CHAPTER EIGHT
C HAPTER E IGHT
In a meeting room of the Terrsaw palace, a likeness hangs of the former King Kladerstaff. It seems an apt placement to Alvira, to have him preside over every decision of strategy that pertains to Terrsaw. After all, he has long been hailed the greatest tactician in the kingdom’s history. Alvira stares at the painting now and recalls the story her father – a nobleman – once told her, of the ancient Terrsaw King who sought to rid his kingdom of the Dyvolsh infection.
The tale of the terrible Dyvolsh was her least favourite. She would have preferred to hear of the tailor’s daughter who sailed out to sea and returned with exotic fabrics, or the tale of the Mirror Queen, who was swallowed by her own reflection when she looked too closely. However, six decades of retrospect lends Alvira the surety that the Great Purger Kladerstaff was more educational for a future Queen.
The tale goes that Kladerstaff’s subjects were falling into the grip of some unseeable disease. It would tire them first, weighing their muscles until they ached before it invaded their chests. Within a week it would take their sense of time and place, then descend them into an incurable state of delusion. Mere days, and the disease or the madness would claim them completely.
Dyvolsh, the kingdom whispered in the old language – the devil . They bolted their doors and shuttered their windows and refused even the most desperate of their neighbours, terrified that Dyvolsh would seep into their homes, under their skin, and drive them to insanity.
A woman tied her ankles to a horse’s saddle and let it pull her through the Mecca. A man sat in his cabin while it burned around him. People of all ages hurled themselves from rooftops, plunged knives into their bellies or tied ropes around their necks. Scenes of unimaginable violence were escalating, and the unaffected seemed powerless to stop it.
All the while, Kladerstaff watched from the palace windows, unable to find the source of the infection, unable to locate the crucible that plagued his kingdom. It seemed they were completely helpless to the blight. Kladerstaff was a benevolent king, a kind and merciful ruler of Terrsaw, and yet his people were being ravaged under his watch, and he could not avail himself to stop it.
That the delusion was contagious became apparent quickly. Families would fall to the illness one after the other, and then their neighbours. The disease spread like ink spots on a map, slowly blackening each doorway in an ever-expanding radius.
First, Kladerstaff ordered his people to stay indoors, but such an order could only keep for so long before the water pails ran dry and the food was gone. Despite it, Dyvolsh found his way through the kingdom with relentless pursuit. The deaths continued, each more gruesome than the last.
Kladerstaff’s own wife soon fell ill. Born on the mountain, she had taught the populace of its beauty, its resource, and of the protection it offered, barricading them from the fiercest of winds. Queen Yerdos was her name, and she was widely adored. The people believed the Holy Mother had sent the woman to Terrsaw herself, for with her came favourable weather.
Queen Yerdos stopped eating. Kladerstaff thought it was stress that stole her appetite, for she loved the kingdom and was as helpless as he. But then, she awoke in the night, coughing and retching, and it was clear that the infection had staked its claim on her. Kladerstaff was removed from the bedchamber, separated from his wife. He was forced to leave her with Dyvolsh.
A week later, as Queen Yerdos died, a patron saint was born. The Queen broke a vase and ran a shard of glass across her throat. Her blood pooled on the bed she had shared with her husband, and she was known thereafter as Saint Yerdos – beholder of the mountain.
Kladerstaff quickly became near delusional himself. His queen was dead, his kingdom would soon be annihilated by an enemy he could not fight – he was desperate. He had to purge the province of this contagion. And if all were to perish, it didn’t seem such a mighty cost to rid the kingdom of a few.
He concocted a magical fire in the Square. His wife had been known for her spiritual nature after all, and if anyone were to devise an antidote to Dyvolsh, it would be Queen Yerdos. Kladerstaff beckoned all to leave their houses and join him. He pointed to the raging pyre and said, “This magic was left to us by our beloved queen, and it will purify the sickness that blights us. Bring forward all those afflicted and watch as it cures Terrsaw.”
