Queen's Hunt (9 page)

She touched the ring on her second finger. Magic hummed at her fingertips, the only trace of the emerald’s true identity. How long before Leos Dzavek discovered the jewel his duke had stolen was false? How long before he thought to strip her of all possessions and force the truth from her throat? Then he would possess two of the three jewels. Morennioù would be helpless against a second invasion. (And he
would
invade a second time. She knew the man who was, who had been her brother. He did not suffer disappointment.)

She had to escape, before he found out her secrets.

There is only one way. Only one choice.

It was a gamble, attempting to make a leap across the magical void in the flesh. She had managed the trick dozens of times in previous lives; she had done it last summer when she recovered the emerald from Autrevelye, and again that last fateful time when Dzavek confronted her. But she had never tried to when so drained of strength. She would have to concentrate hard if she wanted to land in Morennioù and not lose herself in other worlds.

Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane Lir. Ei rûf ane Toc. Komen mir de strôm.

Magic rippled over her skin, clearing her head and easing the cramps in her gut. She murmured the phrase again, her sight narrowing down to a point on the stone floor, to a single speck of water gleaming in the torchlight.

Komen mir de strôm. Komen mir de vleisch unde sêle. Komen mir de Anderswar.

The world tilted away. A narrow edge, a bright sharp line, arced through the darkness. She glimpsed a hundred worlds refracted in all directions. Just as she caught sight of Morennioù, of Enzeloc Island and her home, a force, like a massive hand, struck her backward.

The shock of return drove the breath from her body.

She lay there, gasping. (There? She had no idea where.) Eventually she coughed, spat out a mouthful of blood. Her ribs ached sharply. Her throat felt bruised and sore. Voices yammered inside her skull. Outside, too—voices shouting curses in Károvín and another language. Veraenen.

Valara hauled herself to sitting. Just as she feared, she was still a prisoner in that same dank dark cell. Off to one side stood a bucket and a tray with a loaf of bread. Valara dragged herself closer. The bucket was half full of water. She drank a handful, then another. When her body stopped its shivering, she crawled back to the iron bars of her cell.

Magic roused at her touch. She moved her palms to the walls. Here the magic beat a slower, deeper rhythm.
Hush,
she told it.
Let me read the past, nothing more. Nothing more.

She closed her eyes and focused on her hands. When her breathing had slowed, she narrowed the focus to her palms and then to the point where flesh met stone. The current welled up around her; she felt its electric presence rolling over her skin, rippling through her flesh, between her palms and the air—to the region between body and mind.

Ei rûf ane gôtter. Ei rûf ane Lir. Ei rûf ane Toc. Komen mir de strôm.

Her breathing slowed, her thoughts stilled to match the barely perceptible rhythm of the stone. Rock and mortar used no words, but human speech had echoed here in days and weeks and decades past.
Where am I?
she asked.

Sunlight glinted from the faceted granules; a man’s voice echoed one word.
Osterling.

Yes. Osterling. The early kings of Fortezzien had built a series of castles along the coastline as watch points. The Erythandran emperors had taken over those castles and turned them into forts, manned by soldiers from the imperial army.

Slowly, the rocks yielded their memories, and the trickle of words had become a flood of human speech. Fragments of conversation. Oaths and curses whose meaning had disappeared into time. Valara sank deeper into the past, to the first settlers. Digging. A castle built by common laborers overseen by mages. A remnant of that castle formed this prison. Slowly the voices faded into silence, and she heard only the gulls crying, the wind sifting through sand, and the distant surf, unimpeded by walls or towers or other works of mankind. She had come to the end, which was the beginning.

She withdrew her hands. So she was in Veraene, not Károví. But still a prisoner, and half a world away from her kingdom. Karasek had left seventeen ships behind—nearly a thousand soldiers. Morennioù had only a small militia for each city. They had forgotten to guard against an enemy from outside.

No, it was not them. I did this. I destroyed my homeland.

She sank to the stone floor. Her eyes were dry of tears. She had foresworn grief to keep her strength in the face of an invasion. But now, in the quiet of this cell, memory recited a relentless litany of faults and errors and grave mistakes.

