Chapter 16 The Heart #3
She was a woman. A woman like he had never seen before: she was an orc, or at least half-orc.
Her green skin was even deeper than Kraghtol’s, and the rest of her body was equally imposing.
It was unusual for Kraghtol to meet other people at eye-level, and for a moment, he felt as weak and small as he had while under the effect of the potion.
Her dark hair was styled into a complicated knot, adding even more to her perceived height.
The most unusual thing about her, though, was her dress.
Kraghtol wasn’t even sure it was so much as a dress, or rather a suit, or something in-between.
It was hard to tell any specifics about the cut because of the color.
Or rather, the colors. In an equally mesmerizing and confusing swirling display, the suit wasn’t content with just showing one or two colors.
Instead, it had them all at the same time, waging war for attention with every minuscule movement of the wearer.
Kraghtol couldn’t look at it for a long time without feeling dizzy, so he concentrated on the woman’s face, showing her tusks shamelessly in a fine smile.
“I expected you, Kraghtol, bastard of the beast,” she said. Her voice was no less disturbing nearby than far away. It still sounded like it came from everywhere at once.
“Now that’s rude,” Valir remarked, and Kraghtol winced inwardly. He shook his head and whispered, “No, it’s… my actual name. I’ll explain later.”
“I do not know the ones accompanying you, however,” she continued. If she had heard the whispered exchange, she completely ignored it. “A human and a dwarf. Curious. It has been a long time since one of your kind came to my halls.”
She focused Valir and Kraghtol could see the goosebumps on the noble’s skin.
“These are Dagna and Valir, and they are my friends,” he said with a firm voice, and only after he had spoken the words did he realize how naturally they had come.
The orc woman nodded. Her movements carried a sense of grace that seemed out of place.
“Perhaps you could introduce yourself, too,” asked Dagna. “Because I have absolutely no clue what’s happening and why the oracle in the middle of the deadly swamp is a green skin — no offense, Kragh.”
The smile on the Orcish face did not fade, but deepened a few more millimeters, stopping short of becoming a grin.
“People call me many names. But the moniker I find most fitting is simply ‘queen’. After all, I used to rule these lands.”
Valir shook his head. “There are no kings and queens in Wardenreach. And certainly no Orcish ones.” He hesitated shortly before adding, “Your Highness.” When he noticed Kraghtol looking at him quizzically, he whispered: “Better safe than sorry.”
The queen’s voice was friendly and patient when she answered. “As you have no doubt seen, I have been imprisoned here. The world might have forgotten me after the revolution, but an unseen queen without land and subjects is still a queen.”
“The revolution?” asked Dagna, and Kraghtol’s eyes grew wide. “You don’t mean the unification, do you? How… how old are you?!”
The queen nodded, and her dress spit a reflection of countless colors into the room. “Yes, the unification. That was when the usurpers locked me in here.”
“But that was 370 years ago, Your Highness,” Valir exclaimed. “There is no food or water in here, and not even dwarves live that long. How are you still alive?”
The queen’s intense gaze seemed to pierce Kraghtol now, as if looking into his soul. “Perhaps you want to answer that in my stead, Kraghtol?”
He had an answer ready, and the queen’s reaction told him he had been right.
“Alchemy. The real kind, not what we learned in school. Perhaps she brewed a potion sustaining her body with food and water. And she found a formula to stop aging. Maybe even made herself immortal. Are these things… possible? Can you really do that? Can you tell us how?” His voice had taken on more and more awe as he went on.
This was the alchemy he had dreamed of as a child, not brewing the same three uninspiring potion recipes for the rest of his life.
“I can see your eagerness, young Kraghtol. And while I cannot teach you every secret of alchemy long forgotten since centuries past in just a few minutes, I can grant you a boon, a humble thank you for what you have done for me. It will serve as a starting point on your way to alchemical greatness. Step forward.”
The queen sounded sincere, and Kraghtol was already about to do so when he felt Dagna’s hand on his arm.
“Don’t!” she said, not being quiet. “She’s lying. Or at least not telling the truth.”
The queen cocked her head, and her voice was less friendly. “What do you mean, dwarf?”
“The unification,” Dagna said with a firm voice.
“Something bothered me, and I have figured out what it is. If I’m not mistaken, the unification wasn’t called that, ‘the unification’, until a few decades later, when the guilds had finished negotiating between the three peoples of Wardenreach.
