The Hollow Queen

  Hrarfa was overjoyed at the freshness of the stone, still humming with a little of the fire left over from the world’s creation.

  The statue put its hand, far and away bigger than the image of the hand, on the image and pressed.

  Where is the Earthchild? the titan asked.

  The image of the hand began to glow, like coals of a fire that had been refreshed with a touch of breath blown across them.

  And finally almost reluctantly illuminated the fourth finger.

  One that represented a tunnel pointing toward the south.

  Overjoyed, both demonic presences inside the Living Stone body hurried forthwith down the corridor.

  41

  Almost running smack into Grunthor.

  The Bolg Sergeant-Major, newly minted pick hammer in hand, was leaning casually on his elbow against the tunnel wall.

  The titan came to an abrupt halt before the soldier, uncertain what to do next.

  Grunthor threw back his head and laughed.

  “’Ow disappointin’. Now, ’ere Oi’ve been told you was really tall an’ brawny, but actually yer nothin’ special. Crushed by the truth, Oi am.”

  The titan snickered in return.

  Oh, you will indeed be crushed, but not by the truth.

  “Well, that certainly remains to be seen. But before we set to blows, Oi thought you deserved to ’ear one of yer favorite songs to ’elp make the occasion of our long-awaited meetin’ special. Thought it might be yer birthday or somethin’.”

  The titan’s eyes narrowed. Without another word it started to stride down the stone hallway, a look of murder unmistakable even on features that did not move.

  Only to be dragged to an inadvertent halt by a high-pitched humming note.

  A note that expanded, a moment later, into a four-note pattern, like a net of invisible vibrating threads woven from the four winds.

  Because they, in fact, were.

  * * *

  Faron almost fell forward in the stone hallway tunnel.

  Like a knife to the brain, the sound set the frame of the stone statue abuzz with a shrill vibration that instantly took the power out of its stride.

  It tried to step but found itself frozen in place.

  The sudden lack of control over the body of Living Stone made the Faorina spirit panic, but not with the hysteria that had suddenly seized the F’dor.

  An explosion of foul cursing and ancient oaths of violence and anger ripped through the statue, stinging Faron’s spirit with its invectives.

  Hrarfa, unlike Faron, had heard this song before.

  And knew what the lyrics meant.

  The Thrall ritual! she screamed virulently, heedless of Faron’s warning regarding what would happen if she ever did again. How can that be? The—Dhracian—the Bolg king—he is with Talquist! I saw him in the scale, the second assassin—that’s why we left when we did—

  From the depths of the stone statue, a nonverbal attack of caustic thought silenced her.

  The titan’s two demonic sides struggled with as much strength as either of them could summon to break the bonds of the net of vibration and the wind of the Earth that were wrapping around their essences, but the Dhracian who was chanting the ritual older than Time was one of the original Brethren, the Zhereditck, and had been searching for Hrarfa ceaselessly for millennia with a blood rage unsurpassed by any destructive impulse the F’dor could summon.

  Rath, who had combed the pockets of air across the wide world since the fall of the Sleeping Child had torn the Vault open.

  Looking for this demon and all her like.

  By sheer will, he was relentlessly crushing their life forces.

  * * *

  Grunthor broke into a wide grin. He picked up his enormous pick hammer and stepped closer.

  “Cast ’er off, sonny,” he said softly to the Faorina spirit inside the stone titan. “Yer not like ’er; Oi know all about you. You took ’er on outta pity, but is she worth dyin’ for? ’Cause that’s what’s about to ’appen. Not an easy death, a return to the earth, but an eternal one in a Vaultful of screamin’ bitches like the one inside ya. You decide.”

  The statue remained rigid. Only the disturbing blue eyes darted furiously in the stone head, growing more distended and shot with cracks by the moment.

  The expression on the giant Sergeant-Major’s grinning face was resolving rapidly into a ferocious mien, his amber eyes taking on the glow of righteous rage.