One by one, those deluded by the plague stepped into the fire willingly, drawn to its flame like a moth. With each sacrifice, the flames grew higher, until they could be seen by all, and soon, each and every person infected heeded its call.
The kingdom of Terrsaw was rid of its infection by dawn. The loved ones of those who sent their kin to the pyre waited for their return, only to find that the fire was only fire, and the magic Kladerstaff had promised was a farce. When the flames finally died, only ash and bone remained.
Kladerstaff was prepared for anger and outrage. He awaited the storming of his castle and was ready to allow his subjects their retribution. But instead of a great uprising, the nation rejoiced. The devil had been slain by their king along with hundreds of his own subjects, and yet the surviving populace hailed him a saviour, not a murderer.
One might argue (and Queen Alvira often did), that Terrsaw’s current monarch had achieved feats rather similar to Kladerstaff’s on the day she’d made a deal with the Glacian King and sacrificed the people of a fringe village to the Ledge. A long-lasting blight to the kingdom was gone in a matter of hours, and yet not a soul had ever hailed her efforts. Alvira had traded a forgotten shire and was met with distaste, yet Kladerstaff had ushered double the humans into his purification fire, and his statue was erected in the Mecca – a patron saint of wellness, right alongside that of his wife.
It was the tale of Kladerstaff that had driven her to make the bargain with King Vasteel fifty years ago. Kladerstaff’s act of decisive leadership had saved Terrsaw from extinction, and so too had Alvira. A true leader, she knows, makes the decision all others are afraid to, and then withstands the shudder of its recoil alone.
Every man, woman and child in Terrsaw reaps the benefits of her quick action, her continued action, and yet it is not her name they chant in the streets. It is not in her name that they rally.
It is for Dawsyn Sabar.
Alvira has taken to grinding her teeth to dispel the chorus of voices mocking her. Taunting her. It seeps through the castle walls. It finds her through the corridors.
Long live Sabar! Long live Sabar! LONG LIVE SABAR!
By the week’s end, her molars will be ground to dust.
Impertinent imbeciles. Ungrateful leeches. She should throw them all beyond the Boulder Gate, feed them all to the–
“Your Majesty?”
Alvira jumps. She is loath to be seen jumping, yet she seems to startle easily of late. “Yes?” she says gruffly to her chief advisor. The nobleman appears to be awaiting her answer. In fact, the entire table waits, all faces turned to hers. To what question, the Queen could not venture a guess.
“I was inquiring as to Your Majesty’s wishes for the continued search of Miss Sabar?”
Alvira exhales, not bothering to hide the air of irritation. “Sixty days since she swung from that noose,” she mutters, mostly to herself.
“I’m sorry?”
“I was pondering the ineptitude of my guard,” she says loudly now, enough that it rouses looks of contrition from the faces of her noblemen. “A thousand strong, last I counted, and yet still not enough to find a singular girl.”
Silence follows the statement, and Alvira lets it fester. None dare speak. She hopes it chafes, to have failed so brilliantly.
To her immediate left, her wife peers down her nose at the advisors and strategists, just as disillusioned, Alvira imagines, as she is herself. Cressida may not have many ideas of her own, but she certainly heeds the sense of a good one. The chief advisor, Chen, keeps his eyes downcast, fiddling with the edges of the maps splayed out before him. His underlings follow, two indiscernible men whose names she cannot recall and does not care to.
And to Queen Alvira’s left, is Ruby. Once captain of the Terrsaw guardianship, and now the repentant servant, tethered to the palace until she proves herself useful once more. Which thus far, she has yet to do.
“Perhaps,” comes the quaver of Chen’s voice, eyes looking anywhere but to his Queen. “It no longer benefits the kingdom to continue our pursuit of the Sabar girl and her… followers.”
Acid soaks Alvira’s tongue. “ Followers ,” she repeats, testing the word aloud. She relishes the sight of seeing Chen flinch. “As though she were a messiah. A deity.”
Cressida scoffs beside her, and Alvira can imagine how her eyes must roll in that derisive way. That keen ability to cut and slice by way of expression and gesture.
