Destiny's queen 2

 

Chapter 2

 

Dron was a strong trógling who was an expert miner, and good at mining cantrips. He had gone on the run when he irritated the darkling overseer by complaining that the said overseer, his half brother, as it happened, took the credit for saving a vein of copper, and incidentally, a dozen trógling which had been Dron’s initiative.

The darkling had placed Dron in the food pens, along with those he rescued, in case any of them talked, for causing the collapse which Dron had saved them from. Dron had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the caves, and with his dozen colleagues had tunnelled directly down a level to the mine galleries, taking any of the other food trógling who dared come, and snuck out of the caves, killing three darklings, and collecting another half dozen trógling on the way.  They had survived purely because some of Vulk’s wolfingas and wolves, who had had their chaos removed, had standing orders to seek and rescue tróglings. The weakest and wounded were carried on wolves, and the wolfingas stood by the stronger tróglings to fight off pursuit.

Dron could have made trouble, if he had challenged Kaz’s position, but he was shrewd enough to realise there was more going on than met the eye; and settled for being chief of the mining trógling, invited to some war councils, and learned to appreciate that here, he was given credit for his work.

And then, he had been caught in a freak accident, a tunnel collapse when undermining the enemy camp; and he had prayed to the new mother of trógling, and she turned up. And it was Kaz.  And she had rescued him at some risk to herself.  Dron was one of Kaz’s most fervent worshipers, and was well on his way to being her first Glyph Lord. To be chosen to be one of the two picked to work with her, the other being her long-time friend, Rynn, was an honour to him.

“What if this Thea Drex tries to kill us for not realising we’re saving her arse?” he asked.

“Use an aggressive blast of darksense right in her face, which will make her giddy,” said Kaz. “Or hit her on the head. Use your initiative.  She’s been turned into a rabid Selenite; we have to turn her back. She was taken as a slave at eight years old; you know how many trógling half worship their darkling or high toróg mothers if convinced to do so from an early age.”

Dron grunted.

“We called it ‘Value disease,’” he said. “Those designated as ‘values’ could be stupidly loyal.”

“And we can break it; because her brother is my sword-brother and a dear comrade,” said Kaz.

“You’re pregnant,” said Dron. “And it’s growing too fast.”

“It’s a side-effect of divinity,” said Kaz.  “I have to eat almost constantly, but at least I won’t be heavy during the hot months.”

Dron grunted.

He was not sure he approved of gods and mortals mixing together; but then, anything that would free trógling from the curse, so there were no more born to be abused, tortured, eaten, and enslaved, was a good thing. He was a good soldier; he asked enough questions to understand what was going on, and then obeyed.

 

The tunnel to Thea Drex’s tent came off a storm drain. One of the ones barred by the Selenites, as it happened; but no longer guarded, since in the confusion of the exchange of garrisons, mentioning guarding the river end of the tunnels had been forgotten. The trógling had used ore-moving cantrips on the metal stakes at the end of the tunnels, driven in to contain them, turning the bronze into tin and copper ore until they were weak enough to be broken.  The ore, after all, could be re-used. Kaz had also been experimenting with creating spells to turn darksense into a weapon, refining the echo-location of the sound emitted from the slight muzzle that gave trógling what some described as a kittenish face, to concentrate it to cause enough vibration to cause humans acute headaches, and to weaken metal by flexing it. It took a number of trógling concentrated on a particular piece of metal at the moment, but it was a start. It was built on those mining cantrips unique to the toróg and their weaker, cursed kin, which loosened sand and rock and ores. Cantrips could be used by most trógling, but many had too weak a kormajaia to cast more complex spells without exhaustion. Increasing the amount of magic put into cantrips could, with some, significantly increase the effects. Dron had been a great help in trying out some of Kaz’s ideas, and adding his own thoughts. He, Rynn, and Kaz worked well together in digging through and shoring up a way into the Selenite camp. Kaz’s friend, Protasion, glyph lord and priest of Alethos, and military engineer of the group, had taken sightings to make a precise measurement of reaching Thea’s tent. It was a large, officer’s tent, which gave them longer before she died of suffocation, if indeed she had made it impervious to air as well as everything else, but it was as well that Protasion had been able to work fast.

