Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) (15 page)

Around him, the nomadic spirits suddenly ceased their wandering. One by one, they turned toward him. As ever, their smoky features were indistinct, but there was something in their bearing…. A prickle of dread crept down Algar’s spine, shriveling his stones.
They see me! Gods, they see me!

All at once, the pain and cold slackened, and he felt his limbs gaining substance and weight. The spirits faded from sight. A different sort of cold assailed him as he straightened, his boots sinking into frosted drifts of pine straw. He took a trembling breath and slowly let it out. Steam plumed before his eyes, telling him he had escaped Zanar-Sariit.

He looked around, wondering if the spirits really had seen him. The necromancer who had seated the Spirit Stone into his chest had warned that while he trod the secret ground between the realms of the living and the dead, he couldn’t touch either of those worlds, nor could the beings dwelling in those realms touch or see him.

I imagined it then … but perhaps I should adopt some caution?
Prudence, after all, guided most of his actions.

Prudence!
his mother cackled in the back of his mind. He cringed, but she wasn’t finished.
Is tha’ the name you’ve now given to yer cowardice? Well, m’sweet, murderin’ bastard of a boy, is it?

“Make mock if you’ll,” Algar said, face twisted into a sneer, “but prudence guided me to lay in wait and end your reign over me.”

I say
fear
made you hunker in the shadows with your dagger. ‘Twas fear and cowardice that made you plant the steel in m’back instead of m’heart!

Algar remembered the day in question, hearing her speaking with a man at the door….

“Come again after dark, an’ m’sweet boy will be ready to gobble yer cock,” she had purred.

The man had laughed, a shrill, tittering sound. “That’ll make me just like one of those highborn fools! Would you be m’lady … after?”

“Better than that, I’ll be your
queen
.” After their uproarious laughter subsided, she quaffed a cup of wine, drizzling some across the tatty yellow silks straining to contain her flaccid breasts. The man tried to lap up what spilled, but Algar’s mother swatted him. “Want a taste o’ these, I’ll need a bit more silver.”

No silver was forthcoming, and the man departed. Algar waited until his mother sauntered past his hiding place, then crept out of the shadows behind her, the steel he had so carefully sharpened coming alive in his hand. The keen blade sliced and plunged, first through her silks, then through her doughy flesh. And when she lay on the dirty floor of their hovel, her eyes rolling in pain and confusion, he watched her spreading blood overrun a scatter of coins just beyond her outstretched fingers. It was the price paid for him to pleasure a man. The price was not in silver or gold, but mere coppers. He took those coins for himself, and then soaked her in lamp oil. She was begging weakly for mercy when he set her alight….

Got nothin’ to say for yerself, boy?
the ghost of his mother drawled now, her harridan’s voice ramming against the inside of his skull like a cold iron bar.

Algar smiled wanly up at the wet snowflakes beginning to sift down. “I wish I’d never been born, you bitter old cunt.”

Her laughter echoed through his mind.
Well, you was born, and it weren’t no great pleasure to push you bloody and screaming into this world, m’sweet bastard boy.

“I have another wish,” Algar said, bringing the memory of killing her to the forefront of his mind, concentrating on it so strongly that she could see and smell and hear even the finest details. “More than anything, mother, I wish I had gutted that last buggering bastard and burned him next to you.”

Howling obscenities, the harpy that had birthed him faded into the deepest wrinkles of his mind. It struck him that one day he would be spirit, much as she was. Could one spirit torture another?
Perhaps one day I’ll find out
, he thought, not displeased by the prospect. For now, he had more important matters to attend to than the ghost of his mother, and that was looking after the only other person he hated as much as her.
Rathe Lahkurin
.

Parting the collar of his tunic, he used the proper words to summon the lesser magic of the Spirit Stone. There was no pain in the swirling mass of cloaking shadows, nor were there any wandering spirits.

