The Queen of Thieves: The Line of Kings Trilogy Book Three (23 page)

Chapter
Eighty-Six

Fire
burned all day. Everywhere left standing in the city stank of defeat. Even now,
with the fall of night and the cessation of the rain of fire, the outer city
glowed with heat and a soft orange light. Pockets of the city still burned, but
most smoldered. The wooden buildings had burned fast.

            Selana
strode through the halls of the Castle of Naeth, her eyes burning with a
different kind of power. Tomorrow the armies would come. But if she could
win...if her kin could win this night... Sturma stood a chance, still.

            Though
the rain of fire from the sky had ceased with nightfall, it was still light,
though the false light of fire.

            Selana
had protected most of the citizens of Naeth in the best way that she was able -
by taking them into her world - the tunnels below the city. She had protected
what people, and soldiers, that she could.

            Homes
could be rebuilt - people could not. She may have been a terrible mistress to
the city, and deadly, but she loved people in a way that they would never
understand. Most would never see her, nor her hand, in affairs. To many she was
merely a rumour, and to those within the Thieves' Covenant and others in the
know, she was just a mortal, dangerous Queen.

            Few
knew the truth of her immortality. And her powerful heritage.

            She
may be powerful beyond mortal ken, but she was under no illusions about the
size of the task before her and her sisters.

            And
yet, through the fire and the death outside the walls of the castle, the day's
loses were nothing. She, alone, perhaps, knew that they fought not just for
Sturma but for Rythe herself...

            And
one day, the return of Caeus...? She thought of her brother, her terrible
brother. It was, perhaps, one of only two things she feared. The return of
Caeus, and the return of the Sun Destroyers.

            She
shuddered, and pushed it from her mind. She had time yet...time measured in
centuries...if...

            If
she and her sisters could win this night.

            It
was a big if.

*

Chapter
Eighty-Seven

The
boy was the focus of the spell the witches called forth, and Rena. Rena, the
woman...a mere girl of twenty years in truth, too.

            Everything
rested on the shoulders of the son of the Outlaw King, Tarn, one year old, and
Rena, the lover, and later wife, of the boy's father.

            Rena
felt the power in the room. Her hair practically stood on end. Her baby sucked
at his thumb, something he had never done, and was wide-eyed in the face of so
many people. And what a gathering.

            Rena
feared for herself and her baby, but she was set in her course.

           
You
must risk that which is most dear to you.
She remembered the price that the
old witch, her friend, Tulathia had demanded of her. Once, she had thought it
meant Tarn, her husband. She had risked him. She had lost him.

            She
would not lose her baby, for he was, now, the most important thing to her.

            Selana
entered the great hall where the witches had gathered. There were no men
present and Selana's clothing was, for once, demure. She wore a simple red
dress, tight, perhaps, but with little flesh on show.

            The
great hall had held feasts and councils. The old King had been murdered in this
hall by Hurth, the rogue Thane. Now the hall was full of more power than it had
ever seen since the castle had been built, and burgeoning with that power now
that Selana was present.

            Selana
walked past the seated witches, waiting in silence, and sat at the head of the
Covenant. Rena was in the centre of the assembled witches. A gathering of more
than a hundred of the most powerful witches on the continent.

            There
was no time to waste. The spell was hard, and required all their power. It
would be a long night, and the work needed to be completed before the suns rose
and the assault on the wall.

            'With
me,' she said. No speeches. No inspiration. These women were not frightened
soldiers. They were
power.

            The
spell began with a gentle kind of chanting, which was quiet at first.

            Mist
began to rise outside the Castle, mingling with the smoke. Soon, the mist
turned to fog. No mere natural fog, but the essence that filled the place
between this land of mortals and the land of the dead.

            Rena
watched in awe. Her teeth ached from the feel of the air in the room, and with
her new and remarkable sight she watched the auras of the witch kin grow in
power and luminescence, until she wished she could close her eyes against the
sight. But of course, she had no eyes to close. The light was too much for her.
She turned her sight, instead, to her baby. He looked frightened, and she
shushed him and held him and rocked him, looking at nothing but him. She
wished, over and over again, that no harm would come to him from this spell.

            It
was an awful spell. It demanded blood. The King's blood. Just a nick on the
baby's thumb, but a blood spell was the worst kind, and a dangerous power to
play with.

            But
of course, the witches were not playing. Witches did not
play.

            Deathly
serious, the night's work. They called forth the most terrible power of all as
they broke through the plains of the dead, and called a man back from beyond
Madal's Gates. They called forth the bridge between this world and the next.
The chanting slowed, but louder now, reaching it zenith, until with a voice no
mortal could ever forget, the Queen bellowed fit to wake the dead.

            'I
summon forth the bridge!' she cried out, and the halls, the fog, the very land
of Sturma trembled, for that was precisely what they had done.

            Woke
the dead.

*

Chapter
Eighty-Eight

'What
is this unnatural fog?' said the Hierophant. He lounged in a great pavilion,
eating the flesh of an orange, imported from his own shores. Juice squirted as
he bit into the fruit, rind and all.

