Queen of Fire

She turns away, moving along a stone walkway to a narrow door. The sounds of combat follow her as she walks; the tunnel is long and dark but she has walked here before and has no need of torches. The chamber she comes to is broad and high, tiered walkways rising on both sides allowing access to rows of cells, each sealed with bars of iron. She pauses and lets her song wander, feeling the dulled fears emanating from each of the cells. Drugs are widely employed by the overseers who service these cells, but still the fear always lingers. Her song alights on a cell on the middle tier to the left. The note is harsh, sombre, stirring a hunger.

She is momentarily troubled by this. Usually the song chooses an innocent, some pale-faced youth stolen from a slaughtered hill tribe or identified by the overseers in the training dens. She had liked to play the benefactor, the kindly mistress come to offer them deliverance from this place of endless fear, enjoying the desperate hope in their eyes, even granting them the mercy of a swift death by way of reward.

Now it is different. The song speaks of a loathsome soul and it’s this that stirs her hunger. Was this you, beloved? she asks him. Did you change me so much? Despite her unease she knows this shell must be sustained, the Messenger having related how quickly a stolen shell can sicken, the demands of multiple gifts drain them so. She starts for the nearby stairwell but pauses as two Kuritai approach, dragging a red-clad figure between them and providing a welcome distraction.

“Council-man Lorvek,” she greets the red-clad. “It’s been so very long. I’m glad to see the years have not withered you one bit.”

The red-clad appears to be a man in his mid-thirties, though she first met him some eighty years ago when he first rose to Council, in this very chamber in fact. He had been triumphant then, she recalls, preening with satisfaction at having secured fabled immortality. Now he just seems to be what he is, a scared man, cowed by torture and expectant of death.

“I . . .” he begins, swallows, a faint trickle of blood coming from the corner of his mouth. “I . . . humbly regret any offence caused to the Ally or his servants . . .”

“Oh, there you go again, Lorvek,” she says, shaking her head with a sad smile. “Always saying the wrong thing. What was it you called me that day in Council, oh, twenty years ago? You remember, the day I came back from my excursion to the realm of the slant-eyed pig?”