by Dante King
Chapter 11
Hana led me off from the scene of the battle at Berserker Hall to bathe in the hot pools. The thermal pools steamed invitingly in the rainy air.
Hana motioned for me to hop into one while she disrobed behind a frustratingly placed lingonberry bush. As I scrubbed myself down with a pumice stone, she cast a few surreptitious glances in my direction through the leaves and red berries adorning the lingonberry bush. The glimpses of the Vetruscan bearmancer’s body that I caught were nothing short of breathtaking. She had a tight-knit frame, with perfect breasts and a rounded ass that just cried out to be bent over the nearest available surface and…
I turned my back. There was nothing to be gained by torturing myself. I was a guest in her homeland, and it would be remiss of me to come onto her. Besides, I had faith that the growing attraction between us, the looks that she had been giving me, could only end in one thing.
After we bathed, and I somehow managed to stuff my semi hard-on back into my breeches, Hana led me to a cabin, up near the Berserker Hall, which the Queen ordered to be put aside for me and the other Dragonmancers. The accommodation was pleasantly rustic and very comfortable; all heavy wooden furniture, fur throws, woven blankets, and fires in every room.
“Rest here,” Hana told me. To my surprise, she went up on her toes and gave me a cool kiss on the cheek. “Queen Frami will more than likely send for you tomorrow. It’s my belief that she will wish to show you some of our country. She can tell, as I do, that you’re generally interested in our home.”
“I am,” I said simply. I refrained from telling her that it was mostly because it was like stepping onto the set of Pathfinder or Valhalla Rising.
Hana nodded and watched me carefully. She was stern and somber in many ways, but I found her quite seductive in a mysterious kind of way.
“Rest. You fought well today,” the Vetruscan woman said to me. “And you looked good too, Mike Noctis—both dirty and clean.”
And with a small smile, she hurried off into the drizzle.
* * *
The Queen did call me for the next day. Or the next. With nothing pressing that required our attention, and the weather fluctuating from overcast to downright terrible, we occupied ourselves by exploring the town of Hrímdale. I would often leave the cabin with just Will, the wisp, for company, and head out for long walks. There was a lot to see, especially for one such as myself, who was an alien here on two different levels.
I was walking through the fish market one morning, some four days after the battle at Berserker Hall, which seemed to be one of the main hubs of Hrímdale, when I was pulled up by a guardswoman stepping out into my path. I recognized her vaguely from being one of the women stationed on the main gate when we had first arrived at Hrímdale.
“How’s it going?” I asked her, trying to soften the look of vague distrust that lay over her quite pretty, but unsmiling, countenance.
“A message for you, Dragonmancer,” the guardswoman said with a crisp officiousness that told me we were unlikely to be sharing a jug of beer and swapping war stories any time soon. She handed me a tightly furled scroll that was sealed with dark green wax.
“Thanks very much,” I said, taking the missive. The guardswoman saluted, a quick covering of one eye with a palm that made me think it was a sign of loyalty to the one-eyed Queen, and took her leave.
While Will floated about at calf height and investigated the myriad catches being unloaded from the boats, I unfurled the scroll.
Dragonmancer Noctis,
It would be my honor to take you on an exploratory tour of a small portion of the Vetruscan Kingdom. We shall ride and hunt and talk without any of the retainers of hangers-on that make court life such a bloody bore. I am a firm believer in bureaucracy being more of a hindrance than a help, and of there being few things less helpful than a large body of people when it comes to sharing information or coming to a decision quickly.
So, ride with me on the morrow, and we shall talk.
I also hope that you do not mind humoring me with a little hunting competition. Often, I ride out to help stock the larders of my house with game, and tomorrow is one of those days. It will not hurt to inject a little competition into the proceedings. Be ready to ride at sunrise and meet the party outside Berserker Hall.
Queen Frami.
I crumpled the piece of parchment in my hand and tossed it into a nearby brazier, the flames of which were dancing this way and that in the breeze blowing in off the fjord.
