Queen of Thorns Read online

  "How unfortunate. In time, he might have discovered how to operate this colossus."

  "Might have?"

  "There is no evidence to suggest he tested his theories." I pointed to one of his later notes. "He writes that he is reluctant to interfere with the Walking Man but may return after a visit to a place called Erithiel's Hall."

  "I know where that is," said Fimbulthicket. "It's a barrow mound, older than the first elves."

  I pointed to another passage written beside the panels. "Variel speculates that site could be related to the Walking Man."

  Fimbulthicket smiled and wrinkled his nose. "Is it a human custom to call your father by his given name?"

  "No," I said. "It simply seems strange to refer to this man I never met as—"

  "You're angry with him."

  "No." Hearing my own curt response, I wondered whether I was lying more to Fimbulthicket or to myself. "He is simply a stranger to me."

  "It's been so long since I last saw him, he may have become a stranger to me, too. Look how much I've changed."

  "I can only imagine."

  "Oh, of course!" He chuckled. The sound of his mirth was a welcome relief. "That's odd. For a second, seeing you there poring over those carvings, it was almost like old times."

  "Do I resemble him so much?"

  "Very much. He's a bit taller, but you have the same build. And he doesn't have one of those things." He stroked his chin where I had allowed a narrow strip of beard to grow beneath my lip. It was the most obvious sign of my half-human heritage, although any elf would take one look at my eyes or ears and know I lacked their pure elven blood.

  "More than that, it's the way you do this," he pinched the bridge of his nose. "Or this," he said, stroking his chin, "when you're studying those notes."

  "Nonsense," I said. Such habits could not possibly be inherited. Surely they were learned traits derived from my grandfather or some other relation who visited often in my youth. Upon reflection, however, I could think of no uncles, friends, or teachers who demonstrated those particular affectations.

  Fimbulthicket saw my indecision and smiled again. As I had observed often in the past week, his brief amusement soon faded to a wistful expression. "Anyway, I came to let you know supper's ready. It's almost dark."

  "I've been here so long?"

  He nodded.

  "Very well," I said, passing him my satchel. "I will come out right behind you."

  He frowned as he took my bag, and I realized that I had treated him as a servant. Most of my servants are halflings, yet that was no excuse for such discourtesy. "Thank you," I called after him. But he had already slid away down the passage.

  I began to follow, but curiosity gnawed at my imagination. How could Variel have left the Walking Man without attempting to prove his theories? How could such a man—my father—be so reticent?

  One simple test would take but a moment. I touched a bundle of filaments connecting the "heart" of the Walking Man to its right "arm." A thin film of slime came away on my finger, but I detected no reaction. With my handkerchief I wiped the strands clean. Still nothing happened.

  I tried another strand. The fibers warmed at my touch, a faint white radiance rising within the translucent material. Simultaneously, a dull red glow appeared on the central blister. It formed an elven-style rune unfamiliar to me. I traced my finger from the fibers to the rune.

  The entire structure shuddered. I touched the rune again, hoping to cancel the effect. Instead, I heard an agonizing creak of timber and felt the entire structure lurch forward. Startled screams and barking erupted outside.

  I reversed the path of my finger, drawing a line from the rune to the fibers. More strange runes appeared on the central hexagon, arcane lines radiating outward to activate more of the surrounding fibers. The Walking Man heaved forward in another step, and another.

  Calming my racing heart with a deep breath, I recalled the order suggested by Variel's notes. Perhaps my mistake had been to touch a fiber first. I concentrated my attentions on the central blister. At my touch, some of the runes darkened and disappeared, while others sprang to life unbidden.

  A mighty leap pressed me down against the wood. I forced my knees up and thrust out my arms, clinging desperately to avoid sliding out of the access chute. When the colossus struck the earth again, I nearly dashed my brains out on the "ceiling." The shouts I heard earlier now rattled in my dazed skull. Before I could shake off the confusion, the Walking Man lunged forward again, each step faster than the previous.

  My fingers lashed out to strike every rune in turn. The only difference was that each step felt far longer than those before, and swifter.

