The Queen's Viper Read online

  This book is a work of fiction. Places, characters, names, and events within the story are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously for the purpose of entertainment. Any resemblance to real businesses, events, locations, or people, living or dead, particularly Queen Elizabeth II, is entirely coincidental. Long live the queen.

  Thank you for reading this authorized copy of The Queen’s Viper and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning or distributing any part of it in any form whatsoever without permission from the author or publisher. For permission requests, please contact [email protected].

  Copyright © 2015 Lesley Donaldson and Aquhorthies Publishing

  All Rights Reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part, in any print or digital format.

  Cover credits: Mirella Santana (artwork), Jessica Truscott (model), Alex France (back image), Hufsa Tahir (layout)

  Cover copyright © 2015 Aquhorthies Publishing

  The Queen’s Viper

  ISBN 978-0-9937823-3-6, eBook

  ISBN 978-0-9937823-2-9, paperback

  writerlesleydonaldson.com

  Accolades and Praise For The Queen's Viper

  2016 Semi-Finalist, Kindle Book Awards

  The Queen’s Viper gives us a complex anti-hero—she is both merciless and compassionate, wields considerable powerful yet relies on her cunning. Don’t look for simple good versus evil here. Mixing modern and historical fantasy, The Queen’s Viper has enough magic, action, scheming and political intrigue for a trilogy.

  -Matt Moore, Co-Chair, Ottawa Chiaroscuro Reading Series

  [Lesley] should be commended for the level of creativity they employ in this narrative. Crafting a unique fantasy world out of historical fiction is not an easy feat and the author does so here with an opening scene reminiscent of dark horror. Viper also presents a unique anti-hero figure as a female with a predatory demeanor - an interesting choice for the main protagonist and one that bodes well with a unique perspective.

  -Judge’s review, Book Pipeline Competition

  For Augusta,

  who believes in fairies

  Gin ye ca’ me imp or elf,

  I rede ye look weel to yourself;

  Gin ye ca’ me fairy,

  I’ll work ye muckle tarrie;

  Gin guid neibor ye ca’ me,

  Then guid neibor I will be;

  But gin y ca’ me seelie wicht,

  I’ll be your freend baith day and nicht.

  Translation:

  If you call me imp or elf.

  I counsel you to look to yourself;

  If you call me fairy,

  I’ll cause you much trouble;

  If good neighbour you call me,

  Then good neighbour I will be;

  But if you call me blessed creature,

  I’ll be your friend both day and night.

  The Popular Rhymes of Scotland

  Robert Chambers, 1870

  Prologue: The Good Neighbours

  Albion, an island in the Western sea.

  Many centuries before written history.

  The gods did not say goodbye the night they left the lands of Erta’s children.

  A doomed orange moon hung low in the sky. Its beams traced from the riverbank through a freshly cut path to a glade in the ancient forest. Here, Erta’s children dug the last of three concentric rings of post holes for the felled trees that had been shaped into thick boards of equal length. A cluster of green onyx stones, hewn larger than a man’s head, lay on the ground abutted against each other and offset from the middle of the innermost circle. Kaelra knew she would soon see the sunlight of her home beckoning through this, the last useable passageway between Erta and Veyandra.

  Kaelra squirreled herself in the shadows as close as she dared. She hoped that the darkness would hide the luminescence of her blue skin, for her gauzy attendant’s clothes did not. The reluctant witness wore her hair, grey as pregnant rainclouds, braided down her back. She hadn’t bothered to smooth the wandering strands since she’d hastened out of her armour. Kaelra wore no adornment indicating her significance to her people, save for a single blue and red amulet around her neck.

  A branch cracked on her right-hand side. Kaelra held her breath in case the vapour would reveal her position in the cool night.

  A young stag, with antlers too rounded to successfully challenge for leadership of his herd, came to her. Kaelra hugged the animal’s tawny hide, scratching behind his ears. She pulled away and gazed upon him with swirling green and blue eyes. When she saw the flames of the Great Procession reflecting in his deep brown eyes, she ushered him away.

