The Hollow Queen (49 page)

She closed her eyes, remembering his words, which had floated into the cool darkness of the carriage in which she had lain, roiling in the throes of the nausea of what must have been early pregnancy.

Mark this moment in your mind, nephew; this is the day when the war that is to come began
.

When the emerald-green eyes opened again, they were full of rage.

“And now he is dead, ground to dust and buried in a mountain of slag and the bodies of men and horses—my sworn knight, the Lord Marshal of the Alliance, whom a thousand years of battle could not take down. Part of the cost of you deciding not to at least
ask
what was happening with your grain is too great to be borne, Your Grace. Talquist may have controlled all contact by sea, but a simple messenger sent to Haguefort or Highmeadow might have averted the War of the Known World. It is a shame that a man blessed with foresight, who divines the Future, missed such blatant manipulation.”

“I have paid dearly for it,” the Diviner whispered, suddenly gray. “I have lost my second-eldest son.”

The Lady Cymrian eyed him without sympathy.

“That is unfortunate,” she said. “You and tens of thousands of other fathers. Highly unfortunate.”

Solarrs and Knapp, standing by as she spoke, looked at each other in surprise. There was not even a hint of gentleness in her voice, so unlike the comfort they had always heard there. They watched as she continued to stare at the prisoner, no mercy or forgiveness apparent in her face.

And were cheered by that absence.

“I am at a loss for words,” the Diviner said finally. “Anything I would say now would be woefully meager, incommensurate with what I have done. Do unto me what you will.”

The Lady Cymrian nodded curtly. She turned to the Lord Marshal's men-at-arms.

“Knapp,” she said, her tone brusque, “bring me Anborn's bastard sword.”

The First Generation soldiers exchanged a glance; then Knapp nodded and ran to retrieve the weapon.

“Kneel, Your Grace,” Rhapsody said as she saw Anborn's man returning, the long battered blade in his hand.

The Diviner sighed silently and removed the enormous war helm on which the lifelike image of an arctic tiger was engraved. He slowly got down on one knee and bent his head.

Rhapsody took the hilt of the weapon as Knapp outstretched his arm and ran her fingers over the blade, stained with gore and clotted blood that had not been let in battle, but clearly come from bodies that had fallen atop it.

“This will not do,” she said aloud, more to herself than to the others. “It should be clean, at least. That's only proper.” She pulled her waterskin from her leather baldric, doused the blade, and wiped it off with her cloak. Then she pointed the blade, tip down, to the ground before the averted eyes of the Diviner at an angle where he could see it.

“This was the sword of the Lord Marshal,” she said solemnly. “A common blade, one of dozens, perhaps scores that he wielded over time—”

From the edge of the encampment an uproar broke out.

In response to Rhapsody's surprise, the flames in the torches roared with life, then settled down into a seething burn again.

From outside the encampment a din was growing, and a swell of humanity was moving forth to where the leaders were standing with their prisoner. There was hooting and cheering as a man in chains was shoved along at the head of the processional, with arms trained on him at all times.

Dysmore, a lieutenant in Anborn's elite force, was shepherding the prisoner along.

“M'lady!” he shouted. “M'lady, by your leave, look!”

The Lady Cymrian stood straighter and gestured for Knapp and Solarrs to help the Diviner rise.

Amid a veritable thunderstorm of cursing and spittle from the soldiers accompanying the captive, a tattered soldier could be intermittently seen, shielding his head and face from the blows and shouting that were aimed at it as best he could with his shoulders. The man seemed young, though Rhapsody could see very little more in the twisting and inconstant firelight of the torches.

When Dysmore and his prisoner reached the center of the encampment, the lieutenant shoved the chained captive forward, into the presence of the Lady Cymrian. The guards who had been assigned by Knapp to protect her closed ranks around her, aiming their missile weapons at the prisoner so that he was surrounded on four sides.

Now that he was nearer, Rhapsody was certain that she had never seen him before, but there was a familiarity to him that she could not discern. It was apparent that he was a Sorbold, dark of hair, eye, and skin, with a neatly trimmed beard and a tall, broad-shouldered frame. She signaled to the guards before her to step aside and came forward, Anborn's blade in her hand, her face set in a studied look.

