Chapter Forty-Three The Villainess In the Raider Camp
CHAPTER FORTY-THREE
The Villainess In the Raider Camp
“Shall it be war or peace?” asked the Emperor.
“Peace,” said Count Starost.
The Emperor seemed sorry he had asked the question.
Excerpt from the Once and Forever Emperor
series, now revised, ANONYMOUS
The dragon formed the periphery of the raiders’ encampment, its smooth metallic coils taking the place of fences and posts.
Though they were all encircled by the same dragon, the division in the camp could not have been more clear.
Merac raiders sat about in small groups, chatting loudly and cooking over open fires, polishing swords or adjusting straps over their furs.
The heaviest armour any raider wore was a riveted leather doublet.
Starosts and their followers attended to their bows, long knives and chainmail in relative silence, grey-hooded heads bowed over their work.
And in the centre were the king’s men, dressed and armed in a halfway point between the hostile groups.
The king’s men were the smallest force among the Tagar army.
An air of readiness hummed through the whole crowd, Starosts, Merac and king’s men alike. Now that the princess was safe, Rae thought uneasily, the raiders awaited Ivor’s word to attack.
As Ivor showed Rae around by morning light, the metal dragon provided a strange contrast to the world. On one side, a canvas tent, ropes and pegs in the dewy morning grass, ready to trip unwary feet. On the other side, a dragon’s claw wrought in metal, a bird talon become a scimitar.
She skipped over the metal curve of one devastatingly sharp claw. The king of Tagar walked by her side, hands clasped behind his back, to all appearances conversing with his betrothed.
This could be the opportunity Rae needed to get on the same page. “Listen, I wanted to make one thing clear. I know how fake engagements usually go, but please do not fall in love with me. I don’t mean that as a fun challenge. I have enough to deal with.”
Ivor let out a short laugh, then looked surprised at himself. “You’re very self-confident, Lady Rahela. Has anyone ever told you that?”
Rae winked. “I tell myself that all the time.”
Ivor looked faintly worried by the wink. “No offence meant, but you are clearly a very troublesome person. My life is a series of endless troubles. Each of my subjects is a trouble greater than the last. I have no intention of falling in love with you. Or anyone else.”
Rae regarded the Ice King with deepest suspicion. “That’s what they all say. As soon as they declare they’ll never love again, the story sets into motion. This whole conversation is dangerous. Shut up!”
“You’re the one who started the conversation,” Ivor snapped in return, then saw something that cut his angry retort short. “We must be quiet. A long-awaited ceremony is taking place.”
Rae followed Ivor’s line of sight.
On the solemn side of the raiders’ camp, among grey tents like a cluster of shadows, stood a silver-cloaked and hooded congregation.
They gathered in front of a small woman wearing a simple white garment with her silver-fair hair bared, who in turn stood before a cupboard-sized shrine.
For a moment Rae thought the shrine was filled with glittering fairy lights, until she recalled this world had no electricity.
Instead, she realized, the shrine was filled with strangely luminous shards of glass dancing in a wind that wasn’t there.
Rae remembered the family the Meracs feuded with always dressed very differently from their enemies.
The Starosts wore grey and went hooded, disdaining wealth and glory.
Honestly, Rae always found them to be killjoys.
In the books, when Vasilisa became Ice Queen, her Starost chancellor was ever stern and cold.
But he was clever. He was able to hold off the Emperor longer than anyone dreamed possible.
She could use a man like that.
Rae studied the crowd of Starosts with interest, searching for that chancellor. A tall man, well-muscled beneath the cloak and to all appearances in his early thirties, stood before the white-clad woman.
“Is that Count Starost?”
Ivor’s gaze raked the surrounding camp, searching urgently. For what, Rae didn’t know. “Not yet. This is the ceremony held to elect a new leader of the Starost forces.”
“What happened to their old leader?”
“Solas, Count Starost, went on a quest for light and truth.”
Rae frowned. “Do you mean enlightenment?”
“I mean enchanted light,” said Ivor impatiently.
