Shadow Queen (2 page)

Dafoe flung himself from the stairway and
tumbled onto the ground. He shook the dizziness from his head with
one great shake and stumbled over to the gatehouse doorway.
Soldiers scrambled over each other, punching and kicking their way
to the door. At least twenty remained fighting for entry out in the
courtyard.

The captain rammed his hulking armored body
into the mass of soldiers, shoving them through the entrance. A few
men popped through for each shove he gave. Most of the soldiers
were panicked and resisted. Black smoke coiled around their faces.
One soldier froze, a man named Jacque, letting the smoke snake its
way down his throat. His face blanched and his eyes bulged. Black
oil bubbled from his mouth as he fell over in a heap of unmoving
flesh.

Christophe pressed up against the wall, his
mouth hung open in an empty scream. Another man vomited while
another started to climb over the flailing group of soldiers stuck
in the doorway.

Captain Dafoe kept pushing, harder this time,
jabbing with the heavy metal hilt of his sword. Armor scrapped
against the creaking door frame as soldier after soldier was forced
through.

Soon, those that remained were the few that
sat frozen in fear. Dafoe grabbed each by the scruff of the neck
and tossed them inside the shadowy gatehouse. His hand rested on
Christophe but the lad’s grip on the castle stone was unmovable.
Dafoe hadn’t realized how close the smoke had come to Christophe’s
face. Their gaze met for a brief moment. The young boy’s eyes were
glassy and wide with fear. Black oil trickled down his chin as his
body convulsed, twisting out of the captain’s grip.

Captain Dafoe barreled into the gatehouse,
slamming the door tight behind him.

Astrid flexed her hands in her worn leather
gloves, testing their familiar grip. Ethen hovered over her
shoulder, impatient as ever.

“We need to get going. We’re missing the
trials!” He tugged at her robe, pleading like a beggar in the
streets. His tattered hood was drawn so low over his face she could
barely see his nose.

“I swear,” she said, batting him aside,
“you’re worse than a bride on her wedding night.”

His expression soured as she pushed him
aside.

The wide alleyway was filled to the brim with
the nastiest and meanest of folk, coming from all corners of the
coast to fight. The faces of hunched over goblins, hardy mountain
dwarves and a few of their sea dwarve cousins, a troll or two, and
a hoard of human peasants that had come to watch the brawling all
flitted past Astrid as she picked her way to the Pit.

The Pit was an arena dug into the earth at
the stubby end of the alley. It had a depth of twenty paces, enough
to give you a hell of a time climbing out once the rope ladder was
pulled back up. The ground was a square of fifty by fifty paces,
plenty of room for a good fight but not ample space to escape
without a scar worth bragging about, that is, if you escaped at
all.

Opponents who made it past the trials fought
to the death in the Pit, unless the crowd insisted that the two
dueling warriors were at a tie. Due to the bloodlust of the human
peasants, this almost never happened.

The trials were a way to make sure only
experienced warriors faced such battle. The two individuals weren’t
required to fight to the death, but were highly encouraged to beat
the living hell out of each other as much as possible. The
occasional death did occur, but the entertainment starved peasants
saw this as a necessary evil.

In charge of all this mayhem was Fryx, a
flamboyant sea dwarve who had made his fortune from the thrill of
spilt blood. He sat on a throne of deep purple silk, high on a
creaking wood podium, twirling a thin strand of blond hair in his
chubby fingers. Fryx always had the final word in each battle.

Astrid approached the gate. A blunt nosed
High Goblin stood scrutinizing each entry coming before him with
large, black eyes, and a scroll of thick parchment rolled out at
his fingertips. She remembered someone calling his name earlier.
Lyell, was it? His pale blue skin shone with sweat from the
suffocating desert heat and his inky black hair was pulled in tight
braids against his scalp.

A fiery haired dwarve youth stood in line
ahead of Astrid and Ethen, trying his best to keep his chest puffed
out without fainting. He looked no older than Ethen, his wispy
beard barely escaping his chin.

The dwarve stepped up to the Lyell’s desk,
exhibiting as much swagger and spunk as possible without toppling
over from the weight of his axe. The High Goblin peered over his
sharply turned up nose, squinting with disapproval.

