The Queen of Stone: Thorn of Breland (34 page)

“I’ve never been an expert on trolls.”

Sheshka staggered, falling against the side of the hydra, and Thorn took a step forward.

“What’s wrong?”

“I’ll be fine,” Sheshka stammered, though her voice quavered as she spoke. “Used more … energy … than I anticipated.”

“You saved us.” Thorn glanced over her shoulder, where Harryn was staring down at the bones of the troll. “Stormblade. Are you injured?”

“I’ve suffered worse,” he said. He ran his fingers across the new gouges in his armor.

“Then I’d consider it a personal favor if you thanked our savior.”

Sheshka’s vipers all turned at once, shifting to look away from the knight. Stormblade hesitated, but he approached the two women and dropped to one knee, laying his sword before him.

“Lady Sheshka—”

“Queen Sheshka,” she said softly.

Thorn was skilled at reading people—tells were as vital as spells, and she always watched others’ emotions. Harryn Stormblade was a stern and serious man, and he hid his feelings well. But he was taken off guard. Something ran deeply between these two.

“Queen Sheshka,” he said at last. “I thank you for the risks you have taken on my behalf. There is no token of my gratitude I can give that I haven’t offered before. I am unaware of much, and I trust you will forgive my ignorance.”

“Will you forgive me?” she said. Her serpents peered backward over her shoulders, as shy as vipers could be.

Stormblade hesitated, but his voice was firm. “No.”

“You’d be dead if not for her,” Thorn said. “Twice.”

Harryn looked at Thorn, and she could feel the storm twisting within him. “I know nothing of this. Centuries have passed. Perhaps things—and people—have changed. But I am still living in your yesterday, and I cannot change how I feel so quickly.” He looked at Sheshka. “I am sorry, my lady—your majesty—but I cannot forgive you yet.”

A few of the snakes hissed quietly, but Sheshka looked at him kindly. “I understand.”

Thorn didn’t, but she had other concerns. “Sheshka, I need to get Harryn back to Breland. I know that you have troubles of your own—”

“Let us travel north together,” Sheshka said. “I can call a winged messenger and send word ahead to Cazhaak Draal. We can have you astride a wyvern and on your way back to Breland within three days.”

“Can you bring your scaly friend?” The hydra was sniffing around the alley, looking for more corpses.

“He’s too large to fit through the tunnel to the surface. I fear I shall have to petrify him again. I don’t want him to starve.”

“What about the moons?” Harryn Stormblade had risen to his feet, and his voice was grim.

“What do you mean?” Thorn said.

“How many moons are in the sky?”

Thorn hesitated. “Six.”

“Don’t you see? It’s happening again. This is why I have been restored.” His fingers tightened around the hilt
of his sword. “The Wild Heart reaches out to the world above. Tonight, as the six moons pass over his tower, the Moonlord will taint them with his magic, and that evil will spread to all the skinchangers. That cannot be allowed to happen. This is destiny.”

“And yet you failed before,” Sheshka said. Thorn could tell that the ghosts of the past were haunting the conversation. “You were stripped of your identity and left for dead. But the world survived. The soldiers of the Silver Flame did what you could not. This is not a task for one man … or two women.”

Stormblade’s voice rose with his retort, but Thorn wanted to hear another voice. She took a step back, giving Sheshka and Harryn room to argue, and ran her fingers along Steel’s hilt.

I was beginning to wonder if you’d forgotten about me
.

“I’ve been busy,” she muttered. “What do you think?”

Intriguing. Much about lycanthropy remains a mystery. As Sheshka said, some lycanthropes are driven to murder and depravity, while a few live solitary, peaceful lives. We know that during the Silver Crusade, the curse became far more contagious, and its victims more violent. Harryn is attributing this to the work of the Moonlord … and saying that it could happen again. If so, the surge was contained before. But according to the records, most of the lycanthropes exterminated during the purge were humans and shifters—infected people of Aundair and Breland. These trolls and ogres are another matter
.