            'I
know not...some magic unknown to us. Perhaps witch magic. It is of little
import,' said one of the mages who had been called into the Hierophant's
pavillion.

            The
mage did not shake, though he knew he stood in the presence of Death himself.
The Hierophant coruscated with strength, both in his will and his wizardry.

            'Nothing?
Hmm...perhaps. But double the guard nonetheless. Under an ill fog such as this
dark deeds are done,' said the Hierophant. 'And something...yes...I feel
something...'

            The
Hierophant did not finish his sentence, because what he felt could not be...

            It
felt like the most powerful of all magic. To him, there was a gentle aroma on
the air...like a fine wine to a human's senses, perhaps.

            This
was blood magic.

            And
he felt something else, too. A tear in the planes - a rent none but a Hierarch
could make.

            But
if there were no magic on Sturma...who could possess such power? Who could tear
a hole in the planes? No one, he knew...and yet something was coming through.
Something other. Something of the other side.

            The
Hierophant smiled and finished his fruit. He did not need subjugates to protect
him. He felt something coming, indeed. And at last, a challenge to his power?

            He
hoped so. He sincerely hoped so. All these years, hunting the Line of Kings to
near extinction. All the death, all the machinations and plans. All leading
toward this final moment when his work would be done and the path for the Return
could be set in place.

            It
was almost an anti-climax. For a being of such strength as the Hierophant held,
it was...tedious. For all this to end with nothing but the destruction of the
city.

            He
could not
see
the child - the last of the kings - but he could
feel
him. Feel him within the city.

            Part
of him wanted to crush the life from the child with his bare hands. But why
sully himself? His soldiers and his mages would wipe all life from the city
before him. He would know when the last king died. His seers would know. They
would see a shift in the future. Where once the line had been hidden from
magical sight by a power unknown to the Hierophant, its absence would be
obvious in the eyes of a seer.

            The
Hierophant did not have the talent to see the future. It was his only weakness,
but he had mages that could perform the feat for him.

            All
the loses, all the death - the slaughter at the pass still rankled - but,
yes...an anticlimax.

            The
city burned in just one day. In the morning, his soldiers would take the city
and kill every man, woman and child within.

           
Something
was coming tonight, though. The Hierophant smiled at the feel of it, the
anticipation of whatever the thing they summoned against him was...the taint in
the unnatural fog...the feel of another of power coming against him. He smiled
and it was an awful, sickening smile.

            'At
last,' he said. 'At last...'

            He
let his power grow. Waiting. Waiting for whatever was coming through the fog.

*

Chapter
Eighty-Nine

A
great crack rent the air and a storm raged through the assembled witch kin with
such sudden force that all the witches, bar one, were blown across the grand
hall.

            Selana
herself slumped. Her eyelids fluttered, for an instant.

            Even
she was shocked at what their power, together, had wrought. Alone, not even she
could rival her brother Caeus, but together they had performed a feat which
even her brother would have marvelled at.

            An
unnatural wind howled through the room, pushing the fog from around the stunned
witches. When the fog cleared, Selana saw her sisters slumped here and there
across the room. Some were sitting up, now the winds had gone. Some did not
move. One witch - a young girl, she saw, would not move again. The power of the
spell had been too much for her to bear.

            An
awful price. Awful. Yet Selana felt no remorse. Sometimes you had to be a
terrible mistress to see things through. For an instant, her stony expression
slipped, however, thinking of the poor girl. But then it was back in place. She
could afford no weakness. Not now. Now the end was so close. For good or ill.

            She
almost laughed. Whatever the outcome, what they had wrought this night was
nothing but ill.

            Sometimes,
though, you have to fight fire with fire.

            She
saw the babe still lived, despite the release of dread power. Rena crawled
across the room to the babe, who alone among them had been untouched. Baby
Tarn, for his part, put his thumb in his mouth and snuggled into his sobbing
mother's shoulder. He looked tired, thought Selana, watching with a softening
of her face, because she held a soft spot for all children of women. And well
he should be tired, because he had been the focus, the epicentre, of the magic
that the witch kind had unleashed this night.

            She
hardened her heart once again against the sight of those few of the witches who
would not rise again. She allowed herself a moment to drift, more tired than
she had ever been, and wished she could sleep like baby Tarn would - the sleep
of the just...even for an hour. But sleep was a human luxury, and the Queen was
far from human.

            Drifting
still, stunned a little herself, she realised as her thoughts wandered unbidden,
she noted Rena carrying her babe toward her.

            'Did
it work?' asked Rena, and the Queen's heart almost broke at the very mortal
fear and hope in the girl's words.

            But
she had to be cold, because there were hard deeds ahead yet.

            She
smiled, a Queen's smile.

            'Yes,
child. Yes.'

            Then
she called the men into the throne room to wait, and sent a messenger to
Durmont, too, for Durmont held the most important artefact of an age within an
unassuming hessian sack.

*