The Steel Queen (The Silk & Steel Saga Book 1) Read online

  Drawing close, the Priestess reached out with a languid hand. Steffan’s heart raced as her fingers stroked the contours of his face and ran down the front of his jerkin. With a wicked smile she plunged her hand into his breeches to take his measure. Instead of diminishing him, it only made him harder. “Your offer is accepted,” she purred. “Pleasure me for the span of a day and tomorrow night you will face the Dark Lord’s Oracle.”

  Releasing him, she turned and walked from the atrium.

  He followed through black marble hallways to a luxurious suite dominated by a large bed on a raised dais. As night blurred into day she pressed him to the limits of his skill and his stamina, and then took him beyond, using him in ways he’d never imagined. Her body was both insatiable and addictive. At some point the next day he passed out in a haze of exhaustion and woke alone to find the purple glow of twilight framed by the black columns. Naked and sticky from sex, every part of his body ached, but it was a sweet ache. Rising, he found a copper tub steaming with hot water and fragrant spices. A platter of sweet cakes and a flagon of red wine waited on a side table. He took the luxuries as a sign that he’d pleased the Priestess. After his bath, he recovered his clothes from the tangled bed sheets and dressed. Everything was there, including the dagger in his boot and the dirk sheathed in the back of his belt.

  A slight breeze stirred, bringing him the hint of her scent. Crushed violets mixed with a touch of musky sandalwood and something else, something mysterious, something he couldn’t put a name to. He breathed deep, drinking in her fragrance…and found himself stiff with wanting.

  The Priestess glided into the room. Her dark eyes raked across him, lingering at the telltale bulge. He watched her face, hoping she’d accept his ardent invitation. He thought he caught a glint of amusement in her eyes, and something else, something predatory or perhaps…proprietary. A warning sounded in his mind but Steffan quelled the thought, hoping for a repeat of the night.

  Stiff and formal, her words poured cold water on his hopes. “Steffan of Wyeth, it is time for you to meet the Dark Lord.”

  Bowing low, he said, “I am ready and willing.”

  She gave him an enigmatic smile, a silky challenge in her voice, “Follow me.” She led him outside to a copse of twisted hawthorns. In the center of the trees was a raised well contained by a ring of black basalt. The place felt heavy with the age of centuries. An involuntary shiver ran down Steffan’s spine. The Priestess gestured toward the raised well. “This is the Oracle of the Dark Lord. Look deep into the waters to see his wisdom, to learn his will. Look deep and surrender your soul to him. May the Dark Lord’s pleasure reign.” Bowing, she turned and left Steffan to his fate.

  Now that the moment was upon him, he hesitated, not really sure what it meant to surrender one’s soul. He wasn’t sure if he had a soul. He’d always believed that souls were nothing more then the invention of priests, created to crush ordinary men beneath the burden of guilt. Steffan rarely felt remorse. If remorse was the stuff of souls, then who needed it? Why should he hesitate to give the Dark Lord something that had no apparent value? Unbidden, a fragment of a forgotten childhood rhyme drifted into his mind, “The soul is the key to immortality.” Superstitious prattle! He banished the meaningless cradle rhyme, remembering instead his time with the Priestess. If last night was any measure of what it meant to serve the Dark Lord then he was eager for more.

  Kneeling at the edge of the well, he gazed down into the waters of the Oracle. Jet black and shiny as a mirror; he saw his reflection in the unbroken water. He saw the stars in the night sky above. Just as boredom began to beckon, an unseen force jerked him toward the dark waters, sucking the very essence out of his body. Disembodied, he floated in a vast Darkness. He was nothing in the face of infinity. Steffan fought to maintain a sense of self, knowing he was a mere mote in the eye of the Dark Lord. Images pulsed against him. In the Dark God’s eye he saw places that he had never been, people that he had never met. He understood dark designs that he could never have imagined and learned the skills he would need to succeed. With a roaring sound he was plucked from the eye and thrust back into the frail body of a mortal, left sagging on the basalt stones to gasp for breath. Eventually he saw through his own eyes again. His reflection stared back at him. He looked exactly the same except for a lock of snow-white hair at his temple. Relief washed through him. He’d lost nothing and gained much.