I took a deep breath of the fresh air, tainted as it was with the smell of fresh caught fish, and sighed it out contentedly. It seemed that after a few days of relative downtime, things were looking like they were picking up again.
I had enjoyed the opportunity that I had been given to put my feet up, figuratively speaking, and stroll about Hrímdale like some otherworldly tourist, but it was exciting to know that we were back on the mission that we had been given by the Overseer: namely, to win over Queen Frami and find out where the hell this relic was.
* * *
As instructed, I met Queen Frami and her hunting entourage the next morning just after the sun had risen.
The Queen was looking just as formidable and, well, regal, as she had on the day she had welcomed the Mystoceans into her land. She was dressed in dark furs of black and brown and gray, which made her look particularly war-like. Her eyepatch was in place, as was her crown, and she sat atop a huge bear with hair that was matted and gray in the same way that the Queen’s own long dreadlocks were.
“Ah, Dragonmancer Noctis,” she boomed when she caught sight of me walking toward her. “I will not lie to you; I am looking forward mightily to this expedition today. I don't get to pull my weight hunting as often as I should like—apparently monarchs are required to sit on their asses more often than they are expected to ride their bears. Are you ready?”
I looked at the Queen on her great war-bear and around at her retinue who were all sitting astride theirs. With a thought, I summoned Noctis from his Onyx Crystal.
The sable Onyx Dragon appeared with his usual lack of fuss or drama. One moment he was not there, and the next he was. I had always thought that the majestic, lethal-looking son of a bitch could have benefitted from popping into being in a gout of black flame or something but, on reflection, it was probably more intimidating and impressive just to have him appear out of ether with the rapidity of a falling shadow.
The Queen’s bear cast a baleful, glowing, violet eye at Noctis’ sudden appearance and let loose a low, threatening rumble. For his part, Noctis merely regarded the war-bear with a look of such cool nonchalance I was amazed that rime didn’t form on the creature’s coat.
“Easy, Orka, easy,” Queen Frami chuckled, patting the bear’s thick neck. “We owe this one much. He’s a friend.”
Orka looked far from convinced but, then again, neither did Noctis.
“Mount up then, Dragonmancer Noctis,” the Queen ordered.
I leapt with inhuman agility and grace up onto Noctis’ back, landing as lightly as rain between his great black wings. The dragon had taken on a shape that was slightly larger than the shire horse-sized form he normally did, which I imagined was because he wished to impress upon the gathered bears that he was the biggest and baddest motherfucker present.
To be fair, judging by the way that the bear mounts of Queen Frami’s guards shuffled their huge paws and eyed the dragon mistrustfully, it looked to have worked.
“I told you, Your Majesty,” I said respectfully, “if it’s all the same to you, you can call me Mike. All the Dragonmancer Noctis business makes me feel…”
“Like you have a stick shoved up your backside?” Queen Frami supplied.
“Yeah,” I said, “that’d be about right. Gives me airs. Most of my life, I’ve been so unimportant I couldn’t have commanded respect unless it was inside the fighting cage, and I was so broke that much of the time I couldn’t even pay attention.”
Queen Frami’s broad fa
ce split into a genuine grin. The eye that was not covered with the patch shone in the early morning light.
“Come then, Mike,” she said, “let’s be off. I always feel that my country is at its most spectacular in the early morn.”
Our group rode out into the growing light with Queen Frami leading the way up into the fir forest foothills that loomed over Hrímdale. I hadn’t explored this way myself yet. The forest, even from a distance, gave off the aura of a place that would be straight out of Grimm’s fairy tales. Even we drew closer, it seemed to take on a threat of its own, to send out tendrils of menace to greet anyone who was dumb enough to think that a stroll or ride under its eaves might be a nice way to pass a morning.
I looked sideways at the Queen as we pulled our mythical mounts to a halt and waited for her royal retinue to catch up. Queen Frami’s good eye flicked away from me.
“The smell of this place is...” Noctis began to say in my head.
“Evil?” I suggested.
“Not evil, not inherently so,” the Onyx Dragon countered. “More accurately, I would say that this wood has a minacious old heart. It does not suffer fools to come inside, nor will it mourn their passing if they do.”
