Page 35 of Queen Demon
Dahin leaned forward to check the position of the canal cutting through the plains below and corrected the raft’s course minutely. “We have to believe it is. Such a powerful Well wouldn’t fade after only sixty or seventy years. Especially if there were people up there who still fed it occasionally.”
Tahren’s jaw tightened but she said nothing. Kai felt cold creep up his back like the stinging tendrils of an intention. Dahin’s words sparked a vision of the remnants of a people who were once so proud they thought they deserved to own the world and everyone and everything in it, tending their Well for years—perhaps with ritual sacrifices, with their own pain.
So many of the mortals who had formed the Hierarchs’ legions had been swept up unwilling because their own lands were conquered, because all their choices had been taken away, or because they had been raised from birth to believe in the superiority and sacredness of the Hierarchs’ mission. But there must have been a core of true believers, of the people who had decided it was right and proper to destroy the neighboring Sun-Ar in order to create power. To invest that power into one of their own who would wield it for all their glory and greed. Some of those people might never have left their homeland. Some would have fled back to it as the south fell and all their grand plans came to nothing around them.
With a troubled expression, Sanja sat back against the railing, and Tenes put an arm around her. Sanja said, “If they’re still up there, and the Well is still up there, they can make another Hierarch.”
“Exactly,” Dahin said. He let his breath out and just looked weary. “There’s no sign to say for certain that they’ve done it. I don’t even know if the scholars managed to find traces of the Well. But we have to be ready, we have to know.”
Ziede said, gravely, “Thank you for letting us help, Dahin.”
Kai added, “Thank you for trusting us.” At least now they all understood the urgency.
Even with the raft’s speed, it took days to reach the Belith city of Ancartre. Kai hadn’t taken the overland journey from Benais-arik to the south coast for a long time, and though he knew the years had changed the countryside, part of him had still expected to pass over a mostly empty landscape.
That made it a good surprise to see that over the last few decades, the renewed trade and travel along the old roads had given birth to scatters of villages and farms, many large enough to be called towns. The Rising World Cohort Post on the river roughly halfway between Benais-arik and Stios had grown not only a caravanserai, but enough farmsteads, dwellings, and markets to sprawl out into a small city. It warmed something deep in Kai’s chest, to fly into the night and to see the little clusters of lamplight appearing where only darkness had been before.
Dahin’s talk with Kai and Ziede, and maybe especially with Sanja, had calmed him down enough that he didn’t protest when they wanted to land in order to camp for the night, or for a chance to buy fresh food from a trading post, or just to relieve themselves in a thicket of brush rather than the lidded bucket kept in the raft’s shelter. The wind from the south coast was cooler and their passage through the air stole body heat; both Sanja and Tenes needed breaks from it. The rest of them could have endured a faster trip, but Kai was just relieved that they didn’t have to. Flying like this still gave him a headache.
They could also have made better time if they crossed the Gulf of Stios but it was prone to storms at this season and no one wanted to drown. Even Dahin was willing to admit it was too chancy. Once they reached the coast it was safer to skirt it until they could cross the Belith Straits where the gap between the two continents was at its narrowest point. Stios itself, once a majorport for the Hierarchs, and a place where some isolated Immortal Blessed families still lived, they decided to make a wide circle around.
“As nice as it would be to stay in an actual guest house,” Ziede said, “we don’t want to make the mistake of running into a Blessed who is going to ask a lot of questions.”
“‘Where did you get the ascension raft?’” Kai said by example. “Oh, we stole it from the Immortal Blessed we killed, but he was a traitor to the Rising World so the council said it was fine.”
“I can live without seeing Stios again for a while,” Tahren agreed dryly.
Dahin didn’t join the discussion, but he glared at the gray clouds building to the west and made the course change without protest.
The coastal landscape below was mostly marsh, and the villages they passed over were the stilt-houses of fishers. Floating wooden docks extended out into the shallow water for their small boats, and walkways stretched back onto solid land for the trader wagons that came to buy their catches.
They stopped at one floating village to buy a midday meal. Kai stood on the pier with Sanja and Tenes, watching the fishers cook crabs while Ziede and Tahren took a turn along the walkways. The fishers didn’t seem too frazzled by the raft; they were familiar with Immortal Blessed traveling to and from Stios. Though not Immortal Blessed in the company of Witches.
Kai wore his veiled hat to keep from causing any more consternation. It had been a long time since demons had been forced to fight for the Hierarchs in Palm but it wasn’t worth the trouble to test the waters. A few people came up and asked him and Ziede to touch protective charms made of sea glass and string, since contact with a Witch would make the charm more effective.
So close to their goal, Dahin was antsy at the stop and stayed with the raft, but Kai brought him a spiced crab pie and that seemed to mollify him.
Waiting for the others to return, Kai took a chance and said, “One of the cloister Witches thought Tenes might have family in Palm, near the stone hill country. We’re close to that now…” Dahin looked up from the pie, his face set in an anticipatory wince, and Kai knew what the answer would be.
“Better to do it on the way back,” Dahin said, sounding mostly reasonable. “She didn’t ask to stop, did she?”
“No,” Kai admitted. While Tenes might be reluctant to ask the Witch King to set off across the continent on a hunch to find her family, she might be more willing to look now that they were so close. But there was no telling how far the search would take them. Kai didn’t want to suggest she do it alone; she was still in his care. “All right,” he agreed. “We’ll talk to her about it on the way back.”
When the coast curved into the straits, it grew more rocky, with more bluffs than marshes or beaches. It was obvious when they came within sight of the best point for the crossing.
Palm-Miahfra was a busy trading port of timbered steep-roofed buildings sprawling to either side of a wide channel that had been dug into the shore. It formed a harbor deep enough for larger ships, and a number were anchored along its sides and at the long stone docks. The mouth of it was further protected by a breakwater of piled rocks curving out from the shore. In this land where reminders of war were everywhere, there were still big, slowly rotting hulks of Hierarch ships lodged in sandbars just off the narrow beaches to either side of the channel.
With the strain obviously wearing on Dahin, they had managed to convince him to let Tahren take turns guiding the raft. She was at the steering column and as she slowed the raft to a hover, Kai asked, “Ziede, is it safe to cross?” The sky was blue and bright, the clouds white and puffy, and they were all wrapped up in scarves to keep the wind from stealing their sun hats. Thewind wasn’t as strong as it had been yesterday, but Kai had never trusted coastal weather, whichever coast it was.
Ziede’s brow furrowed as she consulted the nearest wind-devils, then she leaned out to check the weather and tide flags flapping on the tall narrow tower at the tip of the harbor’s artificial channel. The symbols carved around its parapet indicated it was part of Palm’s Coastal Watch, which had formed at the end of the war. Now instead of guarding against roving bands of legionaries, the Watch rescued lost traders and fishers who came to grief in sudden storms.
Dahin said impatiently, “Well?” He pointed toward the far shore, where hazy white towers were just visible against the blue sky: the city of Ancartre. “It’s not that far.”
“Storms come up fast down these straits—” Tahren began.
Dahin’s jaw went tight. “Of course, I know that—”
“Or—” Ziede cut them both off. “We could just hold our arguments until I answer Kai’s question. Yes, it is safe to cross now.”
