Queen of the North (Book 3) (Songs of the Scorpion) (30 page)

A retort froze on her tongue when Zander, snarling and clawing, once more hurtled into the circle of men. Someone hit him with the pommel of a sword, and he fell back, stunned. For a moment, everything went still. Erryn saw something leaking into Zander’s beard from his nostrils and the corners of his mouth. She thought it was blood, but what she saw was
squirming
, rather than running. At the same time, uneasy murmurs rose from her Queensguard. The men keeping Zander at bay began to expand away from him.

“Hold!” Aedran scolded, his tone sharp, uncompromising … and something else.
Frightened,
Erryn thought sure, her own fear deepening.

“Come away,” Aedran said, catching her arm.

This time, she didn’t resist.

Once more, Zander flung himself through the frosty air and slammed into one of his fellows. Instead of using his fists, he began gnawing at the man’s face.

“Stop him!” Erryn cried, her belly cramping with horror.

Before a handful of Prythians could pull Zander back, he had left ragged bite marks all across his screaming adversary’s face. His captors flung Zander to the ground, but he instantly leaped up again. Whatever her Queensguard saw close-up, prompted them to brandish their swords.

“Take him alive!” Aedran called.

One Eye Thal swept in and cracked the iron tamper against the back of Zander’s skull. The man’s raving cut off and he fell to his knees, head bowed. “Careful, lads,” the captain said. “I’d wager my stones that he’s still got some fight left in him.”

Zander suddenly sat bolt upright, head raised, hair swept back over his shoulders, eyes staring. Festering sores pocked his face. The same held for half the men in her army, but it was obvious that Zander had been digging at the raw wounds, ripping them open. A bloody slit had taken the place of half his nose, and one eye bulged horribly, as if something were trying to push its way out of the socket. No one had seen his ravaged face, Erryn guessed, because like most everyone else, he had probably kept his head buried in the hood of his cloak.

“Get it out of me!” Zander screamed then, ropes of bloody phlegm exploding past his teeth. Zander’s scream became a gagging hiss, his disfigured features going the black-purple of an engorged leech. He began clawing at his throat. His mouth stretched wide and silent; black blood streaked his teeth. He made a hoarse barking noise, spewing a bloody clot over his lips. He convulsed violently, now making no sound at all, and pitched over in snow.

Aedran stood as motionless as all the Prythians.

“Help him,” Erryn pleaded.

No one moved.

“Help him!”

Aedran gave her a hesitant look, and then shoved his way through the men. Erryn came after him, but halted at the sight of Zander. She could not make herself get any closer, let alone help. She wanted to turn away and run.

In the murk, Zander lay curled on his side, a fevered sheen of awareness burning in one eye. The other had burst, leaving the socket teeming with a host of tiny, pale creatures.

Maggots
, Erryn thought, dismayed, but knew that wasn’t true. The worms’ faint glow spoke of their kinship to those that claimed Stormhold as a sanctuary.

She drew back, one hand cupped over her mouth to restrain a moan of revulsion and to block the smell of the dying man, a muddy reek of stagnant blood and excrement.

Aedran said nothing as he hauled his sword free of its leather scabbard, the steel singing softly in the gathering night.

“He’s still alive,” Erryn said.

Zander’s breath came in hitching gulps, and his spasming fingers clutched and clawed through the snow. His good eye rolled, his mouth worked. Instead of words, she heard a gagging hiccup, and then a wave of worms boiled over his lips. She retreated a step farther, bile filling her throat and coating her tongue. More worms slithered like tiny white eels from Zander’s ears, from the tattered sores in his cheeks, from his staring eye.

“His back,” One Eye Thal warned, making a hasty retreat.

Distressed mutters filled the frosty air. Aedran tried to draw Erryn away, but she shook him off. She watched helplessly as Zander’s wolfskin cloak began to bulge and hump along the length of his spine.

“Those little caterpillars aren’t doing that,” One Eye Thal shouted, as Zander began to quiver. His good eye wavered, the iris half-covered by the wriggling girth of a worm. He said something in a pleading tone.

