The Golden Queen

Chapter 4

At dawn, the townspeople in Clere dragged the dead monster from the inn and dumped its body into the bay. Father Heany said that no creature damned to be so ugly should be buried on hallowed ground, and the ocean seemed the only place big enough to hide such a fiend.

The town militia guarded the roads but still hadn’t seen more monsters. Yet Maggie knew they were coming. All over town, dogs sniffed the air and barked, sending up keening wails that troubled Maggie’s soul.

“Can you smell them?” Maggie asked Orick just after dawn.

“Aye,” Orick grumbled, standing on his hind legs to catch the scent. “There’s an oily stench on the wind, not from anything human.”

Everywhere, townspeople were rushing about frantically, spreading rumors. But Maggie Flynn just stood, watching longingly up the north road to An Cochan. Gallen still hadn’t returned. He was hours overdue.

“I’m going to An Cochan,” Maggie said at last to Orick, her voice quavering. “If Gallen doesn’t know what’s afoot, he’d better be warned.” She glanced up the road again. There was a tightness in her stomach, a certain knowledge that Gallen had already found trouble. He would never willingly keep a client waiting, and Maggie suspected that his body lay somewhere on the road to An Cochan. If she was lucky, he might still be alive.

“You’re as likely to meet one of those monsters on the road as he is,” Orick said. “And he’s better prepared to defend himself. Just sit tight.”

Orick paced in a circle, rose up on his hind legs and tasted the air again.

Cries of dismay rose from the south end of town. Crowds of people began shouting. Maggie and Orick rushed to the crossroads, looked down the lane: between the shading pine trees, up the cobbled streets lined with picket fences, an ungodly array of giants marched three abreast. Some of them, green-skinned ogres, looked like huge men, eight feet tall. At their head was one of the monsters Orick had slain last night, its too-human head down low, sniffing the ground, blinking at the townspeople with orange eyes.

There were thirty or more of the monsters, and in their center, well protected, walked a creature straight from the bowels of hell. It stood seven feet tall and had a chitinous black carapace. It walked on four extraordinarily long legs, and it held two huge arms before it. One club like arm seemed to end only in a vicious claw, while the other revealed a small, spidery hand that held a black rod.

The beast’s head was enormous, with three clusters of multifaceted eyes in various sizes-two sets of eyes in front, one in back. A long, whip-like whisker was attached to each side of its lower jaw, beneath teeth that looked like something that might have belonged to a skinned horse. Its main body was only about a foot wide across the front, but its ribs would have measured three feet in height. From its shoulders sprouted two enormous pairs of translucent wings, the color of urine. Its bloated abdomen, which was carried between its front and back pair of legs, nearly dragged the ground.

People shouted and ran for their houses, dogs barked and leapt about insanely. Some women and an old man fainted outright, falling to the ground.

Father Heany in his vestments rushed to the street and confronted the black beast. He swung a crucifix overhead and shouted, “Beelzebub, I command you in the name of all that is holy to turn back! Turn back now, or suffer the wrath of God!”

Beneath the black devil’s mouth, dozens of tiny fingers drummed over a patch of tight skin.

The ogre guardians stepped aside, and for one moment the devil faced Father Heany. It pointed the short black staff at the priest. Flames brighter than lightning fanned out, catching Father Heany in the chest. For a moment, Father Heany stood, blazing like a torch, and then the flesh dropped from his bones and his skeleton fell in the middle of the road, amidst a puddle of burning skin. Maggie felt as if her blood froze in her veins.

The ogres trampled Father Heany’s body and just kept advancing toward the inn.

Maggie backed away, retreating between two house-trees toward the edge of town, and Orick padded quietly beside her.

When the menagerie of creatures reached Mahoney’s Inn they stopped, and the doglike leader crouched to sniff the bloody ground.

He turned to Beelzebub and cried, “Master, a vanquisher died here!”

The giants stopped. Beelzebub strode forward and let the whip-like tendrils at his mouth feel the ground, twisting from side to side.

Orick circled behind a tree to hide. Maggie had seen enough. Her heart was pounding, and she struggled to breathe. Every instinct told her to run.

“Let’s get out of here!” she said.