Five years ago, she had thought nothing of breaking the conventions against exploring magic. Or rather, she had thought a great deal about it. Her life dreams had pressed upon her nights, then her waking world. Eventually, reluctantly, she had to accept that she was Leos Dzavek’s brother in a former life. She had helped him steal Lir’s jewels from the emperor. Later, in yet another life, she had stolen the jewels again, and hidden them in Autrevelye.

It was a matter of curiosity, she told herself, unconnected with her life as a princess in Morennioù, the younger daughter, not even an heir. Then her mother and sister died in that shipwreck. Valara had become the heir. Whatever excuses she had made to herself before were worthless. She had sworn before her father’s council to obey Morennioù’s laws.

And yet, she could not resist the pull of curiosity. So she had poked and prodded at her memories, had explored Autrevelye in flesh and spirit, until her life dreams finally yielded enough clues to help her find the first of Lir’s jewels.

Only one. The oldest of the three, the first to speak as a separate creature after the emperor’s mage had divided the single jewel into three, many centuries ago. It was the emerald, of course. Daya was its name. She remembered reaching for it, her fingers digging into the dirt in some far corner of the magical plane, when a voice startled her. Leos Dzavek, conducting his own search.

Shouts. Her own frightened response. Then Leos striking at her with fist and magic. She had fled, bleeding from a dozen wounds and fevered by her too-swift passage between worlds.

Her own magic healed her wounds, but Valara had spent a terrified month convinced that Dzavek would follow her between worlds, or that her father’s council would strike her name from the rolls of nobility. As summer passed into autumn, she told herself that she had escaped discovery. She began to experiment with the jewel Daya. That had proved frustrating at first. Then, one night at the end of winter, as she worked alone in her rooms, the jewel had woken to her touch.

It spoke. In colors and song, as though Autrevelye itself lived inside me.

The next morning, Dzavek’s ships had broken through Luxa’s Hand to attack. An impossible deed, according to all her father’s mages. Well, they were probably dead, too, along with her father and his chief mage.

Her eyes burned with unshed tears.

No. Not yet. She could not afford the luxury of grief. She had to escape this prison and fly homeward. She knew her father’s council too well. They would quarrel—even the best of them—while Dzavek’s soldiers plunder the islands and made them helpless against a second attack.

And he will attack a second time. I know it. I must go back.

Propelled by desperation, she stood and shouted. “Help. Anyone. Can you hear me?”

She called out in Károvín and Veraenen, until the other prisoners shouted at her to shut her mouth and die. She didn’t care. She had to get word to Veraene’s king. She needed an ally.

One of the guards flung the outer doors open and stalked down the corridor, cursing. “What do you want?” he said in stilted Károvín.

“Send for your king,” Valara said in his language. “I can tell him about the Károvín ships.”

His eyes narrowed in suspicion. “You tell me this news first.”

Three hundred years in hiding. It took an effort to break such a long and perfect silence.

“The Károvín,” she said after a brief inward struggle. “The Károvín have a new enemy. The enemy could be a friend to you. To Veraene.”

“Might?”

“I’m sorry. I don’t know the words.”

“You know enough,” he said. “Why aren’t you sure about this friend?”

Careful now. She had to satisfy his curiosity without giving too much away. Her awkwardness with the language helped her there. She made a show of searching for the words, and when she answered, she let herself stumble over the pronunciation. “I didn’t—don’t. I’m not certain because I do not know your king. Does he want a friend? Does he need one?”

The guard studied her thoughtfully. She wasn’t entirely sure if he believed her.

“If you’re lying, I could lose my position,” he said. “The captain doesn’t like tricks.”

Valara shook her head. “I’m not lying. Please, tell him. Blame me if you like. Anything. But the king must hear what I have to say.”

She held his gaze with hers, willing him to believe her, until the man sighed and tapped his fingers against the bars. “Very well,” he said. “I’ll tell the captain. It’s up to him whether he passes the word higher. I can’t promise more than that.”