“You’ve got to be kidding me. Go back to your
mother’s teat,” he said, exciting bellows of laughter from the
burly giants crowded around him. The dwarve was splattered with
bits of rotten vegetables from the tiers of peasants high up above.
“NEXT!”

Astrid readjusted her leather sand mask to
prevent Lyell from getting a good look at her face. Beauty of any
kind, even in the slightest of forms, was often seen as a sign of
weakness. Being both an Elf and a woman were already two strikes
against her.

The High Goblin looked her up and down.
Astrid held her breath. Breasts were a hard thing to hide.

Ethen hovered behind her like a gnat. She was
beginning to wish she had come alone, but she knew he’d have none
of it.

“So, let me guess,” Lyell’s voice was thin
and raspy, like sharpening a dull knife on a rough rock. “You’ve
come here to prove yourself, have you?” Sharp yellow teeth peeked
out behind his purple lips, making his leering grin even more
menacing.

Ethen stepped forward, flourishing an
extravagant bow. “Why, of course, my lord! What better way to be
proven in battle than fighting in the Pit? And, might I add, what a
better warrior than this fine man here!”

Lyell wheezed a cold laugh. “A
fine
man
like this, eh?”

Astrid stood, rigid as a statue. Ethen
recoiled a bit, not knowing what to do.

“Alright then, let’s see how a fine a man
this is. Go on, drop your trousers. Let’s see what you’ve got to be
bragging about.”

The crowd roared, jeering and taunting the
two to “Show ‘em the goods!”

Astrid and Ethen exchanged looks. Both broke
into a run, eagerly melding back into the crowd, as Lyell’s ragged
laughter biting at their heels.

***

Anya sat perched on her mother’s throne, cold
as the stone beneath her feet. She ran her pale fingers through her
midnight hair, listening to the whines of the aristocracy.

“My Grace, we the nobles of Alainia feel that
the city was not meant to be used in such a way. When we lose this
war—”

“—
If
we lose this war,” she said, her
voice pouring over them like deep ocean water, sending the blood
rushing from their faces. “We will not let failure be a
possibility. Do you have such little faith in my decisions as
queen?”

Lord Belios snapped his mouth shut, his eyes
drifting from Anya’s icy gaze.

“May I remind you,
all of you
,” she
said, her black eyes gazing into each of the cowering Lord and
Lady’s faces, “that I am your ruler by birthright. You may think
you are entitled to these blasphemous opinions, but let me assure
you that such words uttered in my presence again will result in
your
death
.”

The Phookan guards stirred at her side,
itching for a chance to spill blood. They breathed heavy from
within their white lacquered armor.

Anya stood, spilling the red silk of her
dress onto the white stone floor. “Now is the time for conquest. We
have cowered from the world for far too long.” Her face softened
into a frosty smile. “
Trust in your queen
.”

The crowd of nobility parted, bowing
frantically, as she passed through to slip into the royal chambers.
The heavy door slammed behind her, leaving her to breathe easy in
the peaceful darkness.

“You’re getting quite good at that,” said
Luthen, embracing her in the shadows, letting them melt together
like the pooling of wax beneath a blazing candle.

“I have a good teacher,” she said, searching
for his teasing lips. “Please tell me we can kill these fussy
nobles
soon
!”

Luthen pulled back, torturing her with his
closeness. “Ah, no, first you must do something for me,” he said.
She could feel him smiling in the darkness. “And those fussy nobles
are keeping your ancestors from crashing to the earth.”

“Fine,” she said, huffing like a child, “I’ll
accept that, but must I always bargain for a kiss?”

Luthen took her hand and led her to the
corridor. She knew where they were going before he reached the
secret door hidden behind the fading tapestry of a forgotten autumn
forest.

She followed him down the familiar spiraling
stone steps into the belly of the palace. The blue warmth of the
Anvalin peeked into the stairwell as they reached the bottom. They
emerged into the large chamber. In its center was the Anvalin, a
massive blue crystal suspended a short distance from the black iron
floor. Tall windows lined the walls, exposing the darkened world
that lay beneath Alainia.