  He brought the pick hammer forward and tapped its perfectly balanced handle menacingly into his palm.

  “You pathetic bitch,” he said softly to Hrarfa, venom dripping from his words. “All this time you’ve been suckin’ the tarse of weak men, whorin’ yer way across the world, across Time. The body you occupy once belonged to a real soldier, somebody ’oo lived and fought and died and was buried with honor. You got no right to be in there, darlin’. Time ta go.”

  An unpronounceable curse blended with a scream of rage that shook the tunnel walls echoed forth from the titan.

  Rath’s hand, which had been winding in the air as if wrapping each of the four winds around his palm, rose up before him. He emerged from the shadows, a glittering in his scleraless black eyes, glaring at the titan with a look so hateful that it drew blood to the surface of his own skin.

  “Last chance, my friend,” Grunthor said to Faron.

  * * *

  Get out.

  The thought, whispered in actual words inside the titan’s body, thudded against the inside of the prison of Living Stone that Faron had been occupying since Talquist had placed him on the Weighing plate of the Scales.

  A burning rage as filled with hate as the F’dor’s screams was rolled up in Faron’s consciousness. He let the formless essence of his mind wrap around the alien vibration that had been sharing his host body all this time and, not knowing what else to do, squeezed it violently with his own mind.

  Hrarfa’s screams of rage became even more scathing, even more dire.

  Faron, no! What are you doing—

  Get out!

  You can’t live without me, Faron, Hrarfa’s thoughts said in a tone that was equal parts wheedling and dark loathing. He will kill you in a moment, and then where will you be? Do you think our kin in the Vault will forgive your treachery?

  I think they will celebrate it. The titan’s thoughts dripped with disdain and ferocious hate. I may be sired by one of your kind, but I choose not to be your kin. Get out!

  Your father was—

  My father was the host of a F’dor, just as I have been. Neither of us have enjoyed the experience. Get out!

  The third command finally shattered the existential link that Hrarfa had formed with the body of Living Stone back in the forest of Haguefort when she had begged for shelter, and had gotten it, from Faron.

  The air in the underground tunnel filled with acrid smoke so caustic that both men’s eyelids shriveled.

  A howling cry echoed throughout the tunnels of the Hand. The sound was so horrific that, even miles below, the Earthchild heard it and trembled violently.

  The formless spirit of Hrarfa, ejected from her host, was trapped in the subterranean tunnels, fading into oblivion.

  That notwithstanding, her desperate will to live was still strong.

  She weighed her choices.

  She could try to run, try to find something in the immediate vicinity, a thought that she immediately discarded.

  Any Bolg weak enough for her to subsume, especially in her compromised state, was outside, tearing apart the fifth, eighth, and twelfth regiments at that moment.

  Most likely.

  The Dhracian who stood behind the Firbolg soldier before her was not an option, of course. Even if she had the presence of mind and strength of purpose to undertake an attempt to forcibly take him as a host, the sheer diametrical opposition would rend her spirit like a wolf with a bird in its teeth and toss its scraps to the four winds over which he had control.

  Mastering the will of
a Dhracian, especially a member of the Zhereditck, was something that could not even be contemplated.

  But the Firbolg commander who stood before her dissipating spirit now might have some weakness, some way inside him much like the ventilation tunnels that had allowed the titan to broach Ylorc.

  In her fading consciousness she sought to assess him and was immediately overwhelmed with the vibrational signature that slapped her in return.

  The grinning fool was in possession of a physicality that radiated life, health, strength, and muscularity. Despite the taste of the old world that hung in the air around him, there was a conflicting impression of youth and a surprising lack of scarring or injury to him. His skin, green-gray like the color of healing bruises, was supple, his teeth were amazingly without pits, his tusks polished and bright, and his hair was mossy and thick like that of a man of two decades, not the more likely age counted in at least two millennia.

  It would be a challenge in which she was unlikely to be victorious.

  She had no other choice.

