Page 6

Chapter Six

Champions of her queendom

Wardens of her madness

I stumbled from the grave, clutching my stomach as I staggered over cobblestones. My head felt stagnant, sludgy, much like the shallow water in King Take’s moat.

“My queen,” cried Valetise. “Something ails her.”

My body went rigid as a board. My head snapped up, and my knees hit the cobblestones. I could not have closed my wide eyes if I had exerted all of my considerable ancient power.

The air rippled around me and in my very lungs, then a howl ripped from my lips. My three werebeasts took up the howl without hesitation.

I howled, a servant of madness and poison.

“She is sick,” a princess was saying.

I was not sick. Words ripped from me. “ I am obsessed. ”

Mad with it. Incoherent with the enticing aroma. I inhaled as the sky thundered and lightning struck Vitale. Thatched homes set alight, and screams rose from my sixth. They were in the way of my obsession, and so their safety did not concern me.

Neither did the safety of the monsters surrounding me, though I knew all of their names.

“Remove yourselves or suffer peril.” My voice was one I had heard before—a menacing and grating voice that whined, high-pitched, as strained metal might.

Three of the monsters surrounding me held spears, and the tallest of them was saying, “She came back through the grave clutching her stomach.”

“Obsession has struck her, Gangrel,” said Princess Bring. “We must let the first wave roll over her, lest she acts upon obsession too soon and too madly.”

And how exactly would they manage that? How laughable.

I bent my knees to jump.

I would attack King Bring first.

“Pawns!” shouted Toil.

A chalky-skinned pawn grabbed my foot as I leaped high. And another one gripped my second foot. I kicked both of the seeing pawns in the face, then landed lightly.

A spear swept my legs out next, but I pushed my power out to flip backwards, then sprung off the wall.

I spun in the air, and a werebeast snapped his jaws at the hem of my dress.

A terrible growl rattled my queendom. They would not prevent my departure, nor my obsession. I saw the way clearly. “Then you have all chosen peril.”

Splat!

A slime explosion threw me backward against the wall of bars. Picket hastened to cast his fibers and help to restrain me. Rage swept me along, and I had never felt the like. My queendom shimmered and squeezed with it. Pawn, princess, and monsters cried out and exclaimed at the jump and tilt.

“You will not hold me here.” I pulsed heat into the slime, though I had never known my power could do so.

The slime dried, and I shoved out with all my strength to shatter the prison. Picket’s ropes were nothing against the claw of my fingers.

My lips torsioned. “Pawns can do naught against a queen.”

Princess Bring and Princess Raise planted themselves before me.

“Power fills me, my queen,” said Princess Bring. “Never fear. We will not let madness derail you so.”

She shot slime over my hands, flinging them out wide with the act. She slimed my ankles too.

I laughed and pulsed searing heat into the slime again, but my laughter faded when the slime did not dry. I used all my strength to pry arm and leg from the wall of bars and achieved nothing more than the smallest budge. My growl was volcanic. “What is this?”

Princess Raise neared. “I am not saying that I will enjoy this, but I am not saying that I will not.”

The princess punched me in the face.

The power in her fist . My breath was stolen. My mind stripped blank from pain. The back of my head hit the bars, and I gasped.

I gasped as the madness that had consumed me upon returning from the grave drained away. “Thank you.”

Raise snorted. “Any time.”

My face hurt. “Maybe not any time.”

She hummed. “Deal. Not sure I could do that any time, unless you are going mad over obsession.”

“I worried that we could not restrain her,” Princess Bring said on an exhale.

She called her slime back, and I gingerly touched my nose. The break was already healing. “Mother poisoned me to lessen the jolt of obsession. No doubt so two princesses might restrain me.”

All four would be needed if this happened again, and I imagined eating any old hellebore would not poison me half as well as the one Mother had given me.

The last of her poison left my body, and with it the bruising and break caused by Princess Raise.

“My queen, what of your new obsession?” Gangrel asked.

