Upon the Flight of the Queen

by Howard Andrew Jones

  “I haven’t judged yet. But I’ve seen the way you treated Lelanc. And I know you abandoned Alantris.”

  “You’ve obviously spent a whole lot less time protecting the realms than you have practicing with hearthstones,” Kyrkenall said.

  Cerai set down the goblet and crossed one slim booted leg over the other. She rested one hand upon each chair arm, looking very much like a queen upon her throne. “Well. I thought my hard work might save the realms. It’s too late for that, but I’m the only one who’ll be able to restore some semblance of their previous appearance.”

  The woman spoke with such matter-of-fact surety that Elenai felt a chill. “From the storm your kobalin told us about?”

  “Yes. It’s going to wipe out nearly everything. That’s the reason I’m preserving Lelanc, frustrating as she is. The queen’s grand experiment is going to begin any day now. And we’ll be lucky if there’s a single realm left by the time she’s through.”

  “So the queen’s going to summon a storm?” Elenai asked, doubtful.

  “No. That’s not what she’s planning to do. But she’s so obsessed that she won’t listen to reason or see where her actions will lead.”

  Kyrkenall took the reins, sounding remarkably composed. “You’ve clearly been sharpening your claws here, Cerai. If the queen’s about to do something stupid, why haven’t you challenged her?”

  “I might have, earlier. But I tried too long to reason with her. Once I realized just how dangerous she really was, it was too late. I have finite skills. I can’t risk myself, or I risk losing all that’s at stake. I have followers for menial tasks, and an army to fend off the curious, but as you’ve seen, that army isn’t capable of a great deal of independent thought. The queen, on the other hand, has many more hearthstones and a whole cadre of people trained to use them. Until recently she also had Denaven, and the entire Altenerai Corps.”

  “You could have come to Altenerai you could be sure of,” Kyrkenall suggested. “Like me.”

  “Oh, Kyrkenall, I’ve always liked you. But you’re hardly dependable.”

  “All right then, but over the years you might have spoken to Aradel, or Varama, or Decrin, or Tretton. Even Enada.”

  “Aradel’s dead now, and Varama is probably dead, too. Pity, that. She was very clever. And I imagine poor Rylin died with her. I really wanted to take him along with me, but he was just too heavy.”

  “You’ll be happy to know that Varama lives. And Rylin does as well, although he was gravely wounded.”

  Cerai’s head tilted. “That wasn’t so very long ago. How could you possibly know the details and be here?”

  “A little bit of magery.”

  Cerai’s gaze instantly swung upon Elenai. It wasn’t cold, exactly, but it was searching. Elenai knew then that she’d been reappraised, reclassified perhaps from curiosity to potential threat.

  “And the city?” Cerai asked.

  “Thousands are dead, and the Naor are in control. Thousands more will die.” Kyrkenall gestured to the surrounding stone. “We could use your help. And your army, to turn them back.”

  “Don’t you mean to accuse me of treachery?” Cerai asked. There was a purring, catlike quality to the query.

  “Do you want me to accuse you of treachery?”

  She sighed. “It’s too late to risk ourselves with anything related to what they’re doing. But I would welcome your help.”

  “You need our help?” Elenai asked.

  “I’ll need assistance once the repairs start. I didn’t want to involve anyone sooner because I didn’t want any hands dropping ingredients in the stew pot. I’m the head chef. I know exactly what I’m doing.”

  “We still don’t know what the queen’s up to,” Elenai said. As Cerai reached over and broke open a crispy hunk of bread, she resisted the impulse to reach out and join her.

  “The queen thinks she’s going to bring eternal blessings to the realms by restoring a lost goddess for us all to worship.”

  “We’ve been hearing a little about her,” Kyrkenall said.

  “How much do you know?”

  “Belahn told us that the hearthstones were a kind of altar to this goddess, and that the queen was going to call her back.”

  “So Belahn talked to you about it?”

  “He was dying,” Kyrkenall said.