  * * *

  A split second after the burning cloud of poisonous smoke had sublimated into the air of the underground tunnel, it shot forth as if on a stiff breeze and wrapped itself around Grunthor.

  Rath, witnessing the attack, let go of the vocal chant.

  “Hold your breath!” he shouted.

  Feeling the Thrall ritual shatter as he did.

  Grunthor looked around and above him.

  He was wrapped in a caustic fog, falling on him like heavy rain.

  His pick hammer trembled in his grip.

  Before his eyes an image formed. It was a hollow face, much like a flattened skull with eye sockets and a toothless mouth, a vertical oval hole where a nose would have been. And as the mist wrapped around him, the vaporous face seemed to open its mouth and soar straight toward his eyes.

  Grunthor was having none of it.

  “BUGGER OFF!” he roared.

  Then he swung back and delivered a shattering roundhouse blow, leading with his claws, cutting through the stinking cloud of vapor like an ax blade through a sapling tree.

  Tearing the face to formless shreds.

  Dissipating the mist.

  And summarily ending the existence of one of the most relentless and powerful F’dor spirits to walk the Earth since the opening of the Vault.

  And, regrettably and inadvertently, releasing the body of Living Stone, still occupied by the Faorina spirit Faron, from the Thrall ritual.

  And any hold that Rath had held over it.

  42

  “Dodge. Now.”

  The distinct voice of the Dhracian cut through the tunnel commandingly.

  Grunthor, long used to following commands without even a second’s hesitation, stepped aside as the titan lumbered past, its arms outstretched for Grunthor’s throat.

  And, with a mighty swing, struck the titan’s extended right arm with his newly crafted pick hammer.

  Shattering it utterly and smashing it off.

  It fell to the earthen tunnel floor and broke into five pieces and an impressive quantity of dust.

  The Sergeant-Major stepped back, panting, waiting for the titan to attack.

  But instead it stood in the center of the tunnel, its gleaming blue eyes staring wildly at the stump below its shoulder.

  The place that had connected to the missing arm was open to the dank air of the tunnel and to the sight of the Bolg and the Dhracian.

  At the place where the lower arm had been attached, instead of the healthy glow of Living Stone was a wet, claylike substance that smelled of the healthy green of forests and caves, rich brown with striations of vermillion and purple, blue and gold.

  But the broken area was dry and brittle inside, the only part of it still living was the very core of the limb, a red-brown center around which was nothing but dry, dead clay.

  Grunthor waited for a return charge.

  But instead, the titan continued to stare at its upper arm in what seemed like shock.

  Then it looked up at the Sergeant-Major in what most closely resembled the emotion of terror.

  And, without a backward glance, it dashed back up the corridor through which it had entered the Bolglands faster than any living man of flesh could run, and lumbered out into the night.

  Running south through the remains of the battle of the steppes where the army it had led lay bleeding and dying, a few of them crying out to the sky for water or their mothers.

  * * *

  Grunthor and Rath stared at each other in astonishment.

  After a long moment, the Sergeant-Major turned to his fellow guardian of the Earthchild and shrugged.

  “Can we follow ’im on the wind? Never really understood ’ow ya do that.”

  “It works more favorably when you are either willing to appear randomly to wherever the wind is willing to take you, or if you are going to a static place rather than following a moving target. But I see no other choice than to try.”

  “Damnation,” Grunthor grumbled. “Oi expected ’im to fight me, to put ’is all into finding the Earthchild. Can’t believe after all the bloody F’dor initiatives to get to ’er, the bloody coward turns granite tail and runs! Oi was so very ready—”

  “What you fail to understand is that once the F’dor spirit you were taunting died, it left the titan with nothing but the Faorina inside it,” Rath said. “It may or may not be a threat to the Earthchild any longer, but the damage it may leave in its wake is immeasurable.”