“I understand. Thank you.”

Valara watched him walk back through the corridor, his shadow fluttering in the torchlight. The other prisoners flung questions and demands at him, in both Veraenen and their own tongue. He ignored them and slammed the outer door shut.

An uproar broke out. Prisoners cursing their interrupted sleep. Prisoners demanding to speak with the officers, to have word taken to their king. Valara covered her ears and sank to the floor. Even if Veraene’s king listened to her, then what? Would he grant her passage home? Would he agree to ally his kingdom with hers?

Hers. Not her father’s. He was dead, murdered by the Károvín invaders.

Grief pressed like a fist against her throat. She resisted a moment, then let the tears break free.

*   *   *

ON A BARE
ridge, miles away from Osterling Keep, Miro Karasek dropped to his knees. He could almost taste his desire for sleep, stronger than his craving for water. From below came the hiss and roar of surf against the rocky shore.

You will suffer great weariness,
King Leos had warned him.
You will live each week twice over. That should inspire you to haste.

He’d left the coastal highway within a mile of Osterling and its fort, scrambling up the hillside, into the pine-forested ridge that ran the length of the peninsula. Luck was with him so far. No pursuit. There were a few fishing villages on the coast below, but the hills and ridges themselves were bare of population. If he could find some shelter, he could risk a few hours of sleep, then take off once the moon rose.

The swiftest passage home lay on the roads between worlds. But he was too weary to risk that. And the king had warned him against such measures.
They will watch all the borders for any sign of the jewels. Including those of Vnejšek.

He sucked in the dust-filled air and pushed himself to standing. It was the time between sunset and twilight. The sky had turned dark blue, and a few stars glimmered overhead. Far to the west, a wine-red ribbon marked the line between sea and sky. Already the ground lay in shadows. Risky, to keep walking over rough terrain. He could stumble and fall to his death on the rocks below. Or lie wounded, unable to escape, when the patrols finally tracked him down.

A thousand ways to die, he thought, moving cautiously forward through the tide of dusk. He had tried most of them in this mission.

A flicker of movement at his feet sent him leaping back. He caught himself before he fell, then laughed a wheezing laugh. Just a mouse. The creature darted through the weeds and vanished into the shadows underneath a large boulder.

And if a mouse, why not a man?

Karasek eased himself into a crouch—his knees cracked and protested—and discovered a man-sized opening, choked with rubble. He cleared away the debris and peered inside. The air smelled rank, as though a wild dog had denned there recently. Nothing stirred inside now, however.

He unbuckled his sword from his belt and lay down on his back. The gap was narrow, but the rocky floor gave him enough purchase. He grabbed on to a handhold and shoved himself through. Dirt and grit showered his face. He coughed, wriggled deeper into the opening until he reached the farther wall.

Here the niche widened, and its ceiling angled upward. He had enough room to crouch, so he twisted around and slid the knife from his boot sheath. His shirt and jacket made a pillow. The pouch containing Lir’s emerald, the reason for his mission, he tucked underneath. As he laid knife and sword within easy reach, it came to him that he was like the renegade warriors of old Károví.

As many brigands as nobles,
his father had commented, in an unguarded moment.

His mother had glanced up with a frightened angry look. Karasek had expected another quarrel, but her mouth had inexplicably softened, and she’d murmured, “Be careful, love.”

He recalled the moment vividly, though he’d been only seven. One rare gesture of tenderness between his parents—the last one.

Karasek shook away those memories. His father was dead, secure from accusations, and his mother had deserted Taboresk for her homeland. Only the present concerned him.

Yes, the present. He smothered a painful laugh. He had no gear, no water. Only ten or twelve miles separated him from the garrison city. Disaster had carried him long past Dzavek’s original schemes, past the fallback plans the king had devised, and the ones Karasek had decided on himself. Now he was running on instinct alone. Like the old warriors from Károví’s founding, he would have to flit like a shadow, using magic and cleverness to regain his homeland.

Brigands and nobles. Which am I?
He yawned, curled up on the hard ground, and within a heartbeat, slept.