Chapter Twenty-Five Thera
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
Thera
Thera was no stranger to pain. Having been brought to the very edge of death by a traitor’s blade, she had come to believe that the agonies of her healing would be the worst discomfort she would ever endure.
Yet, as the spymaster’s fiery web closed in, she came to understand the depth of her folly.
This was beyond anything she had suffered before, pain so invasive and absolute it robbed her of the ability to scream.
Nor could she writhe in its embrace, the tendrils sinking through flesh and bone to coil their way around the very essence of her being, holding her in place, both frozen and burning.
“I’ll send you back to your people an empty husk!” The spymaster boomed his hate at her. “Payment for my murdered children. Shorn of mind and spirit. A drooling half-corpse. Let them call you queen then…”
As he ranted on, Thera felt the train of her thoughts fragment, broken by the pain that now snaked its way through every vein and sinew. Memories flashed by, too fast to catch, flickers of experience she knew she would soon lose forever.
“Before me, you are as an insect,” the spymaster told her. “Here in this realm of dreams, I am the monarch…”
His words were abruptly drowned out by a vast pulse of sound.
Like the tentacles of the spymaster’s cage, it invaded Thera’s form, banishing the pain in an instant.
Her vision cleared and she reeled back from a swift, pale shape as it sped past, shredding the enveloping cage of fire.
Thera tumbled in water disturbed by the sweep of a mighty tail, then spun the other way as another fast but huge form streaked by, casting out a song that rendered what was left of the tentacles into a cloud of black debris.
“Lynnea!” she called out, unleashing a cascade of bubbles, her panicked gaze roving the white whales now forming a circle around her.
The vortex that had brought the spymaster into this realm had disappeared, taking his rasping, venomous voice with it, but of her Tielwald she saw no sign.
Thera began to entertain the terrifying notion that Lynnea may have been captured by the creature, her mind carried off to some other nightmarish realm.
But then she saw one of the whales veer towards her.
Perched on its back, black hair streaming and hand outstretched, was Lynnea.
Catching Thera’s arm, she bore her up into the pale blue, the whale accelerating towards the glittering plain of the surface.
I think, Lynnea commented to Thera an instant before they broke through in a sparkling explosion of spume, it’s time we woke up, my queen…
… Thera jerked on the bed, ears ringing with the echo of her own shout.
She instantly reached for Lynnea, gasping in relief at finding her awake and fully aware.
Perhaps we shouldn’t do that again… Lynnea began, the thought swallowed by surprise when Thera pulled her into a crushing embrace.
Suffused with the joy of survival and the blessed absence of pain, Thera forgot all prior restraint.
The lingering doubt inflicted by Eshilde’s treachery sublimed into honest and unabated lust as she pressed her lips to Lynnea’s.
You’re sure? she asked, but the question was soon forgotten, her thoughts thrumming with unleashed desire.
As their minds and bodies entwined, Thera felt herself to be once again lost in a dream.
Never before had the connection between them been so complete, the merging of thought and feeling exhilarating but also frightening.
Thus joined, there could be no secrets, no guarded thoughts or unshared suspicions.
And yet, instead of shrinking from it, Thera revelled in the welter of image and sensation, her mounting pleasure tinged with the sadness that she should ever have denied herself something so wondrous.
Three weeks later, the queen’s hahl-menda, claimed by some to be the largest collection of warships and warriors ever gathered in Ascarlia, set sail from Skar Magnol.
Vessels crowded Linsker Fjord for miles.
Some were fresh from the yards and slipways, others veterans of the queen’s battles, the remainder captured Nihlvarians, some crewed by freed slaves.
Many had been augmented with heavy bolt-casting devices produced under the direction of the Queen’s Engineer, Teylhar Fehrlank, the Clever Handed.
However, all were unified in raising canvas bearing the crown and sword symbol that formed Thera’s sigil.
Stepping aboard the Great Wolf with the motif blossoming on her unfurled sail, she couldn’t recall giving an order for either its design or widespread adoption.
Synghild’s work, she decided. The Guardian of the Queen’s Treasury had a knack for anticipating her monarch’s needs, often unencumbered by such things as prior discussion.
