The Queen's Viper Page 18

  “Why wish you to use the amulet in this place of Christian worship?” Elizabeth moved around the chapel nervously, as if she expected the clergymen to descend through the wind-battered windows with a flaming crucifix. She had changed into a simple dress of lightweight wool. “Surely there are constructs of the Daoine Tor intended for your ceremony?”

  “Those who serve and guard you are abed. E’en now the kitchens prepare the breads and meats for breaking your guests’ night fast. If the Court wakes and finds you here, they will idealize you as a most pious queen to be at prayer so early before the dawn after so late a night of revelry.” Viper didn’t want to tell Elizabeth that she didn’t have enough power to put the whole palace to sleep.

  “In my year away from you,” Viper said, “I was not so fortunate to find others of my kind. I hath felt their magic at ancient circles of stone. The nearest of these lies on the Medway, too afar from Hampton. If we go therein to the stones, goat-bearded Burghley would have the castle up in arms were he to find you missing. We must attempt the use of the amulet here.” She held her hand over the iron handles of the chapel doors, wondering if she should try and seal the entrance shut. “Besides, this chapel doth make me a-comforted.” She gazed upon the images of the peacock and lion in the windows for what she hoped was the last time. “When I open the amulet’s portal, I hope to find the peace promised in the stars above. Place the amulet on the floor,” she instructed Elizabeth.

  “How amazing that it should glow thusly. When I uncovered it at Nonsuch Palace, the gems were of purpure and rouge.”

  Elizabeth’s comment about the change in the amulet’s colours caused a niggling apprehension. Viper wondered what the change from red and purple to white meant. Impatience tugged at her uncertainty. The immortal busied herself with the task of remembering the details that touching the amulet bestowed upon her. In a circle around the amulet, she carved seven glyphs into the floor tiles with an elldyr creft enhanced fingernail. Nothing happened.

  “Mayhap my passion to put the amulet to use is ill-advised,” she said. The tight grip of anxiety worked its way into her head. Her vision narrowed slightly and her heart rate picked up.

  Elizabeth placed her hands on her hips “Be not so yellow-livered, my friend. How come you to this delay when, moments ago, your conviction did not waiver?” She offered Viper a flinty, thin smile.

  “I am become too much like my indecisive queen,” Viper responded, her dismay disguised behind the long bangs of her hair.

  Elizabeth stepped to Viper’s side and reached out to draw back the long locks. Viper reared her head.

  “Please, do not. I cannot bear your touch when my heart is so troubled.”

  “You should not haunt yourself so,” said Elizabeth. The candlelight in her eyes made her as beautiful as a goddess. “You hath the right of it. I would beg of you to stay to please my own ego. The plate of woe on your table is less palatable than mine. If you hesitate on my account, you need not. I hath hired a spy named Lord Walsingham. With him in my employ, I am as secure as any mortal on this Earth. I would see you happy in your own kingdom, Viper, as you hath given me mine. Take your amulet and find your home.”

  “I cannot.”

  “’Twould be foolish to refuse me.”

  “Elizabeth, I am misunderstood. I cannot touch the amulet,” Viper confessed. Her hand, which had touched the amulet earlier, ached.

  “Then I shall be your conduit.” Elizabeth entered the circle and picked up the amulet. For the first time, Elizabeth saw her own aeir. She startled in wonder as it radiated into the etched runes, which, in turn, smoldered with emerald brilliance. A radiant thread of green elldyr creft coursed between the symbols until it enclosed Elizabeth. She raised her head and nodded to Viper with confidence.

  Viper functioned instinctually and archaic words spilled from her mouth. “Eruditae ama beodian, t’ae ahn vordat ess, ilma rekhat morhta. V’braed taead. V’braed daead.”

  Elizabeth froze as the amulet turned a violent scarlet. “Viper,” Elizabeth lost the assertiveness in her voice, “is this what you hath seen in your vision?”

  Viper didn’t know how to answer. She didn’t know what she had said or the impact of her actions. Her pounding heart rattled her ears louder than the winds thrashing the windows.

  “I… I know not, my queen,” Viper replied, unsure of herself and embarrassed over her hasty error. “There was a portal, which I do not now see. The amulet glowed, marry, but ’twas not an angry red such as that.”