“And that time, we had a united kingdom,” Thorn murmured. The Church of the Silver Flame might have provided the soldiers, but under old Galifar, the church was expected to pursue supernatural threats across the breadth of the realm. Now, the bulk of the military force of the church was aligned with Thrane. Even if the Keeper of the Flame made the offer, the Brelish wouldn’t welcome the presence of Thrane troops. And if Breland
stood alone, how long would it be before other nations took advantage of its weakness? The Cyran refugees could see an opportunity to seize land for their people. The Darguul goblins were always a concern. Even Thrane might use the presence of the plague as an excuse to cross the border in force.

“Stormblade!” she called.

Harryn paused in mid retort and glanced at her. “Yes?”

“Say that I agree with you. What must be done?”

“Queen Sheshka says we are already past the midnight hour. If the threat is real, the ritual must be underway. The Moonlord will be in the tower of shadows.”

Thorn nodded. “And where is that, exactly?”

“I don’t know.”

Sheshka’s snakes hissed derisively.

“That could explain why you didn’t find it before,” Thorn said.

“The text I found was unclear,” Harryn said. “The tower is a relic of the first age of the world. It is difficult to translate the writing of fiends. It seemed to say that the tower was destroyed long ago, but its shadow remains—and the tower itself remains in the shadow.”

Thorn was about to make a clever remark about wasting time searching for destroyed towers when Steel whispered in her mind.
Such a thing is possible
, he said.
The fiends of the first age possessed immense powers. It would operate on the same principles as your gloves—pulling a pocket of space out of the world. The question would be finding the portal
.

“So you’re saying that the castle is
in
a shadow?”

“Exactly,” Harryn said.

Possibly
, Steel qualified.

“So with six moons in the sky, we’re going to look for … a shadow.”

“According to the text, it’s the shadow of the tower,” Stormblade said. “The ghost of a shadow.”

“Well, that makes it—” the words died in her throat.

The ghost of a shadow. When she and Sheshka had traveled across the city, they’d passed through a patch of unnatural gloom. The shadow of a building—with no building to cast it. “I know where it is.”

Stormblade smiled—the first time she’d seen a gentle expression on his face. He struck his hip with an armored fist. “Destiny! Let us fight, then, Thorn of Breland. Together, let us fight for Galifar.”

You’ll have to tell him sometime
, Steel said.

“Yes,” Thorn said. “For Galifar. Sheshka, this isn’t your battle. If you want to stay here, I understand.”

The medusa’s serpents were coiled proudly about her head. “I will join you, sister Thorn. I am not the child I was. And while I do not understand why the Daughters would welcome this darkness, I do not believe that it belongs in our lands. You may fight for
Galifar
… but I seek to defend Droaam and Cazhaak Draal.”

Thorn called the myrnaxe from the glove and raised it in the air. “Very well, my friends. Let us see what fate has in store for us.”

As they prepared for the struggle ahead, one thought lingered at the back of Thorn’s mind. If Sheshka were correct, Sora Teraza had stolen Stormblade’s identity so long ago. And Sora Teraza had told her where to find the petrified knight.

Were they following the path of destiny … or dancing to the tune of Teraza?

C
hew these,” Harryn said, handing her a few leaves. Though he was eager for battle, Harryn was no fool. He sought to treat their wounds before challenging whatever enemy lay ahead. The knight had some skill with the healing arts and a few salves in his bag; his work did not draw from magic, but he was likely a match for the gnoll Fharg.

The leaves were sharp and bitter, and Thorn grimaced. Harryn was bandaging the rat bite on her shoulder, which was the worst of her injuries.

“What is this?” she said.

“Wolfsbane.”

She spat it out. Time to go back to Fharg, she thought. “That’s poisonous!”

Harryn looked at the leaves. “Don’t worry. It’s a small risk, but it’s better than the alternative.”

“He speaks the truth,” Sheshka said.