If you had truly been imprisoned since then, you couldn’t have known the name of the event, but you immediately agreed when Kragh suggested it.
Which means…” she drew breath, and Kraghtol realized she had said all this in one breath until now.
“… either you didn’t know it was called the unification and just jumped onto the first thing anyone came up with or you knew, which means you can’t have been here for that long. In any case, you have not been honest.”
The smile returned to the queen’s face, and it conveyed true amusement. “Dagna was your name, wasn’t it? I am impressed with your sharp mind.”
“So you admit it?” the dwarf asked.
“No, keep thinking. I was right here in this very room for the last 370 years. And yet, I knew of the unification. I even knew Kraghtol’s name, although you watched him open the door for the first time. How is that possible?”
Dagna furrowed her brow. “It’s not. This place is in the middle of a deadly swamp, and the door was sealed. You had no way of collecting outside information.”
“Unless…” the queen encouraged, her voice gentle and patient, and Dagna picked up from there.
“Unless you had someone on the outside telling you all this. You could have talked through the walls. But who? Only Kragh could find this place, not to mention avoid these… demons.”
Now, the queen laughed, a short and friendly laugh with the clarity of a bell. “Isn’t it obvious? My servant, of course.”
“Your servant?” asked Valir.
“Yes, the very servant that guided you here. Where is he?” She looked around as if noticing for the first time that someone was missing, and a streak of annoyance crossed her face.
“Where is who? There was nobody guiding us; believe me, I’d have loved that,” the noble replied, but Kraghtol had a growing suspicion.
“Wyrdroot!” exclaimed the queen, loud enough to fill the hall. Her voice didn’t break.
“Yes, yes, I’m here, am I not?” muttered a voice, and Kraghtol didn’t need to turn around and see the dark silhouette of a gnarly figure approaching against the light of the entrance gate to know who it was.
“You?!” Kraghtol asked. “You’re the queen’s servant?!”
The Orcish queen ignored Kraghtol’s question. “Where have you been? You were supposed to escort Kraghtol through the swamp and keep him from all harm.” Her voice sounded harsh and annoyed suddenly, a stark contrast to the friendliness before.
The servant addressed as Wyrdroot shrugged, which looked painful, as if his joints were displaced.
“It has not been my fault, it has not. The alchemist told me not to come, so I had to sneak behind. And behind these three, there were the red-clad ones who wanted to kill them, so I had to fall behind even more, did I not?”
The queen stared at the old man. “I specifically told you to guide him through the swamp. And now I hear they were not only left alone but also followed by enemies?”
Wyrdroot, who had now arrived in the light, crossed his arms. “You also told me to respect his wishes, did you not? I did that. And I told him about the Mandrakes, I told him.”
The queen shook her head, anger burning in her eyes.
“I have to apologize for my servant. He will be punished for his fault. The swamps are dangerous terrain if you do not know where to tread. Are your enemies still threatening you?”
She snapped her fingers, and one of the large demon beasts stepped forward, nuzzling against the queen’s neck. Absent-mindedly, she scratched its ears.
“N…no,” stammered Valir. “They’re all dead, killed by one of your… demon lapdogs? Well, Kragh saved one, but he escaped, and he’s no threat anymore. Have… have you ordered them to attack?”
The queen shook her head. “How could I? Until now I didn’t even know of your enemies’ existence. I had thought the servant with the brain — the one I tasked with this exact duty — would keep you safe, but alas; at least a demon did.”
Wyrdroot muttered something unintelligible to himself.
“What are these demons? I have seen nothing like them before,” Dagna asked, just a split second before Kraghtol had opened his mouth to ask the same question.
“Poor animals, changed forever when they wandered too close to the center of the swamp. Like all wild animals, they are not evil, just driven by their twisted instincts. The same instinct that tells them to recognize my authority, even after all these years. They are not particularly clever; your comparison to dogs is not wrong. At least they understood the command not to touch Kraghtol on his way here.” Despite the queen’s words, her voice carried little sympathy.
“Now, I suppose I have answered all your doubts, dwarf? More reason to deny your friend his reward?”
“Just one. If you were in contact with this Wyrdroot this whole time, why didn’t he open the seal for you?”
“Yes, good question,” Valir chimed in. “He knows alchemy, and he even told Kragh about how the seals work. Why did you need Kragh for that?”