  “My. The bodies are piling up.” Cerai paused to swallow, then brushed crumbs from her hands. “He didn’t quite get the details right, but he had the gist of it. The queen’s convinced those idiots she’s surrounded herself with that you can reconstruct the being whose imprint is threaded through the hearthstones, simply by stacking them in the right shape and activating all of them at once. Do you know what’s going to happen when that much power is streaming out in the same place?”

  “I’m guessing it’s not good,” Kyrkenall said.

  “That’s an understatement. She’s going to loose an immense amount of destructive power. We’re almost surely looking at dissolution of all but the realm centers. Maybe even those.”

  “How do you know it won’t work?” Elenai asked.

  “Because I know how the Goddess was destroyed in the first place.” Once again Cerai looked pleased with herself. “There’s nothing left but the energy. And once our idiot queen releases it…” She shook her head with dramatic regret.

  “Why is Leonara so obsessed with this?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “She thinks she holds the secret keys to paradise, Kyrkenall, so that none of those little problems like Naor and kobalin, and storms, and decaying borders will ever plague us again. Just one god controlling all, through her loyal queen.”

  Elenai had any number of questions, but she was still struggling to absorb the information.

  “So there really is, or was, a Goddess like this?” Kyrkenall asked.

  Cerai shrugged slim shoulders. “The founders thought of her as one. A god of our gods, if you will.”

  “And what happened to this goddess?” Kyrkenall asked.

  Elenai had begun to suspect the answer.

  “Our gods got together and killed her. And her loyal adherent, Sartain.” Cerai smiled. “That paints things a different color, doesn’t it? It turns out the betrayer was the only loyal one.”

  Elenai opened her mouth to inquire further, but Cerai cut her off.

  “Why don’t I just summarize. That will save a lot of time, because it does seem that you’ve missed some details. The queen began hunting hearthstones after she chanced upon a memory stone left by none other than Sartain. The Gods we know and love and worship were all busy outdoing each other with their creations, but Sartain and the Goddess got tired of it. Our revered Gods ambushed her and Sartain and defeated them. The battle’s survivors decided to scatter her hearthstones all over the realms so that no one person would have access to all the power in one place.” Cerai paused to crunch delicately into another hunk of bread and Elenai watched enviously.

  “You can join in anytime you like,” Cerai said.

  Elenai shook her head.

  “Suit yourself. Now, the hearthstones have an added benefit. They create points of solidity, wherever they are. By scattering them around the realms the founders actually solidified our borders. And some small fragments and splinters came into being that wouldn’t normally have existed because they coalesced around stones that had been left in the Shifting Lands. When the queen started retrieving them, she upset everything. Altering the borders changes the energy patterns in the shifts. That’s part of the reason the storms have grown so much more volatile and frequent lately.”

  “Part of the reason?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “Well, we have an inherently unstable system. These little islands of creation that the founders made weren’t really designed for permanence. They’re like unfinished sketches. They’d be more secure if they weren’t poised always on the brink of chaos.”

  “That explains a lot, actually,” Kyrkenall said. “Although we’d suspected some of it.”

>   Elenai finally found her voice. “Why hasn’t the queen acted before now? Was it because she didn’t have enough hearthstones?”

  “In part. They also have to be assembled in just the right way, which is painstaking. She still doesn’t have them all, but she thinks it’s close enough. For the longest time she was desperate to present the Goddess with what Leonara called the keystone—sort of a master design of the realms—so that the Goddess would grant her immediate permission to restore the original plan. But I liberated that stone. I thought it might slow her down, but it doesn’t seem to have done so.”

  “We need to stop her before she opens those assembled hearthstones,” Kyrkenall said.

  “I think I’ve explained why that’s impossible.”

  “Nothing’s impossible. N’lahr just defeated an entire Naor army, and Mazakan, with a herd of eshlack. We can stop the queen. Maybe all this problem needs is the right arrow.”

  “That’s a brave sentiment, Kyrkenall. But you’ve only a few days, at best. And besides, the Naor are nearly to the walls of Darassus right now, with an army that’s going to smash it flat. Even if you stop the queen you can’t save Darassus.”