Indeed.

My gaze lifted to the onlooker on the second level—Princess Change. She stood outside her chamber, and the monster would have seen much this dawn. Without her presence, I still would hesitate to divulge this information to pawns and princesses.

I was not their only tie. Not yet.

“I must retire and reflect,” I declared.

Pawns bowed, princesses curtsied, and then everyone waited for me to move.

I peered down at my feet, which had not budged. The slime was gone. Goodness. “I must retire. So I will go now.”

Picket crouched to inspect my legs. “There is no slime remaining, my queen.”

Apparently there were aftereffects to hellebore poisoning. No matter, here must be the reason that a queen could blink. Except I did not wish to reveal that skill to Princess Change.

A conundrum.

Princess Bring squelched to my side. “I will help you, Your Majesty. What else is a lady’s maid for?”

“Many wonderful things, and I would be grateful for your assistance.”

Princess Raise chuckled under her breath as she helped to stick me to the slime covering Princess Bring’s back. I got the sense that my taking pawns were also vastly amused by my helplessness, but thirteen mothers had recently humbled me, so I did not feel above being a queenly source of amusement this dawn.

I was blinked to my chambers this way, then deposited on my bed. Bring called her slime away, but an unpleasant tackiness remained. I could do naught about it.

Princess Bring removed my copper crown and set it on the small bedside dresser. I barely felt the crown these days and had forgotten it was on.

“What of obsession, Your Majesty?” she asked as Princess Raise entered. No pawn and no other princess lurked nearby.

I allowed my body to relax into the pillows and mattress. “My obsession is of kings, as I had assumed.”

“Of kings,” they both exclaimed.

One was fearful for me, and the other fearful of me—of what I might do to her king.

Princesses were in my power, and the champions of my queendom and obsession. I would not contain everything within this time. I explained, “Starlight will steal all they are to build her tower.”

“The verse,” Raise gasped. “What was five shall become six. We have witnessed the expansion of your queendom, and soon your power will rival that of a king.”

Yes, that is how she had interpreted the verse, and I had allowed her to believe this. Otherwise the princess would not have agreed to help me secure the bridal gifts and to aid me in reaching the fullness of my queendom.

“Soon my power will rival that of a king, you are correct,” I said. “But that is not all. Princess Raise, I do not seek to hurt your husband, not his kingdom, nor yourself, and indeed not any monster. That remains as true as it ever was.”

Her reply was wooden. “What are you saying?”

“You know what I say.”

The female was a near king among princesses. She had absorbed more than her ancient share of connection while playing king and covering the warping of their union. She used that connection now. “You will be the only queen.”

“Yes.”

“Kings will cease to exist.”

“Yes, in the way they do now. What they will become, I cannot yet connect.”

Princess Bring’s nerves arose in damp jiggles.

Raise sat heavily on the end of my bed. “You always knew this.”

“I suspected. A chant in a grave confirmed my suspicions.”

Princess Bring said, “But how will you bring five kings to heal, my queen? However can such power be netted? Your obsessions are so uniquely defined, and kings must know how ancients drive you. They must have gleaned what you have gleaned.”

I had turned prince to pawn, and princesses to servants of my queendom.

Kings—at least three of them—might have guessed they were next. I had relied on their assumption that I would merely grow equal in power.

Of them, perhaps only King See had guessed the truth from the start, well before I had, in fact.

Regardless, as soon as I gave rein to obsession and struck the first king, the other kings would know what I was about. “I must overcome kings, yet how to go about it? How and how and how?”

Raise’s face turned stony. I could not say how I knew this, really, other than there was a sudden stoniness to her always blank face.

Princess Bring gargled an exhale. “I am certain time shall reveal the ins and outs, my queen.”

“There is no time,” I answered, still staring at the ceiling as a chant swam in mind.

Up and out

Weaves golden fate

Feeling ancient in gifted wisdom.

Five powers grasp

All icy demise

Free from her olden prison.

