The Golden Queen (9 page)

But at that moment, the dronon lifted its head and hissed, making some spitting noise. Gallen had been running up behind the creature, but now he saw that it had a clump of eyes on the back of its head. The dronon pulled out its incendiary gun, but Gallen was too close for the creature to use it.

Gallen whipped out his knives, screaming, “Hold or you die!” and the ogres were so stricken with surprise that they scuttled backward a step.

Gallen was almost to the arch, and he snatched the pouch in one smooth move.

Fast as a striking serpent, one of the ogres grabbed Gallen’s wrist, spinning him around. Gallen concentrated on holding onto the key as he slashed the giant’s corded wrist. Huge gobbets of blood shot out, drenching Gallen’s hand, but the giant held on. Gallen slashed again, jerked backward, and fell to the ground, still holding the key.

He looked up. All three vanquishers had recovered from their surprise. In unison they lunged.

A piercing shriek rose behind them. They halted for half a second, and Maggie rushed between one ogre’s legs. Gallen felt Orick’s teeth biting into his collar as the bear tried to drag him under the arch.

Gallen scrabbled to his feet enough to kick backward a step, faintly aware of the ghostly lavender light radiating from the arch.

Orick roared in fear and Gallen kicked again and Maggie was with them, dragging Gallen backward. He saw the giants’ faces twist in rage, yet suddenly Gallen was swept away through a cold, brilliant light.

Chapter 6

When Gallen and Orick took off down the hill toward the vanquishers, Maggie had felt a thrill of fear as she realized they planned to leave her. She buried her face in the dirt, trying to make herself as small as possible, then heard Gallen’s shout.

Below her in the woods, she saw the green and blue lights of wights rushing uphill toward her, and she realized she was in the thick of it.

Her fear suddenly turned to anger. She got up, saw Gallen and Orick struggling to get the bag with the key from a vanquisher. She rushed down the hill, screaming, and bowled into Gallen and Orick, pushing them through the gate.

An icy white light took her, and she had a strange sensation of gliding, as if she were a leaf fluttering through the wind.

Maggie fell back and hit the ground rolling, tumbling against Orick’s warm fur. Gallen landed on top of her. She was furious, wanted to hit someone. Maggie shouted, “Gallen O’Day, you …” Then she just sat and stared, her mouth open in wonder.

They sat in a meadow surrounded by a lush forest, thick with undergrowth. It felt like summer. A warm evening breeze rushed across her back, ruffling her hair, and in the distance a tiny oblong lavender moon hung on the horizon behind a swirl of clouds.

There was no sign of a gate from this side. Maggie looked around, just to be sure. All around them, broad-leaved trees whispered and rippled in waves under the wind. Locusts sang in the darkness. Overhead was a sky filled with more stars than Maggie had ever imagined.

Gallen got up, folded his arms and stood staring. “What?” he asked, absently. Orick sniffed the air.

“Gallen, is your head filled with nothing but blubber?” Maggie shouted. “You’ve done it to us bad! I don’t like the looks of this place.”

“Fale,” Gallen whispered under his breath. “The vanquishers called it Fale.”

Suddenly, carried on the wind, there were screeching sounds from above. A flock of white birds hurtled overhead in the twilight, creaking like rusty hinges, some diving into the trees as if to catch insects in the air. The birds passed.

Gallen put his hand to his mouth and shouted, “Everynne? Veriasse?” He stood waiting for an answer. None came.

“I can’t smell them,” Orick grumbled, standing on his hind legs to sniff at the wind. “Not even the faintest trace of a scent. They didn’t come out here.”

“What?” Maggie asked. “They had to come out here. They came through not five minutes ago!”

“Maybe,” Gallen wondered aloud, “it’s not like a gate so much as a hallway. Maybe it branches. Leading to different places. Everynne called it a maze of worlds. Maybe we made a wrong turn.”

Maggie looked at the sky full of whirling stars and an odd-shaped moon. The trees smelled strange, and the evening breeze was soft and warm. Nothing like Tihrglas. She couldn’t begin to imagine where they might be.

“You mean we got off on the wrong world somehow?” she asked. “Gallen, you reeking bag of fish, I ought to knock you in the head! What did you have to do this for? What were you thinking, going after the key that way? You could have gotten us all killed! I know what you were after—that woman Everynne. You’ve been hot for her from the moment you first saw her. Why, if someone lopped off your head, it would be no loss. Your gonads would still do all the thinking!”

Gallen shrugged. “The vanquishers had another key. I had to warn Veriasse. Besides, I didn’t ask either of you two to come along.”

Maggie glared at him. “You left me! Both you and your dumb bear left me. As soon as those ogres began shouting, every wight in the country rushed up the hill toward us. I had to throw in with you! And if I hadn’t come to your aid, we’d have all been killed! We could have all stayed home, hidden safe in the woods, but now…!”