He set out at a ground-eating trot. When cloaked in shadow, he could move as effortlessly as a night breeze, never tiring. As poorly as Edrik and his fellows rode, it didn’t take him long to catch up. Algar slowed a hundred strides behind the riders, for strong light revealed his secret.

Over the remainder of the day, the snowfall increased, coming down in thick flakes that quickly filled tree boughs and covered the frosty ground. Algar paused once to contact Brother Jathen with the seeing glass, but as he was about to trace the proper rune, he decided the monk needed a lesson in patience, and put the milky orb away.

Chapter 13

Queen Erryn’s army marched along a precipitous trail that led through plunging chasms of rock and ice. At times, the wind blew so hard that the men had to hold to one another to keep from being swept off the narrow track and into a shrieking white oblivion. At other times, they bored through snowdrifts so high and deep they might have been mountains themselves. They climbed ever higher, working doggedly to tamp a path for their queen and the supply train.

Day had passed to night and back to day, before Erryn and her army came to a ravine that ran flat and true, like a road. Rocky walls towered overhead, giving the army a reprieve from the howling voice of the storm. Mile by mile, the ravine narrowed to no more than twenty strides at its widest. Until Erryn saw the glyph-carved guideposts, each of carved graystone wrapped in bands of black iron and standing some twenty feet tall, she had come to believe that General Aedran was leading them to a frozen doom.

As they drew closer to the ancient guideposts, Erryn made out a tumbledown wall of rough stone farther on partially blocking the way. A pair of stubby towers loomed above the wall like ghosts, their square crowns shattered by some forgotten battle.

“The oldest stories say those who first crept into the Gyntors from the Iron Marches did so to escape the wrath of plundering dragons,” Aedran said, as they rode between the guideposts.

“Dragons?”

“Aye.” Aedran pointed to one of the ancient markers. Ages of harsh weather had worn its glyphs smooth, but the images of winged serpents rising above flames were clear enough. A battered iron dragon emblazoned the top of the marker, its jaws stretched in a silent scream and wings spread for flight. The rest of the carved impressions were strange to Erryn’s eye, perhaps a written language, or perhaps arcane symbols that no longer held any meaning.

“If only to bring us fire,” she said with a violent shiver, “I could hope there are dragons hereabout.”

“I’ve never seen a dragon,” Aedran admitted, his tone suggesting that he didn’t believe in such creatures. “As to fire, I hold little hope that we will find anything to burn, save the wood we carry for cooking, and our lamps and candles.”

Erryn hid her disappointment. “At least we can get out of the wind and snow,” she said, struggling to remember what warmth felt like.

“The storm might prove the least of our troubles,” Aedran warned, his voice almost lost under the sharp exhalations of a Prythian work-chant.
Hah!
they cried as one, the sound rumbling off the walls as the tampers slammed their iron-headed tools against the snow. Sensing a destination, excitement had invigorated the usual monotony of their shouts.

Erryn twisted in the saddle. “You keep warning of troubles, but I’ve yet to see any—other than the weather. I’m starting to think there’s nothing to fear.” The more she thought about it, the more sense it made. What could possibly live in such a miserable place as this?

Aedran fixed his gaze upon her. His mask of Prythian bravado had vanished, leaving his features engraved with dread. “These mountains are cursed, every inch of them. The paths I kept us on until now were the safest … but now safety lies far behind us.”

“If coming here is so dangerous, wherever
here
is,” Erryn said, waving her hand over their bleak surrounds, “then why did you agree to my order?”

He studied her for a long moment, his eyes a vibrant blue over the top of his scarf. “On occasion, the idea takes me that there must be more to a man’s life than gold and glory, more than fighting for the sake of both.”

Erryn stared, still not sure what he was getting at. Truth told, he sounded like a philosopher belly deep in a barrel of brandy.

Aedran suddenly frowned. “Oh, shit on it all! What it comes to is that you were right, and I was wrong. Without shelter, we’ll freeze solid. When the men went missing and those horses froze to death, I got it into my head that I’d rather freeze myself, than face whatever might lay off the path. For a time, I lost sight of Ahnok’s demands, and I forgot who I am as a man of Pryth. For a time, I was afraid.”