It had taken the three trógling over an hour to reach the spot at which they tunnelled upwards, most of which involved the removal of spoil. They had also had to drag along a rather unwilling spirit of air, indentured for them by Thyella, as its ability to generate air to breathe would counteract any bad air which should sink into their tunnel from the tent, and sent ahead of them would help dissipate the stale air. It grumbled constantly.

“You’ll be able to get back to the sky soon,” said Kaz. “And then you’ll get paid by Thyella with the fine perfumes you asked for.”

“Sewer sludge and bad breath, I should have asked for more,” grumbled the spirit.

“Oh, hush, now! Think of that attar of roses,” said Kaz.

“Why couldn’t I be paid up front?” asked the belligerent spirit.

“We went into that,” said Kaz. “I don’t doubt Thyella’s word that on the good stuff, you might as well be too drunk to do anything except giggle for a week.”

The spirit subsided. It did not like confined passages.

“Most people just bind spirits to do their bidding,” said Dron.

“Yes, and I call that slavery,” said Kaz. “I’d rather bargain over a temporary binding. Save with volonteers like cult spirits.”

“You have a point,” said Dron. “I make it that we’re here.”

 

They dug upwards, Kaz having cast the breathe-easy  spell on all of them, to help cope with any bad air, which lasted for an hour, and brought fresh air to the lungs directly from... somewhere. The spirit would help a lot, though, as there were limits to what the breathe-easy spell could overcome, and there did need to be some good air somewhere nearby for it to work.

And then they were through, and the stale air sinking and pouring into the passage. Kaz was glad of the aid of the spell as well as the presence of the spirit. They clambered up, and out into a fairly frugal tent, as those of Selenite officers went. There was a desk with maps, a few chairs, and a folding bed. Thea Drex lay face down on the bed. Kaz, tied to a god of death, could tell she was alive, and promptly cast the breathe-easy spell on her, turning her over.  Her lips were blue, but began to regain a better colour as the spell took hold, and the spirit displaced bad air.

Kaz gave the jewel which contained the spirit to Rynn.

“Go to the end of the tunnel and release him,” she said. Rynn nodded. Carrying Thea, or Sjurgi, was a job for two, and Rynn trusted Kaz’s reflexes if the heroine came back to her senses fighting.

Kaz shoved all the maps and documents she could find into her bag. They might as well have as much intelligence as possible.

 

oOoOo

 

Thea Drex sneezed.  And sneezed again. She was being carried... it was dark. She was still semi-conscious, trying to work out what was happening. She had stormed into her tent, and cast every spell she knew, and made up a few on the fly as well, using sheer power to meld magic to her will, and had thrown herself onto her bed to cry into her pillow over... well, she was still not sure what. That barbarian Harkon... her brother. He was her brother, she remembered him, before he had facial hair, but the way he rolled his shoulders... once he had called her Sjurgi, a name she had forgotten, a name she had not been known as for.... well, a decade and a half at least. Twice as long as she had born the name Sjurgi, she had been Thea, renamed, and beaten if she did not respond to it. A child of eight years old can only hold out so long against that. Children who were too defiant... disappeared. She remembered deciding to comply outwardly, and cling to who she was, internally. There were punishments for remembering her birth culture; rewards for behaving correctly in the new culture, memorising poems of praise to the red moon. She had always had a good memory, and repeated things glibly for treats, praise, and extra merit. And she was able to take out her anger in swordplay as she was trained for the arena. When did she stop complying as lip service and start giving real worship to Selen? When did she start believing the poems she learned so glibly? Were there compulsions.... there were patterns on the boarders of the poems. They were glyphs, runes and sigils to urge belief and acceptance. Thea had screamed in real horror, glad that the sound would not escape her tent.  Where was Sjurgi, and when had she been stolen by Selen? What became of her determination to escape? But she had become the pet of Selen as she had progressed in her studies, working under Thanus himself eventually, apostate hero of Alethos, Daulthus in their own language, lord of endings and absolutes. And how could Thanus be true to Truth if he betrayed his own lord? She had been fooled, and duped...

