Orphan Queen Valkyrie - Chapter 32

Hi, everybody!

Ovid here! This chapter marks the end of the first story arc of Orphan Queen Valkyrie. I have some more writing queued up and ready to go, but I'm taking a week or so off to develop some other projects before I return to post chapters of Orphan Queen Valkyrie: Part II.

What to expect: Necromancers! Treachery! Beating the crap out of snotty nobles! A quadruple date! Life in a palace! At least one prison break! And, of course, happy, cuddly moments between Val and her sometimes-overprotective girlfriend!

Also in development and coming in the not-so-distant future: Tales from the Guild a LitRPG adventure fantasy that focuses on Alysonna "Aly" von Knurr, a reformed (?) thief, beginning adventurer, and niece to the Corvona Adventurer's Guild Vice-Chair, the famous duelist, Vivian von Knurr. Only, everything Alysonna thought she knew about herself might be a lie, and her future might be a lot more convoluted and exciting than that of a typical adventurer. Will Aly be able to avoid disappointing her parents, rescue the sister she didn't even know she had, and defeat the ancient evil lurking out in the wilderness beyond civilization? Maybe! Find out in Tales from the Guild!

-Ovid

Chapter Thirty-Two: The Sleeping Queen

Val had almost forgotten how fun it was to scheme with smart people. Sure, she'd done her share of shenanigans with Iselde and Niko, but the stakes were a lot lower then, and it was usually to pull a practical joke or to see what they could get away with nicking off of somebody before they noticed. They'd give it all back unless that person was an arse - the orphans at Hale Wulde were treated even better than the ones at Mrs. Lavoie's, and so they didn't need to scheme to get two meals or a bed every day… though they did need to do their morning lessons. In retrospect, that was a good thing, because Niko hadn't needed years of remedial schooling before starting her magical studies.

Levin was sharp, very sharp. But he was sharp in a different way from Val and Gus, or from Niko or Pudge, for that matter. He was a fast reader, certainly faster than Val, and he could remember almost everything he read. Val considered her memory to be pretty good - and people sometimes told her it was very good - but it wasn't that good. Levin didn't have a talent for devices like Val did. If you took apart a clock without her watching, she could put it back together after examining the bits for a minute or two. But it took her an hour to memorize a page of text (they sometimes had to do so for practice), and she'd have forgotten half of it by the next week. After two read-throughs, Levin had whatever he'd read memorized and he could recite it ad verbatim months later. Therefore, he could quote ad verbatim from the Pale Testament, which made him a very convincing (albeit young) Brother of the Old Benediction.

They'd just stabled their horses and caught a meal at a mid-town restaurant (mid-town was what they called the second tier - the tiers were low-town, mid-town, upper town, and high town… the several tiers above that were too small to warrant district names). The four of them were discussing what to do about further meals, lodging, and stabling fees when one of the patrons tugged on Levin's sleeve.

"Excuse me, brother?"

Levin smiled amiably. "Yes, er… brother?" The man wore robes virtually identical to Levin's. Val held her breath and her heart may have skipped a beat. But Levin hardly skipped one. "May I be of assistance?"

The monk nodded. "Our prior is ill… he's taken a potion but the recovery's been slow. We haven't got any brothers with the gift of true preaching and wondered if you might be able to give a sermon or two? Assuming, of course, that you've got the gift."

"I'm Gifted all right," Levin said with a twinkle in his eyes. "I'd be happy to preach for you if you can give my companions and me somewhere to stay for the few days we're in town."

"Your… companions? These children?"

"Children? Hardly. Val and Niko are the Maidens of Ford Leaven… when the army of Aurilicht moved to capture the town, Val had a divine vision from the Risen King himself and she and Niko rallied the town's defenders to drive the enemy off and rout their army into a horrible defeat. And Frow? Well… his story is even more incredible. We've got an audience with the patriarch himself in three days time to receive benediction but need somewhere to stay until then."

Plausible lies spun off of Levin's tongue so easily, Val had to wonder whether she could possibly trust anything he ever had to say. But he was almost unfailingly honest with her, so perhaps she should just appreciate that he seemed to trust her. Needless to say, Brother Joviac was impressed and excited.

"I'd like to hear more about your travels, brother. Here… I'll pay for your meal."

"Many thanks, brother," Levin said, grasping the monk's shoulder. "Please, lead the way."

Val didn't know how Levin could do it - he acted like a true devotee. How could he just pretend to be a follower of the Pale God and his horrible religion? Sure, the Brothers of the Old Benediction seemed like a genial lot, but Val suspected that that geniality would drop pretty quickly if they found out three of the four of them followed the old gods and Pudge was pretty much noncommittal.

They followed Brother Joviac through mid-town, past quaint shops and houses, along streets bustling with trade - there were few horses on the streets up here and even fewer above. Whenever Val got a chance, she wandered over to the ledge to look over at the sprawl of shanties below, but she held her breath whenever she did because the smell wafting up wasn't at all pleasant. You could see for miles beyond, out past the exurbs to the hazy and distant mountains shining gauzy gold in the late afternoon light. The view from the palace must have been amazing.

They passed a troop of penitent brothers and a whole procession of people in cages. Val clenched her jaw and glowered, but to anybody watching it would have looked like she was angry at the 'sinners' in their penitence cages and not the awful order that had put them there. They didn't have anything like that in Aurilicht. She hoped they could still win, even with the duke dead.

After about ten minutes, they arrived at a modest stone building, about three stories tall, build right into the ledge. The little plaque carved right into the stone read: Brothers of the Right Benediction, est. 234 AR. She supposed they'd just said the regular benediction back then, but that now it was considered archaic. Joval opened the front door with the jangle of keys and showed them to their cells to stow their things before introducing them to the other monks and nuns, who were excited to have visitors.

"The Archbishop of St. Sylvestine wants us to segregate the order, but thus far the patriarch hasn't ruled on it." Joval said. "In my opinion, communal living isn't communal if you split yourselves up. Is your chapter segregated?"

Levin shook his head. "No, but it was small. We were located in Verdenlecht, but disbanded for obvious reasons."

