Authors: Mark Anthony
“Hurry,” Grisla said.
The knight gripped his sword and stepped through the door, into the frozen vale beyond.
Screams filled Calavere’s great hall.
Grace could not take her eyes from the spindly forms that crept through the high windows. The feydrim dropped from the rafters or slid down tapestries, their claws shredding the fabric as they went. Revelers fell over each other to get out of the way of each creature as it reached the floor. Tables toppled onto their sides, cups and platters clattered. Like a wave crashing on a beach, a mass of revelers rushed against the doors of the hall. However, the planes of iron-bound wood did not open, as if barred from outside. The first nobles and servants to reach the doors were crushed against the wood as more revelers pressed behind them, trying to flee the feydrim. There was no sign of Trifkin Mossberry and his players—the entire troupe had vanished.
Laughter sounded beside Grace.
She jerked her head around. Logren surveyed the chaos of the great hall with eyes like stones.
“That’s it,” he said. He motioned to the feydrim with his hands. “Come, my hungry ones. Come.”
There was a snarl of rage. Grace glanced to the side and saw the source of the sound: King Boreas. He knelt beside the fallen form of Eminda, along with Ivalaine and Tressa. Beside them were Kylar and Kalyn of Galt. The other rulers and counselors had risen from their seats, terror on their faces.
“Blast you, Logren, she’s dead,” Boreas said through clenched teeth. Blood stained his hands, and his eyes were steel.
Logren turned his lifeless gaze on the king of Calavan and laughed again. “I should think so. Even that loud bitch should find it hard to bark with a knife in the throat.”
Boreas’s lips pulled back from his teeth, then with a roar he sprang forward. He reached out muscular arms, ready to snap Logren’s neck with powerful fingers.
Logren made a casual motion with his hand, as one might when swatting a fly. There was a sound like stone breaking. Boreas’s head snapped back, his arms flew out, and he crashed against the high table with a grunt of pain. Wood shattered, and Boreas fell to the floor. He did not get up. Kylar and a pair of servants rushed to him and lifted him from the splinters. He moaned—he was alive—but he slumped in their arms, eyes shut, his face wet with blood.
A sneer crossed Logren’s face. “So much for the bull.”
Grace stared at Logren. She wanted to do something, wanted to stop him, but fear cocooned her body in gauze. She could not move.
No, it wasn’t just fear—it was more than that. Here was evil before her. She had thought she could stand against it, had thought she had done so in Denver Memorial’s ED, but she was wrong. She had lived in awe of Boreas’s strength, and Logren had flicked him aside as if he were a speck of dust. If Boreas could not stop this evil, how could she?
Screams continued to echo off the ceiling. The feydrim scuttled through the roiling sea of revelers. Here and there some nobles or knights—armed only with their eating knives—tried to attack the creatures. As reward for the effort, their faces were slashed with claws and their bodies mauled with fangs. A few of the feydrim squealed and went down with a knife in the throat or eye, but more came behind to replace them. There were too many of the creatures. They poured through the windows faster than Grace could count.
Except for those who who attacked the creatures, the feydrim ignored the revelers. They scuttled over tables and made their way toward the dais. Fear transmuted Grace’s
saliva to lead. The feydrim did not care about the revelers—it was the rulers of the Dominions they wanted.
The first of the feydrim scrambled onto the dais. There were three of the creatures. They opened snubbed maws and reached thin arms toward King Sorrin. Hate and pain glowed in their yellow eyes.
The king of Embarr’s gaunt face was a mask of horror. “Get them away from me!”
The two knights that had stood behind him at the high table sprang forward, short knives in hand. The stout Embarrans each engaged one of the creatures with their knives, and those feydrim hissed and scuttled back. However, the third circled from behind, leaped upon the back of one of the knights, and dug its fangs into the Embarran’s neck. He went down screaming. The feydrim closed its jaws, and Grace could hear vertebrae crunch. The knight’s limbs flopped against the dais, then went still.
Before the feydrim could leap from its prey, another form was there: Ivalaine. The queen reached out with a silver needle and stuck it through the feydrim’s fur. It stiffened and hissed, then the light in its yellow eyes dimmed, and it slumped across the body of the dead knight.