“Wait,” Orick whispered. “Let’s see what they want.”

One ogre kicked down the door to Mahoney’s Inn and rushed inside. A moment later, it dragged out John Mahoney. The innkeeper screamed, gibbering for mercy.

Beelzebub made clicking noises, and one of the giants translated, shouting, “Where did they go? When did you last see them?”

Mahoney fell to his knees. “I don’t know who you mean. Who do you want?”

“You are the owner of this inn?” an ogre shouted. “Two strangers came here last night. A man and a woman.”

“I didn’t see them,” Mahoney begged, crying. And Maggie realized he was telling the truth. He’d already been abed when the strangers came.

But the ogres thought he was lying. One of them growled, and Beelzebub flapped his wings suddenly and leapt into the air. He landed on John Mahoney, teeth first. Maggie saw red blood spurt from John’s head, like the spray of a sea wave as it washes over a rock, then she turned and ran for her life, Orick barreling along beside her.

They hit the woods, rushing through the trees, leaping over logs. Maggie ran until her lungs burned and she could hardly tell which way to go. Still, no matter how far or fast she ran, it did not seem that she was moving far or fast enough to get away. Always she would look behind her, and the town seemed too close, the monsters seemed too close. She probably would have kept running forever, run like a maddened beast to her death, but Orick growled and caught her by the cloak, pulling her to a stop. She screamed and kicked at him, but the bear only growled, “Stop! The strangers went this way! I can follow their trail. We must warn them!”

The two strangers rushed ahead through the forest, and Orick sniffed at their trail in the early morning, forepaws digging into the thick humus while his hind paws kicked forward in a rolling gallop. Maggie struggled to keep up. Between the towering black trees, the forest was wreathed in mist, with the early morning smell of fog that has risen from the sea. Sometimes Orick would spot a juicy slug as he ran. He would dodge aside and grab it from the mossy ground, flicking it into his mouth with his tongue. Yet mostly as he ran, he dreamed, and not all of those dreams were his own: snippets of racial memories stirred in him, visions from the Time of Bears, glimpses of forests from ages past. As he ran among the silent woods, he remembered being a bear cub, tearing at a log for sweet-tasting grubs and termites. Winged termites fluttered above him in a shaft of sunlight, glittering like bits of amber or droplets of honey. Sunlight shone on the emerald leaves of a salmon berry bush. In the memory he felt a vague longing for his mother, as if she were lost, and he heard something large crashing through the forest before him. A trumpet sounded, and a great shaggy beast suddenly towered over him, curved tusks thrusting out impossibly long. It shook its head, and the tusks slashed through the air, casually scattering the flying termites. The cub turned and ran.

Orick relived tales told by his mother, tales so familiar that he could not separate them from his own memory: how she had loved the taste of squirrel meat until she discovered the squirrel’s midden and found that eating its cache of food was wiser than eating the squirrel. He listened to his mother describe tactics for catching salmon-how an old bear should slap the fish from the water with his massive paws while a smaller bear should use his teeth, stretching his head down under the water to gaze open-eyed into the stream. In Orick’s waking vision, he dreamed of bright silver fish slicing through the icy foam. He tasted the small scales in his mouth, the juicy salmon wriggling as it tried to swim free of his grasp.

So it was that as Orick ran through the forest, chasing the strangers, he felt as if he were running backward through time, to the heart of wonder. Surely this morning had already been magic. In solitary battle Orick had defeated a monster, and now he was galloping away from others of its kind, grunting under the weight of his store of winter fat, barreling into the primordial forest of his dreams, into the unknown.

Once, as he passed through a shadowed valley, Orick glimpsed a wight-the flickering green soulfire of someone long dead, a woman with long hair and a frown. She glanced at Orick, and then the wight gazed heavenward. She seemed to recognize that morning had come, and she sank into the hollow of a log.

Orick tracked the strangers’ scent. After two hours, the strangers had marched into a bog of briny water and were forced to veer up a mountain and intersect the north road to An Cochan. Orick and Maggie crept to the edge of the road, Orick padding on heavy feet, sniffing the sour mud of the strangers’ footprints.