  “Could be, and that would certainly be a shame,” Grunthor grumbled. “But fer my money, if it’s not lookin’ for the Child, that’s better than any other thing that could come out of this. That titan made its way, alone, for goodness’ sake, into and through the tunnels of Ylorc. This could ’ave ended way diffr’int. Any day you don’t ’ave to fight a demon is a good one. One o’ my favorite sayin’s. Shall we go?”

  “I will do my best,” said the Dhracian. “After all, I am a hunter dedicated to the extinction of that species. And, for once, we are in luck.”

  “’Ow’s that?”

  The Dhracian smiled. “I have his trail.”

  Grunthor’s brow furrowed, then relaxed.

  Then a massive smile spread across his wide face, revealing gleaming tusks.

  He threw his head back and laughed aloud.

  “So, what’s keepin’ us, then?” he asked.

  “I want to check the weather patterns across the Krevensfield Plain one more time,” said Rath. “When one is riding the wind, as my race and kinsmen can, and you arrive where you meant to, it is an even better day than the one you mentioned. Let us go.”

  Rath made his way down the same tunnel the titan had fled through, Grunthor grumbling quietly behind him all the way.

  43

  LIANTA’AR, THE CITADEL OF THE STAR, SEPULVARTA

  The victories in Yarim, Navarne, and Bethany were substantial enough to convince Anborn that the skeletal armies housed in those cities were sufficient to maintain the Threshold of Death, allowing the bulk of the Alliance troops to move southward to recapture the holy citadel of Sepulvarta.

  By the time Constantin and Gwydion Navarne arrived in the late afternoon, Rhapsody was already there, with Knapp, who was pleased to be reunited with Solarrs and Anborn.

  “Glad your defenses were successful,” the Lord Marshal said within the canvas walls of the officers’ tent outside the fringes of the city. “These next few days are critical—the scouts have relayed information that the largest and most bloodthirsty units of the Sorbold army are advancing from the south, or have been recalled from the western front. At least we know where we’re likely to make our last stand.”

  He saw Rhapsody exhale silently and smiled, though worry was also present in his expression.

  “You are right to assume that this will take some pressure off of Tyrian, m’lady, but the fight here may prove to be far fiercer than it would normally have been.”

  The Lady Cymrian shr
ugged.

  “I am armed with an elemental sword, as is Gwydion, in the presence of three ancient Cymrian soldiers, and the tongue of Mylinmacr, surrounded by the elite forces of the Cymrian army. If I can’t be useful here, I am of no use anywhere.”

  “Having served with you in Bethany, m’lady, I can attest to the untruth in that,” said Knapp pleasantly.

  The hollow queen did not smile, saying nothing.

  “Very well,” said the Lord Marshal, “let’s have at it. The soldiers have been itching to free the holy city, as I’m sure you are, Your Grace.”

  The wordless snort from the Patriarch set the leaders to laughing at the understatement before they headed out of the tent and back to the Threshold again.

  * * *

  The army of the Alliance had set up positions inside the walled city in preparation for laying siege to Lianta’ar, the only remaining occupied stronghold, when Rhapsody straightened up sharply, glancing around at the foothills in the distance to the south, and the Teeth beyond them.

  Gwydion and Anborn, who had been conferring, both looked in her direction.

  “What—what is that sound, Anborn?” she asked.

  The Lord Marshal inclined his ear, then shook his head.

  “I hear nothing, m’lady,” he said.

  She listened again, then shook her head as well.

  Only to see, behind where her loved ones were standing, an astonishing sight.

  The air of the city outside Lianta’ar was spinning vertically, almost like a waterspout. There was an aura of power, ancient and elemental.

  The wind picked up suddenly, spinning in much the same way as the cyclonic vortex seemed to be doing. It rattled the flags on the crumbling ramparts, shaking and rattling the stained-glass windows of the basilica.

  “Look,” she said to the Lord Marshal again.

  He turned behind him.

  Just as he did, the sound she had heard vibrated through the spinning vortex again. As it did, she heard a voice she thought sounded familiar, but that she did not recognize.