Harryn returned to his work, examining the scratches on Thorn’s leg. “The rats, the wolves. You’ve been bitten, and that means the curse was likely passed to you. The wolfsbane should drive it out of your blood.”

“So I could turn into a
rat?”

Sheshka said “No,” just as Stormblade said “Yes.”

Thorn looked at Sheshka. “You first.”

“Only a few of the Children of Zaeurl have the power to pass on their ‘blessing,’ and even then, it needs time to take root. Even if you were infected, you would not change until tomorrow, if then.”

Thorn glanced at Harryn. “Now you, poisoner.”

“What she says would be true, any other time. But not beneath these six moons. If the Wild Heart truly stirs—and if the moons are in the sky—the curse is stronger than it has been in over a century. Any of the cursed can pass on their affliction with a bite, and only those with tremendous will can resist its power. Those who fall to the curse will become subjects of the Feral Master, driven to spill the blood of those they once loved. Under the light of these moons, the change could occur within moments.” He had finished his work, and he slung his pack across his back and picked up his sword. “I have done all that I can. Battle calls.”

Thorn was troubled. As they made their way to the surface, she moved closer to Sheshka. “Do you believe what Stormblade says?”

A few serpents turned to regard her. “I do. I told you of the skinchangers who came to this land before Zaeurl and her children. They were a dangerous breed, and those they touched turned on their own kind. The greater horrors came after the Stormblade left us. Perhaps, if I’d remained at his side … things would have been different.”

“But it doesn’t make sense,” Thorn murmured. “You said that Zaeurl wasn’t like those others … and that she was loyal to the Daughters of Sora Kell. Why would
they
want their people to become subjects of the Wild Heart?”

“I do not know. But Zaeurl cannot be acting alone. The skullcrushers and the war ogres are the troops of the Great Crag.”

Thorn shook her head. “Perhaps. But it still doesn’t feel right.”

The moonlight was dazzling as they emerged from the mouth of the Ossuary. All around them, stone hobgoblins stood ready for battle, waiting for a war that ended thousands of years before. Ahead of them, they could still hear the shouts, drums, and howls of the revelers. Drul Kantar had told the truth; the welcoming feast was nothing next to the excitement of the Midnight Dawn.

“Stormblade, tell me more about the Moonlord,” Thorn said as they climbed over the ruined walls of the fortress. “Do you suppose someone’s taken his place this time? You said he was a tiger—could this be a woman with the soul of a wolf?”

“I know little about the Moonlord,” Stormblade replied. “He claimed to be chosen by the Feral Master himself. He had power over those who were touched by the wild. He could drive them to madness or force them to do his bidding. But I don’t know if these were gifts of his own, or tied to the orbs.”

“Orbs?”

“The lunar orbs. Crystal spheres, relics of the first age. I know even less about them than I do about Drukan. I know only that there was one for each moon, and that Drukan sought them all.”

“Silence upon you,” Sheshka whispered. “We approach the city.”

“This time I know where we’re going,” Thorn said. “I’ll take the lead.”

After the battle in the Ossuary and the rats in the tower, Thorn was expecting resistance. But it seemed that the Aundairian and her troops were all that the mysterious Moonlord deemed necessary to deal with the medusa queen. Goblin children chased one another through the outer ruins, and once Thorn was disturbed to meet the gaze of a rat in the shadows. The rodent appeared ordinary, but a stroke of Steel made it a moot point.

They reached the strange pool of darkness, and she
stepped into it. It was as she’d remembered—a massive patch of gloom that defied the light of the moons above. Looking at it with Harryn’s tale in mind, she could see it for what it was—the shadow of a vast, strange building, a structure that could not be seen. She studied it more closely, tracing the walls down to where its foundation should be. But there was a large plot of open ground, dark and wet, a patch of mire in the midst of the city—poor ground to build on, certainly. Ironweed and chunks of sharp stone rose up from the muddy surface. The swampy soil was reason enough for it to be left barren, but Thorn guessed there was another reason.