“A comforting thought for someone who hasn’t had their morning coffee yet,” I replied drily. “I wonder why Queen Frami insists on hunting here?”
“Perhaps,” Noctis replied slowly, “it is a case of where the greater danger lies, so does the greater prize?”
I considered this. “Maybe. Or maybe the sly old woman is just trying to test my mettle once more.”
Looking around fully at the Queen, I addressed the female manifestation of Odin.
“Another trial of prowess, Your Majesty?” I asked. “Only of the mental kind this time?”
Queen Frami clapped her huge hands, and the noise sent a couple of finches twittering angrily away from out of the branches of a tree.
“Damn me, but you are a perceptive devil,” the Queen said.
I snorted, looking up at the ominous trees. “I don’t know about that, Your Majesty,” I said, “but I know what it’s like to haze or rattle a guy, and to be hazed and rattled myself. It’s one thing to watch how someone reacts when they have their back to the wall or when they are plunged into sudden danger, something else entirely to see how they deal with that slow, creeping feeling of unease that can unman even the staunchest badass. Doesn’t take too great an intellect to know that the best place to see how a guy or girl deals with that sort of pressure is the most threatening place that you can think of, a place that is known to you but not to them.”
Queen Frami clapped her hands again. Her bear, Orka, shifted under the big woman’s weight and shot another maleficent glare Noctis’ way.
“So, are we actually hunting anything?” I asked. “Or was trying to give me the heebie-jeebies the sole reason for bringing me here?”
The Queen shook her shaggy head and looked up at the forest with its towering somber evergreens.
“I admit that seeing if you were skittish was part of the idea,” she said. “But there is fine hunting to be had within the Beinwood. My overriding motive for bringing you here though, Mike, was to ensure that we were not overheard in our discussions about the item I promised to help you locate.”
“Ah,” I nodded sagely. “You mean that there are far fewer people who are ballsy enough to come traipsing around after us in this Beinwood than there are in the less homicidally-inclined forests around here?”
The Queen snorted up a load of phlegm and spat into a bush. “The rebels have eyes and ears everywhere, Mike,” she said, in a low growling voice. “That much became evident when they showed the fortitude to come smashing their way into the fucking Berserker Hall!” The Queen smote the pommel of her cleaver-like sword that hung at her side.
“We better make sure that we get this wrapped up sharpish then, Your Majesty,” I said. “Before they finish licking their wounds and come at you—or me and my Mystoceans—again.”
“Come,” the Queen said, “we shall talk more when we are some distance inside the forest.”
We didn’t speak again until our mounts carried us at least half a mile into the ever-present gloaming of the forest.
The first thing that the Queen said to me, when she finally thought it safe enough to speak, was, “You know, chimera are one hell of an adversary. Crafty as any demon you might come across and fine eating if you can bring one down with magic or steel.”
The casual way that she said it caught me slightly off guard. She spoke as if hunting a chimera was comparable to going pig hunting or quail shooting.
“Your Majesty,” I said slowly, my ears pricked up for any sign that we might be in chimaera territory now, “my biology is a little rusty. By chimera, you mean…”
“Forequarters of a lion, body of a goat, rear section of a drake,” the Queen said.
“That’s what I thought,” I said softly. “Big, are they?”
“Can be, if you’re lucky.”
“And they make good eating, you say?”
“Well, it is the goat section of the beast that you keep for the larder, you know, Mike,” the Queen told me matter-of-factly. “Depending on the creature, you might want to keep the head or a paw as a trophy, but the hindquarters taste like complete ass.”
The Queen cast an apologetic eye at Noctis. “I did not intend to cause offence with my comment about drake meat. But that is the case with the chimera. The drake part of the animal is somewhat tough and horrible.”
Noctis blinked and let out a slow amused hiss of steam.
“He thinks it funny that you should be concerned about his feelings, comparing him to something which is a third of a drake,” I translated Noctis’ thoughts even as I heard them echoing in my own head.
“He does not take umbrage?” Queen Frami asked.
