Gloriana's Masque

by Eleanor Burns

  Then, for what seemed yet another geological age, it knew and felt nothing but searing pain and mental derangement that transcended any sense of identity at all. The pain intensified with each aeon-long moment, and finally dissipated with a sense of explosive release. As darkness descended, all that seemed to echo faintly on the fringes of its consciousness was the sound of falling rocks, and the mostly incoherent cries of a woman, although one word seemed to occasionally stand out. Casmee? Caseem? Casseemee … meer. Cas-ee … Kasimir. Of course, I–

  Whereupon came a shorter, sharper burst of pain, and finally darkness proper.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN – THE EXILED LORD

  “So … how many survivors, or would I prefer not to know that?” asked Lycon, while surveying the wreck of the Lucinian embassy. Although the main structure of the building had endured the final tremor rather better than the palace, which had been at the epicentre, not to mention the cheaply-built Lucinian-style tenements that had already been heavily damaged during the invasion, it was far from unscathed. Its windows had all been shattered, the mosaic frieze had been shaken to a sad heap of red glass confetti, great cracks ran up every wall and down into the very foundations, and Alyssa Skallagrim’s statue was now shy of an arm and of a head. Bad luck, old girl, thought Lycon, but look on the bright side: at least you don’t smell as bad as those poor bastards in there. He immediately repented of that reflection, as even the memory of that scene made his stomach tighten.

  “Most of the Alvere made it out, Milord,” explained Lieutenant Ceolwyn, doing his best to sound professional. Trying to lift my spirits, bless. “Well, all of them, if you don’t count the delator.” So much for the morale-boosting, then, thought Lycon, cynically. The last thing he had needed was to be reminded of how Maradith had been blown to smithereens while he had been crawling off to safety, and how that same blast had then left the embassy vulnerable to the final brief but hideous attack. Admittedly, given the state he had been in at the time there was nothing constructive he could have done but save his own skin, but it still left a bitter taste, and the tone of his next statement was accordingly bitter and insincere.

  “Huzzah for those useless bastards. I’m sure the Lucinian army will appreciate the extra target practice, but I was referring to useful survivors. How many of the actual embassy staff survived?”

  “About half a dozen, sir,” answered Ceolwyn, uneasily. “The desk clerk might not make it, though. Lost an eye, poor devil, right before the explosion, or the eruption, or whatever it was. The Alvere healers are doing what they can for him.”

  “I somehow doubt the Republic will stay its hand on his account any more than I would, so I trust the healers aren’t wasting their skills and supplies keeping that pen-pusher this side of the Abysm. Do we have any senior-ranking hostages left?”

  “Well … Undersecretary Morovah should be alright,” replied the lieutenant, now seriously struggling to maintain his resolute tone. For he knew very well that this was not the answer his lord had desired. “Those invisible things never got to her, thank Thalassa, but after they’d gone and the quake struck, she took a nasty hit when the ceiling caved in. She’s concussed, but I don’t think she’s likely to die on us.”

  “Good for her. And what about the ambassador?” asked Lycon, and he knew from Ceolwyn’s expression that the next answer would be even less to his liking.

  “Afraid not, Milord,” Ceolwyn replied, with a brief, grim shake of his head and an undertone that spoke volumes of lingering horror. “Those things already had their claws in his bowels by the time of the quake. He lingered on for a bit … until half the ceiling collapsed on him, which I think was rather a mercy, all told.”

  “Lucky old ambassador. Shame it couldn’t have been so considerate on the rest of us … Oh well, an undersecretary is something, I suppose,” said Lycon, resignedly. “Whether we return her to Lucinia and hope to buy some goodwill that way, or whether we keep her as a hostage and hope to buy some time … not that I’m wildly hopeful either way,” he added, glancing around the ruins of Kadar Ydril and seeing nothing calculated to raise his spirits.