“What’s that, lad?” One Eye Thal asked, not coming any closer.

Erryn cocked her head, but could not command her feet to move any closer.

Zander’s quivering became worse. “
Out
….”

“I can end your suffering, brother,” Aedran said, the blade of his sword running with the first dim light of the rising moon. “Quickly and without pain. You’ve earned that much.”

Zander’s ruined face knotted, his lips rippled. “….
of
….” he gasped.

“He’s saying something,” Erryn said.

Aedran took a measured step closer to the fallen man. He curled the fingers of both hands around the hilt of his sword. “You’re a fine warrior. The glory you have heaped on Pryth and your clan has bought you a place of high honor at the feet of Ahnok. No man could ask or hope for more.”

Zander’s wolfskin cloak continued to shudder and bulge, as if his muscles had taken on a life of their own. His lips pressed tightly together on a worm, pinching it in half. The loose end fell to the snow and thrashed. He inhaled sharply through the devastation of his nose, making a high whistling sound. “.…
m-me!
” he managed.

Aedran took a steadying breath and raised his sword.

Zander’s face strained. “
Get it out of me!
” As that cry echoed away into the night, he fell limp.

“Hold!” One Eye Thal burst out, halting Aedran’s sword from falling.

A black claw had sheared cleanly through the silver-gray wolf pelt covering Zander’s back. The man whimpered when an opposing claw joined the first. The rest of the men scrabbled back, faces stricken with revulsion.

Erryn stood fast, held as if by chains of frost. Through the numb terror seizing her heart, she realized the claws were actually pincers … so like those she had seen surrounding the mouth of the caterpillar that had dropped to her shoulder in the cold halls of Stormhold.
But these are much larger!

Zander flailed, and it seemed as if he was trying to get to his knees. A high-pitched whistling sound, just at the edge of hearing, escaped his throat. The Prythians dropped their weapons to slap their hands over their ears. Erryn, still rooted to the spot, mimicked them, but the sound knifed effortlessly into her skull.

“
Joraxa!
” someone cried, barely surmounting the piercing wail.

Without warning, the Prythian ranks shattered, the jostling men rushing into the forest, some so fear-blinded that they slammed headlong into tree trunks. Some got back on their feet and ran on. Others lay still where they had fallen, groggy, moaning.

The shriek rose higher, bringing tears to Erryn’s eyes, making her bladder feel swollen. Her gritted teeth ached to the roots, seemed to vibrate in time with the sound coming from Zander.

Not Zander,
she thought.
The thing inside him!

The shrill screech cut off, leaving only the noise of men running for safety, floundering through deep snow, cursing in fright; men who until now had always gone eagerly to battle for her, for themselves, for gold and glory; her army of brave Prythians, fleeing, leaving her to her own fate. All had fled, save Aedran and One Eye Thal.

“What is it?” Erryn sobbed, as a flat, bloody skull the size of her open hand began to tear loose from Zander’s body. A cluster of eyes, glittering like wet obsidian, nested in the creature’s sloping crown. Though they seemed to stare blindly, she knew they had marked her. Below those eyes, the creature’s great pincers snapped together over a smaller, gnashing set.

“Joraxa,” One Eye Thal said, staring as if mesmerized, “the spawn of Gamanas, Keeper of the Grave.”

The tip of Aedran’s sword stabbed into the snow with a fateful clank. “I never believed the stories of the great iceworms. I never….” He trailed off, his face that of a man beaten.

“Kill it!” Erryn ordered.

One Eye Thal looked to her, his face serene. His voice was calm, soft, and absolutely resigned. “’Tis us who’ll die, for the venom of a Joraxa makes a man as stiff as stone … at first. Then the worm drags him deep into the frozen earth, below the roots of the hardest frost. And there, his flesh begins to melt, like hot tallow, until naught but bones remain—bones a Joraxa makes into cradles for its unholy brood.”