“Countries use what they have to hand as a power source. Eyam has the dead, earth drenched in blood producing marvels and the rising ghouls. Tagar is always divided. In the West we have the endurance of the stone and the vitality of wild beasts. In the East, the cold, clear air that carries, and the glint of light on snow. Magic waned, and that in the east almost went out. Even the Starosts could only perform little light magics, like illumination that blinks out when someone lies, and only glows again when that someone tells the truth. There was a legend of a light source that could power clockwork armies and metal messengers, but everyone who tried to follow the vague and sinister directions in the histories perished before ever reaching their destination.”
A hopeless quest was a classic ingredient of fantasy. Rae nodded wisely. “Someone succeeded in the hopeless quest?”
Someone always succeeded in the hopeless quest.
“Count Starost knew the ridiculous feud between the families couldn’t continue.
After a duel gone wrong, he made a bargain with me that I would elevate his mother, the Dowager Countess Starost, to become the Ascendant, who speaks for all our gods.
Thus the Starosts could have spiritual power and the Meracs military power, and both be content.
He broke off the feud by leaving the field, and went in search of the source for all bright power.
Starost succeeded in his quest, though he perished at its end.
He left crystals with me that would shine as long as he lived.
The night the light in those crystals died was the night my dragon’s head lifted from the slab in my laboratory, its eyes burning white as stars.
It took months from that moment to build my dragon, but that was the moment the spark of life lit.
Starost is the reason my dragon flies. I owe him the peace he died for. ”
The spark of life, Rae thought. Magic from outside of Eyam was never as powerful as magic in Eyam, but a source that could make a dragon fly… That might be strong enough.
“If I bring about peace between your people,” Rae said slowly. “Can I use the power he died for?”
“How will you use it?”
She met the Ice King’s eyes. “To destroy the God’s Eye jewel that the Emperor carries on the hilt of his sword Longing for Revenge.”
To break the enchantment Key was under.
Ivor said, “I believe we have a bargain.”
The white-clad woman – the Ascendant, Rae presumed – held a glowing crystal in her hand, illuminating the shallow cave of shadow beneath the tall man’s hood for an instant.
She touched the crystal to the man’s forehead, cheekbones and the base of his throat, each touch giving off another flare of light.
Surely this new leader would be the Count Starost of the books. Cold and stern he might be, but he wanted peace. Rae could use Count Starost’s help.
“The Starosts need a new leader badly. They will not listen to a Merac’s command, and my archers are in chaos,” Ivor explained as they watched. “Solas Starost has been dead almost a year, and it is time for his farewell ceremony. This is a very welcome development.”
There was a note of tension in his voice.
Rae eyed him with alarm. “So what’s the problem?”
Across the way in the grey-lined clearing, the Ascendant intoned, “Will you lead us truly, kindly, wisely, walk the path of light all your days, and when our days end, sing us steady to sleep?”
Rae and Ivor watched as the new leader of the Starosts clasped hands with the Ascendant. The glow of the crystal between their locked palms and linked fingers built, silvery and radiant, as if together they could hold a star.
Until a streak of gold, fast and bright as a lightning bolt, cleaved the air. The crystal dropped to the ground, silver light quenched. The man tumbled to the ground beside the darkened crystal.
His head, rolling out from under the shadow of his hood, ended up several yards away.
“Try leading the Starost clan without a head,” suggested Torhell, Count Merac.
The fur-clad, gold-draped warrior strode into the circle of horrified Starosts to retrieve his axe.
He picked up the golden Edge of Anguish and began to wipe blood off its sun-shining surface.
He surveyed the Starosts hungrily, as if dearly hoping someone would take him up on the challenge of his gaze.
No Starost did, but their king spoke.
“Count Merac!” Ivor snapped. “At any moment we may be at war. Refrain from killing those our own side.”
“A Starost is never on the same side as a Merac.” Torhell now seemed absorbed in cleaning his blade. “You’re king. Order them to stop insulting me.”
“Captive Goddess, guard us. Nobody insulted you, you brutish murderer,” the Ascendant bit out.
“You did insult me!”
Torhell made a sweeping gesture with his holy axe as if to display her insult to his king and the entire audience. The Starosts gave him a look of collective grey-eyed hate.
“It’s insulting,” Torhell informed the Ascendant, “to place somebody like that at the head of your house and in direct opposition to me. Find someone worthy.”