  Ironically, the only buildings that had survived more or less unharmed were the new Alvere dwellings – those mainly built of light, organic materials integrated with living plants – which had proven flexible and rooted enough to weather both the storm and the tremors. This was not, obviously, counting the ones in the north-west quarter that were currently smouldering under the twisted, unsalvageable wreckage of the destroyed lofdreki. And that sad heap of scrap is half of my fleet now, curse those thieving, deserting bilge-rats. Lycon’s few loyal men, under Ceolwyn’s command, had managed to keep possession of one of the intact ships, but as soon as the storm had abated the rest of the fleet had been commandeered by the departing Brythons. The deserters included all of the men that Staakys had left behind, and all but a mere platoon of Lycon’s own men, all of whom were lifelong vassals who no doubt struggled to imagine any sort of life other than one with him in charge. Some had been his house-thralls since they were boys, while Ceolwyn himself had squired for him these past six years, and was still barely into his manhood. Loyal to the last, although from where I’m standing now, even house-thralls are high society. Certainly, no Alvere had ever risen to such an exalted position in Brython society. So, now I’m not even good enough to empty the shit out of Staakys’ chamberpot … let’s be thankful for small mercies, then.

  In spite of his remaining men’s devotion, Lycon knew all too well that one lofdreki and one platoon was by no means a convincing sword to dangle over the Lucinians’ heads. That left him deeply sceptical that, when news of the disaster reached Lyssagrad, the Senate would be inclined to honour the commitments they had made at the peace conference. I damn well wouldn’t. I’d wipe us off the map in a twinkling, hostages or none. Returning to Brythenedd, however, seemed an even less appealing option, given his social prospects. He doubted that even his own family would support his continued claim to his titles and estates. Not if I raised Rowena well, in any case. If she’s truly my daughter, she’ll claim the eorldom within five seconds of the news reaching home and pronounce me outlawed at the next folkmoot. I’d be almost disappointed in her if she didn’t, truth be told. In any case, there was also the risk that some of his erstwhile peers might want to hold him responsible for this fiasco, and he had no wish to end his days being dragged naked in chains through the streets of Blackwyk, especially in atonement for Lord Corin’s blunder. Even in dying, he’s only content if he’s screwing things up for me.

  Escape in some direction was still his preferred option, however. If they took on supplies quickly, the lofdreki could carry them over Falkraine’s Corridor before the Lucinians were wise to the situation, and then they could go to ground in the eastern division of Alvenheim for as long as they needed. He knew from his local informants that there were smaller settlements there, such as Nyth Eryrin and Lley Durgel, which even the Republican Cartographical Survey had failed to map, and where a small band of fugitives could easily disappear for a prolonged time. His instinct was to run even further, perhaps as far as the Autokracy or the northern shores of Drægland. The Queen won’t abandon her people, though, he thought, even as his reason taunted him with the near-certainty that this was an irrelevant point. He was grateful that Ceolwyn intruded on this morbid train of thought.

  “Your orders, Milord?” asked the lieutenant.

  “Take good care of our hostages, of course. Work with the Alvere, as closely as they’ll let you. How would you judge their mood?”

  “It could be better, but it could be far worse. We suffered far more casualties than the Alvere did, the invisible things didn’t even touch them at all, and the ones who got out of the palace before it collapsed told their friends about Lord Corin’s betrayal, so the word on the street is that their gods were exacting some sort of divine retribution on us foreign infidels. That old priestess was telling a different story – making out that you and the Queen were to bla
me – but we’ve got her under lock and key now.”

  “Very good, although I’d almost sooner just have had her under a few tons of rubble,” he declared, and immediately wished that he had thought of a less distressing quip. I will not believe it, though. Not yet. Gathering his spirits, he continued. “Still, at least that means most of them don’t hold Gloriana responsible. All the better for us if they’ll still obey her, as soon as we find her again.”

