The Bane of the Red Queen     
by Kit Wesler
     
     In  the bleakness of winter shall a child be born who car- ries the mark of Selene; and she shall be the Red Queen's bane." For the first time, Queen Caramae could recite those words, and laugh.
     
     She strode lithely around the stone chamber, nearly dancing in her excitement: Caramae, called the Red Queen in part because of the glorious hair that fell in ripples and waves past her shoulders, but more because of the bloody terror of her sorcerous reign. Her seneschal and bodyguard, Glaedwyr of Glaud, stood at the window, dividing his attention between his queen and the courtyard below, the latter nearly invisible through the sleet.
     
     It was bitterly cold in the high chamber, whose windows were neither glazed nor shuttered, and Glaedwyr was bundled heavily. Yet the queen wore only a light gown. Glaedwyr glanced at her, impressed as ever with the sheer vitality of the woman, the fierceness that he had once loved, and then hated. He looked back into the sleet. Beside his hand on the windowsill lay a crossbow, a sporting weapon, too light to pierce armor, but deadly enough in the hands of a marks-man.
     
     The Red Queen whirled toward the grim stone slab with its rusty stains that stood in the center of the chamber, then away again, too full of malice and glee to stand still. "The prophecy!" She laughed. "The last hope of fools and romantics! Did they think my Art could not find this child?"
     
     "There was less art in it than thoroughness," Glaedwyr observed mildly. She gave him an ugly look, then laughed. "A hundred mothers in this city due to birth this month. My Art found them all! Even those who thought to hide in cellars and attics. And my tower held them." Glaedwyr nodded, still watching the courtyard, empty but for the gray weather. "And the child is mine now!" the queen swept on, pacing feverishly. "They are bringing her now. And the blood of a child of prophecy can weave such spells as even I have not yet seen!" Glaedwyr could not help glancing at the altar, at the blades and pincers and nameless potions on the scarred table beside it. He hoped that Caramae did not notice the shudder he could not suppress. There was a knock, and at the Red Queen's snarl, the heavy door opened to admit a gaunt serving woman carrying a shapeless bundle. The queen cried out in triumph, snatching the bundle. Then her voice changed to a cry of fury. "It's dead! The baby is already dead!" The serving woman shrank back. "Please, your highness, it died before I touched it!" But the queen did not deliver the expected blow. "Is it the one?" Caramae demanded, pawing through the cloths. The serving woman looked quickly at Glaedwyr, desperate and ' pleading, and the tall man nodded shortly, the only reassurance he dared give. "There!" the Red Queen said. "The moon-shaped birthmark! It is the one!"
     
     "Thoroughness always pays," said Glaedwyr stolidly. He turned away as the queen threw the pathetic bundle onto the altar and spat, "Get out!" to the servant, who complied in haste. As the sleet fell more heavily, Glaedwyr began to fear that he would not be able to see the expected signal. But as the queen began to pace again, muttering furiously, he saw it: a thin flicker of a lamp shone once, twice, and again, at the far gate. He quietly cocked the crossbow, and dropped an iron-tipped quarrel into the groove. But when he turned from the window, he found Caramae facing him, smiling. She held her hand breast-high before her, in a clawed gesture he knew signified deadly power.
     
     "You fool, Glaedwyr," she said, low-voiced. "Did you really think I wouldn't know? That your men could lock up all the nobles who still support me, and disarm my Red Guard, and steal the talisman from the crypt, all without my knowing? I knew it ail the time!"
     
     With a sneer, she made a throwing motion, and said a loathsome word under her breath. But Glaedwyr merely blinked and held the crossbow steady.
     
     It was the first time he had ever seen her face turn ugly; the first time he had seen the shock and dismay of failure in those great blue eyes.
     
     "Your power is done, Caramae. As it was foretold."
     
     "But the child is dead!" she shouted angrily. "The prophecy is foiled!"
     
     "I regret that we were not quite ready in time to save the girl's life," Glaedwyr said calmly. His gray eyes were as bleak as the frozen courtyard below him. "Better to be smothered on the stair than to be given live to your spells. But it is no matter to you, either way."
     
     "But the prophecy-"
     
     "The prophecy said that the child would be born," Glaedwyr told her. "No one ever said it had to live very long."
     
     Nor did the chroniclers ever mention the iron-tipped quarrel that did, in point of fact, end the Red Queen's reign.