Noctis snorted steam again.
“No,” I said.
“Good,” the Queen said. “In that case then, let us hunt! This section of the forest is home to quite a few of the beasts. They flourish here, though they are cunning and wary.”
“And while we hunt, you’ll tell me about the location of this device?” I asked in a low voice so that the Queen’s guards, even if they had been attempting to eavesdrop, would find it difficult to overhear. The Queen must trust the men and women that rode their bears with her, but I didn’t know any of them and felt it would be better to keep them all out of the loop as much as possible.
The Queen nodded. “Yes, while we ride, I shall tell you of its location.”
We rode our unconventional steeds through the Beinwood, winding our way through the labyrinth of trunks in the perpetual forest twilight. The Queen and I rode Orka and Noctis a little ahead of the guards.
“You may have been wondering, Mike, why it is that it has taken so long for me to discuss the relic with you,” the Queen said as our mounts pushed their way through a thick patch of bushes and undergrowth.
“I have been, yeah,” I admitted. “I thought that, after we had proved our good intent, and Dasyr and Tanila had conducted the Transfusion Ceremony, we would have made a move for the relic right away. Especially after we cemented our loyalty to you by fighting by your side when the rebels attacked.”
The Queen nodded gravely. Obviously, she was a little displeased at being accused of taking her time.
“There is a simple explanation for the delay,” she told me curtly. “And it is one that I’m sure you will not be surprised at, even though you have been here only a little while.”
I ducked to avoid a low hanging branch. “And what’s that, Your Majesty?” I asked, my eyes scanning the gloom.
“The weather,” the Queen said simply. “The relic, to the best of our knowledge, lies beyond the Fey Pass. The Fey Pass, naturally, has been inundated for the past week by avalanches. Such things occasionally crash through the mountains north of here. I had a scout report to me late last night that he believes a small party could make it through no
w without too much risk of setting off another.”
“Another avalanche?” I asked.
The Queen nodded. I noticed that she had loosened her sword in its sheath. “Yes, another avalanche. The northern mountains are capricious. The lands beyond the Fey Pass even more so. Thousands of tons of snow crashing down on your head will be the least of your worries once you get through the Fey Pass, Mike Noctis, you can trust me on that.”
“What’s worse than an avalanche?” I asked.
“Many things.” The Queen’s expression suddenly turned serious. “Like the bears of the Vetruscan Kingdom eventually dying out. Yes, they suffer the same fate as the dragons of the Mystocean Empire. But, unlike the Mystoceans, us Vetruscans do not have a male mancer with the power to breed monsters.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You know about what I can do?”
“Of course. There is a reason Hana was sent out to find you. Our seers spoke of one such as you. There have been no male mancers in any kingdom for a very, very long time. What you are, Mike Noctis, is an enigma. I do not know what would happen if you were to, say, attempt to breed with a bearmancer, but—” The Queen suddenly stopped and held up a hand.
“Quiet!” she snapped, going as tense as a bloodhound that had caught a whiff of an escaped prisoner.
I shut my mouth and listened to the sounds of the Beinwood. As my eyes scanned the almost impenetrable shadows, Queen Frami took a long, careful breath in through her nose. Her one eye narrowed, and a small smile of excited delight flickered on her lips.
“Ah,” she exhaled, her breath rumbling in her chest, “here we go…”
The world seemed to slow, the trees closing in around us. We were engulfed in a world of moist, pine-scented greenery. Above us, above the roofs of the towering trees, the sun scooted out from behind a cloud. It filtered in through the feathery boughs above—great stabbing bars of golden light that looked solid enough to cut.
Myriad insects suddenly buzzed and droned into life; beetles of numerous, incandescent shades, flies that glittered like lumps of glittering coal. Some sort of flying squirrel zipped across my peripheral vision. The air was cool and still and fragrant. A tense expectancy hung in the air like vapor, tickling at my eyes and filling my ears with fluff. My eyes strained for any sign of a lion’s mane or drake’s tail or a fucking goat’s gut among the mass of foliage, for anything that might be the chimera.