Shadows Of The Lost Queen

“The river ran backwards on the day the Queen vanished. That were near a century ago now.” The old man said.

“And you still remember it?” Thragnir said. They sat huddled near a small fire in the ruins of what had been an old temple. It had long since fallen into ruin, its grand roof torn away by conflict. What remained was a skeleton of what once stood—a few fractured beams and pillars lining the main aisle like broken bones pointing toward the heavens. The fire was almost too small to gain any benefit from it. If Thragnir hadn’t needed desperately to make the tincture that now brewed in a small flask in front of him, he probably wouldn’t have taken the risk.

“Like it were yesterday.” The man gazed sadly into the fire, dancing light reflecting in his weary eyes. “That was the day the Loktauri returned. The whole world seemed to shake. The ground opened up. They came pouring out like… like…” A wheezy, wet rattle seemed to take the old man’s breath away for a moment. He coughed, spat something into the fire and continued, “Like ants when you kick their hill.”

Loktauri. Thragnir’s lip curled in disgust. Just hearing the word made his blood boil. “Who was she?”

“Who? The Queen?” the old man looked incredulous at first, but then his face softened with understanding. “I guess I shouldn’t expect a pup like you to know. So little is left now. Queen Wenestra Arenfeld was her name. She was Queen of Ael Aren, though I imagine your people had a different name for it.”

“If they did, it wasn’t told to me.” Thragnir gripped the glass vial with a pair of tongs and examined it closely. Still too green. It needed to simmer a little longer. “Strange that all of that should happen on the same day.”

“Not really.” The old man said matter-of-factly, “Not if you grew up anywhere this side of the river.”

Thragnir raised one eyebrow skeptically.

“There were… legends, prophecies I suppose you could say. Most of us thought them myth, no different than any of the other bedtime stories we told our children.” He paused as if trying to remember something nearly forgotten. Just as he opened his mouth to continue, the silence was broken by a sharp whistle followed by a sickening thwack. Thragnir froze. A bloody, jagged arrowhead appeared between the old man’s teeth and he slumped forward into the fire.

Without thinking, Thragnir rolled backward off the stool he had been sitting on just as another arrow hissed by and clattered off of a nearby stone pillar. He flung himself back, into the shadows where the dim light of the fire could not reach, pressed himself against the wall and whispered a few words in his native tongue.

“Where’d he go?” one voice demanded.

“He’s still in there somewheres. Get in there and find him!” another voice said. “And be quick about it. We been trackin’ this one too long to let him get away now!”

Thragnir remained motionless, barely breathing and willing his heart to slow to crawl. The Loktauri might be able to see perfectly in the dark, but these men, these traitors who served them could not. In daylight, this little stunt may not have worked, but Thragnir was confident that the light from a couple of torches wouldn’t be enough to penetrate the illusion he had just cast.

“This isn’t good,” one traitor said. “I’ve checked every corner of this place twice. He’s not here!”

“Keep looking. We go back now empty-handed…,” The soldier shuddered but did not continue. Thragnir held his breath as one of the soldiers passed by for the third time without seeing him. He had hoped he would be able to escape without bloodshed. Not because he felt any pity for these humans, every one of their race could die and Thragnir would be no less happy. He simply didn’t want to deal with the mess. Leaving bodies out in the open these days was asking for trouble.

When the soldier walked by him a fourth time, Thragnir made his move. With one practiced motion he stepped out of the shadows, grabbed the soldier about the mouth and slipped his dagger between his scrawny human ribs. His struggle was brief and silent and Thragnir let his body down to the floor without making a sound.

“Oi!” Thragnir raised the pitch of his naturally guttural voice in an attempt to mimic the dead man’s. “Look at this!” It must have been passable because the other soldier didn’t suspect anything as he walked around the corner directly into Thragnir’s blade. The placement was perfect once again. Between the ribs, through the lung and into the left ventricle. He watched the life leave the man’s eyes as his heart thrashed itself to ribbons against cold Grulmarian steel.

~

“Cooked too long,” Thragnir said to himself. The tincture in his hand had turned from vivid, nearly fluorescent green to a murky brown. “Drok’tar!” he cursed and flung the vial to the ground. The ground sizzled and hissed as the liquid spread, filling the air with acrid brown smoke. There was no time to make another. He considered leaving the bodies where they were, but when he looked at the old man, his head now smoldering from lying in the fire, he felt a pang of sympathy. The old man was not his friend. Thragnir had no friends. Still, the old man had been generous with what precious little food he had managed to gather for himself and had shared his fire with a complete stranger. He could not leave the old man's body to be ravaged. Time was running out, but this wouldn’t take long.

“What’s takin’ so long in there?!” It was the voice he had heard earlier, likely the leader of this little patrol. He considered waiting for the hunter sergeant to enter. He would fall just as easily as the others—but with no way of knowing how many more awaited just outside, it wasn’t worth the risk.

Fetching his staff from the ground nearby, Thragnir began to whisper. He closed his eyes, focused all his will into a single thought, and touched the tip of his staff to the ground. From the hard-packed soil, a thorn-covered vine emerged. It paused, as if sensing its surroundings, then shot toward the entrance, dividing and multiplying as it went. Reaching the frame where massive double doors once stood, it climbed and spread, weaving itself through the decaying wood until the entrance was completely blocked by a living wall of tightly woven thorns

“I am sorry, old one,” Thragnir said, “May the streams of Ildarion guide you safely to your eternal home.” He reached into one of the many pockets of his cloak and brought out a small leather pouch. A single pinch of the dust within would be more than enough. He brought his fist to his mouth, whispered a few words and blew the ash-like substance off of his palm. The dust came to life, glowing like a swarm of flaming gnats and settled over the corpse which immediately burst into brilliant orange fire.

Escaping the traitorous patrol wasn’t hard after that. In typical, short-sighted fashion, the traitorous patrol focused their attention and energy on cutting through the vines. It was all too easy to crawl through a broken window and disappear into the night.

~

Thragnir wandered purposefully through the forest, stopping only to gather a mushroom here, a herb there, until at last the first rays of a new day shone over the horizon. He hadn’t noticed in the dark, but now, as he knelt in front of a still forest pool refilling his flask, he almost didn’t recognize his own reflection. His normally robust, olive-green skin had turned to a pallid, sickly grey. His orange eyes had lost their luster, his thick black beard, usually oily and soft, was dull and brittle to the touch, and his cracked lips looked as if they hadn’t tasted water in a fortnight. It wouldn’t be long now.

The morning stabbed at his eyes, each shaft of sunlight a lance of fire piercing his skull. The dawn had yet to fully break into bright morning, but already the faint light was a blinding assault. Thragnir yanked his hood lower, the fabric shielding his burning eyes until all he could see was the shifting ground beneath his feet.

Even as his vision dimmed, he began to notice his other senses awakening. Somewhere ahead, a twig on the forest floor snapped. Turning toward the sound he realized that not only could he hear the footsteps of the heavy animal that had stepped on the twig, but he could also hear its every breath and even, faintly, the steady thumping rhythm of its heart.

He breathed deep of the crisp morning air and the musk that drifted delicately on the gentle breeze told him that the animal grazing somewhere in the distance was a yearling doe, that she was foraging under an oak tree where acorns had recently fallen, that she had bedded down the night before under an old willow tree, and that in approximately three weeks, she would be coming into heat for the first time.

But there was something else on the wind as well. Something damp and musty and filled with the cloying aroma of mystaria mushrooms. If he could reach the cave in time, he might still be able to brew the tincture before it was too late.