Queen of the Dead
Dwynwyn, Queen of the Dead, drifted out of the Hall of Peace and between the delicate, dark spires of the city of Sharajentis. She flew freely above its ever growing buildings, fortifications, and spires. Granite gray towers rose with great angular faces from the bedrock far below the ancient floor of the Margoth Woods. Sheer walls of stone with stark, razor-sharp angles radiated outward from the inner ward of the city, forming a cascading series of battlements, towering retrenchments, and ramparts that glowered down slick, polished vertical scarp above the enormous dry moat. Long strands of spiderwebs, woven at the behest of the necrodryads, hung from each of the spires, draping the city in a lacework shroud; a protection from assault by creatures of flight. A perpetual fog permeated the entire wood now, hiding the city from the eyes of the living yet allowing most of its citizens to see clearly the approach of any enemy.
It was the city of the dead—her domain—and its very existence threatened every one of the other Five Kingdoms of the Fae. For years beyond memory, the five original Fae kingdoms had struggled for domination, each over the others. A new, sixth kingdom threatened everyone—especially a kingdom with powers the other five could only envy.
The large stone garden surrounding the Hall of Peace fell quickly behind her. To her right she could vaguely discern the shadowy form of the Lyceum, itself a fortress of the living inside the Kingdom of the Dead. Dwynwyn could almost hear the recitations of the Oraclyn-loi—the Vision Pilgrims in training—drifting out from those long halls. Seekers from each of the Five Kingdoms journeyed at considerable risk to present themselves just to be considered for training in Dwynwyn’s Lyceum. Some came at the bidding of their jealous masters; others out of nearly fanatical obsession to attain the Sharaj—the “Power” as they had come to call it. The limits of the Lyceum to instruct new Oraclyn initiates were exceeded almost at its inception. Many were turned away at the gates of Sharajentis, only to return again in the hope of learning the truth that Dwynwyn had discovered and the power of the visions they all shared.
What a strange fate has brought us all to this terrible destiny, Dwynwyn thought with a frown.
The Shadow Guard—formerly dead warrior faeries of the Third Caste—sailed about her in ever protective circles, their milk-white and pupil-less eyes darting here and there in their eternal watchfulness. Deython, Commander of the Dead, had insisted upon it, especially with his constant absence from the city. The truth of it was, Dwynwyn told herself, that when one commands the dead, there really is very little to fear from death itself.
The living, on the other hand, could cause you all kinds of trouble.
The labyrinthine streets and alleys below her seethed with movement. The restless dead never ceased their building, shaping, and expansion of the city both inward and outward. They built because they were driven to activity; to stop, as she quickly became aware some twenty-six years before, was to suffer the torment of their condition. It was the nature of that torment that had become the greatest question of her own existence. It was to answer that question that drove her now.
Dwynwyn pushed her wings a little faster, soaring easily in her weaving path between the great spiderwebs surrounding her palace. The great tower rose high above the surrounding fortress, shining black obsidian from the fires at the heart of Sine’shai coaxed upward into a hideous shape. Its windows were darker pools reminiscent of eye sockets in skulls. The pillars surrounding the tower were shaped like great long bones, its arches formed into ribs. Its summit was crested with seven long curved towers in the shape of claws. It was repulsive to everything for which the faery stood, and after twenty-six years Dwynwyn still shuddered to approach it. Everything about the city’s architecture said “go away.” Her own palace seemed to scream revulsion to the very soul of the Fae.
It was, of course, all the work of the dead. The dead faery had little use for the living and found their presence troubling at best. But they looked to Dwynwyn as their queen and honored the living Sharajin—as Dwynwyn’s Seekers were called—whom they served. So they built for her this city and made it a fortress which no one would want even if they should be able to take it by some means.
“My fortress,” Dwynwyn sighed. “My prison.”
Dwynwyn banked around a particularly thick cluster of webbing and settled on a large balcony nearly a third of the way up the black tower. Her black and purple robes blended into the obsidian so as to make her almost invisible. She sighed and stepped forward. The blackness parted before her as she stepped into the darkness. Her guards remained outside, hovering about the entrance, the sound of their wings suddenly silenced as the obsidian closed once more behind her. The sound of her own footfalls sounded loudly in her ears as Dwynwyn stepped down the smooth, black corridor.