“What would you know about being worthy?”
Torhell glanced at the headless body dyeing the dirt red. “For starters, find someone who knows how to duck.”
“You jest because you never suffered,” the Ascendant said bitterly. “You have never felt alone, you have never felt regret—”
“I have suffered,” claimed Torhell. “I’ve suffered boredom. I’m suffering it right now. I want my suffering to end.”
“We don’t care what you want, Merac,” called out one of the hooded crowd. “We need a leader!”
Torhell sheathed his axe. In the same movement, he lunged and snatched a bow from a hooded figure nearby. He strung the bow, and fired an arrow that sang across the wastelands, covering an incredible distance to hit the topmost bough of a tree in the Waiting Elms forest.
The arrow was so far away, Rae couldn’t see it. She only saw the tree sway as the arrow struck.
“There,” announced Count Merac. “Archery is meant to be a Starost specialty, is it not? Let the Starost who can split my arrow be your new leader. Find someone who deserves to be my enemy.”
Torhell tossed the bow back at the hooded man he’d stolen it from.
Every one of the Starosts wore a silvery hood, except the Ascendant, whose head was bare, her long hair hanging in streaks of silver-fair and shock-white. Rae presumed her hood situation was for religious reasons. Beneath the hoods, every Starost looked stunned.
“Nobody can hit that mark,” hissed the Ascendant.
Torhell shook his head, the gold beads in his braids chiming. “Shame on you for lying, and you a holy woman! You and I both know who could hit the mark every time.”
The Ascendant’s pale head swung towards her tiny illuminated shrine. Dimly, behind the swinging crystalline lights, Rae glimpsed a picture. Tears rose to the Ascendant’s eyes.
“You are in the water, you are in the air, you are ever with me, for you are everywhere,” whispered the woman. “My son the hero and light-bringer is not yet a year gone. The Star of the East’s spirit lingers yet. He sees everything you do.”
Torhell raised his axe in readiness, making a show of looking in all directions.
“If he doesn’t like what I’m doing, let him stop me. What’s that? He won’t? Still dead? Then I suggest you find somebody else who can stop me. Fast. I hear our king is deeply concerned about your declining ranks.” Torhell’s voice rose to a roar like his beast’s. “Does anyone dare try me? Anyone?”
The Starosts shrank back en masse. Only the Ascendant didn’t move as he advanced. The axe’s reflected brightness leaped from each blade of grass, swinging gold and hungry. She never even flinched.
“Tell me he won’t kill a woman,” whispered Rae anxiously.
“He’s unfortunately broad-minded in his tastes,” said Ivor. “Count Merac is having an extended murderous tantrum over not getting his traditional duel to the death against the Starosts. You ask what the problem is in my court? You’re looking at him.”
Torhell lifted a gold-ringed hand up towards the Ascendant’s throat. If she was essentially the high priestess of all Tagar’s gods, surely it would be extremely blasphemous to kill her.
The Ascendant eyed his hand with distaste. “Get away from me with your rings. Kill me if you wish, but do not touch me.”
The beringed hand faltered, then clenched into a fist. The great cat at his heels rumbled, low and alarming. Torhell made a noise of exasperation deep in his throat, and strode away, shoving Starosts as he went past.
Ivor stared at the cooling corpse on the ground and sighed. “It has been two days since our last blood-feud incident. Someone clean that up.”
Rae preferred not to see blood, so she looked away, towards the silver scales glinting in the morning light. Then she squinted.
“Would it be unladylike to ask about the status of your dragon?” Ivor blinked at her. Rae elaborated. “Does it ever move as though it had a mind of its own?”
“The dragon is a machine with neither mind nor will. Naturally, it does nothing without my command,” said Ivor.
As the king spoke, the dragon twitched and uncurled its tail from around the camp, leaving the encampment defenceless.
The pointed metal head lifted, eyes flaring sudden brilliant red.
When Ivor cried out, the dragon didn’t curve its long, shining neck down to its rider.
Instead, the dragon unfurled its brilliant metal wings so they fanned out like the world’s largest sheet of tinfoil, and took to the air in its first flight alone.