  “Then what you have done in huggermugger is too green an action!”

  The amulet exploded with light. Elizabeth wailed and dropped to the ground in a fetal position, arms clutched across her belly. The talisman floated innocently above her, sucking up her aeir.

  “Elizabeth!” Viper bolted to help. An unseen force from the amulet rocketed her backwards.

  “Forgive me, Oh Lord, for my sins are many,” Elizabeth petitioned aloud. Her abdomen swelled. Viper grimaced as her friend rolled on the floor in agony.

  The windows imploded. Viper felt a sharp stabbing in her ears with the accompanying change in air pressure. She threw up her hands. Coloured shards embedded themselves into the underside of her forearms. The glass halted mid-air around Elizabeth, swirled upwards, then settled gently on the floor.

  Thick sinuous vines wound into the room from the window that had housed the peacock before it shattered. The vegetation molded into a curved staircase. Two strangers entered the opening. Viper observed two pairs of eyes that matched hers in formation. The Daoine Tor proceeded into the room from the makeshift entrance, their feet alighting on each step in unison as it formed. They moved with their arms about each other’s waists. Behind them, a humaine male loitered at the window. Viper froze, unsure whether to attack them, or to welcome them.

  The immortals, one dark brown skinned, and the other with skin the colour of light sandstone, approached the whimpering mortal queen. “Our ears hath heard One on the wind. Our eyes hath seen One from the wings.”

  “Do not lay hand upon her!” Viper yelled. She rushed at the duo. A vaporous, white elldyr creft originating from the earth-toned skinned visitor wound around Viper, holding her back.

  “V’Braed taead. V’Braed daeah,” the paired immortals said to each other simultaneously. Viper sensed they condemned her wanton actions. The newcomers pointed at the amulet that floated in mid-air when Viper did not respond. “One spoke words without giving of Oneself. The Parhelion exchanges, not replaces,” they chastised. Viper felt small beneath their scrutiny.

  The strangers knelt adjacent to the circle of runes. The pale immortal touched the tile as the earthier one spoke the same language Viper used to cast her spell. With a delicate shimmer, the tiles smoothed their surface, erasing any sign of Viper’s carvings. The enchantment ceased and the Parhelion amulet dropped onto Elizabeth.

  Viper struggled. “Let me be, that I may help my queen!” The other Daoine Tor tightened their hold. Viper’s eyes flashed with anger.

  “One skirts the fierce pull of the garen. Help her if One dares.”

  The magic binding Viper uncoiled. Her body tensed to respond to Elizabeth’s needs.

  Viper hesitated. She imagined herself draining her friend’s aeir, the intense rush of temptation racing her heart.

  “How can I be conflicted thusly? If I touch Elizabeth, I would surely kill her.”

  Elizabeth’s aeir trickled back towards her body from the Parhelion like honey drizzling from a sliver of honeycomb.

  Viper wrung her hands. “I know not what I do. I merely sought a way to find thee, my kin-sisters and our home. Tell me, what did I do unto my friend?”

  Elizabeth tried pushing herself off the floor, wrestling with her distended abdomen.

  “No virgin birth for the virgin queen. One makes life when One makes love,” said the conjoined Daoine Tor.

  “The trick of thy words does make my head ache,” Viper moaned.

  The man at the window sp
oke for the first time, his words alarmed. “Mistresses! The palace wakens. Guards hath been a-stirred from their bunkhouses. They come in search of the queen.”

  The immortal strangers retreated as mysteriously as they had arrived, on a rising platform as the vegetation receded. The wind carried the Daoine Tor’s parting words to Viper.

  “One is Us. She is none.”

  Viper power jumped onto the remnants of the staircase and raced to the top. She reached the broken lead frame and concealed herself with her glamour. The servants of Hampton Palace burst into the Chapel Royal, led by Elizabeth’s former governess, Lady Katherine Ashley.

  “Don’t go. Don’t go,” Elizabeth mewled, head tilted in Viper’s direction.

  Lady Ashley responded to words meant for Viper as the governess bundled Elizabeth’s weakened body into her arms. “I will not leave you, Majesty. I shall see to your every comfort until God in his mercy finds you convalesced from this ailment.”