"That explains the accent," Joval said. "Yes, we've heard that that duke of yours wasn't very friendly to the faith. Executed one of our bishops over spurious charges."

Val balled her fists and grit her teeth. Niko went to calm her, and Joval noted it.

"Yes, we were pretty angered over it, as well." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Though there were rumors that the charges might not have been spurious - you didn't hear that from me. Who really knows?"

"It hardly matters," Levin said. "I told you about the girls rallying the townsfolk? Well… they caught the duke's cavalry in heavy bolt-fire during a charge and killed him. The whole regiment retreated in disarray."

"What fool of a tactician had a duke charging into enemy lines? I suppose the Almighty was smiling on us that day… but you already suggested as much. You've already eaten, but if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to chat more while we sup with the brothers and sisters."

"I could eat again," Val said. Niko and Pudge agreed - another meal would not be unwelcome.

They proceeded down a narrow stone corridor with crystals embedded right into the walls. Joval tapped on each crystal as he went, bringing the hallway to a burnished glow as he passed. It took Val a moment to realize he was using magic to do it. She'd heard of glow crystals but had never actually seen one - they were once more common, but the technique to make them had been lost. She was tempted to experiment with one, but they were supposed to be hiding their Gifts. When they arrived at the little cafeteria, Joval volunteered Val to give the benediction.

"Um… I don't know the old benediction," Val said.

"The regular one is fine for meals," Joval said. "You do know the words?"

Of course Val knew the words - she'd been a ward of the Sisters of Resonant Grace for two years. She didn't have Levin's eidetic memory, but she still knew every benediction, prayer, sacrament, and hymn by heart. The common ones, at least.

"Cast your eyes," Val said. That meant that everybody should look to the floor. "Oh Almighty, we humble ourselves before you and thank you for the blessings thus bestowed. On this day, we break our bread and thank you for the sustenance it gives." She held her doughy little dinner roll aloft and pulled it apart, waiting a moment for the others to do likewise. "We thank you for our lives and we ask for the blessing of the righteous, that we may know the right from wrong, that you should light our path so we might guide others to follow in your ways. With this nourishment shall we prepare your works and cast the wicked from our paths. And we, your servants, shall always praise your name. Amen."

"Amen," the other repeated.

The whole time, though, Val held anger in her heart that she was being forced to abase herself before a god whose followers hated her and wanted her dead. She apologized to the old gods… whom she was fairly certain were real in some sense… and hoped they knew that what she was doing was utter bullshit and she didn't mean a syllable of it. She didn't necessarily hate the people she was supping with, but she hated their church and she was going to utterly destroy it some day.

"That was beautiful, Sister Val," Joval said. "Oh… I picked up lemon squares in the market if anybody wants one."

"Me!" Pudge said. He took two.

Afterward, they chatted with Brother Joval and his real-life cousin, Sister Vilka, for a while, and Val found it very easy to sink into her role as the Maiden of Ford Leaven, describing the town (which she'd actually been to) and providing all sorts of details about her divine vision, none of which was true. She'd picked up on Levin's many fibs and figured out what to do - provide large-scale details that would stand to scrutiny as the news came in from the border while providing personal anecdotes that contradicted neither the official story the brothers and sisters were likely to hear nor the stories she'd heard her friends tell. Pudge hardly had to lie about anything at all, and Niko stayed almost painfully quiet, glancing to Val in confusion whenever she invented another story to play off of one of Levin's fibs.

"My brother and I were raised by the Sisters of Resonant Grace after our parents died," Val said. "He went to squire for the Resplendent Order and I learned everything he did - I'd sneak into the practice field whenever I could, and nobody had quite the heart to shoo me off. He's two years older and almost a knight, but everybody reckons I'm better…"

"Now, Sister Val," Joval said. He had a thin but genial face but managed to put just a little admonition in the twinkle of his eyes. "You know what they say about pride…"

"It's not pride if other people said it," Val insisted. "I imagine he'd win in a fair fight, but I fight dirty. That's an important forphan skill."

"Forphan?"

"Former orphan," Niko clarified.

"The Resplendent Order being your family now?" Joval asked, his eyebrows inching up.

"Family is where we make it, brother," Levin said quickly. "It's been a long day for us and I think we'll be turning in."

"Of course. I'll see you on the morrow, my friends."

+++++

Val had been sleeping for perhaps an hour when somebody tapped on her cell's door.  All of the brothers and sisters in the priory slept in little six-by-seven cells, barely enough room for a bed and a small reading desk, but that was fine by Val. Even though she'd slept in far worse places, there was something vaguely disconcerting about spending the night in the stronghold of an enemy god… assuming the Pale God even existed, which Val considered herself agnostic on. It was a bit creepy, but it was also utterly silent - the priory was built right into the rock face, and anything happening in the streets thirty feet above her room didn't make it down to the cells. The only sound was Violet, curled at the foot of the bed and making little mewls and mips as she chased something in her sleep. And, in that dark and vaguely-creepy silence, somebody tapped on her cell door.

It wasn't locked. None of the cell doors locked. But her visitor was allowing her privacy. Val barely had to get out of bed to open the door.

"Are you ready?" Levin asked. He stood in the drafty dark of the hallway, the magic glow hovering above his hand casting unsettling, wavering shadows against the opposite wall.

"Ready for…?"

"To find the Sleeping Queen?"

"Now?" Val glanced back to her cell, as if her little wall clock from her room back home might have made its way there.

"Unless you've got a schedule to keep," Levin said. "Get dressed and bring your things."

Val got dressed for the road and crept out after Levin - this meant, she assumed, that they might not be returning to their cells. That was a pity - it was the most comfortable place she'd slept since the room she'd shared with Niko and Pudge back in Ford Leaven.

They awoke Niko and Pudge and everybody followed Levin back into the depths of the priory. Val and Niko had wanted to sleep in the same room, obviously, but Levin was pretty insistent that this was a Bad Idea, and Val figured he might have learned something about those in his five extra years on the planet.

"Where are we going? And how do you even know where you're going?" Niko asked. Val had been wondering the same thing.