  “What?” Kyrkenall demanded.

  “The Naor have a sorcerer of their own, and he’s been playing with hearthstones and blood magic. I would have stopped him but it would have taken time and energy I simply didn’t have.”

  “You don’t even sound like you care,” Elenai said.

  “I’ve resigned myself to the destruction of Darassus some time ago. It’s happening in a different way, but…” She shrugged.

  “How do you know all this?” Kyrkenall asked. “Where did this army come from?”

  “I can monitor things through my own small collection of hearthstones.”

  Elenai was tiring of her matter-of-fact tone. “Monitor how?”

  “There’s so much I can show you.” Cerai might have been striving to sound kind, but the result was condescending. She was more genuine as she swung her attention to Kyrkenall. “Look. I understand your first instincts. Really, I do. And if you want to go charging off, you can. I won’t stop you. But there’s no way that you’ll reach Darassus in time to make any difference.”

  “Can you tell what’s happened to N’lahr, and what’s going on in Alantris?” Kyrkenall asked.

  “I didn’t even know he was alive,” Cerai reminded them. “And the Naor already destroyed the walls of Alantris and took the city. None of it matters. It’s all going to be destroyed anyway and it’s not worth dashing about to try and do anything. I see you don’t believe me.”

  “It’s not that we don’t believe you,” Elenai said. “It’s that we disagree. You may be unwilling to fulfill your oath, but we’re up to the challenge.”

  She seemed finally to have disrupted the older woman’s equanimity. Cerai glared. “I’ve spent the last five years of my life finding a way to fix the problem the queen’s brewing. You can’t even conceive the time and effort and sacrifice it’s taken.”

  “Whose sacrifice?” Elenai asked.

  A contemptuous frown crossed Cerai’s features, and she shifted her attention to Kyrkenall. “There will be a lot of work to do. I’ll need the assistance of other mages, as well, to put things right.” She nodded to Elenai without really looking at her. “We’ll have to rebuild almost entirely from scratch. Fortunately, the keystone contains the original plans. It will be a tremendous aid. Why don’t you stay, and help me?”

  “That’s the real reason you didn’t want help before, isn’t it?” Elenai asked. She didn’t wait for an answer. “You’re looking forward to this. You get to remake the world yourself, maybe with a few improvements.”

  Cerai laughed. “Look what I’ve done here! Imagine what I can do with even more energies!”

  “Isn’t that exactly what the queen thinks?”

  “The queen wants to turn power over to a greater being. I mean to take the reins myself.”

  “I think we’re going to have to pass,” Kyrkenall said. “Although we’ll be happy to help rebuild if we can’t stop the queen.”

  Maybe he’d be happy. Maybe, though, he was just trying to stay on her good side, and Elenai was the one betraying her temper. Elenai looked sidelong at Kyrkenall, realized his road was the safer one, and wondered when it was that they’d switched roles.

  “It sounds as though Darassus needs us,” Kyrkenall continued, and Elenai kept silent.

  “You won’t make it in time. The best you can hope for is to end up killed by the Naor. More likely you’ll be separated into component pieces by a storm. And I won’t be able to put you back together, even if I know you well.”

  She sounded disappointed in the last, like someone did when they’d been drafting a poem that hadn’t turned out. Elenai suspected that she must have tried to put people back together. She wondered how far she’d gotten.

  “Elenai’s kept us together through some pretty terrible storms.”

  “Has she? Well, the thing about riding through the storms is that you have somewhere to go. If everything’s blasted into pieces, there are no points of safety.” Cerai turned full attention on her. “If you’re as good as Kyrkenall says, then I’ll be even happier to have your help if you can find your way back here. Take a stone so you can center yourself. And if you’re really determined to go try, you’d best get moving.”

  “Is there anything more you can tell us?” Elenai asked.

  “The amount of interesting things I could tell you would fill your days.”

  “I’m taking Lelanc,” Elenai said.

  Cerai stared at her, then laughed at Kyrkenall. “She’s so subtle. Is she your lover, Kyrkenall?”

  “No,” Elenai answered, sounding more resolute than she intended.