“What is it you wish me to do?” Anya pulled
up her red skirts away from the dusty floor. The old iron had a way
of ruining the best of her silks.

“Nothing out of the ordinary,” he said,
brushing her hair from her face. “I just need us to change our
course. I have something in mind for the southern part of our
realm.”

“Is that all?” She laughed a cold and hollow
sound. It echoed in the Anvalin’s iron cage. She stepped forward to
the crystal, feeling the vibrations of its power in her chest. She
closed her eyes and reached out her hand. Touching the Anvalin was
like dipping her hand into hot water, though it was not quite to
the point of being unbearable.

Immediately, the crystal came alive in her
mind. She fought back its urging to communicate, dominating it to
do her will. The Anvalin cowered and obeyed, shifting the city
beneath their feet.

“Much better,” said Luthen, gazing out the
window, admiring his own work.

“Where exactly are we headed?” Anya pulled
herself away from the crystal, shaking off its unnatural
warmth.

Luthen laughed, gathering her into his arms.
“We’re off to better and grander places, my love,” he said, his
breath tickling her neck. “Now come, we have much to do.”

***

Astrid sank to the ground inside a dark
corner of a run down market stall. She tore her mask from her face
and spat in the dirt.

“Well, that could have gone better,” said
Ethen, kicking the litter on the splintering floor with his
boot.

Astrid glared up at him, her smoky eyes as
cold as the bottom of a well.

“Really? That’s the best thing you can come
up with to say?
It could have gone better?
Maybe I should
have stayed and pulled
your
trousers down instead!” She
crushed her mask in her fist and turned her face away. If she
looked at him any longer she was afraid she would to have to hit
him right in the face, very, very hard.

Astrid could hear the jeering of the crowd.
The trials were minutes away from starting, and here she sat, on
her rump, cursing the clever eye of that pig-faced Lyell.

“Come on, Astrid, you’re never going to get
in there. And even if you did, is it even worth it?”

Of course it’s worth it,
she thought,
glaring a hole into the market stall’s floor, too angry to speak.
How else am I supposed to prove myself a Warrior?

Suddenly, in the midst of her fuming, an idea
wafted into the midst of the storm clouds gathering in her mind.
What if
, she thought,
what if…

“Ethen!”

Ethen dropped the clay pot he had been
juggling between his hands. It shattered into a pile of red, flaky
shards at his feet. “What did I do now?”

“I may know a way to get in the Pit,” she
said, jumping to her feet and ruffling his hair inside the floppy
hood.

“You’re mad! The only way into the Pit is
through that horrid High Goblin. And even if you somehow manage to
sneak through him, there’s a whole crowd of nasty folk there to
squash you like a beetle.” He tugged his hood back down over his
eyes, his thin-lipped frown still glowering at Astrid.

“You’re not seeing the big picture my
brother,” she said, taking him by the arm and dragging him back
into the street. She stopped at the mouth of the long, winding
alley and pointed up at the jagged tiers of spectators.

“If I can’t get through them, I’m just going
to have to drop in on them instead.”

The dusty hallway inside the building was
littered with broken baskets and slumping men reeking of ale. It
twisted like a jagged snake and wound back upon itself, up ladders
and over slanted stairs, eventually leading Astrid and Ethen to the
first doorway to the balconies. The ledges were packed with
peasants smelling of piss and sweat, each screaming and jeering and
cursing in anticipation of the spectacle about to take place below.
Astrid squeezed into the crowd first, her eyes lowered and her mask
fastened tight to her head. Ethen followed after. He kept drawing
attention to himself, bumping into a snarling human, apologizing
profusely and bowing as much as the cramped space would allow. This
was perfect, though. He provided enough distraction for her to slip
to the edge of the balcony unnoticed.

Beneath the lookout she could see the
flamboyant dwarve, Fryx, rise from his cushioned throne. He raised
his powdered white hands above his head as the crowd erupted into
ferocious cheers. A layer of sweat was glazed over his face from
the smoldering desert air. The alley that housed the arena hung
heavy with the noonday heat. This was the only time of day when the
sun peaked through the narrow gap between the rooftops.