Douglas Niles
The Druid Queen
Prologue
She ran as fast as she could, down a corridor walled with black mirrors. The passage stretched to obsidian infinity before and behind her. An intersection broke the smooth perfection, two side corridors leading to more infinities, more impossible distances.
Panic tore at her chest, making her heart pound and her throat dry. Which way? Somehow she understood that it really didn't matter. She darted to the left, the soles of her soft leather boots pounding the smooth floor, the steady cadence the only sound in this eternal maze of nothingness.
That, and the rasping of her breath and the thunderous beating of her straining heart. How could that vital muscle possibly keep her alive, possibly contain the explosive pressure of the blood in her veins? She knew, as instinctively as she understood everything else, that it could not.
Another intersection… another frantic turn, between the lines of blackness, the two planes of wall merging into a spot of darkness in the distance. She staggered wearily, her feet shuffling and stumbling until she sprawled headlong onto the marble floor. Astonishingly, her rough fall caused no pain. Indeed, it was more as if she had plummeted into the nest of a warm feather bed, encased by protective down and sheltered against a supernatural chill.
But then she raised her eyes. Still the black walls stretched into the distance, merging into nothing before and behind. Yet, for the first time, she sensed that she wasn't alone within this dim matrix. Someone-something-lurked here with her.
She knew, with a dull and hopeless sense of terror, that this presence, this being, awaited her.
Desperately she scrambled to her feet, slumping against the wall, sliding back along her tracks. She turned and once again broke into a shambling run, the black walls sliding past as she retraced her steps, fleeing the unseen presence, the potent menace she felt in the very pit of her stomach.
She returned to the intersection and stumbled through it, continuing down the passage that was identical to a dozen, a hundred other corridors that had entrapped her during this eternal flight. She wanted only to put that ominous presence behind her.
But as she ran, the threatening aura changed. No longer did it menace her from behind. Instead, once more, she knew beyond any doubt that she approached it.
Stopping on her heels, she spun around again. The intersection! She'd go back there, take a different branch! There had to be a way to evade this thing! Stumbling with exhaustion, leaning against the smooth wall for support, once more she retraced her steps, coming to the adjoining passages to the right and left… but now there was a difference.
Where there had once been four corridors, she now found six-three pairs, angling off to either side like the limbs of a six-pointed star. She didn't hesitate, fearing all the while the evil drawing inexorably near. She plunged down the closest of the right-hand passages, though the aching strain of her lungs pleaded with her to pause, to rest.
She felt it again, that horror, and now she sensed it behind her-and creeping inevitably, dolorously closer with every passing moment. Opening her mouth, she tried to scream, but no sound issued forth beyond the rattling labors of her lungs. The air seemed impossibly dry, sucking the moisture from her skin and throat, parching her very blood with its persistent, penetrating warmth.
She ran and ran, ignoring the weariness and fatigue, the aches that throbbed in her feet, the stitch of pain that grew steadily longer and deeper in her side. She ran only to get away from this thing she did not know, but that she feared above all else in the world … or beyond the world. It loomed nearer now, and this proximity drove extra energy through her veins, propelling her feet into a faster gait.
Another corner beckoned, and she hurtled herself blindly around it, sensing the looming evil as if it reached for her back with rending talons, claws that would rake her ribs aside and rip the heart from her terrified flesh.
Then she stopped in shock, terrified beyond measure. Once again the threat lay before her! She saw it come out of the darkness, materializing a few steps away, confronting her with an image of monstrous evil, of hopeless despair and infernal betrayal.
This time when she opened her mouth the scream was loud and piercing, a shock wave of sound that echoed down the halls and threatened to shatter the smooth glass of the ceiling. Yet the image of evil confronted her still, coolly inspecting her, red lips twisted into a wry smile … an expression of cool contempt, perhaps tinged with a tiny measure of pity.
She screamed again and again, but the image never wavered, never moved away. Finally the woman slumped to the ground in abject surrender, gazing at the shape that loomed above her, abandoning hope … giving in to ultimate despair.
For the looming image, the form and visage that embodied the most potent evil known … that body and that face were her own.
1
"She's sleeping again. That's about all I can say for her." The king reentered the bedroom with a sigh, his shoulders slumping from the weight of his worries. Caer Corwell was still with the silence of the midwatch, night lying thickly about them, though a few embers still glowed red in the large fireplace. A huge dog, blanketed by a coarse coat of rust-colored fur, looked up from the hearthside and thumped his tail once in greeting.
"Better that than the nightmares," Queen Robyn replied, rising from the couch to embrace her husband.
It seemed to the woman that her husband had never looked so old. She noticed that the tint of gray in his hair had grown to an entire fringe. His beard remained full, but even more gray than his once chestnut-colored hair. His dark eyes still blazed with grim determination, but now a hint of despair lurked within them.
It was a despair that Robyn could well understand. Like King Tristan, the queen sagged wearily, and her face was drawn and pallid. Her long hair had lost none of its inky blackness, but now it lay carelessly across her shoulders, uncombed and lacking its usual luster.
The man and woman, High King and High Queen of the Ffolk and the Moonshaes, sat down together on the couch, neither quite ready to return to bed. The great moorhound, Ranthal, rested at their feet, large ears pricked upward to catch any sign of distress or danger, as if the dog, too, sensed that these minutes of nocturnal peace were too rare, too precious to consign them to sleep.
Scarcely a week following their triumphant return to Corwell, fresh from a daring rescue of the imprisoned king, the royal pair had no concerns other than the health of their daughter Deirdre. During the daytime, the young princess lay awake, weak and exhausted from a sleep without rest. Deirdre had little appetite, nor did she ever seem to feel thirst. Indeed, if Robyn did not force her to drink and to eat a few crumbs, she feared that her daughter would take no sustenance at all.
Yet these bleak days were nothing, it seemed, when compared to the nights. Deirdre regarded the approaching sunset with apprehension that steadily built into terror. For hours, she would lie awake, sometimes talking to her sister or one of her parents. On other occasions, she grew shrill and irrational, demanding that her visitor leave, screaming and writhing in apparent agony until her wish was granted.
Finally, then, sleep would claim her. For a precious few moments, her body lay still, relaxed at last. Then, all too quickly, the nightmares began. Or perhaps, the nightmare. Robyn had begun to suspect that each night her daughter suffered the same dream over and over again, so consistent and predictable was the pattern of her distress.
Each night, as the dream began, Deirdre stiffened reflexively in the bed, thrashing with her feet. Her chest rose and fell as if she gasped for breath. Every attempt to awaken her-many had been made-failed to wrest her from the internal trance. Indeed, they seemed only to heighten her terror, so at last there was nothing to do but wait for the nightmare to run its course.