  Erta’s children withdrew to the margins of the clearing as the Great Procession of the V’Braed announced itself with a haunting song. The beings whom the humaines called the seelie wicht, the Blessed People, arrived from the entirety of the Western Islands.

  Females in silver armour too bright for the night led the column. Known as The Seven, each warrior wore a solid visor over her face, engraved with an eight pointed star. They used senses other than sight to navigate towards the incomplete portal. Their leader stopped at the centre of the clearing, before the ring of stones, and the others filed in, three to each side, forming a crescent between the stones and the innermost set of post holes. They pivoted one at a time and faced the aisle. A sharp margin in the middle of their body armour divided a glyph forged in the red blod metal of the seelie wicht. The rune was a double circle on the chest connected by curved lines to smaller, single circles on either side, above the waist. The blod metal glowed like hot coals. White gems sparkled in the lower portions of the symbol. Only The Seven bore the emblem’s privilege and its responsibility.

  A tall man with wide shoulders stepped ahead of the mortal crowd. Animal pelts and boiled leather protected his upper body. A narrow circlet of gold crowned the chieftain’s head. He carried an oak sapling in a clay pot. Two male V’Braed flanking the top of the path crossed their spears in front of him, fresh scars upon their bodies their only armour.

  The leader of The Seven gestured to the spearmen, allowing the man access to the middle of the circle. He glanced up at her and presented the tree. She didn’t react. The chieftain planted the container at her feet with a perceptible grunt of disgust. When he took a step back to leave, one of the spearmen restrained him.

  The sapling rested at the epicentre of the clearing. The leader of The Seven moved forwards, holding a small knife. She grasped the chieftain’s struggling hand, pulled him to the ring of onyx stones and drew the blade across his palm. The man’s blood dripped onto the nearest stone. The guards shoved the leader of men back among his people.

  The chieftain’s blood offering boiled on the surface. Cobalt blue fire spread in either direction around the onyx ring. As it did, each stone raised from the ground and spun mid-air in alternating directions, forming a moon door. Electricity filled the space within. When the hovering gateway rested vertically on the earth, sunshine from Veyandra flooded Erta’s night sky.

  Kaelra pressed her face to the bark as she mouthed the lie she knew she would hear.

  “Erta’s children,” the leader of The Seven said, her face unseen, “the V’Braed who hath walked amongst humaines as neighbours, now leave, scorned by envy. By thy blood we open the passage and by our blood, we shall not return.”

  The warrior stood over the pot, in front of the moon door. She cut her palm with the same blade and pressed her hand against the trunk of the young plant. As she muttered an enchantment in her guttural tongue, her blod magic, black and thick, melded into the smooth sapling. Without looking back, she left Erta through the moon door. Her armour vanished with a white glare. Five of The Seven added their tithe, repeating
the same spell before they walked into the sunshine. The tree expanded in size with each offering, its roots spreading over the dirt.

  Kaelra thought her pounding heartbeat would reveal her hiding place when the last of The Seven stepped forwards. Like the others, she performed the ritual. Unlike the others, she was a servant dressed in the clothes of a princess. When the impostor passed through, Kaelra breathed a burdened sigh of relief.

  The injured V’Braed borne on litters came next, their bodies a tapestry of misfortune. Kaelra buried herself in her dress, as if the layers of lightweight fabric could keep out the chill of her guilt. She didn’t cause their injuries, nor did she prevent them.

  She scanned the procession, searching for one particular face. Kaelra sensed the magic of her lover’s elldyr creft before it wrapped around her.

  “I wondered if you would avoid the exodus.” Odran’s deep voice warmed the back of her neck. His kiss made her shiver.

  “We are so much like them. How sad that our differences are too vast to live together in harmony,” she replied without turning around. Kaelra had another secret that she wasn’t sure she wanted to share. “Imrana knew the risks of taking my place in order to protect the humaines. Hers is a life-debt I cannot repay.”

