Greg Keyes - The Born Queen

“Austra,” he said. “You’re the only one who can stop her. Do you understand? He’s tricked her. He’ll die, yes, but he’ll take the world with him. Anne will go mad; it’s too much power. You feel it, don’t you?”

“I feel it,” Austra said. Her voice was that of a woman in the rising throes of passion.

“Fight her,” Stephen said. “You have claim to the power, too.”

“Why should I fight it?” Austra asked. “It’s wonderful. I’ll have the whole world in my veins soon.” “Yes,” Stephen said. “I know.” He stepped closer. “I didn’t know what he was, Austra. That was what I was missing. He’s been waiting in his prison for two thousand years, planning this moment, building it, planting the seeds in all of us. He doesn’t want to rule, he doesn’t want to return his race to glory, he just wants to die and take everything with him. Can’t you see it?”

“Why should I believe you?”

“Don’t,” he said. “Go see for yourself.”

Flames began to dance on her garments. She looked at Cazio, and for a moment her face was that of the Austra he loved.

“Cazio?” she asked.

“I love you,” he said. “Do what’s right.”

Then his legs went out from under him.

Aspar would have laughed if he could, but the joy was there in the leaves and blossoms for anyone to see. He healed the broken, ended the hopeless, and pulled in the poison, spreading and diffusing it, changing it into something new. He found the heart of the Sarnwood witch and took her in, too, took all of her children in, and reckoned at last she understood, because she stopped fighting him and lent him her strength.

Or perhaps it was that she saw what he saw, the deadly fire kindled in the west, the one thing that would stop life’s rebirth and send everything to oblivion.

The real enemy.

He didn’t need a summoning, not now, and so he moved his weight across the world, fearing it was already too late.

Anne felt the black blood of the Kept flowing into her veins and cried out with glee, knowing that no one since time began had wielded might like this: not the Skasloi, not Virgenya Dare, no one. She was saint, demon, dragon, tempest, the fire in the earth. There had never been a name for what she was becoming. The Kept coiled around her as the life leaked from him, and his every touch sent shudders through her body, pleasure and pain so pure that she couldn’t tell them apart and wouldn’t if she could. Through his eyes she saw a hundred thousand years of such sensation and more, and the anticipation was its own luscious bliss.

More! she shouted.

There is more, the dying demon replied. So much more.

Stephen tried to keep his focus, tried to stay in the world, but it was difficult with so much of him gone. Only the ancient, terrible obstinacy of Kauron had let him keep anything, but even that was fading, and soon Anne would notice her mess and clean it up.

It depended on this girl. He ached to take Austra in his arms and drain the life and power from her; she was a vein that tapped right into the thing Anne was becoming, and he—if he had the gift—could bleed Anne through her. She would never see it coming.

But he no longer had that gift. He was less than a skeleton of himself.

He watched as she knelt by Cazio, murmuring, as her clothing finally exploded in blue flame and she was forced to step back from her lover to avoid charring him.

“You can’t heal him, if that’s what you’re trying to do,” Stephen said. “You can’t heal anything. Neither can she. Always a storm, never a gentle rain. Do you understand? But you are her weak spot.”

Austra stared at him with her blistering eyes for a moment, and then the flames began to subside, then smoke, until she was wreathed in dark vapor and her eyes shone like green lamps. Then she lifted toward the terror that hung above them.

Anne felt an ebb in her strength and sought jealously for the source of it. Had she missed someone? Was Hespero still alive?

But no, it was just Austra, bearing a fraction of her strength.

If you die, the Kept said, she inherits all.

She doesn’t have the power to kill me, Anne said. And she wouldn’t if she could.

She can betray you more than anyone. You know that.

“Don’t listen to him, Anne,” Austra said.

“Of course I won’t,” Anne replied. “We’ll rule together, won’t we?”

“Anne, Cazio is dying,” Austra said. “Can you heal him?

“No,” she said. She hadn’t realized until she said it that it was true.

Seize the Vhen throne, Qexqaneh interrupted. Then you can heal any of these worms if that is your wish.

“He’s lying, Anne.”

“Why should he? He’s sacrificing himself for me.”

“He’s using you to destroy the world.”

“So he thinks,” Anne said. “But I’m the one with the power now. Anyway, what’s so great about this world? You’re part of me now; you can see what vermin people are. I’ll create another world. I already see how it could be done. We’ll make it the way we want it, the way it ought to be.”

“That’s crazy, Anne. That means killing everyone you’ve ever known, everyone dear to you.”

“Like who?” Anne screamed. “My father? Fastia? Elseny? My mother is dead, too; did you know that? Everyone I care for is already dead except you and Cazio, and my patience is wearing a little thin with you. Now, if you want Cazio to live, either join me or give up your gifts, because we’ve got one battle left, and I need all the strength I can muster. After that we can have everything, Austra, just the way we want it.”

Austra opened her mouth again, but then she looked beyond Anne.

“I’ll save you, Anne,” she said.

Anne turned.

She stood in a field of ebony roses, the pearls of her dress gleaming like dull bone in the moonlight. The air was so thick with the scent of the blooms that she thought she would choke.

There was no end to them; they stretched to the horizon in a series of low rises, stems bent by a murmuring wind. She turned slowly to see if it was thus in all directions.

Behind her the field ended abruptly in a wall of trees, black-boled monsters covered with puckered thorns bigger than her hand, rising so high she couldn’t see their tops in the dim light. Thorn vines as thick as her arm tangled between the trees and crept along the ground. Through the trees and beyond the vines was only darkness. A greedy darkness, she felt, a darkness that watched her, hated her, wanted her. “I’ve been here before,” she told the forest. “I’m not frightened this time.”

Something pushed through the thorns, coming toward her. Moonlight gleamed on a black-mailed arm and the fingers of a hand, uncurling.

And then the helmet came through, a tall tapering helm with black horns curving up, set on the shoulders of a giant.

But this time, standing her ground, she saw it wasn’t mail but bark, and the helmet was moss and horn and stone. And of the face she could only see the eyes, wells of life and death, birth and decay—need and vengeance.

You have the power, the fading voice of the Kept told her. Kill him and complete yourself. Anne gathered herself, but her peripheral vision caught motion, and she saw Austra running across the field, running straight for the Briar King.

If he gets her, you lose, the Kept said. You must kill her now.

Anne stood, watching.

Kill her, Qexqaneh said more urgently. Do you understand? Through her he can defeat us.

Anne lashed out at Austra, and the girl stumbled. She tried to rip through the connection between them, recover her power, but she saw what the Kept meant, how intimate that connection really was. Killing Austra was the only way for Anne to be whole, to possess everything.