Queen of Fire

by Anthony Ryan

  Lyrna turned to see the last dregs of fire dripping from the engine’s spout, Alornis meeting her gaze and giving an apologetic bow. Lyrna pointed her towards the now-silent ballista.

  Despite the flames still licking at its ropes and sails the Volarian troop-ship maintained its course, a full Free Sword battalion assembled on deck. Lyrna was about to order Nortah to bring up the rest of his regiment but saw that the Lord Marshal had anticipated the need, the soldiers running to form ranks with remarkable precision despite the confusion all around.

  The port ballista clattered into life once more, Alornis aiming whilst Davoka worked the handle. Lyrna followed the flight of one bolt as it streaked across the gap to claim the life of a Volarian Free Sword officer who had unwisely chosen to stand tall at the rail, no doubt as an example to his men. She hoped they learned the lesson well.

  “Highness!” It was Larhten, calling from the helm and pointing to something beyond the Volarian ship. Lyrna blinked away the smoke-born sting in her eyes and sought to discern something through the haze. The King Malcius, she saw as the view cleared. Fitting that my brother should come to save me.

  The King Malcius came on at full sail, her archers casting a shower of fire arrows at the Volarian troop-ship before she ploughed into her starboard hull with a splintering crunch. The fires now littering the sea painted the subsequent spectacle with flickering shadows, the sight of a host of steel-clad men rushing from the King Malcius to assail the Free Swords seeming unreal somehow, like something from a dream, or a nightmare.

  Lyrna’s gaze was soon drawn to the sight of a burly man throwing himself into the densest knot of Volarians, his mace rising and falling with deadly effect. At his side was a taller and more slender figure wielding a longsword. She watched as together they hacked their way the length of the ship, their knights following in a thrashing mass of steel, driving the Free Swords back with such murderous zeal most chose the scarce safety of the sea rather than stay to fight on. By the time the Queen Lyrna had drawn up alongside the troop-ship the two figures were standing at her port rail, removing their helms to greet her with a bow.

  “Good evening, my lords,” she called to Fief Lord Arendil and his grandfather.

  “Forgive me, Highness,” Banders called back, his broad features slick with sweat. “But are we to land soon? One more week at sea and my knights are like to hang me.”

  Lyrna turned to survey the scene, the sky now black and the only illumination coming from the many blazing ships. The tumult of combat had faded though she could still hear men screaming somewhere, voices calling for help in Volarian mingled with the odd gurgling sound that accompanied a sinking ship.

  “Indeed, my lord,” she called to Banders. “A landing is overdue.”

  The ship sat on the beach like some great wounded beast, her masts sheared away and much of her sides stripped of timber, exposing the complex web of beams that somehow contrived to hold her together. It was Benten who recognised her as the Fief Lord Sentes; his sea-trained eyes had a knack for discerning the slight differences that distinguished one ship from another. “Seems she’s been driven too far up the beach to be taken off by the tide,” he said. “It’s a marvel she’s still in one piece.”

  The short voyage to the bay had yielded only five ships from the thirty that had sailed with Lady Reva, all severely damaged and barely afloat, though their precious cargo of troops and supplies were mostly intact. The Sentes brought the total to six, but she could hardly be described as seaworthy. In all just over two-thirds of the Queen’s Fleet had survived the storm, though casualties had been heavy and the battle with the Volarians had claimed at least another thousand lives. Although Lyrna saw the flush of victory of many faces, she knew the battle had in fact been indecisive, Ship Lord Ell-Nurin estimating they had captured or sunk no more than half the Volarian fleet.

  “Whoever commanded them was wise enough to withdraw under cover of night,” he surmised. “One of our scout ships reported seeing sails on the southern horizon.”

  She took the first boat to the shore, overriding all objections with a silent glare. The time for caution had died in the storm. For all the acclaim shouted at her from the surrounding ships as the boat wended its way towards the beach, she knew their morale would still plummet like a stone when the reality of their situation became apparent. They need to see a queen.