“N-no, of course not, Your Majesty,” Chen says.
“Tell me, sir. Do you harbour a fondness for Dawsyn Sabar?”
Chen’s eyes flicker once to the side. “No.”
A lie. Alvira’s fists clench. “And yet your advice is that I let her roam free on Terrsaw territory, despite her attempts to murder myself and my wife.”
Chen turns a worrying shade of red and sweat beads his upper lip. “I only mean to glean your majesty’s wishes. Our battalions have had no success in locating the girl’s whereabouts across Terrsaw, and your people… well, I fear they…”
Alvira raises an eyebrow. “Spit it out.”
“I fear they have grown… weary.”
Accompanying Chen’s comment, the distant chanting of the Mecca grows louder. It swells quite inconveniently.
Long live Sabar… Long live Sabar…
“Their houses have been ransacked. Their businesses disturbed. I fear that further efforts in this endeavour may create an unwelcome stir,” Chen continues delicately, as if the stirring hadn’t already given way to a rising mutiny.
Alvira’s molars clack together.
Ruby clears her throat at Alvira’s side. “The continued search for Sabar need not include the disruption of peace in the Mecca,” she says now. It is most annoying to hear how strong her voice is, how wilful, when Alvira’s specific instructions had been to clobber the will out of her. “The search of the Mecca is fruitless. Sabar is unlikely to be found there. It is the Ledge she seeks,” Ruby says assuredly. “If we wish to find Dawsyn Sabar, then we would do well to look there.”
Alvira turns her shoulders until she is facing Ruby. The girl has always been tenacious – it was obvious from her initiation into the guard. But she was never petulant. Never stupid. People hear conviction in a woman’s voice and call it conceit or more often bitterness, but Alvira hears it for what it is – power.
She no longer sees power when she looks at Ruby. Instead, she sees a snake. A viper that sheds its skin when it likes, slithering back into the cracks and crevices when it meets a more forceful strike.
Ruby is not a woman of power; she is a pest.
Alvira laughs at the suggestion. Go to the Ledge indeed! “If she has gone to the Ledge,” she says, tapping the chains that still clad Ruby’s wrists – a firm reminder of her tenuous seat at this table. “Then she is exactly where I want her.”
“Your Majesty!” The doors to the meeting room ricochet off the walls as they collide, having been thrown open by a footman. He appears out of breath, as though he ran the corridors.
“Mother above,” Cressida gasps, clutching her chest. “Treecher! How dare–”
“It is urgent,” Treecher gasps, eyes wide and haunted.
Alvira stands. Ice trickles down her spine.
“The King of Glacia is here,” the footman continues, ignoring the gasps around the table. “Adrik.”
Fear floods Queen Alvira’s stomach. “Here? Now?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
Alvira turns to her wife. She wears an expression that likely mirrors her own. One of sickening dread. “Get out,” she says abruptly to the room. “Now.”
Chen and his advisories snatch their maps from the table and practically fall through the doorway without bothering to bow their heads to her as they leave. Ruby makes to follow.
“Not you,” Alvira barks. “ You will remain. Should this beast come for blood, it will be you I offer first.”
Ruby’s eyes darken in response, but she does not argue. She bows her head politely, then returns to her place at the table, without the decency of even appearing afraid.
“Well, well,” comes a voice ahead of the creature. It steals down the hall and into the meeting room, as unnatural as its owner. “What a fine home you keep.”
The creature turns the corner, his frame filling the entire doorway. Flanked on his sides are two others, just as tall and menacing.
Immediately, Alvira is transported back to that fateful night five decades ago, when a king named Vasteel broke through the glass ceiling of the throne room and snapped the Sabar King’s neck. Vasteel’s skin had been just as translucent, his hair just as startlingly white. Though his wings, admittedly, had been a sight bigger, and clear of troublesome abrasions.
In fact, this Glacian before her appeared… battered. It was hardly several months ago that Adrik had visited the palace and pronounced himself the new Glacian King. His skin hadn’t been so colourless then, nor his hair.