  “Better make that if we find her, Milord,” replied Ceolwyn, matter-of-factly and with no intentional tactlessness, but it was all that Lycon could do to stop himself from punching his faithful young squire out. “The Alvere scouts haven’t given up on the search yet, I know, but those caverns beneath the palace are vast. They’re not even certain which of the mountainside caves is the one that connects to the crypt, and even if they get lucky and the quake’s driven out most of the vargs that were nesting in there, it’s bound to be unstable after last night. I hear they’ve had a couple of narrow brushes with being buried alive already, and whole sections are blocked off by rockfalls that it would take years to shift … and this is even assuming that the Queen made it out of the crypt alive, or that she didn’t try getting out through the palace instead, in which case we’re looking for her flattened remains in the wrong place. Honestly, I don’t think there’s much chance that we’ll–”

  “And who in the name of Erybos asked your opinion, boy?” Lycon snapped, and immediately wished that he had maintained his self-control. Ceolwyn looked taken aback, and well he might. Lycon had, after all, always taken pains to conceal his feelings from his peers and his subordinates alike, and that went double for his feelings for Gloriana. Unfortunately, his talent for composure seemed to have deserted him of late, although whether that was testimony to the depth of his feelings or merely the depth of the shit he now found himself in was hard to determine. Or, worse luck, just another wonderful side effect of being an Alvere. So far, he was finding his transition roughly akin to having a bad hangover, with the grim certainty that the preceding night had been no fun whatsoever. He was irritable, he struggled to concentrate, sounds were uncomfortably loud, light and colours were headache-inducingly bright and intense, and smell and taste were both unpleasantly acute, as if everything in the whole world had gone ripe and rancid overnight. Bearing in mind that the gruesome contents of the embassy would not have smelled pleasant under any circumstances, and that the wind had shifted in precisely the wrong direction, he deemed it more than likely that if he stayed he would only succeed in disgracing himself further in the eyes of his last loyal officer. Puking at Ceolwyn’s feet was certainly unlikely to come across as a gesture of stoical courage and self-mastery. “Just … just maintain the search. It’s too soon to write her off, and she’s far more use to us alive. That will be all, Lieutenant,” he ordered, as he turned away and beat a less than perfectly dignified departure.

  With the palace quarter now entirely in ruins and the embassy a gutted shell on the verge of collapse, there was nowhere for Lycon to seek solitude except for his cabin aboard the lofdreki. This was hardly the last word in comfort, being little more than a moderately large cupboard containing a foot locker, a tilting shelf, a folding stool, and barely enough room to sling a hammock. Surplus gear was not encouraged aboard the flying ships, as they performed better with a light load, although it made them less than suitable for prolonged voyages or as makeshift HQs. For want of any more absorbing distraction, he took a selection of maps out of the foot locker and studied each of them in turn. There were the RCS maps he had ‘borrowed’ from the embassy’s files: dreary and formal documents machine-printed on folding parchment, but detailed in the extreme, with numbered contour lines; accurately placed highways, tracks, telegraph lines, canals, railroads, and rivers; and even the depth and currents of the waters around the coastline meticulously plotted. That would be useful if they ever needed to ditch the lofdreki in favour of a more conventional and less conspicuous ship, which was eminently likely.

  The Alvere maps, by contrast, were hopelessly imprecise, but minor artistic masterpieces, illuminated with many-coloured inks on scrolls of sturdy, coarse-fibered paper. The landscape, the settlements, and the temples of Alvenheim were beautifully illustrated, and annotated with many intricate sigils. Concepts such as scale and measurement seemed to have had little to no interest for the designers, but the maps were still valuable information as they included many local points of interest that the Lucinian surveyors and cartographers had missed. Deep within the contour-less but picturesque mountains, far from the known roads, there were depictions of places that might have been villages, shrines, or ruins, although the ancient and complex annotations were completely beyond Lycon’s comprehension. She’ll understand it, though, he reflected, with certainty. If I can’t persuade her to run, we can find a good bolthole around these parts easily enough. Perhaps even more than that. If Kadar Ydril harboured dark and ancient secrets, then why not other places in Alvenheim? Perhaps they might even locate another of those primordial temples, somewhere nice and isolated where there would be no interfering southerners nor troublemaking comrades to spoil their plans. Just imagine that … A little revision, and who knows but that it may not be long before she and I can have our revenge?