Levin described that, just before vespers, he'd asked Brother Joval whether the priory had a catacombs and, if so, where to find them. When asked why in the world he wanted this information, he'd explained that he liked to do his evening meditations somewhere quiet and had grown used to doing them somewhere like a catacombs. Joval had even affirmed Levin's actual reasoning asking about them, cautioning him not to go too far back, as the catacombs themselves were pretty straightforward but emptied into the vast network of ancient tunnels beneath the city.

"Vast network?" Val asked. "How are we supposed to find anything in a vast network?"

"I figure it's got to be somewhere under the palace… that would make sense, right?"

"That would make sense," Niko agreed. "But things don't always make sense."

"True." Levin shrugged. "If we don't find it, we'll head back and look some more tomorrow. We've got three nights here before we've got to be scarce."

Val thought that going into the catacombs would be frightening, but it wasn't so bad. Not with three other people there. Now… being in there alone… that would be terrifying. Of course, Violet would still be there. Looking back, Val could see her familiar padding after them, her eyes faintly reflecting in the glow of their magical lights.

It was warmer than Val had imagined it would be. In her mail, she was uncomfortably warm, but with the hardened armor shirt draped over her shoulder, it was perfectly comfortable, with a pleasant if slightly-sour draft fluffing her hair and cooling her face as they proceeded down the catacomb tunnels. It was mostly smooth marble, lined with sarcophagi and with the occasional rough patch, stretching for about seventy feet back into the rock. There, it turned at a right angle, and stretched for another fifty before ending in a little spiral staircase leading down.

"Who here is good with direction?" Levin asked.

"I'm better than Val and Ette says she's pretty good," Niko said. Val thought it was a fair assessment, so she just nodded.

Levin nodded, too, and pointed in a direction slightly to his right. "The palace is about half a mile that way and maybe two hundred fifty feet straight up. Let us know if we're going the wrong way for too far."

"Got it."

With that, they headed down the staircase and into the depths of St. Sylvestine's tunnels.

+++++

Everything from the city above drained into the tunnels, so there was quite a bit of running water in little rivulets, babbling aqueducts, and whole caverns that dripped from random spots in the ceiling. Most of it seemed clean, though some was obviously sewage - they could smell those from some distance, given the enclosed environment, and avoided them when possible. Even so, Val was skeptical that she'd ever be able to get the smell out of her boots - and she liked her boots.

"I think I've ruined my boots," Niko said.

"Exactly!"

"Girls, we're making history!" Levin whispered. "This is bigger than boots. We might be the saviors of the nation!"

Val wasn't sure - it didn't really seem real to her. If you'd asked her a year ago about doing magic, that wouldn't have seemed real, either, but Levin was proposing that they use Val's blood to awaken a centuries-gone queen to free the country from the grips of the Regency Council. It was the stuff of legends, and legends just didn't happen anymore. Did they?

"Does your cat always follow you?" Pudge asked.

Violet meowed.

"What did it say?"

"She said yes, obviously she does. But she's not my cat, she's my familiar."

They continued through a long cylindrical tunnel, easily eight feet across, that might have once been a waterway. Orange fungi the size of dinnerplates made little squish and fart sounds as they tread upon them. Niko indicated that they should go left at the intersection.

"What's the difference? Isn't she also a cat?" Pudge asked.

"Sure, she's a cat. But it would be like saying, hey, is that little girl following you and my saying, 'I'm not a little girl, I'm a battle-witch and a damn good one.'"

Pudge chuckled. "A battle-witch?"

"And a damn good one," Levin reiterated.

Val nodded, since that was obvious. She decided that that was now her job title, so long as she wasn't surrounded by people who might want to kill her for using the wrong magic, worshiping the wrong gods, or having the wrong blood. Maybe she could even get cards made.

They must have been traveling for two or three hours before they could go no further. The passageway that Niko had directed them down terminated in a great vertical shaft rising about twenty feet over their heads and plunging down into indeterminate depths. The whole chamber was smooth, black volcanic glass glittering in the glow of their magical lights.

"I… I think this is it," Val said.

Levin frowned and leaned further over the shaft than Val would have dared. Warm, clean air from deep below buffeted Val's face.

"It could just be a mine shaft or drainage," Levin said.

"It's not. Can't you feel it? There's a motherlode of natural energy pulsing up from down there. Even stronger than the deep pool back at the glade…" She closed her eyes and felt it, the energy of the earth pulsing like a thunderous heartbeat deep below.

Never one for ceremony, Pudge tossed a rock into the shaft. They heard it clattering down before splashing into liquid with an almost-comical plunk that echoed up far louder than Val would have expected.

"Sounds like there's water at the bottom and it's pretty deep," Pudge said. "The shaft, not the water. I wouldn't hazard a jump down."

"Me, either," Levin said. "We'll have to come back tomorrow night… get our hands on some rope and rappelling equipment. Whatever it is that rangers use in the mountains. I can probably find a book on it…"

"Let me try something first," Val said.

She closed her eyes and held her hand out into the updraft of warm air, concentrating on the shape of the energy she felt within the earth. It seemed to call to her and, when she called back to it, it responded, welling up like the spindly vortex of a tornado in reverse, touching up against Val rather than reaching down to kiss the Earth. It went into her, was reshaped by her, and cycled back down in a great coiling vortex of magical energy. She could see it in her mind almost as surely as she could see anything with her eyes. The floor of the tunnel began to tremble.

"Um… Val…" Niko nudged her arm. "We should leave."

"No. It's working." Val said it definitively enough that nobody asked her again, though the rest of them backed away.

There was a rumbling. A crackling. A rustling. The smell of springtime. Pudge sneezed.

"What in holy macaroni was that?" Pudge asked.

He glimpsed down the shaft. What had been glittering obsidian all the way down was now filled with the branches and leaves of a great tree. The leaves themselves were a pale, ghostly green, as if the tree had adapted to centuries underground rather than having grown from nothing less than a minute ago. The branches were gnarled and frequently bifurcated. Climbing down wouldn't be too terribly difficult.

"Want to tell us what it looks like at the bottom?" Val asked Violet.