  Recovering the tatters of my thoughts, I reconsidered Variel's notes. If he had made a mistake, where was it? I retraced my original steps in reverse to no avail. I tried deactivating each motor activator in sequence, again without result. Desperate, I spread my fingers as wide as possible to touch the stones of all six panels at once.

  The runes of the central panel dimmed. The Walking Man slowed. With a final shuddering step, the colossus came to a halt.

  When I had mastered my breathing, I allowed gravity to pull me down the shaft, catching hold of the vines at the entrance. The Walking Man's posture differed from when I had entered, its forward leg providing a gentle incline toward the ground. For that, at least, I was grateful. My climbing spell had long since dissipated.

  Caladrel arrived as I set foot on the ground. His awful expression was all the admonishment I could bear.

  Arnisant arrived soon after, sniffing my hand before settling at my heel. Radovan and Kemeili reached us next. Behind them trotted Fimbulthicket and Oparal, still in her shining armor. Behind them, the slivered moon revealed a wake of ten thousand blossoms shaken off the Walking Man. They led back to the fire of the camp we had pitched beside its earlier position.

  No one spoke, but I saw the approbation in their faces. Only Fimbulthicket seemed to gain rather than lose color, although the blush in his cheeks could as easily have come from sprinting.

  Seeing that I was unharmed, Caladrel took a look at the Walking Man. His face paled. As he turned and walked back toward the campfire, he clenched his jaws to stop himself from speaking.

  Kemeili shook her head. She tugged on Radovan to come with her, but he shrugged off her hand. She huffed, turned on her heel, and followed the ranger.

  After a glare that would have withered a better man, Oparal did the same.

  "That's something I never saw before." Fimbulthicket almost smiled at me before deciding against it. He grimaced and slipped back toward camp.

  Only Arnisant and Radovan remained. I braced myself for a snide remark, but when he spoke, it was with barely suppressed admiration and a certain whimsy. He whistled low. "That was monumental."

  Chapter Six

  The Ruined Unicorn

  Radovan

  A couple of days after we left the giant tree golem, everybody was still spooked.

  Only the gnome seemed chipper—at first, anyway. He even had a little color in his cheeks, though I had to catch him in a sunbeam to see it. He couldn't stop talking about how we'd been the first to see the Walking Man take more than one step. It wasn't like he was glad it had happened, exactly. He was just glad to have been there when it happened.

  The gnome's good mood didn't last. Soon he was rubbing his knees and elbows, snapping when anybody spoke to him. When he was alone, he stared off into the distance, looking caught halfway between bored and...I don't know. Lost, maybe. Poor little guy looked lost.

  When the boss wasn't looking, Oparal did her best to set him on fire with her eyes. I was glad she was giving somebody other than me the stink-eye, but I reckoned I'd need to keep watch on her. Probably she wouldn't take a poke at the boss, but I meant to be nearby if she did. I'd been keeping out of her way, and lately she'd kept out of mine. That was as good as it was likely to get.

  Kemeili sensed I had something on my mind, and she wanted a piece o
f that action. That worked for me, since the boss wanted me to keep her occupied and maybe suss out her motives. The best way to do that was to give her what she expected. The more she thought she was handling me, the more likely it was she'd let a little pillow talk slip out. Despite our occasional cuddles, I'd yet to learn anything really useful. Like, for instance, what she meant to get out of this trip other than the pleasure of my company.

  Problem was, Kemeili took a cue from our first night and thought it was cute to tell me I needed to be punished. She pushed it too far a few times. I showed her my teeth. That set her on her heels, but she kept coming back, especially late at night. If she weren't so good at what she was good at, she'd have begun to annoy me.

  In fact, all the elves were starting to annoy me in one way or another. Caladrel had begun scouting farther away. Just when we started to wonder whether he was coming back, he'd materialize beside the campfire. He even scared Arnisant, who woofed and sat up when he finally smelled the ranger over the wood smoke. The ranger was starting to remind me of an old crony who'd come close to giving me my first heart attack back in the Eel Street alleys.