  She was accompanied by Lord Marshal Nortah and a full company of Queen’s Daggers. Off to the north Brother Sollis led another cluster of boats filled with all that remained of the Sixth Order whilst Count Marven took his best Nilsaelins to secure the southern approaches. They were obliged to row their way through several corpses en route, Lyrna surprised to find most were Volarian, bobbing in the swell with arrows protruding from their armour.

  The tide was low and the beach free of breakers as they scraped to a halt, Lyrna leaping free of the boat before Iltis could raise an objection. She heard him smother a curse as he splashed into the waist-deep water behind. She laboured through the surf towards the hulk, eyes scanning the part-ruined hull and finding numerous faces staring down at her, though there were no voices raised in awed acclaim now, most just seemed pale with exhaustion. She noticed a dark cluster of more Volarian bodies on the beach, perhaps two hundred men and horses liberally seeded with arrows.

  “Thought we were easy meat,” a voice called down from the Sentes, Lyrna’s gaze finding a stocky man standing in one of the rents in the ship’s hull, holding a longbow and looking down at her with a stern regard that contrasted with the usual cautious respect shown to her by Cumbraelin soldiery. “Proved them wrong.”

  Lyrna stared up at him, holding his gaze until he added, “Highness,” in a clipped voice.

  “Lord Antesh,” she said. “Where is Lady Reva?”

  He sagged at her words, head lowered and eyes tight closed. “I take it, Highness, you have no news of her either?”

  Lyrna turned to watch the first wave of troops coming ashore, the Queen’s Daggers spreading out to sweep the dunes whilst a Realm Guard regiment grounded their boats, more following in a seemingly unending tide. “Lord Antesh,” she turned back to him, finding a man now visibly shrinking in grief. “Lord Antesh!”

  He straightened at her shout, a spasm of anger flashing across his face before he forced himself to a neutral expression. “Highness.”

  “I hereby name you Lord Commander of the Queen’s Cumbraelin Host. Please remove your soldiers from this ship and proceed inland. There will be a council of captains this evening where I shall require a full accounting of your numbers.”

  She moved on without waiting for an acknowledgment. They followed the Blessed Lady, she knew. I can leave no doubt that they must now follow me.

  The woman must have been quite beautiful in life, possessed of a dancer’s litheness and features of porcelain delicacy. But, as Lyrna had witnessed many times now, death always seemed to rob the body of beauty, bleaching the skin and leaving the features a slack echo of the soul that had once made those rosebud lips smile. Brother Sollis had discovered more bodies in the dunes a short distance away, slaves judging by their clothing, each with their throat cut. The once-beautiful woman, however, showed no sign of any injury despite the dried blood that discoloured the flesh around her eyes and nose.

  Brother Lucin was the oldest member of the Seventh Order she had met so far, stick thin and almost totally bald save for a tuft of white hair that sprouted from the top of his head like a forgotten weed. He wandered around the woman’s body for a time, frowning in concentration, occasionally muttering to himself. During her fruitless search for evidence Lyrna had interviewed a number of people arrested on suspicion of Dark practices, finding them all charlatans or victims of malicious accusation. One, a charming but terrified young man, had been all too happy to explain how he would gull rich widows into parting with coin or jewels by claiming to commune with long-dead relatives, providing a demonstration not entirely dissimilar to that now performed by Brother Lucin.
In recognition of his honesty, Lyrna had persuaded her father to commute the charlatan’s sentence to ten years in the Realm Guard.

  “How long will this take?” she asked Aspect Caenis, failing to keep the dubious note from her voice.

  “All places have history, Highness,” he replied. “Brother Lucin is obliged to sort through a haze of images to find the right event.”

  “Ack!” the elderly brother exclaimed, his face drawn in a grimace of equal parts disgust and fear.

  “Brother?” Caenis said, stepping closer.

  Brother Lucin waved him away with an irritated flap of his bony arms. “I felt it,” he said, casting an accusatory glare at Lyrna, as if she had led him into some kind of trap. “The thing inside her. Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Watch your mouth, brother,” Iltis growled, his face dark with warning.

  Brother Lucin barely glanced at him. “The past is real,” he said to Lyrna. “Not some mishmash of shadows. It has power.”