“Who is this?”

“Titactyk, m'lady,” said Dysmore, breathing heavily and struggling to settle the crowd of soldiers behind him. “Leader of the Sorbold assault force, second-in-command to Fhremus Alo'hari. He was caught fleeing with what was left of the second cohort after the rout here in Vornessta.”

Suddenly an image formed in her mind, one she had seen in her nightmares, and the Lady Cymrian nodded. “Are you the man who led the raid on the Abbey of Nikkid'sar?” she asked.

The captive said nothing. He glanced around nervously, his eyes glittering.

“He was apparently heard boasting about it in brothels and some of the taverns in the border towns, m'lady,” said Dysmore. “This has been repeatedly verified by the scouts.”

“That's not true—” the man blurted. “Please—”

“What do you have to say for yourself?” Rhapsody asked. “This is your chance. Be honest.”

“I am innocent,” the man said quickly. “Please, m'lady—mercy—”

The Lady Cymrian nodded again. “You are actually a liar, not an innocent,” she said. “I can hear it in your voice, in the frequency of your tone; there is no truth in it. That was a grave mistake.”

She turned on her heel and strode back to the Diviner, who was standing, frozen in silence, his eyes the only moving part of him. She stopped in front of him and, with one smooth overhead arc of her arm, drove the tip of the bastard sword into the ground at his feet.

“That is for you,” she said to the Diviner. “I would not soil Anborn's blade with the blood of his like.”

She looked back at Titactyk as she pulled forth the coiled tongue whip from her side.

Both men's eyes widened.

The Lady Cymrian left the weapon wedged in the ground and walked purposefully back to the chained captive.

“Kneel,” she commanded.

“M'lady—”

Rhapsody nodded; Dysmore and three of the soldiers behind him stepped forward rapidly and seized the man by the shoulders and head, slamming him to the ground on his knees.

“Please, m'lady, do not put me to the lash,” the Sorbold soldier whispered. “You are dressed as a medic, well known for your mercy—”

“That must have been before I read the field report from Nikkid'sar,” Rhapsody interrupted harshly. “Long before, actually. I do not remember a time when I felt sufficient mercy to pardon anyone, let alone a man who would sanction, commit, and lead the rape and murder of powerless women, the gang-sodomizing of a woman of the cloth, and the flinging of infants, live, into the sea by catapult in a game of sport. You are no soldier; you are a criminal, an animal. Your atrocities have violated my dreams; I have seen your perversions in visions that have left me shaking.”

“Please—”

“Spare me your whining and your family the embarrassment. Until the Lord Cymrian returns, and with the death of the Lord Marshal, I am, unfortunately for both of us, your judge. For that raid, and any other crimes you have committed, I sentence you to death.”

“M'lady
—
”

“
Silence
. You gave no heed to the pleas of innocents; I do not wish to hear another word from you.” In a vicious sweep, Rhapsody drew Daystar Clarion; the blade roared forth from its scabbard, its flames rippling angrily, its call ringing clearly. “Move back,” she said to Dysmore and the three other soldiers; they stood and stepped away quickly as she advanced.

In one last desperate move, Titactyk lurched, trying to rise.

Just as he did, Rhapsody snapped the tongue whip with her left hand, encircling Titactyk's neck and dragging him to her feet. Then she leapt into the air, swinging the sword over her head, and brought it down solidly on his neck, the blade of elemental fire and ether slipping like a hot knife through the butter of his skin and skeleton, severing his head cleanly from his shoulders. It spun to the ground, where it landed with a thud, its eyes still wide, the jugular vein pulsing as it gushed blood onto the dirt behind it for a moment until the wound sealed, cauterized by the flames of the sword.

A gasp rose from the group of soldiers, then resolved into a raucous cheer.

“Silence,” the Lady Cymrian commanded quietly again; her tone rang through the air of the encampment, bringing the celebration to an abrupt end. “Bind up the body and remove it as you would any other enemy soldier, with respect in death.”