He stopped. The morning sun had nearly cleared the hills now, shining on the road, and it seemed strange that the sun could be so warm and inviting on a day so filled with fear. Orick listened. Kiss-me-quick birds were jumping in the bushes, calling out for kisses.

Maggie was panting from the long run. Orick glanced at the road, inviting her to climb up.

She shook her head violently. “I think I heard something.”

Orick tasted the scent of the strangers, looked uphill. They had crossed the road shortly before, heading up under the old pines, into a patch of chest-deep ferns on a knoll. Orick saw the bole of a young house-pine up there, grown from a seed gone wild. Though the house had only open holes for doors and windows, it was the kind of place that made a good temporary shelter for travelers. Orick could not see the strangers, but their scent was strong. He suspected they were hiding inside, resting where they could watch the road.

On both sides of them, the road curved sharply into the deeper woods. The trees provided heavy cover. Orick started to climb, but suddenly heard the shuffling of heavy feet on the muddy road to the south. Both he and Maggie faded back, crawled into the shadow of a twisted pine. From under the heavy cover, Orick watched the road above.

Orick’s snout quivered in fear, but the scuffling footsteps had halted a hundred yards off, and everything became silent. Orick wondered if the monster had stopped to wait for passersby, or perhaps quietly slipped off into the woods, or if it had turned around and headed back toward Clere. For ten minutes, he and Maggie waited in silence, and Orick was just imagining that the danger had passed when Gallen O’Day came ambling up the road, heading toward Clere, whistling an old tavern song. Orick moved a bit so he could see Gallen clearly. Gallen looked worn, and his head was wrapped in a bandage. Orick wanted to call to him, warn him of the strangers in town, but at that very moment a deep voice shouted, “Stop, citizen!”

Gallen stopped and stood looking up the road, his mouth hanging open. An ogre hurried down the road to meet him. The ogre’s chest and lower extremities moved into view, and Orick got a close look at the thing. Its long arms-covered with bristly hair and strange, knobby growths-nearly reached the ground, and in one hand it held an enormous black rod, like a shepherd’s crook. Its fingers could not have been less than a foot long, and they ended in claws that were like nothing Orick had ever seen on a human or bear. The ogre wore a forest-green leine, belted at the middle, and wore enormous brown boots. As Orick watched, the ogre clenched its fists rhythmically, in and out, in and out, flexing those claws threateningly. For a moment, Orick though it would lash out, catch Gallen by the throat.

“Citizen,” the ogre growled in a heavy voice Orick could understand only by listening intently. “I am searching for a man and a woman, strangers to your land, thieves. Have you seen them?”

“Thieves?” Gallen hesitated. “Well now, sir, with the great fair just ending at Baille Sean, the road is heavy with strangers. I saw several pass by an hour ago. Yet I must admit that in all my days, I have never seen anyone stranger than yourself. Would you mind if I be asking: do these strangers present as much of a spectacle as you?”

“No,” the ogre answered softly, hunkering closer to Gallen. “The two I seek are more of your size, citizen. One man is a warrior, skilled in all arms, and he is a scholar. Yet if you saw the pair, your eye would catch only on the woman: she is of unequaled grace and beauty, and at first you would watch her distractedly, almost unaware of anything or anyone else. But the more you watched her movements, the more entrancing she would become. Her every step is like a dance, every soft word a song, and soon you would fall under her spell. If you stood in her presence for an hour, you would think you loved her. If you were with her for a day, you would become lost, and you would find yourself helplessly worshipping her forever-such is her power.”

Gallen’s mouth had fallen open again, and he stared at the ogre. Orick bent lower so that he could try to see the ogre’s face, but the trees were in the way. Orick was tempted to come out of hiding, if only to see this curious beast, but fear made him stay hidden. Finally, softly, Gallen asked, “What is this woman’s name?”

“Everynne,” the giant answered.

“I saw her,” Gallen said, “late last night, at the inn in Clere. She had dark hair, and a face so sweet and perfect that she seemed then to steal my heart.” Orick wanted to shout, dismayed that Gallen would betray the strangers, but Gallen went on. “And I saw her with her companion again this morning, only an hour ago. They stopped in An Cochan to buy fresh horses, and they hurried off north.”

