The Hidden Queen, page 51
In response, I pull off my helm and put the crown on my head, piercing my finger on the sharp point of the blood lock before latching it under my chin.
The world went dark when I removed my helm and its wards of sight, but the moment the lock clicks, my vision ignites like one of Mother’s festival flamework displays. Wardsight fills the vision with color, but this…this is colors I did not know existed.
Amanvah’s aura is so clear to me now, and I ache at its purity. Visions dance around her—her past, her present, her hopes of the future. I see her childhood fear of Asome, and his ultimate betrayal. The tear bottles she filled, night after night, when she heard Mother was missing.
I watch her scream at the Damajah and storm out of the palace to race to Anoch Dahl. The second most powerful woman in Krasia, and she walked away from everything to be at my side in the dark.
I see her standing beside me at the front of a grand army, my crown ablaze like the sun as we face down the demon queen and her horde.
Amanvah believes in me. My sister desperately wants, needs me to succeed.
My sister loves me.
I want to cry. To beg her forgiveness. I have heaped such distrust upon her…
Again the flamework weapons roar, returning me to the present. I look up at the wall of warriors surrounding us and find I can see right through them to the melee without on the other side. Ambient magic rushes toward me from every direction, filling me with strength, knowledge, and power. I look at Asome, his aura fading fast, and realize I don’t need Amanvah at all. I push her aside and trace healing wards over his wound, powering them with the magic flowing into me. Immediately, the hole stops bleeding, then begins to knit itself closed.
Even his aura, so unreadable moments ago, is open to me now. His desperate ambition. His belief he was destined by Everam for greatness that those around him sought to deny. Even I believe it, seeing the measure of power in his aura.
But I see, too, what Father must have seen. Asome would be a strict ruler, but he would be fair, and clever, and stand fast against the alagai.
“If only you had been patient, brother,” I say as the fog clears from his eyes. “The crown would have come to you on its own.”
I worry he might reach out while I am bent close—try to take the crown one last time—but as I can see the power in his aura, so, too, can he see mine. I am beyond him now. Instead, Asome’s face takes on a look of anguish. He knows I am right.
“Help me end this,” I say. “We will have a reckoning, you and I, but not here. Not now.”
Asome just looks at me blankly. “You had a weapon.”
“Ay?” I ask instinctively, but I can already see his meaning. Asome felt me reach for the hanzhar, and knew he could not defend in time. An image hovers in his aura, me, knife in hand, standing triumphant over his bloody body.
Even now, I can see he would have preferred that. Preferred death to the dishonor of living with his failure.
I get to my feet. “What is the greater dishonor, brother? The shame of defeat, or of living with the knowledge that Sharak Ka was lost by your selfishness?” I reach a hand down to him. “It’s not too late to stop this. It’s not too late to play a part in victory.”
Asome stares for just a few seconds, but it feels like an eternity as outside the ring people die and the conflict deepens. Then he reaches back, and I pull him to his feet. Together, we stride into the circle of my bodyguard. Cutters take one look at my face and fall over themselves to make way.
“ENOUGH!” The crown responds to my will, blazing bright with power and activating a ward of sound that turns my voice into a thunderclap that carries above the boom of flamework weapons and the screams of the wounded.
* * *
—
“I couldn’t just stand by—!” Rhinebeck protests, when we are finally alone inside the csar.
“You could and you should!” I shout back. “It was Domin Sharum!”
Rhinebeck spits on the floor. “To the core with the sand rats’ barbarous rituals, if it means I have to stand by and watch someone kill you!”
He means it. I can see it dancing in his aura. Rhinebeck loves me. He always has, even when we were just children writing letters. Standing by and watching me die was too much for him.
Was it fair to ask? Of him? Of Gared? Of anyone who loves anyone? Would I stand by and watch Selen or Darin die for the sake of honor? I don’t know. But there is one thing I do know.
“Forty-seven Sharum are dead from Angierian flamework,” I growl. “Hundreds more injured, and the rest with a blood debt against you.”
Rhinebeck crosses his arms. “My men and I can protect ourselves.”
“Stop thinking of yourself, you arrogant son of the core!” Again the crown responds without my conscious command, turning the shout into something that shatters Rhinebeck’s brave façade.
I suck in a breath, trying to calm myself. I didn’t mean to do that. Until I can better understand the crown, I cannot risk losing control.
“We’re weeks of travel from the surface,” I say as calmly as I can. “Without our alliance, none of us is likely to ever see the sun again. We cannot fight among ourselves, and our task is greater than any one life. Even mine. Even yours.”
The words sting his aura like the bite of a spear, but they have to be said. Even now, he doesn’t understand. Not really. In his heart the lives lost mean nothing compared to mine, and now that I have the crown, it was all worth it.
I want to shake him. To shout again, or speak some quiet wisdom to reshape his worldview, like my father was said to have done, time and again. But I have no great wisdom about love and duty to share, and there isn’t time to coddle him.
“The crown is speaking to me,” I say. “I can sense everything. Not just the magic all around us, but something bigger, more powerful, and very, very close. The Spear of Ala is calling.”