Meow. That meant, Not especially. But Violet was a good familiar and did it anyway, bounding out to the nearest branch and then strutting and hopping her way down as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a calico cat to do. She soon descended out of the view of their lights, but the dark never bothered a cat. About three minutes later, she meowed back up.

"She says it's wet and there's a big room beyond."

"You can really understand that?" Pudge asked.

"Battle-witches can understand familiars and talk to horses," Val stated.

"I guess I’m half-way there, then," Niko said.

Val and Niko were members of Ette's 'monkey squad', so they were inveterate climbers. Levin was spry and scrappy and Pudge was a long-time orphan, so they were at least competent. They weren't unusually clever cats, though, so it took Val and Niko ten minutes to get to the bottom, splashing down into warm, waist-deep water. The pool itself was likely deeper, but the roots of Val's tree covered most of the bottom of the shaft, so they had no trouble wading over to the stairs that led out of the water, upon which Violet was nonchalantly grooming herself. They waited another five minutes for Levin and Pudge, even though Val really wanted to see what was in the next room. It had been Levin's idea and it would have been cruel to go exploring without him.

"Hell's bells! Why didn't you tell me the water was that deep!" Levin yelped. He'd jumped into the small area not blocked by the tree's roots and had gone for a bit of a dunk.

"You didn't ask," Val said. She removed her boots and blotted the insides dry before much water could soak in. The floor beneath her feet was earthy and warm, like a freshly-planted garden soaking in the sunlight. Every fiber of her being resonated in the energy of the place. "I think I know why my blood is special," she said eventually. "It's not because I'm descended from Friyja…" though she was pretty sure she was. She was pretty sure Friyja was the queen she'd seen in her dream. "It's because I'm connected to here." She slapped the soil with her foot. "I can feel it in my bones."

"It's more like a… vibration for me," Levin said.

"Yeah," Niko said. "Like a little shivery tingle."

"Yeah," Pudge said. His eyes went wide. "Guys…"

"Are you sure you're not imagining things?" Levin asked.

Pudge shook his head. Even though boys took a while to get the Gift, there was no mistaking the sense of magic when it came.

"Congratulations, but it'll be a month before you can do anything with it," Levin said. "Girls have it easy."

"Do not," Val and Niko said.

Levin let out a big breath. "I guess we should check it out."

As they stepped into the chamber, the whole place glowed to life, little veins of blue and orange within the walls pulsing brighter and brighter until the whole chamber had the illumination of a slightly-cloudy afternoon. After a few hours in the tunnels, it was enough to make Val squint.

The chamber arched up perhaps forty feet overhead, like the inside of a great curved sarcophagus. And standing upon a pedestal in the middle of the room was the life-sized statue of a woman… or perhaps it was Valkyrie, for she had angelic wings emerging from her back, spread as if in mid-flight. Her gown was frozen mid-rustle in some torrent of wind, and her hair streamed back as if whipped in a gale. And, as they circled around the statue and Val saw her face and she gasped. The face was familiar.

It was her mother. Or at least it was the face of her mother when she dreamt of her. She committed it to memory - she would never forget that face again. Her frozen gaze was filled with purpose, her face at once beautiful and terrifying. This was a woman who could command loyalty, who could command armies, who could cultivate the love of a nation, and who could instill a deep jealousy in lesser women and men. This was a woman who had been betrayed three hundred years ago and cursed into a form of stone, to stand watch in this lifeless and lightless place for all of eternity. But Val had brought life and light to the place, hadn't she?

"In my dream…" Levin said. His words trailed into nothingness.

Val remembered his recounting well enough. In his dream, she'd bloodied her hand and placed it upon the statue's heart returning the Sleeping Queen to life. Val unsheathed her knife and gave her palm a shallow, inch-long cut, giving the blood a moment to pool. What would she tell the queen when she awoke? Welcome to the Eighth Century, your majesty? That sounded a bit too coy. Levin nudged her shoulder. Right. Awakening the queen.

Val opened and closed her fist a few times to get her hand good and bloody. She'd bled maybe a dram and the flow was already slowing - hopefully, it was enough. She climbed up the pedestal, careful not to dribble any of the blood, and reached up to the statue's chest, right over where its heart of stone ought to be. The stone was strangely warm. Something deep within it cracked. Val tumbled backward into Niko's waiting arms.

Images flashed through her mind. A vision of that day, of a great and strident queen bound in magical chains. Of a priest… of course it was a priest of the Pale Order… stripping her magical protections in an hours-long ritual before entombing her in accursed stone. Of her soul desperately searching to free itself as the curse seeped into her tissues, freezing her spirit. All except for one tiny, desperate thread, escaping into the world like a ribbon of wriggling energy that found its way into an unsuspecting peasant girl a hundred miles away.

The girl was struck down on the spot in the field where she stood, shaking upon the ground, her eyes rolling back. Her father tried to rouse her, but she wouldn't waken until the next day. Afterward, everybody thought she seemed different - she was still kind, but she was more commanding, more purposeful, less obliging. And the next day, she revealed that she'd been Gifted, even though she was two years past her first blood. And that strand of the queen's soul lived on, generation after generation, waiting to be reunited with itself, waiting to lift the curse.

There was a great flash. Val was unsure whether the flash was in her vision or in the real world. In Niko's embrace, she opened her eyes to see the last of the statue crumbling to dust. The light gradually ebbed from the room, leaving them in silence and darkness until Violet meowed that she couldn't see (maybe the dark sometimes did bother a cat) and Levin cast a magic light with a sigh.

"It… it didn't work," he said. He sobbed, his chest heaving, his head curled down between his lanky knees. "Nothing happened. There is no queen."

"It did work," Val said. "There is a queen."

He shot her an incredulous look and gestured to the ruined remains of the statue. "Look for yourself. She turned to bloody dust, you silly girl. There. Is. No. Queen."

Val put her hand on his shoulder and waited for Levin to meet her gaze. "You're wrong. It's me. I'm the rightful Queen of Sudria."

Levin pulled himself to his feet and wiped his tears away. "Right," he said. "Right. In that case, we've got a lot of work ahead of us."