Gallen pointed up the road toward An Cochan, and Orick felt his muscles ease in relief. He could always tell when Gallen was lying, and right now the young man was sending the ogre off on a mad quest.

The ogre tensed and rose on his tiptoes, anxious to head off down the road. Gallen said, “Sir, may I ask what they have stolen? Can you offer a reward if I regain the merchandise?”

The ogre hesitated. “She stole a key made of crystal, a key which opens gateways to other worlds. If you recover the key, my master will pay a generous reward.”

“How much of a reward?” Gallen breathed.

“Eternal life,” the ogre said. The creature straightened its back and shouted, “Vanquishers, all north!” Its voice rang out with such amazing power that the ground seemed to shake beneath Orick’s paws. In the distant woods, dozens of other voices bellowed the message, “Vanquishers, all north!”

Orick could stand it no more. He knew that if he did not get a good look at the ogre now, he might never get another chance. He edged lower in his hiding spot, and his heart began pounding and he wished he’d never seen the thing: the ogre’s head was enormous, and its hideous face was deeply creased, while a massive chin hung down like the arm on a sofa. Its lips were reddish brown, the color of burnished wood, and its large teeth were as yellow as pears. Its eyes were as huge as a stallion’s testicles, and they were a bright orange. Scraggly brown hair hung limp from its head. All in all, the ogre was like no creature he had ever dreamed.

The ogre seemed to realize he had urgent business elsewhere. It loped toward An Cochan, back bent, head held peculiarly low, as if that enormous head were some great burden that it carried.

Gallen stood watching after it for several moments, an astonished expression on his face. He licked his lips and shook his head in wonder. He muttered to himself, “Eternal life, is it? What if I want a bonus? How about eternal life and a pair of laying hens? Or maybe eternal life and a sack of potatoes thrown into the bargain? Would your penurious master go so high?”

Gallen stared down the road. The sunlight still shone on the road, birds were hopping in the brush. A light morning breeze sifted through the trees, and Gallen shook his bandaged head, then stood with his mouth open as if he could not believe what he’d just seen.

Maggie stepped forward from the brush and whispered, “Gallen?” Orick followed.

Gallen saw her, then looked back up the road where the ogre had gone. He began jumping up and down and pointing. “Ah, Christ, you missed it!” Gallen said. “I just saw the most incredible giant! Come here! Hurry! I’ll show you its tracks! I swear to God, it had green skin and teeth as big as shingles!”

“I know,” Maggie said. “We saw it, too. Gallen, there’s a bunch of those things in the wood. They came through town and murdered Father Heany. It was terrible!”

Maggie was on the road by now, shaking her head and grabbing Gallen’s arm as if to make sure he was alive. Up here on the road, Orick could smell the strangers more strongly-Everynne and her guard-but he didn’t want to say anything, afraid that somehow perhaps one of the giants might hear.

“Father Heany is dead?” Gallen stepped back in shock. “But …” He searched for something to say.

“Father Heany tried to drive the monsters out of town. And they burned him up. Then they went to the inn, looking for those travelers. They knew John Mahoney had let them stay in his inn. They killed him for it.”

“But, he’s an innkeeper, for Christ’s sake!” Gallen shouted, looking angrily back up the road. “That’s what he does for a living! Ah, hell, where is Everynne and her guard now?”

“They ran off into the forest before dawn,” Orick said. “I’ve been trying to track them.”

“You wouldn’t turn them in, would you?” Maggie asked. “That beast may sound like he’s offering some grand reward, but those creatures are devils! Beelzebub himself walked at the head of their procession!”

Gallen looked sober. “Even if I didn’t know that they’d killed a priest, I wouldn’t turn anyone over to that thing. I have my honor to think about. I promised to take Everynne to Geata na Chruinne, and I’ll do it, even if the woods are full of sidhe. Orick, can you still follow their trail?”

Orick shivered. He had not thought about it, but here they were in Coille Sidhe. The humans told stories of the sidhe-strange and brutal beings from the otherworld. Orick had always thought them to be only tales for children, but suddenly the otherworlders were walking about in the daylight, looking for an enchantress with a key. “I can sniff them out.”