  “My apologies if I have placed you in danger, brother,” Lyrna replied, realising an insistence of propriety would avail her little with this one. “But our current circumstance requires that we all take risks.” She nodded at the corpse. “Was that her?”

  The brother looked down at the dead woman with palpable reluctance, edging away as if in expectation she might suddenly spring to life. “There were soldiers with her. They called her Empress. She had a mighty gift, I could feel it, rushing out of her all at once to bend the wind to her will.”

  “Then she’s dead,” Count Marven said. “She gave up her life to destroy us. The enemy are leaderless now.”

  Brother Lucin gave the Battle Lord a withering glance. “This was just a shell, chosen for its gift. You can bet she’ll already have woken in another.”

  “Why kill the slaves?” Marven asked.

  “Witnesses,” Lyrna replied, looking again at the dead woman’s face. Where did she find you? Did you ever have a name of your own? “Few if any Volarians will know the true nature of their new Empress. Have the bodies taken to the pyres, I doubt they have anything more to tell us.”

  “Pretence will avail us nothing now,” she told the surviving captains of her army and fleet, gathered together on the high ground beyond the beach where the troops still laboured ashore, the sands dotted with blazing pyres for the dead. “We have suffered a grievous blow. Lady Reva is missing and most likely dead as is Fleet Lord Ell-Nestra. A full fifth of our army has been lost due to my misjudgement. Accordingly, I am bound to ask if there are any here no longer willing to follow my commands.”

  She scanned their faces, finding most patently baffled by the question. The Meldeneans regarded her with the same surety that had marked their attitude since the Teeth where, she knew, many believed their gods had invested her with some form of divine insight. Far from undermining their faith the events of the previous evening seemed to have cemented it; who but the gods could have snatched victory from such assured defeat?

  Similarly, Fief Lord Arendil and Baron Banders exhibited no sign of distrust as did Wisdom, who had come to speak for the small Eorhil and Seordah contingent. The only clear expressions of unease came from Lord Marshal Nortah, which was typical, and Lord Antesh, still evidently in the grip of his grief. But, like the others, he remained silent.

  “Very well,” she said, nodding to Count Marven. “Battle Lord, our tactical position, if you would.”

  “We have a secure perimeter extending one mile inland, Highness. Brother Sollis has the Order scouting farther afield, so far there are no reports of significant enemy forces nearby although we have encountered a few cavalry patrols. We’ll gain a clearer picture when the remaining horses are brought ashore.”

  “Those that are left,” Baron Banders put in. “A third of our mounts sickened and died on the ships. Horses don’t take well to life at sea.”

  “This region is rich in farmland,” Lyrna said. “No doubt we’ll find replacements soon enough. Until then I’m afraid any unhorsed knight will have to fight on foot, my lord.”

  “That’ll give ’em something else to gripe about,” Banders muttered, soft enough for Lyrna to safely ignore.

  “The Volarian fleet?” she asked Ship Lord Ell-Nurin.

  “Still no sign, Highness. But I doubt they’ve gone far. Probably licking their wounds and awaiting reinforcements.”

  “Then let’s not allow them the leisure to do so. I hereby name you Fleet Lord Ell-Nurin. The freighters and troop-ships will sail back to the Realm with all dispatch to gather supplies and reinforcements. You will take every warship we have and harry the enemy without respite.”

  “I shall, Highness. It would assist our efforts if Lady Alornis were to accompany us. We require more fuel for her engines and my fellows can’t quite get the mix right.”

  “The Lady Artificer is indisposed. Make do as best you can.” She paused, making a point of meeting the gaze of everyone present, ensuring they saw no uncertainty in her eyes. “The army must be fully mustered by tomorrow. When it is, we march for Volar. Their Empress will no doubt be revelling in her imagined victory. I intend to disabuse her of this notion in short order.”

  “Reva’s dead, isn’t she?”

  Alornis wouldn’t meet her gaze, sitting listlessly on the bunk in Brother Kehlan’s tent. If the moans and occasional cries from the wounded troubled her, she gave no sign, her expression as unmoved as it had been during the battle.