  But that word triggered a sense of deep self-reproach. The Queen was not vengeful, and her ancient ‘weapon’ – whatever it may have come to, and whatever Lycon had hoped to achieve with it – had been in her eyes an instrument to aid and bless all of her enemies. He would not sway her with dreams of revenge, even if she consented to listen to him at all, lest we forget who it was who actually spilled the blood that caused this disaster in the first place, he reminded himself. Perhaps there was that much to be grateful for if Gloriana had died in the cavern: he would never again have to look her in the face and see the accusation written there, or hear it spoken in that same regal, withering tone she had once used to reduce Secretary Kasimir to a snivelling wreck. This was not a very adequate consolation, however, so before Lycon resumed his studies he made a brief excursion to the hold to liberate a cask of mead. That might not help him to concentrate, as such, but if it succeeded in at least taking the edge off these debilitating and unmanly emotions, he would consider a little haziness to be a fair exchange.

  He pored over the maps for a while longer, taking in more and more mead and less and less information as time wore on, until the next thing he was aware of he was slumped upon the wooden shelf. The side of his face was resting uncomfortably in a wet patch of his own saliva that had formed a new, although a not very artistic lake on one of the priceless Alvere maps. His back was wedged against the cabin wall, keeping him from collapsing, and his muscles ached almost as badly as his head. A disgusting staleness filled his mouth and nostrils, and he could hear an urgent voice calling him from outside the cabin, although he could barely comprehend it. Each syllable made him feel as if his head had been hollowed out, filled with nails and glass shards, and rattled violently. A genuine hangover on top of my pseudo-hangover. I really thought that plan through well … Painfully, Lycon dragged himself upright, straightened out his uniform as well as he could, and called for the visitor to enter, while wishing his voice could have sounded stronger and less raspy. The visitor turned out to be Lieutenant Ceolwyn, who was thankfully too proud and upbeat to pay much heed to his CO's questionable condition, as he delivered a cheerful report.

  “Lord Lycon, sir! We've found them! The search parties have, I mean, but they’re both alive, at any rate, and well … or well enough, anyway.”

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” asked Lycon, his spell of relief having been cruelly cut short by the lieutenant’s poor grasp of the principles of tact. “Is the Queen injured?”

  “Barely, Milord. Battered, but not broken. The southerner’s worse for wear, mind you. His head lost an argument with a rockfall.”

  “It’s been a rough night for Lucinian skulls, sure enough,” quipped Lycon, his renewed sense
of relief in no sense diminished by Lord Kasimir’s misfortunes. “Will he live?”

  “More than likely. These Alvere are tough as stale hardtack … err, no offence, Milord,” he sheepishly added. Lycon acknowledged the apology with a dismissive if irritated hand wave. “He’s conscious, anyway. Babbling like a senile old fishwife, granted, but definitely conscious. Mumbling a load of nonsense like you wouldn’t believe about evil gods and monsters, and about the earth being angry, and what have you. If I was in the healers’ shoes, I’d just dose him up on tincture of nepenthe until his head’s mended enough for him to start making sense again.”

  “No doubt,” replied Lycon, doing his utmost to keep the unease he felt out of his voice. Thalassa only knows what they saw in that cavern, after I’d buggered off to safety … ish. I wouldn’t be quite so flippant about the gods and monsters aspect. “I’ll come and see them for myself in due course. Thank you for bringing that to my attention, Lieutenant. Dismissed.” Now that he no longer suffered any anxiety over whether or not Gloriana had survived, Lycon found that he was less than keen on seeing her. He did not suppose her attitude to him would be much improved on having discovered that he had not only ruined her ritual, but in so doing had also managed to lose her fleet, demolish her capital, and more than likely put paid to her peace treaty. Still, he would have to face her sooner or later, but he intended to do so with a presentable uniform and breath that tasted less like a bonnacon’s hindquarters. If she’s going to send me into exile, her last sight of me may as well be one that she’s not likely to confuse with the last tramp she had booted down the palace steps … not that she would ever do that. A depressingly apt image of my future, mind. My own people – may Erybos bugger the lot of them with his flaming harpoon – will certainly exile me. Oh well, let’s enjoy the fading illusion of lordly status for as long as I can. There was a spare uniform in the foot locker, badly creased, but at least it smelt of good navy soap, with a faint hint of pine tar, and not like a tavern floor. When he had changed, he performed some hasty ablutions, then set off to the Alvere healers’ encampment.