Gallen said, “I’m sorry. I would never wish any harm on you. I’d never have dragged you into this.”

He had such an expression of grief on his face, and he spoke with such sincerity, that Maggie had a hard time staying angry. She pointed her finger at him and then shook her fist. “Just admit one thing. Just be honest about one thing: don’t you dare tell me that you came here to talk to Veriasse. It was Everynne you were after. You’ve been giving her looks all day, and don’t you dare deny it, Gallen O’Day, or I’ll beat you with a stick.”

Gallen shrugged. “I couldn’t just let her get killed.”

Maggie figured that was as much of a confession as she’d ever get from him. She got up and looked furiously for the crystal key. She had fallen on it when she rolled through the gate. Its lights were gently fading. Maggie picked it up. She could see little worms of silver inside, bits of wire and small circles made of gold, odd things that looked like a priest’s communion wafer.

Orick grunted. “I’m hungry. Is anybody else hungry? Where do you think we could get some food?”

“Aye,” Gallen said, “I’m hungry. And thirsty, and tired. And I’ve no idea which way to go, do you?”

Orick gave a little bawl, bear talk for, “No, and it really makes me mad.”

“If we head off on a straight path,” Gallen said, “maybe we’ll meet up with a river or a road.”

Maggie looked toward the falling moon on the horizon. It seemed as good a direction as any to take, and if she left it to Gallen and Orick, they’d never make up their minds. She began hiking through the forest and the others were forced to follow.

The uneven ground featured no real hills be few flat spots. They pushed their way through broad-leaved plants that made the sound of tearing paper, and everywhere she could hear mice or rats running through the dry undergrowth. Often, tumbled white stones protruded from the ground.

Every few minutes, Gallen called Everynne’s name, but after nearly two hours, Maggie got angry. “Will you quit that bawling. She’s nowhere near here, so you might as well put a cork in it.”

Gallen fell silent. Though they walked a long time, the moon still lay in the sky like a glowing blue eye, warm and distant. It had hardly moved at all. They found a small pool of water that reflected night shadows and starlight, then knelt to drink. It tasted slightly salty, but quenched Maggie’s thirst. Nearby, several white birds flew up in the night, screeching and circling.

Orick snuffled in the grass and shouted, “Hey, you two, over here!”

He’d discovered some nests. Maggie opened the first egg and found a bird embryo in it, so left the rest to Orick. Maggie was exhausted. They hadn’t found anything more impressive that what might have been pit trails—no sign of a house or a road.

Not knowing what else to do, she looked for shelter. Aside from the arching trees, she found nothing.

She went to a large white rock, thinking to huddle behind it. It had been sculpted with strange symbols—as if it were part of a building. She looked about. All the white stones had been shaped by hand. They had been hiking through the ruins of a vast city.

Gallen collected two armloads of grass and leaves to use as a blanket, laid them by Maggie in the lee of the rock. The ground was hollowed like a shallow grave or as if some beast often came there to rest, thus packing the soil. Orick lay with Gallen and Maggie, his thick fur warm and welcome.

Gallen called one last time for Everynne. Only the croaking of frogs gave answer. A wind blew cool against Maggie’s skin, like the touch of a silver coin in winter.

Maggie wondered if someone should keep watch, but they’d seen no sign of anything larger than a mouse.

Gallen whispered to himself, “So Father Heany is dead. He was such a clean man. Death is such a small and nasty affair, part of me is shocked he would get involved in it.” He said nothing more. Soon, Gallen breathed deeply in sleep.

Orick sang some bear lullaby to Maggie as if she were a cub:

“Through winters long and cold we’ll sleep.

Don’t you weep, don’t you weep.

With hides and fat, warm we’ll keep,

Though snow grows deep, though snow grows deep.

So let your tired eyes rest, my dear,

And when you wake, I’ll be here.

And when you wake, I’ll be here.”

When the song finished, Orick sprawled a paw over Maggie’s shoulders and licked her face. “I have plenty of winter fat stored,” Orick said. “Next time we find food, you eat.”

Orick closed his eyes.

For some reason, Maggie stared up at the night sky. Hundreds of thousands of stars shone. Directly above was a great pinwheel made of brilliant points of light. Somehow, when she had stepped into this new world, she had not anticipated that all the stars she had known as a child would also be gone. Yet if they were to be replaced by so many stars, in such wondrous arrays, she imagined that she could grow accustomed to them.

Three stars moved fast, in formation, from west to east then dropped toward the treetops in the distance, and Maggie wondered at them. Were these strange stars flying on their own, or were they perhaps distant birds of light, flapping in the darkness?