End of Part I

OvidLemma

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-Ovid

Announcement Hi, everybody! Ovid here! This chapter marks the end of the first story arc of Orphan Queen Valkyrie. I have some more writing queued up and ready to go, but I'm taking a week or so off to develop some other projects before I return to post chapters of Orphan Queen Valkyrie: Part II. What to expect: Necromancers! Treachery! Beating the crap out of snotty nobles! A quadruple date! Life in a palace! At least one prison break! And, of course, happy, cuddly moments between Val and her sometimes-overprotective girlfriend! Also in development and coming in the not-so-distant future:Tales from the Guild a LitRPG adventure fantasy that focuses on Alysonna "Aly" von Knurr, a reformed ? thief, beginning adventurer, and niece to the Corvona Adventurer's Guild Vice-Chair, the famous duelist, Vivian von Knurr. Only, everything Alysonna thought she knew about herself might be a lie, and her future might be a lot more convoluted and exciting than that of a typical adventurer. Will Aly be able to avoid disappointing her parents, rescue the sister she didn't even know she had, and defeat the ancient evil lurking out in the wilderness beyond civilization? Maybe! Find out in Tales from the Guild! -Ovid Chapter Thirty-Two: The Sleeping Queen Val had almost forgotten how fun it was to scheme with smart people. Sure, she'd done her share of shenanigans with Iselde and Niko, but the stakes were a lot lower then, and it was usually to pull a practical joke or to see what they could get away with nicking off of somebody before they noticed. They'd give it all back unless that person was an arse - the orphans at Hale Wulde were treated even better than the ones at Mrs. Lavoie's, and so they didn't need to scheme to get two meals or a bed every day though they did need to do their morning lessons. In retrospect, that was a good thing, because Niko hadn't needed years of remedial schooling before starting her magical studies. Levin was sharp, very sharp. But he was sharp in a different way from Val and Gus, or from Niko or Pudge, for that matter. He was a fast reader, certainly faster than Val, and he could remember almost everything he read. Val considered her memory to be pretty good - and people sometimes told her it was very good - but it wasn't that good. Levin didn't have a talent for devices like Val did. If you took apart a clock without her watching, she could put it back together after examining the bits for a minute or two. But it took her an hour to memorize a page of text they sometimes had to do so for practice, and she'd have forgotten half of it by the next week. After two read-throughs, Levin had whatever he'd read memorized and he could recite it ad verbatim months later. Therefore, he could quote ad verbatim from the Pale Testament, which made him a very convincing albeit young Brother of the Old Benediction. They'd just stabled their horses and caught a meal at a mid-town restaurant mid-town was what they called the second tier - the tiers were low-town, mid-town, upper town, and high town the several tiers above that were too small to warrant district names. The four of them were discussing what to do about further meals, lodging, and stabling fees when one of the patrons tugged on Levin's sleeve. "Excuse me, brother?" Levin smiled amiably. "Yes, er brother?" The man wore robes virtually identical to Levin's. Val held her breath and her heart may have skipped a beat. But Levin hardly skipped one. "May I be of assistance?" The monk nodded. "Our prior is ill he's taken a potion but the recovery's been slow. We haven't got any brothers with the gift of true preaching and wondered if you might be able to give a sermon or two? Assuming, of course, that you've got the gift." "I'm Gifted all right," Levin said with a twinkle in his eyes. "I'd be happy to preach for you if you can give my companions and me somewhere to stay for the few days we're in town." "Your companions? These children?" "Children? Hardly. Val and Niko are the Maidens of Ford Leaven when the army of Aurilicht moved to capture the town, Val had a divine vision from the Risen King himself and she and Niko rallied the town's defenders to drive the enemy off and rout their army into a horrible defeat. And Frow? Well his story is even more incredible. We've got an audience with the patriarch himself in three days time to receive benediction but need somewhere to stay until then." Plausible lies spun off of Levin's tongue so easily, Val had to wonder whether she could possibly trust anything he ever had to say. But he was almost unfailingly honest with her, so perhaps she should just appreciate that he seemed to trust her. Needless to say, Brother Joviac was impressed and excited. "I'd like to hear more about your travels, brother. Here I'll pay for your meal." "Many thanks, brother," Levin said, grasping the monk's shoulder. "Please, lead the way." Val didn't know how Levin could do it - he acted like a true devotee. How could he just pretend to be a follower of the Pale God and his horrible religion? Sure, the Brothers of the Old Benediction seemed like a genial lot, but Val suspected that that geniality would drop pretty quickly if they found out three of the four of them followed the old gods and Pudge was pretty much noncommittal. They followed Brother Joviac through mid-town, past quaint shops and houses, along streets bustling with trade - there were few horses on the streets up here and even fewer above. Whenever Val got a chance, she wandered over to the ledge to look over at the sprawl of shanties below, but she held her breath whenever she did because the smell wafting up wasn't at all pleasant. You could see for miles beyond, out past the exurbs to the hazy and distant mountains shining gauzy gold in the late afternoon light. The view from the palace must have been amazing. They passed a troop of penitent brothers and a whole procession of people in cages. Val clenched her jaw and glowered, but to anybody watching it would have looked like she was angry at the 'sinners' in their penitence cages and not the awful order that had put them there. They didn't have anything like that in Aurilicht. She hoped they could still win, even with the duke dead. After about ten minutes, they arrived at a modest stone building, about three stories tall, build right into the ledge. The little plaque carved right into the stone read: Brothers of the Right Benediction, est. 234 AR. She supposed they'd just said the regular benediction back then, but that now it was considered archaic. Joval opened the front door with the jangle of keys and showed them to their cells to stow their things before introducing them to the other monks and nuns, who were excited to have visitors. "The Archbishop of St. Sylvestine wants us to segregate the order, but thus far the patriarch hasn't ruled on it." Joval said. "In my opinion, communal living isn't communal if you split yourselves up. Is your chapter segregated?" Levin shook his head. "No, but it was small. We were located in Verdenlecht, but disbanded for obvious reasons." "That explains the accent," Joval said. "Yes, we've heard that that duke of yours wasn't very friendly to the faith. Executed one of our bishops over