“Are you mad?” Erryn stumbled back from him, back from Zander, back from the thing gradually curling free from his skin. “You must fight. We all must fight!
Kill it!
”

“There’s not much point fighting iceworms,” One Eye Thal said in that calm, dead voice.

“You must try!”

One Eye Thal’s lopsided smile was ghastly in the dappled light of the rising moon. “Soon, it will set to hunting us, following the heat of our blood as a hound follows the scent of a stag. If we run now, some of us might escape. All the rest will gather at the feet of Ahnok—”

Erryn’s slap rocked his head back, made his gray hair fly. She had not known she was going to strike him, but seeing some of that submissive light flee his good eye, she slapped him again, hard enough that her palm stung. The third time she drew her arm back, he caught her wrist.

“You’d have us fight our doom?” he demanded, spittle flecking his lips.

Erryn glanced at the creature. It had risen a foot out of Zander. She swallowed her fear. “I command it, you cockless old fool! Now unhand your queen, before I hew off your wilted stones!”

That seemed to sting him more than her slaps, and he looked to Aedran. “This brazen wench
is
the true Queen of Pryth, just as you said she’d be!” He shoved her into Aedran’s startled arms. “Take her, boy, and keep her safe. Run as fast and far as you can. If any of us survive, I’ll find you!”

Before Erryn knew what was happening, Aedran lifted her, his strong arms holding her to his chest like a nursing babe. Then he was plunging through knee-deep snow. One Eye Thal struck off in the opposite direction, howling a battle cry, but going wide around the iceworm.

The Joraxa was still coming out of Zander, birthing itself from the man’s corpse, rising into the frigid moonlight. Its pincers snapped together … spread wide … snapped together, the rhythmic jarring motion flinging shredded meat and blood.

Aedran wheeled around a cluster of naked birch trees and sank to his hips in an unseen hole. Erryn didn’t regret losing sight of the Joraxa. Cursing and straining, Aedran clambered up and out of the snowy trap, still holding Erryn to his chest. The only aid she could provide was to wrap her arms tight around his neck. Aedran changed course again, and Erryn’s breath caught when the Joraxa came once more into view.

By now, it had uncurled to half the height of a man, and was reaching higher in a waving, serpentine motion. Its segmented body was a collection of overlapping plates the color of old bronze—below the glaze of repulsed terror encasing Erryn’s mind, she knew that was not its true color, for Zander’s blood slathered the creature. Finger-length spines ran like hackles down the creature’s back. Dozens of insectile limbs were unfurling from its belly, each tipped with a stubby triad of clutching talons. It lifted its head and loosed another of those whistling shrieks. Erryn almost screamed when she heard an answering cry, and then another, and another.
It’s calling to its kindred!
Then, nearly too terrified to imagine the question,
How many are there?

Erryn soon lost sight of the iceworm, though she could still hear it and the others, their cries punctuated by softer, barking chirps. Aedran quickened his pace, loping along in jouncing strides, his harsh gasps filling her ears.

Chapter 28

At length, Aedran stumbled and collapsed on top of Erryn. Gasping an apology, he rolled onto his back in the snow. “Can you run?”

“Yes,” she said, her mind filled with gruesome images of the iceworm climbing out of Zander’s corpse.
A mercy that I can no longer hear it.

Aedran used a tree limb to stand, knocking loose a drift of snow that fell over them both with a muffled whoosh. The fluffy cold struck Erryn like a slap, and she scrambled to her feet.

The iceworms might have fallen quiet, but there were other noises in the moon-stippled forest. Faint sounds of men crashing through brambles, calling out to one another. Some of those who were closer snarled and cursed, much as Zander had before he fell.

Aedran took her hand. “Let’s get a little farther.”

They went together, him hauling her through snow that reached almost to her waist. Before she had been too frightened to feel the cold, but now its bitter touch began sinking into her limbs, stiffening them.

You cannot stop
, she chided herself.
And you cannot make him carry you again
. This last angered her, for she knew in her heart that she had been letting Aedran and the rest of her army carry her ever since claiming Valdar and naming herself queen. So far in her short rule, she had done very little to mark herself out as a good and strong queen.