* * *
—
The alamen fae are amazing to look at in crownsight. Their auras are brighter and vastly different from those of surface folk. Like other denizens of the dark, their bodies can instinctively Draw and hold a bit of magic. Like me, they are unnaturally strong, slow to tire, and quick to heal.
The differences do not end there. The fae have senses I barely have words to describe, even as the senses given me by the crown defy description. Their eyes can see in any illumination no matter how dim, and their sensitive skin can detect the heat creatures radiate. Subtle vibrations resonate in their bones, telling them the presence of objects around them.
There is fear in them as we approach the gates to the tunnel that leads to the Spear of Ala. For thousands of years, the fae were little more than livestock for the demons, and I can see demons right on the other side, ready to strike.
But when the doors swing wide and the alagai charge, they run headlong into the crown’s sphere of protection. My spear brothers are ready, striking while they are fetched up against the field like a bird flown into a window. Their spears pass through my magic effortlessly, and ichor sprays the tunnel floor. Quickly, demon bodies pile, threatening to choke off the tunnel we need to advance.
I concentrate on the sphere of protection, seeing it surround me like a bubble. The dead alagai are still rich with magic, but their auras are flat now, lifeless. I adjust the field to ignore them, then thrust the power into the tunnel with force. The remaining demons are pushed back, allowing my army to advance once the bodies are clear.
Amanvah was right. Had I taken the crown when it was offered, Asome would not have dared challenge me. If I had worn it on our journey, I could have desiccated whole mushroom colonies myself. Vaporized minoc in midair. Cleared our army’s path like a force of nature.
Asome’s downfall was wanting the crown too much, but my own could easily have been not wanting it enough.
The tunnel is only a mile, but my head aches from keeping my will focused on the narrow area. I’m relieved when we finally push out into the main cavern, but the feeling is short-lived.
Demons are quick to surround us, clawing at the edges of the crown’s forbidding. I do not know what forces Alagai Ka holds in reserve in Safehold, but there are thousands of alagai in the chamber.
Rock demons thrice my height boom with every step. Wind demons smaller than minoc swarm in great clouds. The cavern floor is alive with flame demons and snow demons and chittering, spiderlike cave demons. Some I have encountered before, and many I have only read about in bestiaries. Some are entirely new.
But the alagai are pale shadows before the Spear of Ala. Still miles away, the great subterranean csar of Kaji shines in crownsight like the sun itself. Its walls form a gigantic greatward that Draws and holds an incredible amount of raw magic, but that is only the beginning. I can sense the faith of thousands, of millions of warriors who gave their lives defending it in the time of the first Deliverer. That belief, that unity of purpose, binds a different kind of magic to the first, the pure gold light of Sharik Hora, the Temple of Heroes’ Bones.
The Spear’s light sings to me, and I can feel my crown responding. The Damajah really did it. Her replica crown is keyed to this city like a blood lock. If I can get inside, I will be able to Draw on its power like a god.
But we are not inside yet, and the great gates stand open, just as Elder Havell warned.
I start slowly, expanding the forbidding as I move into the cavern until I find the upper limit of the crown’s power, a dome nearly half a mile in diameter. I keep one end over the mouth of the tunnel as Lord Commander Gamon rides out with his cavalry, in their element, at last. They patrol the border of my forbidding as Rhinebeck leads the Flamework Corps out to give them cover, followed by Gared and Ashia, each with a thousand of their best fighters.
Even this elite and mobile force takes over an hour to assemble. I feared holding the forbidding would exhaust me, but I find it is effortless. And why not? The Crown of Kaji was designed for this very purpose—allowing the first Deliverer to protect an entire army on the field.
Still, my anxiety grows as the minutes pass, eager to face this next test, now that it is upon me. The demons are strangely quiet, having drifted back out of range of cavalry spears. Demon drones are driven by their endless hunger and instinct to kill. The sight of us should be driving them to frenzied clawing at the forbidding, but these keep their distance and bide their time.
The Flamework weapons stay blessedly silent. They have orders not to fire without my direct command, and Rhinebeck knows my patience for reckless decisions is at an end.
When all are in position I begin moving forward, surrounded by a mass of warriors forming a giant pincushion of spears and bayonets as my forbidding slowly clears a path through the cavern to the csar.
There is a keening sound, and I catch sight of a demon much larger than the rest, drifting at the edge of my sight. Another call sounds from a different direction, and again I glimpse a demon whose glow of power outshines the others. Then a third. A warning, perhaps. Or a command. Indeed, the demons retreat farther, out of range of even the flamework weapons.
Then the gwilji attack, in numbers vastly greater than those domesticated by the alamen fae.
The dogs of darkness are nearly invisible, even to me. They kept their glowing eyes and mouths pinched tight as they stalked in under the cover of the demon horde. Now their claws loudly clatter and scrape grooves in the stone as they race forward and spring.
Again the Flamework Corps fire without waiting for an order, though it’s hard to blame them with the enemy bearing down.
Their bullets pass harmlessly through the gwilji, hindering them not at all. Some leap upon the horses, their talons piercing warded wooden armor like heavy nails. Others race past, tearing into the Flamework Corps.