  Pushing away from the well, he gathered himself and left the hawthorn grove. Returning to the villa, he found the Priestess seated on her throne in the atrium. She smiled, “I see the Dark Lord has accepted your offering.”

  Steffan bowed low. “I must be on my way. The Dark Lord has need of me.”

  She gave him a penetrating look. “It is forbidden to talk of anything beyond the meeting of the gatekeeper.”

  Steffan nodded.

  “Every experience at the Oracle will be unique, both in terms of the price and the visions. See that you remember this when you come again. Now go and may the Dark Lord’s pleasure reign.”

  He turned to find the gatekeeper waiting. The dark-robed keeper led him back to the ferry. Impatience gnawed at Steffan like a hungry beast. He was needed in Coronth. He had much to do in the service of the Dark Lord.

  15

  Katherine

  Kath knocked on the door to the healery, then entered without waiting for a reply. She found the master sitting with his back to the door, concocting a potion at his workbench.

  “For once you’re early.” Without turning, Master Quintus continued pouring a yellow liquid into a boiling flask. “What mischief brings you here before the first patient?” The bitter smell of alum wafted from the flask.

  Kath thrust her hands into her pockets and stared at the master’s broad back. Now that she was here, she really didn’t know how to start.

  The healer took the flask from the brazier and turned to stare at her. “You’re early, you’re tongue-tied, and you didn’t even bring meat scraps for Snowman.” At the sound of his name, the giant frost owl gave a low hoot.

  Kath tightened her grip on her gargoyle, resolved to see this through. “I need to talk to someone who’ll believe me…it’s important.”

  The master gave her a piercing stare and then banked the fire in the brazier. Rising from his bench, he locked the outer door and took a seat behind his cluttered desk. “Tell me what’s bothering you.”

  “I’ve been having dreams…nightmares. They’re so real that when I wake up in the middle of them, as I always do, it takes me a while to work out it was just a dream. But what really scares me is that I’ve had the same nightmare over and over again.” Before she lost her nerve, she rushed on. “I’m worried it’s a portent of the future and if I don’t somehow heed the warning then Castlegard will fall to the forces of the Mordant.” She ran out of words and sat still, staring at him.

  “So you’ve come for a matter of dreams,” the master said in the scholarly voice she knew so well, “a difficult subject. Great masters have spent their entire lives studying them and yet the questions remain unanswered.” He bent down, reaching for a scroll from his cabinet. “Some think dreams are the voice of the gods speaking directly to man, although the message can be somewhat garbled. So it’s possible your dreams are a warning of a dark future, just as you suggested. Of course, the other prevalent theory is that dreams are a special way our minds have of telling us something we already know but refuse to acknowledge. Whatever the interpretation, a frequently repeated dream usually contains an important message, a message that should not be ignored.”

  “So, what do you believe? Do dreams come from our minds or from the gods?”

  “There are good arguments for both theories. In my opinion, the question is not so much where the dream comes from, but what is the message behind it? The trouble with dreams is that they are often confusing and indirect, a sort of riddle, so the most obvious message is usually not the true meaning.” Picking up a quill and a clean sheet of parchment, he
mused, “The key to working out the message of a repeating dream is to examine the details that remain the same. So think carefully about the dream that you had last night and tell me what elements always appear in your other nightmares.”

  Passing her good luck charm from hand to hand, Kath replayed her dreams in her mind. “I am always being chased by powerful enemies who want to kill me. Sometimes they’re men, and sometimes they’re ogres, but they’re always soldiers of the Mordant. I am always running through Castlegard but I’m lost in a part of the castle that I’ve never seen before. This part of the dream never makes any sense because I don’t think that there is a part of the castle where I haven’t been. Anyway, I always end up trapped in a dead end, with nowhere to hide, no weapons to fight with, and no way to escape. Then, when I am about to be killed, somehow I fall through a solid stone wall into the safety of another room. Then I wake up, surprised to be alive.”

  The master’s quill scratched across the scroll. Then, chewing the feathered end, he sat back to study his notes. “Well, the most unusual element of the dream is the part about being magically saved from death, so I assume the message has something to do with the fact that you’re saved, or else it has to do with the manner in which you are saved.” He paused, “In your dreams, are you always ‘saved’ the same way, by falling through a solid stone wall?”