The other Embarran staggered back. He had managed to gut one of the remaining feydrim with his knife. However, these men were not used to fighting without sword and armor. The third feydrim lashed out with its claws and sliced through the tendons in the back of his knee. The knight collapsed to the dais with a cry of agony. Once he was down it was easy for the feydrim. It closed its maw over his face and muffled his scream.
Once the knight’s cry ended, the feydrim lifted its head and bared its bloody fangs. Ivalaine fell back—it seemed the queen had no more needles. Grace stared at the creature. Once before she had killed one of these things with Travis’s help. She tried to command her hand to move to the knife in her boot, but it would not. The feydrim left the faceless body of the dead knight and scuttled forward.
“Help me, Olstin!” King Lysandir shrieked. “By all the gods, it’s coming for me!”
Olstin stared at the feydrim, then his ruddy face went white, and his eyes rolled up in his head. He slumped to the
dais while tears and snot ran down Lysandir’s face. The feydrim stretched its thin arms toward the king of Brelegond.
A flash of blue blinded Grace. There was an inhuman shriek and the reek of singed hair. When Grace’s vision cleared, she saw the feydrim writhing before Lysandir. A web of blue sparks sizzled around it, burning into its fur, its mouth, its eyes. The feydrim fell dead, and the sparks vanished.
“Blast you, Melindora Nightsilver!” Logren said.
Grace turned her head. The Lady Melia stood below the dais, hands raised, her beautiful face hard, her amber eyes molten. A blue nimbus surrounded her body. Grace stared.
Below the dais, Falken and Melia had organized resistance to the feydrim. The bard and a dozen of Boreas’s guards had set up a barricade of tables and benches. However, it was not the knives of the men so much as Melia’s magic that kept the feydrim at bay. She turned, and the nimbus about her strengthened until Grace could hardly see her slender form within the azure light. Fifty feydrim hissed and prowled on the other side of the makeshift barricade, but they did not venture over.
Logren stepped to the edge of the dais. “You’re a fool to fight, Melia. And you as well, Falken. Both of you know more than anyone the power you face. Both of you know you can never defeat it.” He raised his arms, and his voice boomed out over the great hall. “Hear me, all of you! The Pale King rides from Imbrifale this very night. Fight him and you will surely die. But there is another way. Vow to serve him, surrender yourself unto him, and I tell you that you will know glorious life such as you have never before imagined!”
The revelers cowered now. They knew they could not escape the hall, and they knew the feydrim would not kill them if they did not fight.
Logren’s face was rapturous. Grace imagined a world of people with hearts of iron. A world without kindness. A world frozen all in ice. No, there were enough heartless people in either world.
She concentrated, forced her breathing to calm, and reached out to touch the Weirding. It was everywhere—
strong and tinged with fear—spinning a web of life through the hall. She gathered it to her, wove it with her fingers as she had the threads of the loom, creating a net of power. She froze. There. In the center of the web was a dark blot, a place with no life, with no energy at all. She recoiled in loathing. It was Logren.
He spun around, a leering grin upon his lips. “So my little witch attempts a spell.” Logren advanced on her. “But your magic cannot touch me, Lady Grace. Haven’t you realized that?”
“You can’t win.” The words were dry as dust on her tongue—meaningless.
“But I already have.” His words were soft, just for her. “Melia is strong. I admire her as I always admire strength. But her magic cannot hold out much longer. Look—even now her power wavers.”
Grace did not want to follow his gesture, but she could not resist. Her heart turned to ice. It was true. The blue nimbus surrounding Melia flickered, and moisture beaded her brow. The feydrim pressed closer toward the barricade.
Her gaze returned to Logren, then dropped down to his pearl-gray tunic.
“What’s wrong, my lady?” he said in a mocking voice. “Is there something you do not understand?”
“Your chest.…”
A sneer cut across his face. “And you fancy yourself a witch, Lady Grace? It is not such a difficult magic, to trade one scar for another.” He touched the fine white line that marked his cheek. “I found a witch with the talent, and when she finished I stuck a knife in her back.”
Grace shuddered. So that was how he had hidden the truth.
Logren advanced on her, and she retreated until her back touched the stone wall behind the dais. There was nowhere else to go.