  Viper turned from the touching scene and searched at the shattered window for the mysterious Daoine Tor. She dug her nails into her palm, dripping tar-black blood onto the broken fastenings.

  “I will come to you anon, Faerie Queen,” the immortal promised in a whisper before she hastened into the breaking dawn after her kin in search of answers only they could provide.

  17: Near Drowning

  The River Medway, Maidstone.

  June 4, 2012: moments later.

  A pair of mute swans flapped their wings furiously in the bridge’s shadow. They propelled themselves forwards, running across the surface of the water. The rising swirl of the river’s eddies swallowed the trail left by the swans’ launch into the air. Viper watched the birds fly downstream towards the Sisters’ green. In Viper’s time, swans belonged to the wealthy. Now, they lived in public playgrounds. A thought flashed, unbidden, into her head. She wondered how much her significance, like that of the swans, diminished in this modern world. The acidity of anxiety burned her chest. As bleak a thought as it was, exacting vengeance upon Annys was Viper’s sole purpose, even at the expense of Owain’s life.

  The immortal remained true to her decision. “I cannot delay my progress to find the Mort Lake Glass. Graeme, do what thou can to save thy master. I will see thee to thy carriage, then set out for the Sage’s Glass.”

  Graeme nodded the nod of a man used to giving and receiving orders. Viper started walking with him towards the van. Dhillon reached out past Clare and grasped Viper’s wrist. The immortal balked at the audacity of the young man’s action. Since he was one of Owain’s team, she refrained from ripping off his arm.

  Viper shoved his hand away with a snarl. “Never touch me.” Elldyr smouldered in her fists.

  Dhillon blinked rapidly. “You won’t go to Owain?” he asked with incredulity. He clasped one hand to the strap of his haversack as if it he would swing it at her to defend himself. His other hand fumbled for the chain beneath his shirt. Clare had reached out to stop Dhillon when he moved towards Viper, then stopped herself. The girl’s eyes flickered from him to Viper with indecision.

  “Dhillon, man, what ye doin’?” Graeme had turned when he heard Viper’s growl. He stood at least ten feet away.

  “You healed Clare’s wounds,” Dhillon said to Viper, a crescendo rinsing in his voice. “If the Sisters carried us in the air from Berkshire to London, why can’t we ask them to take us back to London and you can save Owain?”

  Viper bared her teeth at his suggestion. “My path lies along the Medway, not London. I must retrieve the Mort Lake Glass before Annys. You heard mention of the pox in Sunninghill. The pox is the mark of Annys. She comes ever closer to the South.”

  Dhillon raised his voice above the increasing rush of water beneath them. “If Annys is as dangerous as you say she is, she probably already has the Mort Lake Glass. Please, get us out of here and help Owain. I’ll do anything you ask.”

  “Should Owain be under attack from gunfire as Clare doth report, then his wounds are like to be fatal. As such, if I employ my elldyr creft, ’twill render me near death. Then, ’twould be no challenge for Annys to capture me, whether or not she holds the power of the Glass.”

  “Are you so selfish that you’d let Owain die just to get your way, even though he loves you so much?” Dhillon said, his voice shrill.

  A memory of another beloved’s call for help burned in her mind. Viper wouldn’t be caught in the trap of caring for others again.

  “A concept I learned from a humaine, rest thee assured.” The deepest grooves in the ridges on Viper’s skin darkened to mulberry, a purple that was almost black. Her unsettled elldyr creft made her long hair and coat tails flare up. Her malachite eyes shot with fearsome black.

  “Stop arguing, both of you,” Clare insisted. “I have a feeling we’re at the midway, because that looks like the end of us!”

  She pointed to the foaming fifteen-foot high wave that rushed towards them. The water reared up but it didn’t break over the bridge. Watery horses bearing dark riders surfaced from within the wall.

  “Merrows!” Viper bellowed. She wiped the spray from her face. “We hath tarried too long.” The immortal wound her elldyr creft around the two youngest humans and began pushing them towards Graeme. “Make for the end of the bridge. Quickly!”