  Kath nodded, wondering where this was going.

  “Falling through a solid stone wall is a very imaginative way to be saved, don’t you think?” The master began to rummage through the scrolls in his cabinet. “You know, Kath, your dreams might not come from the gods, or from your mind. In fact, I think they may come from a third source. Have you ever heard of a focus?”

  “No.”

  “Focuses are the last magic left in the lands of Erdhe.”

  “Magic?” Kath made the hand sign against evil but the master didn’t seem to notice. “Ah here it is,” he triumphantly plucked a scroll tied with a purple ribbon from the bottom of the cabinet. Unrolling it, he began to read, “focuses are imbued with the only magic known to have survived the War of Wizards. In the days of high magic, apprentice wizards selected a “focus” to help them meditate, to focus their thoughts and hone the skills of their magic. The “focus” was a small object that the apprentice mage could hold in his or her hand, a crystal, a stone, a gem, a piece of jewelry, a carving. By focusing on the object, the apprentice cleared her mind of all other distractions, enabling the invocation of magic. With constant use, the focus absorbed some of the magic of their mages. Most focuses were destroyed in the War of Wizards, but those that survived are most often found in and around ruins from that era. People with latent magical talents have an uncanny ability to find the lost artifacts. For example, if asked to select one object from ten different items, a person with latent magical abilities will be drawn to select the single focus among the ordinary items. Over time, the focus will induce dreams of magic. These dreams are the key to understanding the magic locked within. But the magic can only be wielded if the person is touching the focus. If the focus is lost, then the person will ‘lose’ the ability to do magic. Focuses are only capable of invoking minor magics of limited range and scope, as the higher magics died out with the great mages during the War of Wizards.”

  Kath sat spellbound but also appalled. Magic was not a part of her world.

  The master gave her a thoughtful look. “Legends say that Castlegard was created near the end of the Age of Magic. Is it possible that you have found a focus?”

  Kath unclenched her fist, wondering if she held the answer. “I found this in an unused part of the castle.” She set her good luck charm on the corner of the desk. “I’ve had it for about a year now. It’s my good luck charm, you see, so I carry it with me everywhere.”

  The master studied the small stone gargoyle. He looked but he did not touch it. “Tell me, do you keep this with you when you sleep at night?”

  “On the table next to my bed.”

  “Then I think that we have solved at least part of the riddle. I believe your ‘good luck charm’ is a focus and it is using your dreams to teach you the lost magic of its original master.” His voice deepened. “You are very lucky, Kath, focuses are rare and very valuable, even more valuable than Sir Blaine’s blue steel blade.”

  She stared at the gargoyle as if it was a poisonous viper. “But everyone knows magic is evil. The War of Wizards nearly destroyed the world.”

  “Nothing but superstitions and fear bred of ignorance. It’s just magic, Kath. Of itself it is neither ‘good’ nor ‘evil’; it all depends on how you use it. Think of it like a sword. A sword can be used for good or evil depending on the hand that wields it. But people fear magic because it is much more powerful than a single sword.”

  “But what should I do with it?”

  “Keep it with you always. Keep it hidden and safe. From what you’ve told me, it’s possible this little statue may save your life some day.” The master healer leaned back in his chair, a thoughtful look on his face. “I need to ask your permission to write to a trusted colleague about your focus. This colleague is an expert and may be know more about your little gargoyle. Do I have your permission?”

  Kath nodded, still stunned from the idea of magic

  “Thank you for trusting me. You can come to me any time.” Getting up from his desk, he added, “Now my usual remedy for nightmares is always a good dose of sunshine, so off you go.” He stood and ushered her out the door.

  #

  Late that night, a giant frost owl rose up out of Castlegard’s inner yard and flew south on silent wings, a sealed message tied to its talons.

  16

  Blaine

  Ugly rumors swirled around Castlegard. A knight of the maroon was dead and the rumors named it murder. Instead of taking Sir Lewis to the castle, Sir Raymond had bundled the wounded knight on his charger and retreated back to the mining garrison in the mountains, spinning a tale of ambush by bandits seeking blue ore. A courier was sent to Castlegard with a report of the ambush and a squad of knights was dispatched to pick up the trail of the bandits, only to find that there was no trail. The knight marshal arrived at the garrison in time to question Sir Lewis on his deathbed. Returning to Castlegard, he questioned Blaine, listening without comment, reserving judgment for the king.