  “Her ship was wrecked in the storm,” Lyrna told her. “We found some survivors, but none have any word of her. I know you were close to the Lady Governess, and I too grieve for her loss. Her spirit, and her sword, will be greatly missed.”

  “I always wanted to ask her about the siege, what she did. But I couldn’t, I saw how it pained her. I used to wonder how a soul so kind could do what they say she did at Alltor, for that was not the Reva I knew. Now…” She looked down at her hands, the thin, dexterous fingers moving like pale spiders. “Now I doubt she would know me.”

  Lyrna reached out to smooth a wayward lock of hair from Alornis’s forehead, finding herself perturbed by the chill of her skin. “My lady, there are thousands of people now alive because of you.”

  “And thousands dead.”

  Brother Kehlan came to Alornis’s side, holding out a cup of something hot and sweet-smelling. “A sleeping draught, my lady.”

  “I don’t want to sleep,” she told him. “I might dream.”

  “There will be no dreams.” He smiled, placing the cup in her hands. “I promise.”

  Lyrna joined the healer as he moved away. Despite many hours’ ceaseless work he remained alert, seemingly indifferent to the foul stenches that clouded the tent, and the blood that stained his robe. “Can you help her?” she asked.

  “I can help her sleep, Highness. I can give her various remedies to calm a troubled mind. It may return her to some kind of normalcy, for a time. But I have seen this before, the malady of the spirit that arises in those pushed beyond their limits. Once it takes hold, it never really fades. I advise she be returned to the Realm as soon as possible.”

  “No!” Alornis had risen from her bunk, advancing towards them, formerly placid features now rigid with determined refusal. “No. I am staying here.” Her words were a little slurred and she stumbled, Lyrna rushing forward to catch her.

  “We have more fires to light together, Highness,” she whispered to Lyrna as the queen laid her on the bunk, watching as she slid into slumber, still murmuring, “so many beautiful fires.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Vaelin

  The Wolf People unveiled their canoes when the solid plane of white surrounding the island thinned then fragmented under the weight of the new sun. Within days all that remained were a few stubborn ice-blocks drifting in the fast-flowing current separating the isles. Like the boats fashioned by the Bear People at the Mirror Sound, the canoes of the Wolf People were all constructed from hollowed-out tree-trunks, varying widely in size. Most were capable o
f carrying no more than four people at once, others were of sufficient size to accommodate up to ten, but there were three of such dimensions it seemed incredible they could float at all.

  “Hewn from the great red trees that grow to the south,” Astorek explained as one of the huge craft was manhandled towards a slipway in preparation for launching. “Trees that grow tall as mountains over the life-span of twenty men. Only once in a generation do the Wolf People permit themselves to take a red tree. It’s a cause for great celebration when a new big boat is made.”

  The purpose of the huge craft soon became clear as Astorek led his wolves on board along with the other packs. There was a definite tension in each of the shaman as they stood amidst their wolves, faces set in concentration. The wolves all sat in placid obedience, though every once in a while one would turn towards a different pack, a low growl building in its throat before snapping back to instant placidity at an insistent gesture from its shaman. Without the shaman’s command they become wolves again, Vaelin realised, once again wondering at the fortitude of the Gifted found among these people. They use their gifts for hours yet never tire.

  “It’s not strength,” Kiral said, appearing at his side with her cat in tow. In accordance with Lonak custom she hadn’t named the beast, though the other Gifted had predictably dubbed it One Ear. It was the least well behaved of the cats, prone to voicing a nightly chorus of forlorn wails and a hissing disinclination towards any human company save Kiral’s. It greeted Vaelin now with a brief snarl and kept close to Kiral’s side with a low-backed wariness.

  “It’s skill,” the huntress went on, nodding at Astorek. “Born of centuries-old necessity. Our gifts are useful, but we can still survive without them. These people need their power or the ice will kill them. So they learned to control it, share it, use only as much as they need.” She smiled faintly, eyes still lingering on the Volarian. “We must seem like clumsy children to them.”