The War Queen

by Jane Merkley

  “Like I said. She’s a female.”

  Altarn’s skin turned so hot she believed she could char the chair handles she was gripping tightly.

  “Here’s a bit of rumor I’ve got just recently…” The others leaned in close. The same information about war circled around over and over again so soon talking about it at all become almost unbearable. Fresh news was always appreciated. “I’ve heard that Lady Altarn has sent birds to try and recruit Luthsinia!”

  One of the men snorted. “I hope she’s recruiting them as side line motivators, because they aren’t much good for anything else. They were as uninvolved in the Old Wars as they could be without cheering for the enemy. They still retained a king. They want nothing to change and especially don’t want to help anybody else change.”

  “If she’s going that far, then Altarn must be really desperate because she knows she has no chance against Lord Byrone’s army, like she’s already expecting she’ll lose.”

  This put everyone into contemplation.

  “I just can’t see why the Ruids would want to take our land. We’ve been at peace with them since Gildeon and his angels were born. Nothing ever of the sort was brought up until we got a female in the House.”

  Altarn stood briskly up, causing her chair to knock backwards onto the floor with a loud crack. The men looked askance at her. Altarn didn’t move, wondering what she was planning on doing anyway. Knowing she looked foolish at her temper-driven display, she righting the chair and left. Halfway to her room, she realized she had left her swimming attire at the table in her haste to leave but was not willing to go back for it if it meant she had to see any more men on her way.

  She unlocked the door as if trying to sever the head of the key and slammed it shut behind her.

  “Bastards,” she cursed under her breath as she tore her black braid out into a mangle of kinked chunks in front of the mirror.

  She massaged her scalp and was able to sooth a small portion of her anger as she relished in the comfort of loose hair – a small delight for her. She pulled on the chain hovering above the tub and a small bell chimed beyond the walls. After a few moments, there was a knock on her door and she opened it to three servant boys carrying a large pot of boiling water each. They deposited the steaming water into the tub and then left. Locking the door after them, she undressed and sunk into the water. She hissed at its burning temperature.

  She was determined to not let the men’s words downstairs upset her, but that was like pretending a pack of wolves circling about weren’t going to eat you.

  Females had not held a position of power for a very long time. Since the Old Wars, in fact. They had done such a good job that men became jealous and butted in, and then touted that females were beautiful and gentle and should be treated delicately.

  At least she knew Blindvar’s weapon systems and knew how to fight with several of them; something she knew Byrone couldn’t do. She would be amazed if he could get out of bed.

  She allowed herself a private giggle as she imaged Byrone’s fat body rolling across the floor like a barrel, pushed by his servants because he was too heavy to pick back up.

  The continuation of this thought made her laugh louder, and by the end of it, she was calmer. She would break through men’s preemptive ideals about women.

  She finished her wash and dried with the provided towels. The two moons outside – the larger a soft white, the smaller an ash gray – battled their heats through her open window. The breeze coming through wrapped her in a taint of cold earth.

  She crawled into her bed, reading Kyree’s note one last time, and dreamed of a world void of men.

  Candle Wax

  Temples were built to be the most beautiful structures in any city. But as of late, only a handful looked upon them with only a measure of admiration that still just barely qualified it as pretty.

  Even less still prayed in them.

  The temple echoed like a hollow tomb at night, as if relying on sun beams to fill it with something more than the empty faith from the people that had left that day.

  The Prayer room behind the chapel glowed with a hundred candles, like a small sun unto itself.

  Priestess Miraha and her two temple sisters were knelt in prayer, clasping hands in a circle with heads bowed low, knees sunk into a crust of white wax boiled from the hundred candles before them lit to inspire insight.

  Miraha let go of all thought and concentrated on that one desire of her heart. What happened to Gildeon? It was a question not asked once, but a thousand times by every priest and priestess for the past sixteen years. That prayer has remained silent. But no one has been willing to stop trying.

  She knew it was going to be so this night… and then she accosted herself. She was certainly not going to get answers if she thought that way. Every day was fresh, every prayer was brand new. This one mattered just as much as the very first, and the very last.

  She cleared her mind and started over.

  She waited patiently, watching, listening, feeling everything and anything that might provide an answer, an essence of what was otherwise too quiet to hear unless in prayer.

  “The time to know begins this night.”

  Miraha sucked in her breath and almost broke her intense concentration. Her heart thrummed faster. She almost believed it was her own thoughts entering this meditation, but the voice was distinct, and spoken by a man.

  Then she wondered if she should respond, and worried that she had ruined the delicate connection with her unexpected shock, but a tiny pinprick of light appeared center of the blackness behind her eyelids. She watched patiently, careful to check her emotions so as not to pull her out of what a million prayers had pleaded to receive.

  The pinprick stretched wider, and images appeared, made up of large blurs of more light.

  Was this Velmashyn? The place where Gildeon and his angels lived?

  She blinked to make sure it was not her own thoughts interrupting this mediation, but the scene before her was such that she could not generate a sight like this on her own.

  She couldn’t describe what Velmashyn looked like. That was a privilege only the faithful dead can have; her mind-sight had created a narrow funnel so she only saw what her gold-blessed invitation would let her see.