spurious charges." Val balled her fists and grit her teeth. Niko went to calm her, and Joval noted it. "Yes, we were pretty angered over it, as well." His voice dropped to a whisper. "Though there were rumors that the charges might not have been spurious - you didn't hear that from me. Who really knows?" "It hardly matters," Levin said. "I told you about the girls rallying the townsfolk? Well they caught the duke's cavalry in heavy bolt-fire during a charge and killed him. The whole regiment retreated in disarray." "What fool of a tactician had a duke charging into enemy lines? I suppose the Almighty was smiling on us that day but you already suggested as much. You've already eaten, but if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to chat more while we sup with the brothers and sisters." "I could eat again," Val said. Niko and Pudge agreed - another meal would not be unwelcome. They proceeded down a narrow stone corridor with crystals embedded right into the walls. Joval tapped on each crystal as he went, bringing the hallway to a burnished glow as he passed. It took Val a moment to realize he was using magic to do it. She'd heard of glow crystals but had never actually seen one - they were once more common, but the technique to make them had been lost. She was tempted to experiment with one, but they were supposed to be hiding their Gifts. When they arrived at the little cafeteria, Joval volunteered Val to give the benediction. "Um I don't know the old benediction," Val said. "The regular one is fine for meals," Joval said. "You do know the words?" Of course Val knew the words - she'd been a ward of the Sisters of Resonant Grace for two years. She didn't have Levin's eidetic memory, but she still knew every benediction, prayer, sacrament, and hymn by heart. The common ones, at least. "Cast your eyes," Val said. That meant that everybody should look to the floor. "Oh Almighty, we humble ourselves before you and thank you for the blessings thus bestowed. On this day, we break our bread and thank you for the sustenance it gives." She held her doughy little dinner roll aloft and pulled it apart, waiting a moment for the others to do likewise. "We thank you for our lives and we ask for the blessing of the righteous, that we may know the right from wrong, that you should light our path so we might guide others to follow in your ways. With this nourishment shall we prepare your works and cast the wicked from our paths. And we, your servants, shall always praise your name. Amen." "Amen," the other repeated. The whole time, though, Val held anger in her heart that she was being forced to abase herself before a god whose followers hated her and wanted her dead. She apologized to the old gods whom she was fairly certain were real in some sense and hoped they knew that what she was doing was utter bullshit and she didn't mean a syllable of it. She didn't necessarily hate the people she was supping with, but she hated their church and she was going to utterly destroy it some day. "That was beautiful, Sister Val," Joval said. "Oh I picked up lemon squares in the market if anybody wants one." "Me!" Pudge said. He took two. Afterward, they chatted with Brother Joval and his real-life cousin, Sister Vilka, for a while, and Val found it very easy to sink into her role as the Maiden of Ford Leaven, describing the town which she'd actually been to and providing all sorts of details about her divine vision, none of which was true. She'd picked up on Levin's many fibs and figured out what to do - provide large-scale details that would stand to scrutiny as the news came in from the border while providing personal anecdotes that contradicted neither the official story the brothers and sisters were likely to hear nor the stories she'd heard her friends tell. Pudge hardly had to lie about anything at all, and Niko stayed almost painfully quiet, glancing to Val in confusion whenever she invented another story to play off of one of Levin's fibs. "My brother and I were raised by the Sisters of Resonant Grace after our parents died," Val said. "He went to squire for the Resplendent Order and I learned everything he did - I'd sneak into the practice field whenever I could, and nobody had quite the heart to shoo me off. He's two years older and almost a knight, but everybody reckons I'm better" "Now, Sister Val," Joval said. He had a thin but genial face but managed to put just a little admonition in the twinkle of his eyes. "You know what they say about pride" "It's not pride if other people said it," Val insisted. "I imagine he'd win in a fair fight, but I fight dirty. That's an important forphan skill." "Forphan?" "Former orphan," Niko clarified. "The Resplendent Order being your family now?" Joval asked, his eyebrows inching up. "Family is where we make it, brother," Levin said quickly. "It's been a long day for us and I think we'll be turning in." "Of course. I'll see you on the morrow, my friends." +++++ Val had been sleeping for perhaps an hour when somebody tapped on her cell's door. All of the brothers and sisters in the priory slept in little six-by-seven cells, barely enough room for a bed and a small reading desk, but that was fine by Val. Even though she'd slept in far worse places, there was something vaguely disconcerting about spending the night in the stronghold of an enemy god assuming the Pale God even existed, which Val considered herself agnostic on. It was a bit creepy, but it was also utterly silent - the priory was built right into the rock face, and anything happening in the streets thirty feet above her room didn't make it down to the cells. The only sound was Violet, curled at the foot of the bed and making little mewls and mips as she chased something in her sleep. And, in that dark and vaguely-creepy silence, somebody tapped on her cell door. It wasn't locked. None of the cell doors locked. But her visitor was allowing her privacy. Val barely had to get out of bed to open the door. "Are you ready?" Levin asked. He stood in the drafty dark of the hallway, the magic glow hovering above his hand casting unsettling, wavering shadows against the opposite wall. "Ready for?" "To find the Sleeping Queen?" "Now?" Val glanced back to her cell, as if her little wall clock from her room back home might have made its way there. "Unless you've got a schedule to keep," Levin said. "Get dressed and bring your things." Val got dressed for the road and crept out after Levin - this meant, she assumed, that they might not be returning to their cells. That was a pity - it was the most comfortable place she'd slept since the room she'd shared with Niko and Pudge back in Ford Leaven. They awoke Niko and Pudge and everybody followed Levin back into the depths of the priory. Val and Niko had wanted to sleep in the same room, obviously, but Levin was pretty insistent that this was a Bad Idea, and Val figured he might have learned something about those in his five extra years on the planet. "Where are we going? And how do you even know where you're going?" Niko asked. Val had been wondering the same thing. Levin described that, just before vespers, he'd asked Brother Joval whether the priory had a catacombs and, if so, where to find them. When asked why in the world he wanted this information, he'd explained that he