Dysmore bowed slightly and signaled to specific troops as she sheathed her sword, re-coiled the whip, and turned back to the Diviner, whose heavily browed and bearded face was white in the shadows of the torches.

“I will not beg, nor will I resist,” the Diviner said. “His sniveling was appalling. I will not dishonor my people in that way.” He knelt before her.

Rhapsody's eyes kindled to a deeper green in the light of the torches.

“I was telling you of Anborn's sword,” she said, equally quietly, looking down at the ruler of the Hintervold. “While he was a man of fastidious taste when it came to horseflesh, he did not aspire to carry an elemental weapon, or even a particularly fine one. He felt the advantage in battle was in the skill of the soldier, not the superiority of the blade, though he did have a standard beneath which he generally did not choose to go in selecting a sword. I know he carried this one for at least a century.”

She lapsed into silence.

“So you are telling me that you will execute me with a common blade, in spite of my office?” said the Diviner dully. “I do not object—it is no more than I deserve.”

Rhapsody crouched down until she was balanced, on the balls of her feet, at eye level with him.

“I am not going to execute you at all,” she said. “You are going to help me find him.”

The Diviner blinked.

“Find him? Who?”

“Anborn—the Lord Marshal.” She glanced in the direction of the valley below the encampment, where the body of her friend was buried in the mountainous detritus of battle along with those of Sorbolds, slaves, horses, and soldiers of the Alliance, human, Lirin, Bolg, and Nain alike.

“How—how do you expect me to do that?”

“You will begin by rising now.”

The Diviner complied slowly as the Lady Cymrian rose with him. She exhaled when she was standing erect again.

“Did you not tell me when I came to visit you in the Hintervold several years ago, every time you were in your cups, if I recall correctly, the story of how you found Jurun's grave in Cariproth?”

The cloud of nerves and worry in the old man's eyes cleared.

“I may have,” he said grudgingly. “I had accomplished that a year or so before.”

“You used a silver willow branch that King Jurun had held—I believe it was thought to be the last thing he had so held, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Well, this sword is the last object that Anborn held—he threw it to the ground before he charged down into the valley. That's what I meant when I said it was for you—I ask that you help find whatever—whatever
part
of him you can, if anything can be recovered, so that I might properly mourn and bury him. I am a Namer, Your Grace; burial rituals are a major part of my training, my earliest training. He was sworn to me; if there is any link between the two of us that you can divine, or between him and his bastard sword, I ask you to find it, and locate whatever remains you can. I will commit them through the funeral pyre to the wind that he served as a Kinsman.”

The Diviner stared at her for a long moment. Then he bowed his head.

“I would be honored to be allowed to attempt it,” he said. “But there is likely little, if anything, left to find. And, unlike Titactyk, I will not lie to you, deceive you. If I am not certain the remains are his, I will not pretend that they are, even if it would save my life.”

“That is all I ask. Your life is not forfeit at this time; all of us have been unfortunate enough to experience Talquist's deceit and manipulation to our own loss. Come, and I will escort you into the valley, unless you need to wait until sunrise.”

“Actually, no,” said the Diviner. “The echoes, if any remain, will be easier to divine in the dark.”

The Lady Cymrian signaled to the soldier who held Hjorst's tiger helm, and the man hurried over, returning it.

“Very well,” she said, dismissing the solider and handing the Diviner Anborn's sword. “Let us go down into that valley of death together, Your Grace. We will be silent; eventually, when you have done what you can, I need you to explain to me how Talquist tricked you into believing that your neighbors sought to invade your realm.”

The Diviner's eyes began to shine.

“I fear I must also confess to you, m'lady, that I performed a divination for him about your child,” he said, his face colored in shame. “I may have given him the means to find your baby.”

Rhapsody nodded. “I know.”

“You—you
know?”

“Yes; I watched you.”

“How—how—”

“Come, Your Grace,” she said impatiently. “There will be time to speak later, of things I do and do not remember, as well as those things that I wish to always be able to recall. This task is one of those last things.”