“Wait!” Maggie said. “Gallen, we’ve no cause to get involved in the affairs of the sidhe. Let the devils squabble among themselves. If this woman has stolen something, maybe she deserves to be punished!”

Gallen half-closed his eyes in thought, and his long golden hair shone in the sunlight, the bandage holding it like a bloody headband. Orick wondered why his head was bandaged. Gallen looked down at Maggie and Orick, the sun catching his powder-blue eyes. “I don’t believe this Everynne is a thief. Her guard was loyal to her. Thieves are never so devoted to their own. Greed wrings all the devotion right out of them.”

“Perhaps he was under a spell-” Orick said, “as the ogre warned.”

“Perhaps,” Gallen agreed. “But only an hour ago, I swore to Father Brian that if my heart was ever hot to give someone aid, I would do it. And this morning my heart is hot to give aid to Lady Everynne.”

“Well spoken,” a gravelly voice said from the knoll above them. As one, Gallen, Maggie and Orick glanced up. The hill was covered with pines near the top, but the voice had come from close by, from the fern beds not twenty yards away. Suddenly there was movement, and Orick saw a man standing in the ferns, wearing a deep-hooded robe painted in greens and browns. Images of ferns were painted on it so precisely that if the man had remained still, Orick would never have seen him. Yet as the stranger walked downhill toward them, the robe shimmered and turned a soft brown. The man wore two swords at his hip.

The stranger halted in front of Gallen, and his scent was muted-hard to catch even at ten feet. Of all the wondrous things that had happened today, to Orick this was the most wondrous, the man’s lack of scent.

The stranger pulled back his hood. He appeared to be in his late forties, but he was well-muscled, and his skin was ruddy tan. His hair had once been a golden brown, but now was turning silver. “I am Veriasse Dussogge,” he said, “Everynne’s counselor and protector. Will you guide us to the gate now? We are in great need. It will not take long for the vanquishers to discover your ruse and return in greater numbers.”

“I can take you,” Gallen said, “but we have not yet agreed to a price.”

The stranger licked his lips. “You said only a moment ago that your heart was hot to give aid to the Lady Everynne.”

“True,” Gallen admitted, “but I didn’t say that my heart was hot to give it to her for free!”

Orick looked from Gallen to Veriasse. Veriasse seemed to be weighing his options. Obviously, he could not afford to spend hours searching for either the gate or a new guide.

“You have me at a disadvantage,” Veriasse said. “What is your price?”

“Well, that depends,” Gallen answered. “Finding the gate is easy enough, but I’m not eager to tangle with one of those ogres. I assume you knew they were following you? That’s why you wanted a man-at-arms?”

Veriasse nodded. “The vanquishers are very dangerous. I should warn you that they carry weapons more powerful than any on your world. The vanquishers can easily kill you at a hundred yards.”

“Hmmm.…Then my price needs to reflect the risk I’ll be taking. How about eternal life?” Gallen raised a brow.

“It is not in the Lady Everynne’s power to grant that to you now,” Veriasse said, “but if she reaches her destination …”

“Then she can give it to me if she reaches Geata na Chruinne?” Gallen asked.

“She has other gates to pass through,” Veriasse answered. “She must face many dangers. But if she wins through, then, yes, she would return and pay your fee.”

Uphill, a whippoorwill called. “Quickly!” Veriasse hissed, urging them off the road. “Vanquishers!”

He grabbed Gallen’s arm and leapt downhill into the brush. Orick plunged after them, and Veriasse led them a few hundred feet off the road, into the shadows under a pine.

“Don’t stir,” Veriasse warned. Orick waited motionless for a moment. A trio of ogres passed on the road, marching quietly, heads swiveling as they searched the forest. Maggie was breathing so heavily, Orick feared the ogres would hear her. But they passed quickly.

After another two minutes, Veriasse whistled once like a thrush. Lady Everynne bounded downhill over the edge of the road, wearing her blue robes and a headdress made of triangular silver bangles fastened with a metal mesh. She bore her rosewood harp case under one arm; a pack was strapped to her shoulder.