  A column of water crashed on the footbridge between Graeme and everyone else. When the excess water spilled back into the river, a Water Horse remained, blocking the path. The oversized magical beast had blazing yellow eyes, and damp, sickly green hair. Its sinewy muscles churned like brown, silted water. A fine spray of water smelling of rotting fish burst from its nose.

  A male Merrow with an elongated fish tail sat side-saddle on the Water Horse. Beneath his spiked black hair and yellow-red head fin, he had blue-green skin coated with tiny grey barnacles. Thin nasal slits opened and closed with each breath, exposing blood-red mucosa inside. He held aloft a three-pronged trident of rusted metal and river debris.

  Viper widened her stance. Elldyr creft curled around her hands, ready for the offensive. Dhillon caught Clare’s arm and dragged her away from the beast and behind Viper. He stayed in front of Clare, eyes ranging across the tsunami of riders poised for attack.

  The Merrow’s voice gurgled when he spoke, a sound as ugly as his face. “My Mistress, Annys of the Blue Waters, welcomes you to her country,” he pointed his weapon at Viper, “and demands your death.”

  Battle chants erupted from the other Merrow. The females, with flawless pearlescent faces, had upper bodies with smooth skin in hues more green than blue. Cherry red, branching fins ran from the top of their heads along their spines. Their teeth, black and crooked, were no less dangerous than the males’, despite the beauty in their feminine faces. The Merrows wore stiff kelp-patterned armour, in shades of rust and brown. They flaunted spears, saw-toothed blades and tridents constructed from the river’s cast offs.

  “It is a weak Mistress, indeed, who sends her damned creations to do her bidding.” Viper’s hands ignited with orange fire. The ground dried beneath her.

  She threw a crackling fireball at the Merrow on the bridge in front of her. The sphere knocked him to the ground. He rolled around and howled in pain. His armour bubbled. The Water Horse charged Viper without its rider. She created an elldyr barrier in front of herself. The conjured beast exploded into a vile grey-brown froth when it stuck Viper’s defensive magic.

  Graeme had his pistol trained on the fallen Merrow, who trashed his tail and grasped at the ground with one hand in a vain attempt to pull himself into the water. Viper flipped the rider over by the tail and stomped on his chest until he stopped moving. His eyes bulged as he died.

  “Heed me well,” she said to the other Merrows. Tails twitched and hands tightened on their weapons. “My fight lies with Annys, not with thee. Mistake me not. I will not hesitate to kill thee, nor is thy aeir free from my powers. Stay thy hand or perish by mine!”

  A screech from one of the females incited a thunderous cry like the r
oar of a waterfall from the others. The first wave of Merrows stormed the bridge, three towards Viper and two at Graeme. The others remained in the safety of the wave, vaguely interested in Clare and Dhillon.

  Graeme fired his pistol repeatedly. “Run!” he ordered the youths.

  “I can’t!” Dhillon yelled back. He held his small dagger in his hand. Clare clutched his arm in fear.

  Viper blasted her trio of attackers with a cyclone of fire. The lead rider caught the worst of the flames. Her skin charred and cracked. Heat in the air strangled her scream into silence. The Merrow’s destrier boiled until it vaporized beneath its rider’s blackened body.

  Viper encircled the Merrow at the back right of the formation with bindings of magic. The elldyr creft rings contracted until his ribcage audibly crushed. Viper tore his polearm from his grip. She drove it, imbued with elldyr, through the heart of his Water Horse. The beast reared up on its hind legs. Its screech of misery ended in a splatter of muck. Viper broke off the pointed end of the polearm and threw it like a javelin into the third Merrow’s heart. He died instantaneously.

  Gun shots grabbed Viper’s attention before she dealt with the third Water Horse.

  “Bullets go right through the horse things!” Graeme hollered. He’d been knocked to the ground by his attackers. A trident between his legs pinned his kilt to the bridge. A dying Merrow convulsed beside him, spewing watery green blood into the Medway. The horse waved its hooves savagely above Graeme. Bullets killed the riders, not the Water Horses.

  Viper pummelled the remaining three Water Horses, including the one overtop of Graeme, with a barrage of dark purple elldyr entwined with orange-red fire. She didn’t stop until her magic blasted the beasts to foggy wisps.

  “One destroys conjured creatures with magic, or with weapons altered by magic,” she said.