If throne is seat

Union is seam

Skulls are skin

Shackles are stitch.

Until ancient in truth

Tarry not

Linger never

Lest the world becomes forever buried.

I could not understand the middle. The part about icy demise, and thrones that were seats. The end was a warning of what would happen if I did not conquer five kings.

The beginning was a warning of what would happen if I allowed “time to reveal the ins and outs.”

So I could not wait. And I must act.

How and how and how?

There was a humming in the walls. I could almost make out words, if they were walls at all. Was Mother learning to talk and not just rattle?

“We are immortal.” Princess Raise scoffed. “No time? Of course there is time to wait.”

That would suit her ends greatly, for unlike the connective abilities of a queen and kings, Princess Raise needed ample time to ponder and ponder and ponder some more before she could arrive at most connections. She did not wish for me to act. She was also a princess, who likely could not fathom the foolishness of disregarding time.

“We are immortals all, and time chips away at us like any other being,” I mused. “For princesses, four bridal gifts were won. For kings… Do they share such an object? Did princesses or ancients give them anything at their unions? No,” I answered my own question. “For King See has never joined with a princess, so the answer does not lie in their unions, nor the power gained with union. The answer resides in what came before.”

“They each have a kingdom,” Princess Bring supplied.

I was grateful she had no loyalty to her king because I felt the loss of Princess Raise’s openness and would not like to face two silent princesses.

“They do each have a kingdom.” How to win a kingdom, though? “Is there a tangible source of their kingdom, do you suppose? Something like a heart?”

Princess Bring shook her head. “I have no answer, Your Majesty. Shall I consult pawns?”

I tried to wave a hand in the air to no avail. “Pawns are rarely worth consulting. Not that they are not magnificent in every way. We each of us has a monstrous calling, after all, but their calling does not include consultation services.”

A tightness entered Princess Raise’s shoulders.

The caveat of the Raises’ facelessness was thus: time or monsterdom has erased the facial features that gave away their emotions in deals and negotiations, and this had made them lax about body posture and all it revealed. This was often the key to unlocking their thoughts. And so they gave away far more than most monsters. “Princess Raise, I remind you of our deal.”

“I remind you that I agreed to help build your tower as long as my king remained unharmed.”

True enough. “I will harm no monster, your husband included.”

“Do you give me your word.” Her tone was mocking. She had little reason to trust a queen. Ours was the beginning of a friendship, not the hearty and warm middle of one.

I could not look at her. I would need to fathom how to unlock my body if I wanted to conquer kings. “Consider that obsession is granted by ancients, princess.”

“The same ancients that drove me to union with my husband. What is driven by ancients is not always a blessing. Consider that I mean to protect him and always will, chained by love as I am.”

I would consider just that. For there was something in what she had said about ancients driving her to union with a king.

If throne is seat

Union is seam

The chant of thirteen mothers mentioned unions, and so I must not disregard their importance ever. “You speak from fear. You speak too hastily. My obsession need not be as it has previously been, and your union need not always remain a curse, but your union will not change if you continue on in the same manner of the last many centuries.”

“I have seen you in the throes of madness,” she whispered. “When you attacked Princess Change.”

“Is Princess Change yet unharmed?”

The princess did not answer.

Princess Bring exclaimed, “You forget that ancients fill us with power too. If our queen grows too seized with violent and thoughtless intent, we possess what is needed to hold her. If you do not trust her promise, then consider that your role as your husband’s shield is best carried out from where you are. Abandoning your role as queen’s steward to hasten to your husband’s side will only see you locked away and unable to act as shield at all.”

Raise dragged her hands down her face, and oily prints remained. She was very upset. “I envy your position, Bring, so indifferent you are to your king’s fate.”

“I try to be indifferent because he wished to kill me,” she replied. “And I also believe Queen Perantiqua holds the fate of the world and monsters in her stitches. I feel certain about this where I rarely feel certain of anything.”