  All of Castlegard held its breath waiting for the punishment to fall. Blaine’s imagination ran wild with possibilities, all of them terrible, but first he had to attend the formal sentencing of the rogue knight.

  In the outer yard, a giant octagon had been inscribed in the hard-packed dirt. The king, the knight marshal, and the other veterans stood at the start of the long maroon chain while Blaine took his place among the other fresh-made knights. Six hundred and eighty-two knights stood with their shields facing inwards, forming a living octagon.

  A lone soldier waited in the octagon’s center, standing beside a burning brazier. Chosen by lots, he wore a black hood. The knight marshal signaled and a horn sounded, echoing off the mage-stone walls. Guards forcibly marched the prisoner to the heart of the octagon.

  Blaine studied Sir Raymond’s face. Captivity had transformed his arrogance into cringing fear. Blaine wondered how he’d ever earned a maroon cloak.

  The marshal snapped open a scroll and read the charges. “Raymond of Radagar, you are accused of defiling your oath to the Octagon, first by attacking an unarmed brother, second by contributing to the death of Sir Lewis, and finally by lying to your officers. Proof of your thrice-fold guilt was confirmed by the deathbed confession of Sir Lewis. By the king’s judgment, you are condemned on all counts. With the murder of Sir Lewis you have earned a death sentence, but King Ursus has chosen to be merciful. By order of the king, you will be stripped of all rights and symbols of knighthood. Branded as a false knight, you will be driven from the castle, and given five days to flee the lands of Castlegard. Your execution will be immediate if you ever return. The knights of the Octagon, once your brothers-i
n-arms, bear witness to your shame. Let the sentence be carried out.”

  The knights drew their weapons and began beating their shields in a slow rhythm. Guards forced the prisoner to his knees. Something snapped in Raymond. Struggling against the guards, his face contorted in hate. “I curse you all! I spit on your hollow honor! May the Dark Lord take the Octagon!”

  A soldier backhanded the prisoner. King Ursus unsheathed a dagger and stepped up to the false knight. With two quick slashes, he sliced Raymond’s maroon cloak free, letting the wind snatch it away. More cuts and the surcoat hung in tatters. The king stepped back, his words a low growl. “Finish it.”

  Two guards tightened their hold on the condemned man while a third grabbed Raymond’s hair from behind. The soldier hooded in black removed a glowing red brand from the brazier. The unmade knight gibbered in fear and squirmed at the sight. A scream split the courtyard as a broken octagon was branded into Raymond’s right cheek, his face forever scared with shame. The sickening smell of burnt flesh filled the yard as the second brand was applied. Dowsing the craven with water, the guards brought the screams to a sputtering end.

  A sack of rations and a flask of water were hung around the neck of the unmade knight. Guards marched him at sword point to the gates of Castlegard, expelling him from the castle. The iron-studded gates closed with a loud clang, signaling the end of the ritual. The king dismissed the knights, leaving the yard with the marshal.

  Shaken, Blaine returned to his quarters in the Knights’ Tower, wondering if he’d glimpsed his own fate. Avoiding the stares of his fellow knights, he stowed his shield and then retreated to the solitude atop Needle Tower.

  Sitting on the parapet with only the stone gargoyles for company, he wondered at his fate. For the tenth time that day, he lovingly polished his blue steel sword. Gleaming with deadly beauty, the sword symbolized his hopes and his dreams. By tradition, the design of the hilt reflected the heraldry or deeds of the original knight, but in Blaine’s case, both were blank. After much thought, he’d chosen an octagon for the pommel and wings for the cross-guard. He’d dedicated his great sword to Valin, the Octagon, and the winged goddess of Justice, but the only blood the sword had shed was that of a fellow knight. Blaine shuddered at the irony. He wouldn’t be surprised if the king gave the blue sword to another knight, one capable of a hero’s deeds. His stomach churned, knowing all of his dreams were at risk.