Gared and his Cutters race to defend them, but the Sharum infantry hesitates. Just two days ago, the Krasians would have leapt to protect the Flamework Corps, but despite the truce I forced, the slaughter at the last csar has not been forgotten.
The Cutters have no such qualms, locking shields and hacking at the talons, the only way to kill a gwil. Their claws are what bind the ghostly creatures to this world, and as they are severed, I watch as the creatures dissipate fully and are pulled down into the Core.
There are cries from above, and minoc join the battle, diving down, their sharp proboscises leading.
Ashia bangs shield and spear together, activating the wards on her choker to amplify her voice. “The alagai send hounds of the abyss against our siblings in the night, and we let greenlanders take the glory?!” she demands in Krasian. “Follow me, if you wish to find Heaven at the end of the lonely path!”
She leaps into the fray, and a thousand shamed warriors clatter spears and follow, again throwing shields over their Angierian allies and fighting as one.
We keep moving steadily toward the csar, and I trust in my warriors and Warders to hold the defense as I try to make sense of the csar’s web of power. It reaches for me like plants reach for the sun, connecting us with lines of magic than intensify as I approach, all of it pulsing in unison.
But there is disharmony in its song. The invasive creatures within, the open gate preventing the greatward from activating fully, and another signal, this one coming from afar.
The lines of power drift through the cavern, invisible to the others, but unmistakable in crownsight, nearly identical to those binding me to the csar.
As Inevera feared, there can only be one source of such power.
“What is it?” Asome asks, ignoring a tsst! from Amanvah.
“Father’s crown,” I say. “The true Crown of Kaji is holding open the gates.” The signal cannot be anything else. But what does it mean? It is said the Crown of Kaji will only grant its full power to those of the Deliverer’s blood. Is that overstated? Has Alagai Ka killed him and found a way to access the crown’s power?
Or does Father wait in the caverns below? A prisoner, perhaps, or a slave, his will broken by Alagai Ka.
“Can you command them to close?” Asome asks.
I shake my head. “I don’t know how.”
“How do you move your arm?” Asome asks. “Imagine their weight, their power. Bind yourself to them until they feel an extension of your very body.”
“Why are you listening to him?” Rhinebeck demands. “Why is he even here?”
“Because I am not an honorless chin who strikes from afar to try to cheat Everam’s will,” Asome says. “Because I am the only other man alive who has worn the crown. A better question is why you are here.”
“Enough,” I growl, reaching out toward the csar. It’s a meaningless gesture, but it helps me focus as I cast my own lines of magic back at the csar, gripping the gates as if in a tug-of-war.
The power holding them is strong. Stronger than mine. But it is distant, reaching out over many many miles to command the csar’s defenses down. I concentrate, willing the gates to move, but they are stubbornly still.
“I can’t close them alone,” I say. “I can interrupt the signal somewhat, but we’ll need muscle to make up the difference.”
“That, we got in plenty,” Gared says. We press forward, but, limited by beats of a marching drummer, progress is excruciatingly slow.
Even with the gates open, the golden magic of heroes’ bones is enough to keep demons out of the city. Gwilji and other subterranean terrors prowl the streets, however. They come at us as we reach the gates and enter the city, but we have the foe’s measure now, and they are no match for our forces.
The gates are warded to open at the crown’s command, but there are conventional cranks and counterweights for when the csar’s master is not on-site. We lash horses to the cables, and they pull with all their strength as I concentrate, trying to cancel the insidious command from afar.
More and more warriors bend their backs to the task, until I fear the great woven steel cables will snap, but then, with a great groan, the gates begin to move.
Slowly, painfully, they gain momentum, moving faster and faster until they swing the last few feet in a great rush, closing with a resounding boom.
* * *
—
The moment the gates close, I feel a circuit close and the csar’s greatward activates, blazing with power that floods me until I fear I will drown in it.
It flows out into the cavern like ripples in a pond from a great stone. The alagai shriek and flee, driven like livestock out of the cavern as they scamper into the surrounding tunnels.
If the csar sang to me before, now it is Minister Arther, whispering secret tallies in my ear. I can sense the survivors hiding inside, who and where they are, if they are in good health or poor.
I sense, too, the invaders. Not true alagai, the wards and forbidding have no hold on these subterranean denizens, but they can kill just as easily as demons.
One of the most spectacular stories of my father is how he called every spear in the csar to be his army, spinning about him and his companions in a protective storm of blades that sent gwilji to the abyss in droves. I can sense those spears even now, waiting for my call.
But do I need them, with such power coursing through me? I close my eyes, letting the csar become an extension of my body as Asome said. I sense the invaders, and focus my anger upon them.
That is all the csar’s magic needs to respond, flaring like festival lights as it vaporizes the enemy one by one.
Just like that, the Spear of Ala is ours, a bottleneck against the coming of the demon queen.
Jechi Hosta domiciles are cut straight into the caldera, with rooms running wagon train deeper and deeper into the rock face. Arick and I are up front, watching Wonda and Selen thump around, practicing trips and throws. Olive gave Selen Wonda’s old position as captain of the house guard, but Wonda was her teacher, and it din’t take long for them to fall into old grooves.