Such feeling rose in me at her soggy utterings. A monster believed so powerfully in my fate when I felt doubt on the subject from breath to blinking and back again.

Raise squared her shoulders. “Know this, Queen Perantiqua. You may rule the world, but if you harm my husband, I will be your enemy forevermore. Princess Bring has the inner strength to do what is required of her as your servant, but I am seized in the trappings of all I feel for my husband, and I cannot imagine that changing.”

There was somewhat of a resounding boom in me at her phrasings of love, for I certainly felt Princess Bring was the stronger of the two in this moment. I did not care to inspect this feeling too much.

Princess Raise sighed. “But love does give me hope when I perhaps should not hope. I must be a fool, for I shall tell you the source of a king’s kingdom, so infected with hope as I am. Kings share a source indeed. You are right that this is not tied to union nor the power gained from union.”

I inhaled the heady aroma filling the room. Bring shivered, and Raise stopped speaking all together.

She took a breath before continuing. “My husband has often remarked on how kings were once unified. Even when they made their pact to save the world, the beginnings of ruin and resistance existed in many of them, so they were not truly unified then, you see. You must go back to the very beginning. To that which is olden. That is the only time that kings were unified, so my husband recalls.”

In its ancientness, my mind could fathom two verses at once. And so they played in a blink side by side and all together.

Five soldiers rode across the plains,

At a cave they arrived.

Green light shone from far within,

So sought it, the brave five.

A pulsing power, a stone half-buried,

Beckoned, taunted, coaxed.

’Til five brave men, in unison did,

Touch left hand to olden rock.

Each man awoke in icy darkness,

The stone eroded and dull.

Breaking free of the cave, no longer

brave, They stared at a new, foreign age.

Up and out

Weaves golden fate

Feeling ancient in gifted wisdom.

Five powers grasp

All icy demise

Free from her olden prison.

Olden rock. Olden prison. The key was in that which was olden , as Princess Raise had rightly recalled her husband saying.

My mothers had referred to the time that ancients spent warping kings as “her olden prison .” In the original poem of kings, five brave men touched their left hands to olden rock. In unison. In unity.

Unified.

“And this is the only time kings were unified, and this is all five kings really share. Their source is the olden rock where ancients warped them to immortal beings.”

Princess Bring took up a squelching glide. “So we go to the rock, and you will do queenly shimmerings, and afterward kings will kneel at your heels.”

I highly doubted the conquering of kings would be so easy. There was the matter that the original poem of kings mentioned them setting left hand to olden rock. Bravery was mentioned in the verse, too, and a passage of time also. The green light could be important, or their occupation as soldier. All of these factors might play into my obsession and more.

The conquering of kings would not be easy.

“Obsession sharpens,” I whispered. “Come dusk, I will search for olden rock.”

“You need not search,” Raise muttered.

My, the monster felt very trapped in the right or wrong of her direction. She could hardly work against me, and she could hardly leave my queendom and be rendered ignorant of my every move. On another level, the princess believed that her union would never heal without my help. But she had opted to help me along for now, and for that, I was grateful.

Bring stopped gliding. “But yes, my queen, you would not know of the olden rock. Kings often gathered there in the very beginning to seek out immortal and ancient answers. I cannot speak for other kings, but King Bring has not visited the olden rock in an age. ’Tis outside the walls of this pulse.”

Beyond the walls of Vitale? Was it indeed? Other than a school field trip where we had walked a few feet beyond the steel gates of Vitale, I had only peered out over the high walls at the hostile world beyond on rare occasions—mostly when considering how I would fling my withering body over the side when the time came.

As a monster, I had nothing to fear of a hostile world.

But I did fear a stone that had triggered the coming of kingly monsters. The stone had been the warping tool of ancients. Whether power remained in the stone, I could not ignore a deep foreboding at the idea of seeking such a tool out.

Yet I felt surety in this path too—or perhaps a lack of other ideas. “When dusk arrives, to the olden rock I must go.”