“Your people expect ritual and ceremony,” she had explained some days ago.
“They expect glittering baubles and grand titles. And they expect symbols. For that is how they know they are ruled even when they can’t see their queen. ”
It had been Synghild’s idea to mark the hahl-menda’s departure with a suitably grand occasion.
People thronged the harbour and surrounding streets, cheering and waving, many throats loosened by freely distributed liquor.
Exhortations for victory joined joyous, near manic cries for vengeance.
Yet, for all their hungry exuberance, it was to the non-smiling or silent faces that Thera’s eye drifted.
Older men and women, some younger clutching wailing infants, wept and waved to sons, daughters, and husbands as the ships carried them off.
Despite the air of celebration, come more sober hours, she knew the principal question on every mind would pertain to how many of the queen’s menda would be coming back.
Before taking ship, Thera had been obliged to spend a few moments observing a ritual farewell with Synghild.
As the queen’s nominated regent, and potential successor, it was necessary to mark her as such before as many eyes as possible.
Together, they struck sparks from bronze effigies, one formed into the sigil of Ulfmaer, Master of Storms, the other Silfaer, the Battle Maiden.
That done, Thera stood atop a platform of clustered barrels and made a proclamation regarding Synghild’s status and the certainty of their impending victory over the Nihlvarians.
Never fond of speeches, Thera thought her words flat, grating even as they echoed across the sea of faces.
Yet, when she concluded the address with a somewhat strained appeal for “Ulthnir’s mighty hand to smite our pestilent foe!
” the resultant roar of acclaim was far louder and longer than expected.
“Please accept my best wishes for your enterprise, Queen Thera,” Duchess Ayin said when Thera stepped down.
The duchess’s voice was barely audible above the crowd’s continuing excitement.
For weeks now Ayin had been engaged in negotiations with Synghild regarding Ascarlia’s future trade with Albermaine.
The discussions seemed needlessly prolonged to Thera.
The duchess was plainly using them as an excuse to remain in Skar Magnol, still determined to await the return of the Spear Maiden and her mysteriously important brother.
“I bring a small token.” Ayin said, producing a narrow, cloth-wrapped object from her cloak.
However, instead of offering it to Thera, she extended it to Lynnea.
As was usual when in public, the queen’s Tielwald kept a decent remove from her monarch, though always just close enough to intervene should a threat present itself.
At a nod from Thera, Lynnea duly came forward to accept the gift, pulling away the covering to reveal a sheathed dagger.
“This served me well in fraught times,” Ayin told Lynnea. “But I have scant need of it now. I bid you bear it and keep your queen safe.”
This has taken many lives, Lynnea judged, half drawing the dagger and running a finger over the blade.
And all deserved their fate. A fine and welcome gift.
She smiled at the duchess and performed a near perfect parody of an Albermaine-ish curtsey.
I’m sorry she can’t return to her ailing husband. Being here is a great trial for her.
As Lynnea straightened, Thera saw a brief but palpable frown of confusion pass across the duchess’s brow. She recovered quickly, summoning a smile of farewell before resuming her place at the head of her guards.
“She heard you,” Thera said later as the Great Wolf pulled away from the quay. “I’m sure of it.”
Is that jealousy I sense? Lynnea enquired.
They stood together at the stern, hands entwined as they watched Skar Magnol and its cheering crowd recede into the distance.
Since waking from the shared dream, and the change it wrought in their relationship, Lynnea’s role required that she kept to the periphery of public gatherings.
But, when among such trusted servants as the crew of the Great Wolf, Thera saw no need for circumspection.
She was hardly the first queen to take a lover.
“You said only I and your mother could hear your thoughts,” Thera pointed out.
Some minds are more sensitive than others. I suspect she sensed only my sorrow for her, not the thought beneath. It’s rare, but it happens sometimes.
“Good. It wouldn’t do for my Tielwald to reveal her mind to a foreign noble.” She paused as a darker thought intruded. “The spymaster. We shared a dream with him. Could he have sensed your thoughts?”
I don’t think so. I couldn’t sense his, only the ugliness of his soul.
“It was foolish to risk so much and gain so little.” She squeezed Lynnea’s hand. “Though I find I don’t regret it.”