liked to do his evening meditations somewhere quiet and had grown used to doing them somewhere like a catacombs. Joval had even affirmed Levin's actual reasoning asking about them, cautioning him not to go too far back, as the catacombs themselves were pretty straightforward but emptied into the vast network of ancient tunnels beneath the city. "Vast network?" Val asked. "How are we supposed to find anything in a vast network?" "I figure it's got to be somewhere under the palace that would make sense, right?" "That would make sense," Niko agreed. "But things don't always make sense." "True." Levin shrugged. "If we don't find it, we'll head back and look some more tomorrow. We've got three nights here before we've got to be scarce." Val thought that going into the catacombs would be frightening, but it wasn't so bad. Not with three other people there. Now being in there alone that would be terrifying. Of course, Violet would still be there. Looking back, Val could see her familiar padding after them, her eyes faintly reflecting in the glow of their magical lights. It was warmer than Val had imagined it would be. In her mail, she was uncomfortably warm, but with the hardened armor shirt draped over her shoulder, it was perfectly comfortable, with a pleasant if slightly-sour draft fluffing her hair and cooling her face as they proceeded down the catacomb tunnels. It was mostly smooth marble, lined with sarcophagi and with the occasional rough patch, stretching for about seventy feet back into the rock. There, it turned at a right angle, and stretched for another fifty before ending in a little spiral staircase leading down. "Who here is good with direction?" Levin asked. "I'm better than Val and Ette says she's pretty good," Niko said. Val thought it was a fair assessment, so she just nodded. Levin nodded, too, and pointed in a direction slightly to his right. "The palace is about half a mile that way and maybe two hundred fifty feet straight up. Let us know if we're going the wrong way for too far." "Got it." With that, they headed down the staircase and into the depths of St. Sylvestine's tunnels. +++++ Everything from the city above drained into the tunnels, so there was quite a bit of running water in little rivulets, babbling aqueducts, and whole caverns that dripped from random spots in the ceiling. Most of it seemed clean, though some was obviously sewage - they could smell those from some distance, given the enclosed environment, and avoided them when possible. Even so, Val was skeptical that she'd ever be able to get the smell out of her boots - and she liked her boots. "I think I've ruined my boots," Niko said. "Exactly!" "Girls, we're making history!" Levin whispered. "This is bigger than boots. We might be the saviors of the nation!" Val wasn't sure - it didn't really seem real to her. If you'd asked her a year ago about doing magic, that wouldn't have seemed real, either, but Levin was proposing that they use Val's blood to awaken a centuries-gone queen to free the country from the grips of the Regency Council. It was the stuff of legends, and legends just didn't happen anymore. Did they? "Does your cat always follow you?" Pudge asked. Violet meowed. "What did it say?" "She said yes, obviously she does. But she's not my cat, she's my familiar." They continued through a long cylindrical tunnel, easily eight feet across, that might have once been a waterway. Orange fungi the size of dinnerplates made little squish and fart sounds as they tread upon them. Niko indicated that they should go left at the intersection. "What's the difference? Isn't she also a cat?" Pudge asked. "Sure, she's a cat. But it would be like saying, hey, is that little girl following you and my saying, 'I'm not a little girl, I'm a battle-witch and a damn good one.'" Pudge chuckled. "A battle-witch?" "And a damn good one," Levin reiterated. Val nodded, since that was obvious. She decided that that was now her job title, so long as she wasn't surrounded by people who might want to kill her for using the wrong magic, worshiping the wrong gods, or having the wrong blood. Maybe she could even get cards made. They must have been traveling for two or three hours before they could go no further. The passageway that Niko had directed them down terminated in a great vertical shaft rising about twenty feet over their heads and plunging down into indeterminate depths. The whole chamber was smooth, black volcanic glass glittering in the glow of their magical lights. "I I think this is it," Val said. Levin frowned and leaned further over the shaft than Val would have dared. Warm, clean air from deep below buffeted Val's face. "It could just be a mine shaft or drainage," Levin said. "It's not. Can't you feel it? There's a motherlode of natural energy pulsing up from down there. Even stronger than the deep pool back at the glade" She closed her eyes and felt it, the energy of the earth pulsing like a thunderous heartbeat deep below. Never one for ceremony, Pudge tossed a rock into the shaft. They heard it clattering down before splashing into liquid with an almost-comical plunk that echoed up far louder than Val would have expected. "Sounds like there's water at the bottom and it's pretty deep," Pudge said. "The shaft, not the water. I wouldn't hazard a jump down." "Me, either," Levin said. "We'll have to come back tomorrow night get our hands on some rope and rappelling equipment. Whatever it is that rangers use in the mountains. I can probably find a book on it" "Let me try something first," Val said. She closed her eyes and held her hand out into the updraft of warm air, concentrating on the shape of the energy she felt within the earth. It seemed to call to her and, when she called back to it, it responded, welling up like the spindly vortex of a tornado in reverse, touching up against Val rather than reaching down to kiss the Earth. It went into her, was reshaped by her, and cycled back down in a great coiling vortex of magical energy. She could see it in her mind almost as surely as she could see anything with her eyes. The floor of the tunnel began to tremble. "Um Val" Niko nudged her arm. "We should leave." "No. It's working." Val said it definitively enough that nobody asked her again, though the rest of them backed away. There was a rumbling. A crackling. A rustling. The smell of springtime. Pudge sneezed. "What in holy macaroni was that?" Pudge asked. He glimpsed down the shaft. What had been glittering obsidian all the way down was now filled with the branches and leaves of a great tree. The leaves themselves were a pale, ghostly green, as if the tree had adapted to centuries underground rather than having grown from nothing less than a minute ago. The branches were gnarled and frequently bifurcated. Climbing down wouldn't be too terribly difficult. "Want to tell us what it looks like at the bottom?" Val asked Violet. Meow. That meant, Not especially. But Violet was a good familiar and did it anyway, bounding out to the nearest branch and then strutting and hopping her way down as if it was the most natural thing in the world for a calico cat to do. She soon descended out of the view of their lights, but the dark never bothered a cat. About three minutes later, she meowed back up. "She says it's wet and there's a big