  “Humaines?”

  “That is what they name themselves, the children of Erta.”

  “And what of the V’Braed? How shall Veyandra thrive without all of The Seven?”

  In facing Odran, Kaelra revealed more than her tears. She moved aside the outer portion of her dress and placed his hand to the bump on her abdomen. Her glowing belly squirmed, far too soon before her Quickening. Kaelra wondered if her baby sensed the tension between the humaines and the V’Braed.

  “I did what I needed to do to stop him,” she said. Dark portent tainted the joy in her voice.

  “Is that?”

  “A girl.”

  Understanding softened Odran’s features. “Then she is the future of our kind.” Odran couldn’t keep his eyes off of Kaelra’s belly. “You would banish her among these humaines?”

  They heard the horns that marshalled the next wave. Kaelra retreated into the woods, her fear setting a rapid pace. She didn’t want to risk being seen by her father, the V’Braed most reluctant to leave.

  Odran caught up to her and, taking her arm, turned her around. “Kaelra, there is time to change your mind.” He cupped her cheek. “Until the binding tree fills the moon door, you can go home and take your place among The Seven.”

  Her unlined face revealed greater wisdom than it ought to bear. “I shall do much more than that Odran,” she said. “The humaines shall forget the pretense we conduct today. When they do, and the magic of Veyandra once again blends with Erta’s, so shall my father return. These mortals shall not triumph a second time.” Kaelra pressed her forehead against his. She traced his lower lip with her thumb. “You cannot tell him, not even after he finds out that Imrana took my place,” she said, her voice tremulous.

  “Only we know the nobility of her forfeiture. Kaelra, I shall not abandon you.”

  The convincing argument she had practiced for this moment disintegrated on her tongue. Instead, she said simply, “Leave now, and find a way back to us both.”

  Well Rested Inn, Camberwell, London, SE5 7KD

  June 3, 2012

  Dear Mr. Forrest,

  Thank you for your email today regarding the historical value of the garment fragments found in the sinkhole in your hotel parking lot. We will send you a surveyor immediately. He will dispatch members of our London recovery team if your site contains items of significance. The team is currently employed nearby, at an excavation of wooden plinths at Canary Wharf. Their response time will be very fast.

  Atticus Appraisals and Archival provides the highest level of compensation for artefacts found in the UK. We guarantee the most expeditious and least interruptive dig sites in the country.

  Please be advised, that if there are human remains interred in the ground, we must notify the local constabulary. In the absence of criminal activity, you may repair your asphalt as soon as we have cleared the site.

  With regards,

  Roberta Harding

  Signed electronically

  Communications Manager

  Atticus Appraisals and Archival

  1: Camberwell, Present

  Camberwell, London.

  June 3, 2012: dawn.

  The unforeseen sinkhole gave birth to four hundred years of hatred. London exchanged its concrete crust for an ancient soul, the prisoner trapped within the oblivion. The hole started as an innocuous golf ball sized pit. A hotel employee in kitchen whites smeared with grease tossed his cigarette butt towards it without notice. Within minutes of his departure, the indentation expanded into a bottomless crater the width of a man’s arm span.

  Chunks of asphalt tumbled into the void as bony hands clambered to the surface. Stale earth choked the immortal’s first breath of freedom. Her hacking cough transformed into a bitter cackle. She shielded squinting eyes from the morning sunlight, weak behind heavy clouds, then gasped. Her skin, once captivating with its luminescent hues of purple, bleached to bone-white.

  When she adjusted to the light, her new environment replaced the harsh memory of the faces she last saw before powerful magic incarcerated her. The cream-coloured building in front of her, with its rows of windows, wasn’t the same wooden Banqueting Hall of her entrapment. She scanned beyond the small lot and its strange metallic carriages to the houses bound together in rows.

  Her instincts told her that this was Camberwell, where her journey to betrayal had started.