  Arni and me, we stuck by the boss, even though he wasn't his usual loquacious self. "Loquacious" was one of my new words—as far as the boss knew, anyway. His little exercises might not have been teaching me as much as he figured, but it was great practice for my gambling face. More important, it was something to keep his mind off his troubles. It still bugged him what happened at the Walking Man, and how everybody else had treated him since then.

  "Don't let one little goof get you down, boss. What's a few years to that elf village?"

  "Perhaps we should focus your lessons on arithmetic instead of vocabulary. The colossus took nearly three dozen steps. My 'little goof' advanced the doom of Erages by a third of a century."

  "So how much longer before the big guy hits town?"

  His mouth worked for a second before the sound caught up. I guessed he was doing arithmetic. "Something short of twenty millennia."

  "A millennia is a bunch of centuries, yeah?"

  "'Millennium' is the singular. But yes, it is precisely 'a bunch.'"

  "So really, there's plenty of time for your half-elf buddies to get out of the way. Yeah?"

  He didn't smile, but he looked like he was remembering how. "Thank you for putting the matter in perspective."

  "Smarter than I look, right?"

  "The converse is barely possible."

  A little ribbing was better than all the moping. "I call 'millennium' as one of my words."

  "Very well." He told me how to say "millennium" in Varisian, Tien, and Elven. The Varisian was no problem, maybe because it was the language of my ancestors and all that. Tien didn't feel as natural, but it was still pretty fresh in my mind from our visit to the other side of Golarion. I was getting good at the Elven, too. The trick was to hiss and lisp at the same time without spitting.

  The boss found a sunny spot where he could sit down and scribe some riffle scrolls. He could have only so many ready at one time—don't ask me why—but he was constantly changing his mind about what he wanted handy. Arnisant went over to him, turned around a couple times, and settled at his feet. The boss flipped back and forth in his book of spells, shaking his head.

  He fussed over his book every time we took a break on our way to this guy Erithiel's hall. Time was he'd just slap together a bunch of fire and lightning. One day we got caught in a big warehouse fight where none of that stuff was any good, so he started mixing it up. It was the same thing here in the forest. Besides, lightning was no good against demons, Caladrel said. And fire wouldn't make me bigger and badder the way it used to—not that I was complaining. It was good to be free of that devil at last. For the first time in a couple of years, I felt like myself again.

  While the gnome brewed tea to go with the last of the seed cakes he'd brought from Omesta, Oparal made a big show of sharpening her sword. When she looked my way to see whether I got the message, I whistled a dirty tune whose lyrics I bet she'd heard in Cheliax. Her face reddened, and I walked off triumphant.

  Hurrah for me.

  I decided to take a stroll outside of camp, figuring Arni could look after the boss. After a minute or two, I sensed someone had followed me. Before I turned to see who it was, Kemeili's whip caught me around the ankle with a smart crack. The thick leather on my kickers saved me from the sting. I looked down to see she'd used the soft touch: three leather flaps at the end of the whip closed like fingers around my ankle, holding me tight.

  Kemeili crooked a finger and tugged me toward her, not hard enough to trip me, just strong enough to tell me she wanted me to follow. Her wicked little smile told me that all by itself.

  I took a step in her direction. She tugged again, and I took another. Why not? I'd gotten some rest between nightmares, and my blood had been up ever since our tussle with the demons. That fight had almost been fun. I'd fought worse than those worm things plenty of times, and there was no feeling bad about putting down something from the Abyss. Demons weren't people. Killing them was nothing like a sin.

  Even Oparal had to agree with that. The business with my jacket still bothered me. Aside from a few little stylistic details—the sort of flourishes rich people love, and artists love to charge extra for—my phoenix looked nothing like her bird-headed saint, or whatever it was. Still, ever since the night she called me out, the jacket felt heavier. With or without that stupid elven cloak, it was too hot to wear most of the time. I'd taken to carrying both of them over my shoulder. That was a shame, because I looked mighty fine in that jacket.

  "Wake up!" Kemeili tugged on her whip. "We don't have all day."