room beyond." "You can really understand that?" Pudge asked. "Battle-witches can understand familiars and talk to horses," Val stated. "I guess I'm half-way there, then," Niko said. Val and Niko were members of Ette's 'monkey squad', so they were inveterate climbers. Levin was spry and scrappy and Pudge was a long-time orphan, so they were at least competent. They weren't unusually clever cats, though, so it took Val and Niko ten minutes to get to the bottom, splashing down into warm, waist-deep water. The pool itself was likely deeper, but the roots of Val's tree covered most of the bottom of the shaft, so they had no trouble wading over to the stairs that led out of the water, upon which Violet was nonchalantly grooming herself. They waited another five minutes for Levin and Pudge, even though Val really wanted to see what was in the next room. It had been Levin's idea and it would have been cruel to go exploring without him. "Hell's bells! Why didn't you tell me the water was that deep!" Levin yelped. He'd jumped into the small area not blocked by the tree's roots and had gone for a bit of a dunk. "You didn't ask," Val said. She removed her boots and blotted the insides dry before much water could soak in. The floor beneath her feet was earthy and warm, like a freshly-planted garden soaking in the sunlight. Every fiber of her being resonated in the energy of the place. "I think I know why my blood is special," she said eventually. "It's not because I'm descended from Friyja" though she was pretty sure she was. She was pretty sure Friyja was the queen she'd seen in her dream. "It's because I'm connected to here." She slapped the soil with her foot. "I can feel it in my bones." "It's more like a vibration for me," Levin said. "Yeah," Niko said. "Like a little shivery tingle." "Yeah," Pudge said. His eyes went wide. "Guys" "Are you sure you're not imagining things?" Levin asked. Pudge shook his head. Even though boys took a while to get the Gift, there was no mistaking the sense of magic when it came. "Congratulations, but it'll be a month before you can do anything with it," Levin said. "Girls have it easy." "Do not," Val and Niko said. Levin let out a big breath. "I guess we should check it out." As they stepped into the chamber, the whole place glowed to life, little veins of blue and orange within the walls pulsing brighter and brighter until the whole chamber had the illumination of a slightly-cloudy afternoon. After a few hours in the tunnels, it was enough to make Val squint. The chamber arched up perhaps forty feet overhead, like the inside of a great curved sarcophagus. And standing upon a pedestal in the middle of the room was the life-sized statue of a woman or perhaps it was Valkyrie, for she had angelic wings emerging from her back, spread as if in mid-flight. Her gown was frozen mid-rustle in some torrent of wind, and her hair streamed back as if whipped in a gale. And, as they circled around the statue and Val saw her face and she gasped. The face was familiar. It was her mother. Or at least it was the face of her mother when she dreamt of her. She committed it to memory - she would never forget that face again. Her frozen gaze was filled with purpose, her face at once beautiful and terrifying. This was a woman who could command loyalty, who could command armies, who could cultivate the love of a nation, and who could instill a deep jealousy in lesser women and men. This was a woman who had been betrayed three hundred years ago and cursed into a form of stone, to stand watch in this lifeless and lightless place for all of eternity. But Val had brought life and light to the place, hadn't she? "In my dream" Levin said. His words trailed into nothingness. Val remembered his recounting well enough. In his dream, she'd bloodied her hand and placed it upon the statue's heart returning the Sleeping Queen to life. Val unsheathed her knife and gave her palm a shallow, inch-long cut, giving the blood a moment to pool. What would she tell the queen when she awoke? Welcome to the Eighth Century, your majesty? That sounded a bit too coy. Levin nudged her shoulder. Right. Awakening the queen. Val opened and closed her fist a few times to get her hand good and bloody. She'd bled maybe a dram and the flow was already slowing - hopefully, it was enough. She climbed up the pedestal, careful not to dribble any of the blood, and reached up to the statue's chest, right over where its heart of stone ought to be. The stone was strangely warm. Something deep within it cracked. Val tumbled backward into Niko's waiting arms. Images flashed through her mind. A vision of that day, of a great and strident queen bound in magical chains. Of a priest of course it was a priest of the Pale Order stripping her magical protections in an hours-long ritual before entombing her in accursed stone. Of her soul desperately searching to free itself as the curse seeped into her tissues, freezing her spirit. All except for one tiny, desperate thread, escaping into the world like a ribbon of wriggling energy that found its way into an unsuspecting peasant girl a hundred miles away. The girl was struck down on the spot in the field where she stood, shaking upon the ground, her eyes rolling back. Her father tried to rouse her, but she wouldn't waken until the next day. Afterward, everybody thought she seemed different - she was still kind, but she was more commanding, more purposeful, less obliging. And the next day, she revealed that she'd been Gifted, even though she was two years past her first blood. And that strand of the queen's soul lived on, generation after generation, waiting to be reunited with itself, waiting to lift the curse. There was a great flash. Val was unsure whether the flash was in her vision or in the real world. In Niko's embrace, she opened her eyes to see the last of the statue crumbling to dust. The light gradually ebbed from the room, leaving them in silence and darkness until Violet meowed that she couldn't see maybe the dark sometimes did bother a cat and Levin cast a magic light with a sigh. "It it didn't work," he said. He sobbed, his chest heaving, his head curled down between his lanky knees. "Nothing happened. There is no queen." "It did work," Val said. "There is a queen." He shot her an incredulous look and gestured to the ruined remains of the statue. "Look for yourself. She turned to bloody dust, you silly girl. There. Is. No. Queen." Val put her hand on his shoulder and waited for Levin to meet her gaze. "You're wrong. It's me. I'm the rightful Queen of Sudria." Levin pulled himself to his feet and wiped his tears away. "Right," he said. "Right. In that case, we've got a lot of work ahead of us." End of Part I OvidLemma As always, please leave a comment below! Preferably in some sort of poetic format! I love to hear from my readers! Thanks for reading, and make sure you follow me here to catch my latest releases! I plan on releasing chapters of this story about three times a week, but I haven't decided on what days yet. Advance chapters are available on my Patreon. If you liked this story, don't forget to check out my many other stories Scribble Hub, Patreon, or Amazon free with Kindle Unlimited! https://www.patreon.com/OvidLemmahttps://www.amazon.com/s?i=digital-text&rh=p_27:Ovid+Lemma -Ovid