Now fully in the darkness, she hastily pulled open the fasteners of the black robe of her office. It was heavy and loathsome to her now. She nevertheless caught it before it fell to the floor and, feeling her way in the short corridor, hung it carefully on a stone hook protruding from the wall just for this purpose. Dwynwyn shivered slightly in the cold, her light shift insufficient against the chill of dead stone. She closed her eyes, for she knew what was coming next, the most terrible thing that she was forced to endure.
She took a blind step and then another. She caught her breath as she heard the sigh of a second portal open before her. She saw the brightness rise abruptly behind her closed eyelids. Dwynwyn pressed her lips together and opened her eyes.
Tears blurred her vision. Dwynwyn choked on a single, unbidden sob that racked her. Her step faltered and she was forced, as many times before, to grip the railing in order to steady herself as tears rolled down her cheeks hot and unchecked.
The oval space was nearly two hundred feet in length and fully a hundred feet across. Painfully white alabaster columns soared upward higher and higher, their delicate latticework exquisite in its expression of peace and harmony. It arched upward into a dome where sunshine fell in gentle rays from between what appeared to be soft clouds drifting through an achingly blue sky. Twin waterfalls in the northeast and northwest quarters of the curved walls cascaded over crystal-laced stones, their soothing tumble quietly murmuring through the hall. The pools at the base of the falls then ran into two streams that ran around an oval dais before joining in a central pond. The floor of the hall was covered in a garden of unsurpassed beauty. The carefully molded shrubs and grasses were all shaded by the dappled light of impossibly graceful trees whose white bark ran upward into delicate silver-edged leaves that flashed in the gentle breeze. A small flock of birds fluttered through the air, their song a melody of contentment and rest.
It was the Garden of Dwynwyn and she wept each time she entered it. It was a pure, white heart in the center of death and darkness, her refuge and her strength. It was the symbol of life, beauty, peace, and joy. It represented everything that her kingdom denied and all that she had sacrificed for the sake of the dead.
Existing among the dead could be endured, she knew—one grew numb with them, unfeeling and cold. It was coming back to life and its warmth that hurt—for only then did she fully appreciate what she had lost.
“Dwynwyn? What might I do for you?”
“Cavan.” Dwynwyn sniffed behind her sudden smile. “You always ask me that each time I return.”
“It needs the asking each time you return,” Cavan replied. The aging sprite had been Dwynwyn’s nearly constant companion for as long as she cared to remember. Now he hovered with some effort in the air, holding the collar of her royal receiving coat for her as he had each evening upon her return. He helped her into the white-and-
silver-lined garment as he spoke. “Out you go into that horror you call your kingdom each day and then expect to fall back into this island of sanity without missing a step. Honestly, you fall apart every time you return. Then it’s my job to put you back together into some semblance of your former self.”
“Well, at least you know you’ll always have a job.” Dwynwyn smiled. She collected herself and breathed deeply of the sweet air in her garden. It settled her further. Cavan was right; perhaps if the transition from the darkness to the light were more gradual she might not feel its pain so acutely, she thought. She could talk with Deython about it if she chanced to see him again soon. Perhaps he could explain it better to her subjects than she had.
“Your Majesty,” came a voice from a single faery standing in the garden below. “I beg your forgiveness for intruding on you.”
She is always so formal, Dwynwyn smiled to herself as she closed her eyes and took in another deep breath. I wish she would relax a little. “Yes, Shaeonyn, of course. What is it?”
“Your Majesty, the appointed time is at hand. I submit my humble personage to confer with your august self.”
“Your ‘august self’?” Cavan snipped, wrinkling his nose. “Just what kind of manners do they teach those Seekers down in Mnemnoris?”
“Be kind, Cavan.” Dwynwyn chuckled. “Shaeonyn is my apprentice.”
“And has been for too long, if you ask me,” Cavan replied. “Those Mnemnorian Fae—they speak more and say less than any other faeries I know!”
“And there certainly are none more skilled at the Sharaj than Shaeonyn,” Dwynwyn said.
“With the exception of yourself,” Cavan added quickly.