Maggie gave herself over to fatigue and began to drift.
What kind of world have we entered?
she wondered.
So many trees, nothing to eat. What will become of us?

When Maggie woke, Orick was gone and the moon had set. Gallen slept soundly beside her. Maggie got up, scanned the landscape in a huge circle. It was especially dark under the trees. Orick was nowhere to be seen, but after a few minutes she spotted him in the distance, running toward her between the trees. Orick raised up on his back legs and called, “Hallooo, Maggie. Over here! I’ve found something! Food!”

Maggie was painfully aware of her empty belly. While working at the inn, providing three meals a day for strangers, she had grown accustomed to eating on schedule. But now she had been fasting for over thirty hours. She prodded Gallen’s ribs with her toe. “Get up. It’s time to eat.”

Gallen sat up, rubbed his eyes. “It’s a little more sleep I’m wanting.”

“Up with you, you lout! You’ll sleep better with some food in your tummy.” Maggie realized belatedly that she sounded shrewish—like her own mother before she died. Back in Tihrglas, John Mahoney often warned her about her mouth: “Your mother grew so accustomed to nagging you kids, that she soon started bedeviling everyone in general. I’ll tell you right now, Maggie: I’ll not have you shrieking like a harpy at my customers, as your mother did!”

Maggie bit her lower lip, resolved to control her tongue.

When Gallen and Maggie reached the bear, he began loping through the woods. “I caught scent of it as I was sleeping,” Orick said. They reached a cliff and found themselves looking over a large valley, lush with trees. A broad river cut through the valley. Lights blazed on the water.

It took Maggie several moments to realize what she saw: the river was enormous, and huge ships sailed down it, each bejeweled with hundreds of lights. On the far side of the river was what appeared to be a single building that extended low along the ground for dozens of miles. Fierce bluish lights shone from thousands of windows. In places the land was clear, leaving bits of open meadow and farm. In other places, the building spanned over the water like some colony of mold growing in a neglected mug of ale.

As she watched, bright globes dropped from the sky and fell toward the city, then settled upon rooftops. Perhaps a mile away, a woman in green robes climbed from a shining globe and walked through a door into that vast building.

Maggie drew a breath in exclamation.

“As I said, I picked up the smell when we were sleeping,” Orick explained. “There’s good farmland down there. I smell ripe corn and pears.” Indeed, Maggie saw a few squares of checkered fields and orchards not far off.

“So,” Orick said, “shall we go knock on their door, ask for food?”

“It’s better than starving in the night,” Gallen said.

Maggie felt a deep sense of disquiet. “Are you sure?” she asked. “How do we know what they’ll do to us? What if there are vanquishers about?”

“You just saw that woman get out of her sky coach,” Gallen said. “She looked nice enough. Besides, what if
there are
vanquishers about? They won’t know us.”

Gallen searched for a way down the embankment and found a narrow footpath. Maggie hesitated, but didn’t want to be left in the dark. They climbed down. The starlight was not enough to see by, and Maggie found herself feeling her way forward through the shadows with a degree of apprehension.

At the bottom of the valley was a lush orchard where some sweet-smelling, pungent fruit had fallen. Orick licked one. “This stuff is pretty good,” he said, and he began eating.

Maggie gave the bear a minute, thinking that if the fruits were poisonous, the bear might start gagging, but Orick showed no sign of dying or taking sick.

“Didn’t you say you smelled corn?” Gallen asked.

“Yeah, over there!” Orick pointed toward the city with his snout. “But why eat feathers when there’s a chicken to be had?” he quoted an old proverb often spoken by bears. Obviously, he preferred this strange fruit.

Maggie cautiously followed Gallen toward the river. Halfway there, he stepped into some bushes and disturbed a buck that leapt up and bounded through the brush.

Maggie’s heart began thumping.

The deer charged uphill toward Orick, and the bear bawled in startlement and ran downhill to pace nervously at Gallen’s side.

They found a paved road by the river and followed it. Often through the trees Maggie glimpsed boats sailing the river or sky coaches rising from the city, yet the night remained quiet.

At last they found a field of ripening corn, the tassels shining silver-gold in the starlight. The corn stalks, at twelve feet, grew taller than any in County Morgan; the huge ears were sweet and full.

Maggie shucked an ear, knelt to eat, and Gallen followed.

Maggie was on her second ear, the sweet kernels dribbling down her chin, when Orick roared, “Spider! Run!”

The bear lunged away.

Maggie looked up. Towering above her, its belly just skimming the corn tassels, stood an enormous creature with six thin legs. The spider’s body itself was a yard across, and Maggie could discern green glowing eyes. One enormous leg whipped out with blinding speed and knocked the cob from Maggie’s hand, another lashed at her.