.”

  “Regrettably.”

  “You wouldn’t regret it as much as I.”

  “The dead are merely dead. I doubt they feel much beyond the grave. The living feel for quite a while longer.” Diort stood. “I’m not threatening you, Bregan. I’m trying to understand what makes you unwilling to try. To let you understand how I view your actions, both petty and otherwise.”

  “What did Ceyla say?”

  “Nothing that would save you.”

  “Oh.” Bregan looked up at him. “Nothing?”

  He shook his head. “Nothing.”

  Bregan let his breath out in a long, drawn-out sigh.

  “Did you expect her to?”

  “I thought she might hear the Gods, too.”

  “She is Vaelinar,” he reminded the other.

  “True. How unfortunately true. Could you find a Kernan oracle?”

  “Not a reliable one. The best oracle is you telling me you will listen and learn, as best you can.”

  Bregan stood, dusting his hands off. His breeches hung with dirt and grass clumps and he dusted uselessly at them as well. Finally, he muttered, “I will try.”

  “And I will get you some new tutors.”

  “Do that!” Bregan shouted at his turned back. “And I’ll do this!” He pushed his hands into the sky and spoke a word Abayan didn’t recognize but felt in the depths of his skeleton.

  A whirlwind rose up and grabbed them both in its turbulent spirals. Diort felt the sickening moment when his feet left the ground and he began to spin so fast he couldn’t center himself, his stomach revolting and his breath torn from his lungs. He put a hand up, and the wind’s pressure immediately grabbed it, flinging his arm wide. He pulled it back to his side before his shoulder could give out and hugged himself, completely helpless in the whirlwind’s grip. Somewhere in the swirling dust and chaos, he could hear Bregan’s delighted howl. Diort closed his eyes tightly. Only a madman would enjoy this ride. They plunged, and Diort’s eyes flew open.

  He could only see clearly straight up and straight down. Downward, the ground sped under his feet in a blur, dirt undistinguishable from rock and grass and shrub. He forced his chin up and looked upward through the spout toward bits of blue sky and white-streaked clouds, a view that dizzied him even more.

  As suddenly as it began, the twister stopped, dumping him unceremoniously to the ground. Bregan landed next to him, giggling maniacally. The funnel retreated from them but stayed near, clay-colored dust rising in its depths, feuding with the storm-colored cloud that seemed to comprise most of the phenomena.

  “I told you! But you didn’t believe me!”

  “I did believe you. There was no other way you could have covered the distance you did, but—” And Diort looked at the whirlwind. “I didn’t understand you.”

  He cautiously got to his knees. He did not recognize the wilderness where they’d been brought. A strange fragrance hung in the air. Birdsong started up, as if it had been quelled by the twister and then released. Bent thistles underfoot crunched as he stood and took a step away.

  An eerie voice, more whine than words, spoke up. “Do not stray. The land here is unforgiving.”

  An insect with an uncommonly long stinger paused by his eyebrow. Diort refrained from smacking it out of the air only because experience had taught him that such creatures normally only stung when threatened and that if he missed, he would invariably be stung. When he swung about slowly, he saw that he stood at the edge of a place where dirt did not rule as the ground, a miasma of color did.

  A curtain of mist rose up from the rainbow and broke off into unnerving shapes before dissipating with a faint howl. Trees at the far boundary grew from raw edges of ground in twisted, knotted shapes that bespoke a wind which blew here, and often, that he could not yet feel. A . . . thing . . . flowed through the colors, triangular head up, blazing green eyes reflecting the sunlight, a brush of a tail following after, a thing which ignored them entirely as it trotted past, looking for prey. It might have been a sand fox, once. Or perhaps not. It was the gait and the tail that hinted at its origin but not convincingly so, for its hide was an oily black and there had been a red cast hidden deep in its green eyes.

&nbs
p; Diort wanted to step farther away from it, but he seemed to be on one of the few pieces of actual ground. Bregan looked as if he might launch himself into the midst of the coloring pot, but Diort caught him by the collar.

  “Don’t.”

  Bregan froze, reluctantly, with a doglike murmur of disappointment as he sank back down. He fiddled with a clasp on his brace.

  The fine and familiar piece of craftsmanship no longer adorned his leg. In its place, a contraption of mottled black wood and thorn wrapped about Bregan, looking as painful as it did useful. The briars ranged from thumb-long to as long as his hand and looked to be locked into Bregan’s flesh and muscle. Blood did not spring up from the various places where the brace hooked in, but bright, crimson flowers bloomed there, small and tightly curled buds of incredibly brilliant color. Bregan picked at one, his own expression crumpled and hurt.

  The whirlwind spoke again. “It does not belong here; therefore its aspect is alien and hostile.”

  “I need it off.”

  “It won’t leave you. It’s not supposed to.” Diort only guessed but he felt correct.

  Bregan ran his hand over it, palm down. It seemed to have no effect, but the etchings of pain left his face as he did. When finished, he leaned back with a sigh.

  “We’re at a badlands.”

  “War is coming.”

  Diort laughed, a short burst of scorn. “War is always coming. If Gods stayed awake and paid attention, they would know there is scarcely a moment of true peace for the world to treasure. It takes no prophet to utter that.”

  “The coming war will be as this one was.” And as the whirlwind’s voice grew sterner, so did the chaos in front of them increase, boiling like a pot set over a blazing fire. “This is what happens when Gods go to war. There is no surrender. There is no victory. There is only destruction.”

  “The Mageborn were men. Foolish, arrogant ones at that.”

  “Men who thought they were Gods. Men who believed they could harness such as Myself.” The whirlwind churned faster, turning dark. “They turned their backs on their fellows and perverted their gifts. They sought to climb into the heavens on the backs of their victories and destruction. We did not allow that. Not then, not now.”