“You should certainly hope that is the case,” Dwynwyn chided, “or she could rival us both. I am fine now, Cavan. Would you do me the favor of securing the hall as you leave? I have urgent business to attend with my apprentice.”
Cavan hesitated for a moment. “I live to serve—as does all my house, Dwynwyn—but are you certain you—”
“Yes, Cavan,” Dwynwyn interrupted him in her haste. “Please leave us. I wish to be undisturbed.”
Cavan nodded, though disapproval showed in his eyes. “As you wish,” he called as he quickly fluttered away through a side portal.
Dwynwyn waited until she was certain the portal had closed behind her sprite friend. The Sharaj, they called it—the Power—for lack of any other word that might do. The advent of this New Truth into the world had shaken the very foundations of the Fae. That Seekers should call truths into existence from their Orsyl—their visions—was a terrible and frightening thing, yet it was manifestly true and could not be denied. The Fae had given it a name largely out of fear; they hoped that by giving the thing the form of a word it would somehow be diminished. It would take more than semantics of the Fae language to contain the Sharaj.
Shrugging her shoulders as though the weight of her royal coat somehow did not sit well, Dwynwyn fluttered her wings and sailed over the railing toward the floor of her garden.
“Has she come?” Dwynwyn asked as she approached her apprentice.
“Queen Tatyana of Qestardis awaits your pleasure, Your Majesty. I have taken the liberty of securing your garden personally and delight in telling you that your words will remain private. Will there be anything else before I withdraw?”
“Yes.” Dwynwyn nodded as she softly alighted on the dais next to her apprentice. “There are two things I want. First, stay and hear what we say to each other. It concerns you, and I would rather you understand more fully the truth of what we are trying to accomplish.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” Shaeonyn murmured, her large eyes cast downward as she spoke. “And the other?”
“Please call me Dwynwyn.”
Shaeonyn hesitated, her silence speaking volumes.
“Well, perhaps we’ll just deal with one thing at a time,” Dwynwyn said, relieving her shy apprentice of the awkward moment. “Please conduct Her Majesty Tatyana to the garden at once.”
Dwynwyn watched Shaeonyn as she floated toward the western portal of the garden. She was lithe and beautiful, even among the Fae, with a long, delicate neck, smooth copper skin, and full lips. Her eyes were large dark pools that bent down slightly at the corners, giving a perpetual sadness to her countenance. Her hair was a flaxen color—a peculiarity that marked her as one of the southern Fae from the House of Mnemnoris.
She was the first, Dwynwyn reflected, to join her in her exile. Shaeonyn had arrived one day as uncalled for and largely unwanted as the storm that had preceded her, in the encampment near this same spot over twenty years before. Dwynwyn still remembered looking out from under the rain-soaked awning at the wet and shivering faery Seeker who had left her homeland, her lady, and her caste because of a vision she had had of a faery Seeker calling her to a place she had never known.
Dwynwyn had asked that shivering girl what she wanted.
“To see the vision clearly,” she replied haltingly, “to heed the call of the Sharaj and to master it.”
In all those years since and through all they had shared to-gether—both in the vision’s mystery and in life’s struggle—Dwyn-wyn had never been able to get beyond the reverential deference that Shaeonyn always showed to her. That Shaeonyn was driven by her visions was clear to Dwynwyn, but just what those visions were remained a mystery beyond the stone wall of her strict and proper bearing. Dwynwyn wondered if beyond that cold formality lay something too delicate to touch without bruising her apprentice.
She was skilled beyond even Dwynwyn’s abilities. Yet, for all that, the strength of her powers had been disappointing. She had an elegant command of the subtlety of the Sharaj but always seemed to tire easily, and the power of her creations from the vision were never as strong as Dwynwyn would have liked. The Queen of the Dead still hoped for some new truth that could explain the problem, for she saw her successor in Shaeonyn.
Now, Dwynwyn knew, the visions of the Sharaj that had carried this seemingly fragile Seeker to the Queen of the Dead were now about to carry her away. A wind was moving through Dwynwyn’s visions, too, and she knew them to be carrying her apprentice eastward on a desperate task. Its success was far from sure, for her vision did not carry that far.
Its failure, however, would certainly doom all the Fae as surely as it had doomed the Kyree.