And it was about this point that Thea... Sjurgi... realised that she was thinking sluggishly, that breathing was getting harder, and that she had done something stupid... but it was too hard to think what it was that she had done that was stupid. And the next thing she knew was that she was sneezing in an acrid atmosphere in the dark.

 

oOoOo

 

It was not a good day for high ranking Selenites.

Clodax Dren came to in a prison cell.

Granted, as prison cells went, it was moderately comfortable, in a sparse sort of way; it had no window, but it was not damp, nor cold.  It had a stone floor, with a rug on it, he was lying on a bed which was not luxuriously soft, but nor was it unpleasantly hard, in a bed which was narrower than he was used to, but definitely not a plank, such as might be found in many prisons. There were magical lights, and a table with a chair. Behind a screen, he could see some kind of lavatory, and a faucet for water, and a basin under it. A fire danced in a grate, which had a heavy iron grill across it; either it was magical or it was tended by someone who could remove the grate.  And the answer to that became apparent, when the back of the fire moved aside, and someone added a log to it.

“Hey!” shouted Clodax.

The back of the fireplace closed off, as if he had not been heard.

 

Back in Selenopolis, the army led by Orgeron Cass decanted themselves off the barges, Orgeron having decreed that they might as well use the barges, emptied of much bad grain after the rodent infestation. Erlax Sorn made sure to get out of the barges and get to the palace as fast as possible, in order to get his retaliation in first.

And as Orgeron Cass managed to make his hungover way onto the wharf, having decided that the best way to make more room was to drink the wine supplied for the officers, he was arrested for dereliction of duty, cowardice, and incompetence.

His cell was a lot less comfortable than that of Clodax Dren, despite his exalted name. His army was the laughing stock of the plainsfolk, and it was said that the women of the plain had a new joke which ran, ‘Who was that soldier I saw you with last night? – that was no soldier, that was a member of the Selenite army.’

 

oOoOo

 

“What’s happening?” asked Thea Drex.

“Awake? Would you like a drink?” she was asked.

“Yes... please,” she said. She was tilted into a more upright position, and found a flask at her mouth, which poured slowly. Gratefully she gulped honeyed water. It was withdrawn.

“Not too much or you’ll be sick,” said the voice.  It was female. “That was remarkably silly, warding your tent against fresh air.”

“I... was not thinking straight,” said Thea.

“No, you had just had someone break through the years of lies,” said the voice. “We’ll find Sjurgi, don’t worry.”

Thea wanted to say, ‘but I was happy, I knew who I was, I had purpose.’ She was angry to have had that certainty stripped from her.

And she was angry that the certainty and purpose was built on lies and theft of her childhood. She wept again, silent sobs shaking her frame.

Kaz could see the woman’s reaction with darksense, and was pleased. It meant that a breakthrough was possible.

“Another drink?” she offered. It was accepted. This one had a sleeping draught in it; and Thea/Sjurgi drifted off to sleep before they left the tunnels.

She was left in a cell very like that of Clodax Dren. In fact it was on the other side of the service tunnel which led to the fires, whose chimneys joined above the passage. There were spyholes as well, or rather, rock which was transparent one way only. The lower levels of the temple of Alethos had a number of surprises, one of which was their use as holding cells for high ranking prisoners of war or hostages.

Thea/Sjurgi was less disquieted than Clodax.

She knew with absolute clarity, as well as she knew that she was in a temple, and out of all contact with her goddess, that she would either discover who Sjurgi was, and embrace that change, betraying all she had been for so long, or she would die for her goddess. And Thea/Sjurgi did not want to die for someone who had tricked her.

And it was not Selen who had seen her dying and saved her; it was her brother’s people. They could have left her, and let him grieve her death and move on.

It was much to ponder.