“What’s your god of war have to do with it?” Erryn didn’t worship any particular god, though on occasion she had shared a scrap of food with a hungry waif in order to gain the favor of Ilix, the patron god of thieves.

Aedran shrugged. “Given a choice between a meaningless death, such as freezing solid, or dying while battling an enemy, a trueborn Prythian must always choose to fight, as Ahnok demands of the warriors who follow him.”

Erryn found herself nodding at the sentiment, but while trading doctrines kept her mind off the cold, she had greater concerns. “Do you know what awaits us … what dangers?”

“Hard to say. Could be we face nothing worse than the storm. Could be we’ll all meet terrible ends that no man has ever imagined.”

“You could say the same about most anything,” Erryn said. “Surely you can do better.”

“I told you the Gyntors are cursed—something even you should know, seeing as you’ve lived your life in their shadow.”

Erryn’s shrug opened a gap in her cloak and let in an icy draft. Shivering, she pulled it tight again. “I’ve heard stories and told a few, along with everyone else, but I’ve never seen anything to prove they were true.”

“Be glad you haven’t,” Aedran said. “By dark sorceries or endless seasons of cold, it makes no matter what changed those who keep their lairs in these mountains. I’ve crossed some of those who live deep in these crags, and they’re no longer men. Long ago, they shed the cloak of humanity in favor of donning the skins and the ways of beasts. They hunt the night like wolves, seeking prey, even if that happens to be their fellow man.”

Erryn felt his fear eating into her; she saw behind her eyes packs of crazed men draped in tattered hides, running over the snow on the hunt; saw them dragging down some weary traveler, ripping and clawing—

He’s just trying to frighten me
, she thought, shoving the images away. Erryn sat straighter in the saddle. “An army of Prythians can defend themselves against anything that lives here.”

“Not everything that walks these lands lives as we live,” Aedran said, facing ahead to look over the bent backs of the soldiers clearing the way.

“I have no fear of the restless spirits,” Erryn said.

“We shall see.”

~ ~ ~

A broad vale hazed by streamers of snow opened beyond the ravine. A mile farther on a mountain rose up, its peak lost in the clouds. Lower down, long blades of ice and slumping brows of snow draped the face of a fortress wall several shades darker than the granite outcrops and promontories surrounding it. Something about its sweeping curves and sharp ridges made Erryn uneasy.

“Have you been here before?” Erryn called above the wind, which had grown stronger, now that they had escaped the ravine.

“No,” Aedran said. “But I’ve heard stories of this place. It is named Stormhold.”

“And what do these stories say?”

Aedran pointed out the twin ridges sweeping down off the mountain to embrace the vale, their rough backs marbled with ice and drifted snow. “I’ve heard that the arms of Kiniss guard it well, and that she always welcomes the lost.”

“
Kiniss
... a goddess?”

Aedran eased his mount closer to Erryn’s, until their knees were brushing. “Aye. She’s one of Dargoth’s Thousand Daughters. Dargoth, the God of the Mountains, is insatiable. To avoid the temptation of laying with his daughters, he struck all his daughters’ wombs barren, and then sealed them with fire and molten rock.”

Prythian gods, Erryn decided, were as demented as Prythians. “If Kiniss welcomes the lost, she’s a friend of mine.”

Aedran’s laugh carried above the wind. “The Thousand Daughters are also insane—seems they didn’t appreciate their father’s treatment. Kiniss may welcome the lost and weary into her embrace, but at best we have even chances of her letting us go.”

“You Prythians need friendlier gods,” Erryn said.

Aedran laughed harder. “Ofttimes we rage against the gods as much as each other—all the gods save Ahnok, that is, for what fool would fight the God of War?”

What fool indeed?
Erryn thought, thinking if anyone would challenge gods, it would be a Prythian.