Veriasse stood, and Orick saw that his robes were taking on the colors of the wood-deep grays and greens with splashes of yellow sunlight. Veriasse pulled his hood low over his eyes. “Everynne,” he said, “this young man asks eternal life as his reward for leading you to the gate. Will you accept his price?”

Everynne looked at Gallen. “He doesn’t know what he is asking. How could he? He doesn’t know who I am, nor can he understand the limits of our power.” She looked into Gallen’s eyes. “When you ask for ‘eternal life,’ it is not what you think. I could change you-make you so that you will not grow old, cure you of all ills and injuries. Perhaps by doing this, I could extend your life-for a thousand or ten thousand years. I can give you new bodies, keep you so that you are reborn at each death. But you could still be killed. Your life will still end, someday.”

“You can do this?” Gallen asked. Maggie was looking at Everynne in astonishment, and the young girl backed away as if afraid.

“Perhaps,” Everynne said. “At the moment, I am as helpless as you. But I promise: if you take me to the gate and I survive the next few weeks, then it will be in my power to pay your fee.”

Gallen offered his hand, and Maggie said, “Gallen, no!”

“Why not?” Gallen asked.

“It’s a trick-” Orick cut in. “There’s things she’s not telling you. If you help her, you might not die of old age, but those giant vanquishers can come back and knock your head in! Listen to Maggie. You’ve no cause to be concerning yourself in her affairs.” Orick’s heart pounded, and he stared at his friend. Orick was a practical bear, and Gallen’s bargain here just didn’t make bear sense. Obviously these were magical creatures, and by bargaining with them, Gallen might win eternal life, but would he have a soul when he finished?

Gallen raised an eyebrow, questioned Everynne without saying a word. “If I live, the vanquishers will become my servants,” Everynne said, “and to my knowledge they will never return to this world to harm you or your family. Gallen, I cannot promise you that all dangers will fade from your life. There are worse things than vanquishers. If I die, I suspect that you and your people will learn more about what lies beyond the Gate of the World than any of you ever wanted to know.”

“What do you mean by that?” Maggie demanded.

“We are at war,” Veriasse cut in.

Orick looked hard at Gallen, and it was plain that the young man was wrestling with his thoughts. “Then,” Gallen said, “I think I know what price I must ask.”

“Which is?” Everynne asked.

Orick’s nose was dry from fear, so he licked his snout. He waited for Gallen to ask for eternal life, but Gallen said, “I want to come with you beyond the gate into the realm of the sidhe and make sure that you reach your destination.”

“No!” Everynne said. “You cannot even guess the kinds of dangers we will face. I cannot take you. You would not be a help-only a hindrance.”

“You are a traveler and you need guards,” Gallen said. “That is what I do.”

Orick thought the man crazy, but Gallen had eyes only for Everynne. It was a case of lust, sure and through. And when Gallen got that set look in his eye, you could more easily pull a badger from his den than deter Gallen from his goal.

“Last night,” Gallen said, “you would not tell me your name because you knew that these vanquishers would be following you.”

“Yes,” Everynne answered. “I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“Yet the vanquishers came. Inadvertently, perhaps, you have touched our world. Now I want to touch yours.”

“It’s not that simple,” Everynne said. “I could let you come through the gate, but it does not lead to one world, it leads to a maze of worlds, and you are not prepared to enter. Even if you did, you would only want to come home again. In these last few days, I have grown to appreciate this world immensely for its simplicity, its ease of life.”

“I don’t know about other worlds,” Gallen said. “But I suspect that this one is damned boring.”

“A boring world is a valuable commodity,” Everynne said. “I would that all worlds were so innocent.”

Gallen thought a long moment, shrugged. “Then I’ll take nothing in return for my aid. Only a scoundrel would extort money from a woman in need.”

Orick shook his head, confused by Gallen’s sudden turnabout. He wondered if he’d ever understand humans. The Lady Everynne smiled gratefully, raised her brow as if her opinion of Gallen had just raised dramatically.

In the distance was a sound Orick could just barely make out, though none of the others could have heard it. Voices shouting, “Vanquishers, to the south!”

“They’re coming back!” Orick said. “Hurry!”

Gallen leapt into the woods, and the others followed.