  Gildeon was sitting on his glory and all was as it should be. But an angel approached and spoke with him. They spoke for some time, and Gildeon was becoming increasingly angry. Then suddenly, the angel turned and ran from him. Miraha did not understand why Gildeon chased him.

  The scene shifted. Miraha saw Fangbor – the four pillars and an altar on a hilltop above Niesh. There were clerics there, one was giving birth, the contractions having come on so suddenly…

  The sky and earth roared. An image fell from the clouds, then another. The earth shuddered. Miraha recognized them as Gildeon and the angel. Her heart raced, and she worried she would lose the connection.

  Gildeon grabbed hold of the angel as they fell onto the pillars. The pillars broke.

  The scene was becoming more disjointed, the blurs of light melding together.

  Huilian broke into several pieces. There was a baby girl, the body so brand new that her soul was still on its trip from Velmashyn to occupy the body. Before her soul had reached its mortal frame, Huilian put a piece of his soul inside her body. When the baby’s soul finally came to earth, Huilian whisked it up for himself.

  “You are a monster, Huilian,” Miraha heard.

  A dark choke of laughter.

  Emotions were too intense. She opened her eyes to break the connection and let go of the two priestess’s hands, trying to contain sobs. Her temple sisters broke their own prayers and gathered her into their arms.

  “Miraha!” Juquan held her close, gently patting Miraha’s short black hair.

  Both sisters waited patiently for Miraha to compose herself, which she did with three gulps of air.

  “I’m okay,” she said finally, patting Juquan’s hand who let go of her. “I’
m okay.”

  “What happened?” Sashaia’s large brown eyes watched her hungrily.

  Miraha hesitated. “I don’t know how to put it into words,” she said. “I need more insight.”

  “Then you did see something!” Sashaia exclaimed.

  “Something, yes, but something I feel I owe Priest Herten the respect to tell first.” Miraha was so shaken by the truth of what she saw, that feeling overcame her joy at having finally been the one to discover it. She need time to understand it herself.

  “We understand.” Juquan nodded, though her eyes glistened with excitement. “But let us know later if you are able. The candles are low. Are we all ready to retire for the night?” she asked both sisters.

  “I… I will stay a while longer,” Miraha said, hoping her sisters would not hear the slight tremor in her voice. “I need to make sure I understand what I saw.”

  The two sisters touched her gently as they parted from the room.

  The open windows invited a chill wind which buffeted the candle flame. Miraha’s thin white dress did nothing to prevent the cold that penetrated her skin like the dark laughter in her vision had.

  She tried for two hours more to get her eyes back into her mind, to see again what no other priest or priestess had seen, ashamed she had broken the connection because the sight was too horrible to witness. She tried to clear her mind, but her earlier meditation left its striking content at the very front of her eyes and she could not rid its burning.

  She finally relented and sat back on her heels. Alone and still shaken, the warmth from the dying candles could not distract her from the cold and empty darkness between the flames. A possible truth she had discovered that night. Gildeon lived.

  And so did that dark angel that had fallen with him.

  Forlorn

  The wind screamed between the sickly pillars; screamed… like over the bones of the decayed, through the rotting faithless, between the cracks and breaks in the despairing soul.

  Screamed within herself.

  She fell to her knees when she reached the place, hands tightly pressed on the stone. She hated this place, hated it more than the hell she was going to. Once believed to be the closest spot a mortal could get to Gildeon’s feet, it had become something darker than sin, so one could feel it creep upon their skin. She felt the creeping now, but she felt it all the time inside herself so it did nothing to evade her away. It was an eating darkness, gnawing on the flesh eager to chomp down to the soul. They could eat all they wanted. She had no soul for them to chomp on.

  The white-washed pillars, like jagged edges of bone, shivered still under the impact of the god when he fell on them.

  The eating darkness pulled on her black hair tenderly, brushing her cheek as it recognized who she was.

  “Forlorn,” it named her. “Forlorn…”

  The darkness cuddled with her. She let it comfort her. She wanted to embrace it. It was warm, quiet, gentle… things she never felt herself. It wasn’t her that wanted this. It was that thing inside of her. She cursed that thing… she damned it. She encouraged the darkness to eat her skin so that it might go so far deep that it might also eat that thing… eat it out of her – out of her heart, out of her mind.

  “Feast,” she whispered back. “Eat it all.”

  It wasn’t her soul structured betwixt her bones.

  Lorn she called herself, or rather, Huilian called her, that thing inside her.

  But the darkness whispered Forlorn into her ear.

  “I am here,” she answered. “But I do not know where I am.”

  In an instant, her thoughts and eyes were seared as light blasted over her body in a wash of cold morning. She almost screamed from the pain. Or rather, Huilian screamed.

  A voice behind her. Whose was it?

  “What are you doing here?”

  She opened her eyes, bleary from agony. The darkness was gone. Only pale and bleeding light from the rising morning.

  “Madame…”

  That voice again. How irritating. What did it belong too?

  “Madame!” A hand gripped her shoulder.