He has transformed, Alvira thinks. One look to her right tells her that Cressida has deduced the same.
Alvira hears an intake of breath, and from her periphery, sees Ruby’s chest rising and falling. But not with fear, with anger.
Mother above, but the snake is moronic. Adrik will snap her like a twig if he spies her boldness.
“King Adrik,” Alvira intones carefully, and is relieved to hear that her voice does not shake. “What a surprise.”
“Is it?” he snarls. He appears to wilt slightly where he stands. The day grows oppressively hot, and Alvira imagines this new pure-Glacian has not grown used to its toll. “I rather thought your guards might be expecting me, Your Majesty.” And indeed, Adrik seems somewhat put out. As though insulted by the lack of due precaution.
Alvira treads carefully. “With our current understanding in place, I had come to think the extra fortification… unnecessary.”
“And I thought you would have known I would come, what with the sudden growth in your populace.”
Alvira’s mouth closes with a snap. Whatever she had expected the beast to say, it hadn’t been that.
Adrik’s pale eyes swivel between Alvira, Cressida, and – annoyingly – Ruby, as though she were a noteworthy thing. “Where are they?” he asks slowly, dangerously.
Alvira swallows but lifts her chin. “I assure you; we are putting every effort into recapturing the Sabar girl, and–”
Adrik growls, effectively cutting her off. Within a moment he has approached the round table and swiped a hard-backed chair out of his way. It splinters as it hits the wall. “Not her. Where the fuck are my humans ?”
The silence that follows is broken only by Adrik’s harsh breathing. He sucks air through his bared teeth with growing intensity. “The only thing saving your skin is the existence of more convenient stock, Queen. Have you forgotten? Where are the Ledge-dwellers? ”
Alvira’s throat closes. A dark, insidious cold seeps through her. It makes her next words brittle. “Are they…” she hesitates. How she hates to hesitate. “They’ve escaped?”
“Mother above,” Ruby mutters, and the awe in her voice grates on Alvira’s skin.
Adrik is riddled with it – this calamity. Ropes of veins stand prominently along his neck and down his collarbone. His eyes exude the urgency of a man strung out. He is desperate.
No danger more grave than a desperate man, Alvira’s father once told her. Now she knows how wrong he was, for surely no other danger could equate a desperate Glacian.
Where are the Ledge-dwellers? Alvira thinks, and then: She succeeded.
“WHERE ARE THEY?” Adrik roars, and the table beneath his hands gives an alarming crack as its legs begin to buckle.
“In case our dumbstruck expressions weren’t answer enough,” Cressida says, in a voice far more superior than it ought to be, “we are no wiser to their whereabouts than you. Though I assume we can thank Dawsyn Sabar and her band of miscreants for their absence?”
Adrik seethes for a moment, his jowls positively trembling with rage.
“You look rather worse for wear,” Cressida remarks now. “Thoroughly trounced. Am I to take it that victory is hers too?”
Adrik rounds the table in the space between heartbeats. He has Cressida’s throat in one hand and his eyes on Alvira’s in a moment. Something unhinged pulses behind his eyes. Something deranged.
“Where. Are. They?”
“Not here!” Alvira exclaims, her hands raised uselessly, as though they might protect her wife. Should this Glacian decide to flick his wrist, she will be no more. “I swear it! If they walk on Terrsaw soil, we have not been wise to it!”
“We’ve searched the entire mountain,” Adrik continues, the manic glint in his eyes remaining. “Turned over every boulder and searched every cave. There is nowhere else they could seek refuge.”
Alvira bids herself to think, to speak, and all the while, Cressida’s face colours from pink to red to purple.
This is what Alvira does best. She acts. She does not stutter in the presence of adversity. She stomachs what she must. She, alone, untangles the messes of this kingdom while the rest scurry away and quail. She thinks of Kladerstaff, who was decisive when no one else dared to be. She thinks of King Sabar, who neglected to protect his own people from the Glacians, and then she watches Cressida’s eyes implore her. Beg her. Alvira opens her mouth and says, “I know where they have gone.”
