Greg Keyes - The Born Queen

“Remember your promise,” she said. “Find me if I do not find you.”

“How will we know when you’ve finished?”

“Somehow, I think you will know,” she replied.

Marché Hespero drew on the faneway of Diuvo and made himself small in the eyes of the sky and of men.

The fighting had ceased at nightfall, at his order. Although his body was warded against steel, there were some things that might do him harm; the blow of a lance or mace, though it would not cut his skin, might well break bones and organs through the skin. And a splintered lance, a broken arrow—he frankly wasn’t certain what they might do. During an open melee, any of those things might find him by sheerest accident even though no eye saw him.

He slipped through the lines of his men, past their fires and amid their grumbling. The enemy had withdrawn into Eslen-of-Shadows and crouched behind a low wall that had never been meant to serve as a fortification. Still, they had managed to hold it passably well. Crotheny might have lost its witch-queen and her ability to slay thousands with a wish, but if anything, the leadership of the army had improved. He slipped over the barrier and wove through the alert front ranks, back through where men were sleeping, into the houses of the dead.

He knew his knights were questioning an attack that was not only sacrilegious and unprecedented but to their minds nonsensical. The only approaches to the castle from the shadow city were steep and fully exposed to anything the guards on the city walls might want to launch or drop on them for hundreds of kingsyards.

What he wanted, of course, was control of the throne, which finally had shown itself a few days after he had killed Anne.

He hadn’t intended things to be this messy; he’d intended to seize control of Anne’s gifts as he had the former Fratrex Prismo’s. Her power married with his own would have made it easy enough to slay any who opposed him in Eslen and let his army walk in.

Instead, he had to make do with talents he already possessed, at least until he appropriated the sedos throne and then took control of the others. That shouldn’t be so hard, with the Vhen throne empty and measures taken to keep it so. When he had both of those, he would find the keeper of the Xhes and dispense with him.

He had hoped to have Eslen-of-Shadows pacified to make the task of winning the throne easier, but he felt the power swelling toward the proscribed moment, and he also sensed the other foe he had dreamed about so long ago. He had no way of knowing who was stronger at this point, but he had taken plenty of risks, and this one last gamble for the greatest prize was surely worth it.

He was nearing the tomb itself when a soundless explosion of red-gold light came pouring from the door frame. He shrank against a cold marble wall, gathering his will to hide himself as completely as he could yet also ready for battle.

Something came flying out of the opening, a dark cloud, and a woman, glowing…

He blinked. It was Anne. It was the throne.

She was the throne. She was what he had come to claim. But how—

Anne was the flashing heart of a thunderhead, moving out over his men, bolts of blue-white lightning arcing out from her to the waiting earth, replacing silence with ear-aching thunder. He watched, frozen for the moment, as knights and soldiers and Mamres monks all perished alike, as Anne Dare—the Born Queen—only shone brighter and brighter.

His vision had started like this. Had he failed? Was there any chance to stop her now?

The Black Jester. If he could take his strength, add it to his own…

“Hespero!” a voice called over the din.

He jerked around and saw, to his great surprise, Stephen Darige.

“Brother?”

“Nice trick,” Stephen said. “Good for sneaking about. Too bad you were distracted.”

And with those words, their battle began.

The candles all flickered when Brinna touched her fingers to the hammarharp, and the small room filled with the sound. Leoff waited, almost forgetting to breathe.

There it came, Mery whispering a note and then, suddenly, the same tone issuing, clear and perfect, from the mysterious woman at the keys. It shivered up his spine to know that she was hearing the sound itself, not in this world but in the other. He wished with all his being that he could hear what Brinna and Mery did. He knew it in his mind, of course, but his ears hungered for it, too.

Now Areana joined in with the quick line, starting low but climbing higher separately from the first theme, never touching it, as if two deaf musicians were playing side by side, each unaware of the other. The melodies wandered like that for a while, tightening but still separate until, in a moment that shocked him even though he knew it was coming, they were suddenly in unison for three notes. It sent a thrill of pure terror through him, and he suddenly very much did not want to go through with this.

But now it was his turn to sing. He prayed he was up to the task.

In the house, a hammarharp sounded a single chord, and then a voice lifted in one high, clear note. Neil was startled; it reminded him of frightening a covey of quail along the side of the road. What was more surprising, that surprise or the startlement itself?

Because it was Brinna, and the depth of that single beautiful note opened a door on everything he still didn’t know about her, everything he wanted to learn. He knew she played the harp, and beautifully, and he loved her voice, but he never knew this was hidden in it.

The note dropped and wavered, and a second voice joined it, another woman: the composer’s wife. The song suddenly wasn’t pretty anymore, and Neil remembered a time not so long ago when he’d been sinking in the sea, dragged down by the weight of his armor, and he’d heard the Draugs’ lonely, jealous song, welcoming him to the cold land of Breu-nt-Toine, a country without love or light or even memory. In this music—in Brinna’s voice—he heard again the song of the Draugs.

He walked away from the house not so much because the music repelled him as because he was drawn to it, just as his armor had dragged him toward the sea floor.

But then another memory came.

He’d been seven, in the hills, gathering the goats. Goat gathering wasn’t such a hard business, and he’d been doing some of the work on his back, watching the clouds, imagining they were islands filled with strange kingdoms and peoples, wondering if he could ever find a way up to them.

Then he’d heard the horns blowing and knew the fleet was in. He jumped up, leaving the goats to themselves, and rushed down the hill trail, racing along with the sea down below, until ahead he could see his father’s longship with its broad blue sail and prow carved in the likeness of Saint Menenn’s horse Enverreu.

By the time he reached the docks, the ships was tied up. His father already was back on dry land and opening his arms to sweep his son up in rough arms.

“Fah,” he shouted. The sun that day had shown a kind of gold that Neil had never seen since, although he had watched for it and had seen something of its hue that day when he had fought for the waerd. And right there on the wooden planks, in front of all his comrades, his father pulled from his things something long, wrapped in oiled cloth, its head stockinged in sealskin.

He pulled off the cloth and sock in a hurry, and there it was, his first spear, with its beautiful shiny blade and plain thick pole.

“I had it made by Saint Jeveneu himself,” his father said, but at Neil’s amazed expression, he mussed his head and corrected himself.

“It was made by an old friend of mine on the isle of Guel,” he said. “No saint but a good man and a good smith, and he made it special for you.”