  “My. I didn’t mean to touch a nerve.” Cerai waved grandly. “Go ahead. Take the creature. I was going to use her as a model to restore ko’aye, but maybe I’ll just design something better.” She stood, and spoke to the transformed kobalin waiting patiently near the fireside. “I need more supplies packed, two satchels full. The same as I took with me. Have their horses brought out.”

  “Yes, Goddess.” The servant bowed his head and hurried away.

  “They insist,” she said slyly to Elenai’s disapproving look.

  Elenai was about to ask how hard Cerai had worked at getting them to call her something else, but her ring lit. At first she thought their host must be working some attack, but Cerai’s brows wrinkled in dismay to discover her own ring shining. Kyrkenall’s was alight as well, and he was already standing with his sheath in one hand, Lothrun half drawn.

  A woman had shimmered into being across the pool from them. The color of her khalat and dark hair were washed out, but beneath her high forehead her eyes were bright points like miniature suns.

  “Rialla,” Kyrkenall whispered in stunned amazement.

  Elenai looked to Cerai to see if this were some trick of hers, but the older woman’s aplomb was fully shattered.

  “Can you hear me, Kyrkenall?” Rialla’s lips moved, but Elenai didn’t hear her words, only the echo of them within her mind.

  “I hear you,” Kyrkenall said, and then he risked a look over to Cerai, who had climbed to her feet in rapt absorption. “How is this being done? Are you trapped somewhere? Like N’lahr?”

  “I think I am dead in your now,” Rialla answered, and, curiously, brought a hand to her face. “Time’s short.”

  “This isn’t some trick of yours?” Kyrkenall demanded of Cerai, a harsh edge to his voice.

  “No,” Cerai answered, still astonished. “I swear by the ring. How—”

  Rialla’s attention swung to Cerai. “There is something I must do. Meet me in your fortress courtyard.”

  “What are you going to do?” Cerai demanded.

  “We have to get them all to Darassus,” Rialla said impatiently. “I can show you a way to open a portal, and you must watch, because you will do it again yourself.”

  One of C
erai’s eyebrows peaked. She must have liked the sound of that, for she looked very curious.

  “You’re the one with my hearthstone,” Rialla said to Elenai, her eyes like sharp metal points.

  “Yes. And you’ve been warning me about Kyrkenall.”

  “I have?”

  “About him having to jump left.”

  Rialla frowned. “I’ll have to look into that.” She sounded irritated.

  “The jump hasn’t happened yet,” Elenai said, wishing the strange woman would finally provide some clarity and details. “I really wish you’d give us more information so we know what to look for.”

  “If I said it’s important, it is. But right now I can’t tell you, because I don’t know of it yet.” Rialla was making even less sense than she had in the dreams. “You must get the ko’aye,” she insisted, an edge to her voice. “Everything has to be in just the right position at the right time or it will have all been for nothing.”

  Elenai hesitated, looking to Kyrkenall, who still stared, disbelieving, then to Cerai. None of this sounded quite right, but if Cerai were tricking them she was choosing an odd way to go about it.

  Besides, Elenai reminded herself, she had wanted to free Lelanc in any case.

  “Right,” she said. “I’ll meet you in the courtyard.”

  “Speed’s of the essence.”

  Elenai sprinted from the room and into the stairwell, taking the steps two at a time.

  29

  Homecoming

  Rylin looked out to see a half-dozen troops riding at them over the lush green grass. They wore helms, and blue tabards over their cuirasses, and their horses were a mix of whites and browns. Though none raised weapons, they radiated a sense of menace.

  Lasren willed his ring to light and raised it high.

  Rylin hoped that signal would still mean something, and told Elik to mount up. “I’m just a common soldier, remember,” he said.

  With an apologetic look, the squire climbed onto the animal.

  The patrol slowed, then drew to a halt only a few horselengths off. They arranged themselves in a semicircle behind their leader, a dark-haired woman in an Altenerai khalat with red piping. An exalt. A native of the Storm Coast, she had narrow eyes and coppery-brown skin.