Adrik’s eyes narrow. His lip curls back over his teeth.
“I know where to look ,” Alvira amends. “I did not know they had been freed from the Ledge, but if what you say is true, then I know where to find them.”
“Where?”
“I will have them returned to you. But…” and here, Alvira ignores the bile in her throat, the rapidity of her pulse. “If you kill my wife this night, your livestock will run free.”
Adrik laughs wickedly, though his hand loosens around Cressida’s throat. “You make threats?” he says. “I could rid this palace of its souls this night. I could pluck the strays from the streets if I wished. I have no use for you at all.”
“Except, you are weakened,” Alvira retorts, the words coming faster now. A plan forming. Her eyes sweep to the Glacian’s torn wing. “You are battle-weary. Just being here, so close to sea, taxes you further, does it not?” Alvira awaits an answer that does not come, so she continues. “You cannot endure our climate for long. If you could, you’d search for them yourself. You do not fool me, Adrik. You are not here to reign terror on Terrsaw. You are here to have me do your bidding, of which I have just pledged my willingness to do. Do not insult me with empty threats. Besides,” Alvira does not allow herself a smirk; she should only push the beast so far, “knowing they are out there – Dawsyn, Ryon – it would be intolerable for a… being in your position. You would live out your reign awaiting their return to Glacia, awaiting the day they come to seek your throne.” Just as I wait, Alvira thinks.
Adrik’s eyes tighten, as does the fist at Cressida’s neck. Cressida make a strangled whimpering sound.
“But you’ve already surmised as much, haven’t you?” Ruby interjects, and Alvira’s skin prickles with irritation. “You haven’t come here to raid the Mecca. You’ve come because you fear Ryon. You betrayed him, after all.”
Adrik drops Cressida, and she topples to the ground gracelessly. Alvira goes to her side immediately, sickened by the bruises already blooming along her throat.
“Ryon betrays his very nature,” Adrik growls, though the droop in his shoulders diminishes the menace. “He betrays me, and I will savour the day I wring the life from him. As for the girl…” And here, Adrik’s eyes turn impossibly paler. White and ghostly. A creature most unnatural. “I will drink the life from her. She is but a human. She will taste the same as all the others. I will pitch her slackened body into the Chasm after I’ve reaped all essence from her core, and never think of her insignificant name again.”
Adrik pounds his fist to the table, and it gives way, caving in the middle. All three women startle.
“Find them,” he says, his chest heaving. “Send word when it is done. You have until the change of season. By then,” Adrik pauses, sneering, “it will be growing cooler here in your kingdom. I might find the land beyond the Boulder Gate more to my liking.”
“The hostile season comes in a week,” Alvira states. “It may take longer to track down the–”
“Send word,” Adrik repeats. “Or we will cross the Boulder Gate.” He nods to the henchmen who flank him, smiling most cruelly. “And we will help ourselves to as many as we can carry.”
The silence that descends the room upon the Glacian’s departure is deafening. It drowns out the rebels in the Mecca. It rings in the Queen’s ears, pulses violently in her brain.
“She did it,” Cressida exhales, her voice no more than a whisper. “She freed the Ledge.”
Alvira does not reply. Her mind is a loop, echoing the same question back to her. How? HOW?
She squeezes her eyes shut. The day she has always feared, coming to pass. Worse still, that it passes at the hands of a Sabar. She can envision her now, toting her barbaric ax, wreaking havoc upon whatever she touches.
“You have no idea where they are,” Ruby says levelly. Her tone is neutral, a simple statement of fact. “And we have a mere week to find them.”
Alvira has never reduced herself to physical violence, but the snake tempts her. “ We ?” she says acidly, cocking her head to the side. “No. You. ”
Ruby swallows, finally humbled.
“ You have a week to find them. A week to prove yourself worthy of continued existence. And should you fail,” Alvira’s voice finally gives way, quivering in the wake of each word, “then you will climb over that Boulder Gate and deliver the message yourself.”