“I am high in the Pale King’s favor, Lady Grace.” Logren’s voice droned in her ears. “Surely he will give me a kingdom to rule for my reward. And when he does, you will be my queen. No other in the Dominions is as beautiful as you, not even that witch Ivalaine. No, don’t tremble. You will not be afraid when the time comes, my lady.” He ran a finger down
the bodice of her gown, tracing a line between her breasts. “You see, I will take away that weak human heart of yours, and I will give you one that will make you strong and unafraid.” His eyes were pits of blackness. “You will be mine, Lady Grace, and together we will rule forever!”
Grace gazed into his empty eyes, drew a deep breath, then spoke the only words she could. “I’d rather die.”
Logren laughed. “And die you will, Lady Grace.” He drew a curved knife from the folds of his tunic and raised it above her. “Die and be reborn as my queen!”
Before he could plunge the dagger into her chest, there was a metallic flash. Both the blade and Logren’s hand flew to one side, then fell to the dais. Logren screamed and pulled back the stump of his wrist. Dark blood sprayed from the wound.
Grace reeled. A figure stood behind Logren, clad all in smoke-gray.
“Durge!”
But how could the knight be here? Then she saw the rip in the tapestry behind the knight, opened by the greatsword he held in his hands. Through the slit was the darkness of a hidden doorway.
“My lady,” he said in a hoarse voice.
The knight was hunched over in pain. Blood stained his face, his hands, and his clothes. His cloak dangled in shreds behind him.
With an animal snarl of fury, Logren turned on the knight. He pressed his severed wrist against his own tunic, soaking it. “You idiot! What have you done to me?”
Durge gazed at him with somber brown eyes. “Something I will now finish, my lord.”
The knight swung his greatsword, but his injuries slowed him, and—despite his own horrible wound—Logren moved with unnatural speed. With his bleeding stump he batted the sword aside, then his other hand sped forward and contacted Durge squarely in the chest. The knight’s eyes went wide, and he flew back against the stone wall, striking it with a terrible
thud
.
“My lady …”
Then his eyes fluttered shut, and he sank to the floor, where he did not move.
Grace opened her mouth, but her scream was silent.
No
!
Logren whirled around. “Do you see, my lady? Do you see how wrong it is to resist me?” He turned, clutching the stump of his wrist, then moved to the edge of the dais and shouted to the entire hall. “You are all idiots to resist me!”
Grace sagged against the wall. He was right—they could not win. Melia’s power dimmed, and the feydrim pressed forward. Falken and the others slashed with their knives, but it would not be enough. In moments the feydrim would break through the barricade, would tear Melia, Falken, and the guards to bits, and would slink onto the dais to finish what they had come here for.
She shut her eyes, the din of the great hall receded, and darkness enfolded her. Familiar darkness. This was not the first time evil had owned her.
Grace was a girl. She lay stiffly in her bed, wondered if she would be the one that night, and believed as only children could believe that if she stayed hidden beneath the covers the monsters could not touch her. She was wrong. The covers were no protection. First came soft footfalls, then gentle whispers, and finally hands that reached out of the darkness—cold, hard hands—slipping beneath the covers to clutch soft flesh. Moans of pain drifted in the night, melding with the cries of owls.
Memories rippled, changed. It was an older girl who stood in the heart of the fire. Flames danced all around. They licked at walls and ceiling as if they fed on some viscous fuel that had permeated the wood. Screams rose above the roar of the flames—the horrid animal screams of grown men and women in agony. They could not escape their rooms, for somehow the locks on their doors had melted before the fire had ever touched them. A puff of parched air scorched the girl’s face. It was time to go. She walked through the inferno toward the open mouth of the door, and it seemed the flames flickered away from her as she moved, letting her pass. But it was her fire, after all. She had called it, and it had come.
The flames vanished, replaced by cool white tiles and sleek metal drawers. Her hands reached out as if they were not her own and opened one of the drawers. He lay inside, his dark skin gray under the plastic. Leon. Beneath the clear covering, his eyes opened and fixed on hers.
You’ve got to live, Grace
. His breath fogged the plastic.
Don’t you see? No matter how much it hurts, you’ve got to live
.
A bright light shone behind her. She turned. Now she was in the ED, and the doors slid open. Gurneys rolled in, dozens of them, hundreds, all bearing broken people who cried out in pain. One of the gurneys stopped before her. Grace bent over it and pulled back the sheet to examine the patient.