  Lorn sprung like an animal. She jumped away and stared with fixed eyes on the man who had touched her.

  He was dressed in soft colors of the earth with a hint of violet mixed with green so when he turned a certain way in the light the color rippled. He had a bow on his back and a long sword on his hip. Tight black curls tumbled down the sides of his face to his jaw. A shadow of growth around his chin and neck testified he had been patrolling all day.

  “Madame, this place is off limits. I’ll ask you to leave once. If getting you away requires more than that, I will go to further measures to make it happen.” He put his hand on the hilt of his sword to demonstrate his measures.

  “Off limits?” Lorn looked around the valley that was free to her view from the hilltop she and the pillars were standing. “It’s just a place exactly like any other place on the land.” She stared at her feet. “God forsaken.”

  “Madame!” Lorn watched the ranger shifting uncomfortably, likely bothered greatly by the demonic feel of the place that Lorn was numb too. “In the name of Lady Altarn, take thy feet off this place!”

  “I like it here. No, no, I hate it here.” Lorn turned from him and stared out into the sun until all she could see was white fire, hoping to burn the soul out of her.

  She felt pressure around her body, and she wondered if she should just give in, let the soul take her. But then she realized it was the ranger dragging her to his horse.

  She convulsed wildly like an uncoiled spring. The ranger grabbed at her wrists. She tried to kick at him but he was wrestling her to the ground.

  “What are you doing to me?”

  “You are being detained on trespassing charges.”

  “Let me go!” Lorn cried.

  A tiny prick punctured the side of her neck. Within seconds, she fell into a void of dark silence.

  Ruid Tattoo

  Altarn was jostled awake by a knock on her door. Throwing on a robe that was provided with the room, she opened the door to a bright-eyed young woman.

  “It is ninth morning hour,” she said.

  Altarn nodded and closed the door.

  Breakfast was included with the room and she sat apart as far as she could from the rest of the guests so as to avoid early frustrations.

  Handing in her key after her meal, she headed to the stables to claim her horse.

  She stopped back at the aviary once more with another note to Jasper: Going out into the big dangerous world of Niesh again. I should have brought Lotus. It’s kind of scary out here.

  Lotus was a secret that only Kyree and Jasper knew about. Kyree, because she made Altarn’s bed every morning. Jasper, because she had made the mistake of bringing her purple colored, cotton stuffed toy pony to the military barracks once while she was in the service. She had done it purely out of habit because it was her first time so far away from home. That horse had caught many a tear from her and it was hard to get rid of one of the last things she still looked to for comfort, even as childish as it was. She had endured the embarrassment with a smile and put the toy out of sight, though still within arm’s reach.

  She ate lunch at a small sandwich shop and then waited around in the shade of the tents in the stockyard for the caravan to leave. Finally, the caravan master arrived and soon the team of horses and wagons were lurching forward.

  This part of Blindvar was a rugged bowel of mountains. Ashnar had claimed a hilltop to itself, connected to Niesh nestled in the valley beneath by a road that gently descended for five miles. Even though Niesh was considered the lowest point in the mountain range, the caravan would continue to descend the closer they came to Yott.

  Altarn had never stepped over Blindvar’s border. Luthsinia was populated more so lately by Ruids and Blindvarns alike who still had tight bonds with each other and wanted to avoid the coming war they felt was started irresponsibly.

  It had been a while sinc
e Altarn had ridden in a saddle for so long, and her body told her EXACTLY how it felt about it three hours into the ride.

  But by then Yott could be seen in the distance. Just before the last hill the caravan had to descend, the caravan was forced to stop at a control point before crossing the border into Luthsinia. The caravan master went into a fit of rage when the guards asked to see everyone’s right arm and search every cart.

  “See what the Lady has done!” he vented to everyone who would hear. “She’s backed up my train. They’ve never searched the carts!”

  “Rumors are becoming more stable,” scuffed one of the guards as the fuming caravan master shoved the sleeve up his right arm. “Oh, and you’ll like this one… I also need to see your tags seeing you are not a Ruid.”

  “This is madness!”

  “So my king knows exactly who is in his state.”

  Altarn was hoping to sneak by without being checked. She was wearing Kyree’s name tags for this very reason but it still reflected Altarn’s household. But the guards were watching carefully and they caught her trying to sneak casually by.

  “Hold on, lady.” The guard grabbed her horse’s bridle. “Now I know you’ve got something to hide.”

  Snarling, she pulled the tags out of her shirt.

  “Please don’t say anything,” she said as the guard’s eyes narrowed, writing down the name on his ledger. “I don’t want questions and it could endanger me if people are that angry with Altarn.”

  The guard nodded and passed her through.

  The final road leaving the mountain range turned steeply downward. It had been made at the lowest point the road masters could find, but riders still had to hold the reins on the horses to keep them from galloping too quickly down.

  Though Yott was generically just a small village, it teamed with visitors from miles around as it was the caravans’ first stop coming into Luthsinia.

  Altarn thanked the caravan master, more earnest than necessary, perhaps, but she couldn’t help feeling a little bad because it was because of her that the caravan had to be searched.