  Her heart told her how to seek revenge.

  The immortal stumbled upon her first step in this unfamiliar world. Her tattered Elizabethan clothes fell away in ragged strips. Sunlight cleaved deep valleys in her emaciated body. Behind her, a solid bottom appeared in the hole, as if protecting itself from her return to its depths.

  Her supernatural senses rushed the future that had been denied her into her head. She dropped to her knees, stunned by the barrage of modern sounds: cars on the main road, thick electrical cables humming overhead, the roar of a giant bird with fixed wings in the sky. She didn’t know how long it took her to adapt to the din. One sound in particular caught her attention. At a third floor window, a boy of about seven years of age pressed his hands on the glass. His shallow breaths hammered against her ears.

  “Mummy,” the boy didn’t turn away from the immortal as he spoke, “there’s a white lady in the parking lot.” Although the glass muffled what he said, the immortal understood him. She created a psychic connection to the openness of his youthful mind. Through his memory, the immortal perceived Mum sitting on a bed, and Dad in a small room behind a door. Mum stabbed a slender black box at something the boy’s mind called the TV.

  “This is London,” his mother said. “It’s full of white people. Come away.”

  The fog of the boy’s breathing obscured his view of the immortal. He adjusted his head and squinted through the clearing made by his nose. The immortal wasn’t yet capable of making herself invisible. Through him, she saw herself glaring with hateful, black eyes.

  “Uh-uh.” He shook his head, studying her harder. “She doesn’t have a car and there’s something wrong with her eyes.”

  He looked at Mum for an answer, but she didn’t reply. Mum found the station that she wanted and settled on the foot of the bed. Flags of white, blue and red decorated her outfit. The immortal recognized the crosses symbolic of St. George and St. Andrew, the patron saints of England and Scotland, combined into one flag the boy knew as the Union Jack.

  The boy wiped the window clean with his sleeve for a better view of the immortal. Seeing both his vision and hers in her mind demanded all of her concentration. Long wisps of fragile, grey hair clung to her skull. Unsure of herself, the immortal froze.

  “She doesn’t have any clothes.”

  “Not now, Willie.” Mum focused on the news announce
r detailing the manufacture of the queen’s Jubilee barge. The report cut to a live shot of the royal boat moored on River Thames under less than enthusiastic skies.

  “Oh, honey,” said Mum, tilting her head towards the bathroom door as she spoke to Dad, “come see the boat. It’s so beautiful!”

  “Of course it’s beautiful,” he replied in a gruff voice, “it’s the ruddy queen’s. D’you expect her to be floating in a dinghy manning her own pole?”

  “Hurry up, would you?” Mum tapped her red shoe on the stained carpet. The words Keep Calm and Carry On glittered across the toes. “I want to get a good spot. I wish you’d let us come yesterday. There’s been people camped out since before midnight.” Thousands of people would ignore the bleak day and line the river’s banks for a glimpse of Queen Elizabeth II on her Diamond anniversary during her Jubilee Flotilla.

  “The sun’s just up. We’ll have plenty of time to catch the train. The whole city hasn’t jumped into the river. Let a man curl one off in peace.”

  The boy faced into the room, oblivious to his parents’ discord and to the presence of the immortal in his mind. “Mum, you should see what she’s doing.”

  His mother’s chest heaved with exasperation. “Is she breaking into a car?”

  “No.”

  “Is she pointing a gun at you?”

  “No.”

  “Then I don’t care. We’re here to participate in a monumental day for England, not spy on visually impaired people who live near a hotel.”

  Her disregard interrupted his fixation on the too-tall, scary-looking woman in the parking lot. The boy turned from the window and said, “But Mum-”

  “No ‘buts.’ Come away right now or I’ll ground you for the rest of the weekend.”

  “Oh, man!” He pumped his arms in frustration. Mum had already returned to the pageant coverage. When the boy risked one last peek at the parking lot, he was nose to nose with the face of death.