  This was no time to be thinking of Oparal. I followed Kemeili, her whip pulling me along in jerky little steps. The awkward pull-and-step made me feel like a Sarini fool on stilts. I grabbed the whip near its grasping leather tabs and tugged back.

  Kemeili hesitated. She could twist the handle the other way to unleash razor-sharp barbs, but I was betting she wasn't out for blood. She dropped the handle and watched me coil it up while she walked backward, leading me farther away from camp.

  When she paused just a couple dozen yards away, I shook my head. "Farther," I told her. "Your voice carries."

  "What makes you think my voice will carry?"

  "Go on a little ways. I'll show you."

  At that she ran. I gave her a head start before I lost my cool and chased her.

  She let me catch her in a green grove just as the sun peeped out from behind a cloud.

  "You took my whip. In return, I want ..." she eyed my jacket before saying, "those boots!"

  There was no water nearby, so I figured there'd be no harm in that. Barely breaking stride, I tugged them off and tossed them to her. When she caught them, she threw each in a different direction.

  "Hey!" I dropped the whip and rushed her. Laughing, she ran through an overgrown stavisiberry patch, leaving me to follow barefoot.

  I'm less keen on following than on finding the shortcut. A nearby tree gave me a path over the bushes. I clambered up and swung branch-to-branch, monkey-style. I hit the ground on the other side just as Kemeili came out of the bushes.

  She rewarded me with a pretty good shriek. She tried to run back, but I had my arms around her waist. She caught the back of my knee and tried to throw me over, but she'd tried that trick before. I pulled her across my thighs, turned her over, and gave her a swat on the bottom.

  Her smile vanished, but it wasn't anger on her face. She grabbed my hair and pulled herself in for a vicious kiss. I winced as she bit my lip.

  Guess she was out for a little blood after all.

  After that startling nip, her lips and tongue taught me more Elven than I'd learned in the past week. Her mouth moved from my lips to my ear, then down my neck where the last bruises she'd given me had only just faded. With her free hand, she tugged the jacket off my shoulder.

  "Hey, mind the—"

  "'Mind the jacket!
'" She slapped me hard and held my chin to make me look her in the eyes. "Forget the jacket. Give me those pants."

  "Give me yours."

  Our negotiation lasted maybe twenty seconds before all our clothes and two broken saplings lay in a trail behind us. Even back at her place, I didn't need to ask whether she'd taken precautions. The year I took up girl-wrestling, I paid a hedge witch for a potion to take care of that forever. The world had enough little hellspawn without me adding to the legion of cursed kneebiters.

  We took turns making angels in the grass before finding another patch to spoil. We found us a cozy spot up against some kind of I-didn't-care-what-kind-of tree. I pressed Kemeili up against the bark. Before she could complain about its rough edges, I showed her what it was that made me think her voice would carry.

  What do you know? I was right on the money.

  She got plenty out of me, too, including sounds I'd never heard before, much less made. Maybe we didn't have much to talk about, but what we had in common didn't need words. We scared off the birds, marked the grove as our territory, and shook the leaves from the trees. Hell, pretty soon we even called down a storm. The thunder rolled up behind us, louder and louder.

  "Radovan, move!"

  I was moving, but I heard the fear in her voice. It wasn't thunder behind us. It was hoofbeats.

  I pushed Kemeili up. When I saw her catch a branch, I jumped.

  Half the tree trunk exploded as I rolled away. Bark sprayed my skin, splinters sticking in places you never want splinters. I couldn't feel much pain yet, but I did feel the hot breath of the animal.

  It was the ugliest horse I'd ever seen, and one of the biggest. Its shoulder was high as my head, and its thick neck rose even higher. Looking up, I saw it wasn't exactly a horse.

  From its forehead jutted a spiraled horn, black as pitch at the tip but fading to bone white near the base. The beast's hide was mottled gray turning white and pink near its belly and in a few unscarred patches. Where there weren't scabs, fire and acid burns covered its pelt. Its mane could have been a hedgerow some farmer had failed to burn down.