Jim Butcher - Academ's Fury

Amara stared out at the darkness for several moments. "Dawn," she said quietly. "Had the First Lord dispatched Knights Aeris to us, they would have been here already."

Bernard stood beside her and said nothing.

"How long until then, do you think?" Amara asked.

"Eight hours," Bernard said quietly.

"Not time enough for the wounded to recover without crafting."

"But time enough to rest," Bernard said. "Our Knights needed it. As do you, Countess."

Amara stared out into the darkness, and it was then that the vord queen stepped into the light of the furylamps.

The queen walked upon two legs, but something in its motion was subtly off, as though it were performing a trick rather than moving naturally. A worn old greatcloak covered all but a few portions of the queen. Its feet were long, the toes spreading out and grasping at the ground as it moved. Its face, where not covered by the cloak's deep hood, was strangely shaped-its features almost human, but carved from some kind of rigid green material incapable of changing expression. Its eyes emitted a soft green-white glow, round orbs of color with no detectable lids or pupils.

Its right hand was raised above its head. Its arm was too long, jointed strangely, but the hand that grasped a broad strip of white cloth was also nearly human.

Amara just stared stupidly for a moment.

The vord queen spoke, its voice a slow, wheezing wail of sound, painful to hear and difficult to understand. "Alerans," the creature said.

Amara shuddered in reaction to the creature's voice, the alien tones and inflections.

"Aleran leader. Come forth. White talk, of truce."

"Crows," Bernard breathed quietly. "Listen to that. Makes my blood cold."

Doroga regarded the queen with flat eyes, and Walker let out a rumbling sound of displeasure. "Do not trust the words of the queen," he said. "It is mistaken and knows it."

Amara frowned at Doroga. "Mistaken?"

"It's lying," Bernard clarified. He squinted at Doroga. "Are you sure?"

"They kill," the Marat said. "They take. They multiply. That is all that they do."

Bernard squinted out at the vord queen, now remaining perfectly, unnaturally still as it waited. "I'm going to talk to it," he said.

Doroga's frown deepened. He never took his eyes from the vord queen. "Unwise."

"If it's busy talking to me," Bernard said, "it isn't leading an attack on us. If I can buy us some time with talks, it might make a difference."

"Doroga," Amara said. "These queens are dangerous, are they not?"

"More so than a warrior," Doroga said. "Speed, power, intelligence, sorcery if you get too close."

Amara frowned. "What sorcery?"

Doroga stared at the vord through eyes that appeared to be lazily unconcerned. "They command the vord without need for speech. They can make phantoms appear, distract, and blind, create images with no substance. Trust nothing you see when a vord queen is near."

"Then you can't risk it, Bernard," Amara said.

"Why not?"

"Because Giraldi is wounded. If something happens to you, command falls to me, and I am no soldier. We need your leadership too badly for you to take chances." She shook her head. "I'll go."

"The crows you will," Bernard spat.

Amara lifted a hand. "It makes sense. I can speak for us. And frankly, between the two of us I suspect I have more experience in manipulating conversations and evaluating responses."

"If Doroga's right, and it is a trap-"

"Then I am the most likely to be able to escape," she pointed out.

"Doroga," Bernard growled, "tell her how stupid it is."

"She's right," Doroga said. "Fast enough to escape a trap."

Bernard stared hard at Doroga, and said, "Thank you."

Doroga smiled. "You Alerans pretty stupid about how you treat your females. Amara is not a child to be protected. She is a warrior."

"Thank you, Doroga," said Amara.

"A stupid warrior to go out there," Doroga said. "But a warrior. Besides. If she goes, you can stay here with your bow. Queen tries anything, shoot it."

"Enough," Amara said. She flicked her cloak back to clear her sword arm, loosened her weapon in its sheath, then strode forward out of the cave and into the steady light of the furylamps. She stopped about ten feet in front of the vord queen, enough to one side to give Bernard a clear line of fire to the creature. She regarded the vord queen in silence for a moment. The entire while, the creature did not move, its luminous eyes tracking her.

"You asked for a talk," Amara said. "So talk."

The vord queen's head rotated oddly within the hood, eyes coming to rest at a slant. "Your people are trapped. You have no escape. Surrender and spare yourselves pain."

"We will not surrender," Amara said. "Attack us at your own peril. Once battle is joined, we will show no mercy."

The vord queen's head tilted in the opposite direction. "You believe that your First Lord will dispatch forces to save you. That will not happen."

There was something about the vord's statement, a certainty about the way it spoke that shook Amara's confidence. She kept her face and voice steady, and replied, "You are mistaken."

"No. We are not." The vord queen shifted in place, and the cloak stirred and moved inhumanly. "Your First Lord lies near death. Your messengers are dead. Your nation will soon be divided by war. No help comes for you."

Amara stared at the vord queen for a moment, fear a sudden, steady sensation at the base of her spine. Again, the creature spoke with total certainty. If it was telling the truth, it meant that the vord were working in several places at once. That the vord queen Doroga worried about had, in fact, reached the capital.

More pieces fell into place, and Amara's sense of horror rose as they did. The Wintersend festival was attended by most of the nobility of the Realm. Public victories during Wintersend were that much more valuable-and public defeats that much more disastrous. It was surely no coincidence that the Cursors had come under attack at this time. If Gaius truly was incapacitated, his intelligence forces reeling, it would be an almost laughably easy matter to engineer the revelation of his weakness, and after that it would be a short step indeed to open civil war.

Amara stared at the vord queen with a rising sense of despair. Oh yes, the vord had fought intelligently. They had taken the time to get to know their enemy. Amara could not make more than vague guesses as to the extent of what the vord were doing, but if they were truly working in concert with disruptive efforts within the capital…

Then they might very well be doomed.

Amara stared at the vord queen as the thoughts reeled through her mind.

"Intelligent," said the vord queen. "Intuitive. Rapid analysis of disparate facts. The logic of the hypothesis is sound. Surrender, Aleran. You will make an excellent addition to the Purpose."

Cold horror drove Amara back a pair of steps and sent her heart into frantic racing.

It had heard her thoughts.

"You have fought commendably," the vord queen said, and it seemed that with every word the vord's pronunciation became more clear. "But it is over. This world is now part of the Purpose. You will perish. I offer you the opportunity for a painless end. It is the most you can hope for. Yield."

"We do not yield," Amara snarled, shocked at how high and thready her voice sounded. "Our Realm is not yours. Not today." She lifted her chin, and said, "We choose to fight."

The vord queen's glowing eyes narrowed, pulsing from green-white to a deep shade of golden red, and it rasped, "So be it." It opened its hand and released the white cloth to fall to the ground. Then it turned and bounded with inhuman grace and speed into the darkness. Amara retreated quickly to the cave, her legs shaking almost too much to walk.