by Karen Chance
The door slammed open, showing a bemused, human-looking guard. And a flood of dark-eyed, silk-clad, tassel-bedecked lovelies, each with a platter or basket or pitcher. Or, in the case of one girl with wildly improbable crimson hair, a basket of fresh-baked bread rolls that she started tossing to the famished fey.
“Did you think we forgot you? Poor darlings,” she cooed, to the very surprised, very pleased-looking soldiers.
Well, apart from one.
“Stop that! Stop that immediately!” the officer told her, only to have her laugh and shake her tassels at him. Xanthippe had been a lion tamer’s assistant back in the day, and not much fazed her.
“Who ordered this? Who ordered this?” he demanded, as his men began dividing up the bounty.
“The princess, handsome one,” a dark-haired girl with some of the biggest tassels I’d ever seen said. And smacked a kiss on his outraged cheek. “She thought you might be lonely, all the way down here.”
Several of the men sniggered, but the officer didn’t seem amused. “I wasn’t informed. And what is that?” he demanded, focusing on the two large pitchers a dark-skinned beauty in yellow fringe was carrying in.
“Relax, lover,” Xanthippe said. “We know the rules. It’s just wine.”
“Wine! Do you have any idea what he can do with wine?” He gestured savagely back at Pritkin. “Get it out!”
“But what are they supposed to drink?” the dark-skinned girl asked. “The men look thirsty.” She looked around. “Aren’t you thirsty?”
There was a general murmur of agreement, which didn’t seem to make the officer any happier. “I said no,” he told the girl, pushing her toward the door. “Get out!”
“Watch the shoes,” she said, which were cork-heeled wedges at least five inches high.
But he didn’t listen. And the next thing I knew, a big earthenware pot of wine was smashing onto the stones, fey were cursing, girls were yelling, and the other pot was pouring all over the officer, when the dancer wobbled and fell into him. And then . . .
And then . . .
I stared around, mouth full of roll, as the room suddenly got darker. And farther away, although that wasn’t possible—was it? But it kind of seemed like it was. Maybe because the stones Pritkin and I had been sitting against were moving, opening up like they were swallowing us whole, pulling us back into our own little tunnel, one that hadn’t been there a second ago. And then abruptly closing behind us.
The yells, shrieks, and girlish laughter abruptly cut off, leaving us entombed in a womb of stone. One that was moving a whole lot slower than it had been a moment ago. And then barely moving at all, stones that had been almost liquid suddenly solidifying again, gritting against each other, groaning in my ears. And pressing against me to the point that I could . . . barely . . . breathe—
Pritkin, I thought, because I didn’t have enough air in my lungs to scream.
And then we were out, popping like a cork out of a champagne bottle, hitting open air and falling what had to be six feet, onto a hard patch of dirt.
Chapter Fifty-two
I lay there, stunned and half-choked, because I had been trying to breathe through bread. But the fall seemed to have jarred it loose, and I spat it out, all the while staring at the wall above us. Which was still moving in a very unrocklike way, as if it couldn’t remember where all the stones went.
“Myrddin?” I said nervously, and didn’t get an answer. I looked over to find Pritkin on his back, appearing unconscious—or worse. “Myrddin!”
“I’m all right.” It was faint.
“Are you sure?” I scrambled over.
He opened his eyes to look at me, and they were almost completely red from popped blood vessels. “I . . . hate . . . earth magic.”
It didn’t look like it liked him too much, either.
But it obeyed.
“So,” I asked, after a moment, “what do they call someone with four?”
He huffed out what might have been a laugh, and shook his head at me.
And continued to shake it when the earth suddenly moved underneath us. Enough to blast a bunch of birds out of a nearby tree, like they’d been shot from a cannon. And to throw me on my butt when I tried to get up.
I looked at Pritkin. “Did you—”
“No.”
He rolled to his knees, staring at the lightning scribbling warnings across the sky. And illuminating blue-black clouds stacked high above skirts of rain. That wasn’t so weird; we’d been inside the castle for more than an hour. They’d had plenty of time to form up.
Except that they were everywhere, on all sides, at least the ones I could see. Just huge gray sheets rushing toward us, illuminated here and there by neon flashes. One of which hit a lone tree, far in the distance on a hill, exploding it into burning pieces that were almost immediately doused by the incoming tide.
And that was exactly what it looked like, I realized: a tide rolling over land, drowning everything in its wake.
Then another tremor hit, as if the earth itself was angry.
“The kitchens,” Pritkin said, pulling me up. “They’re not far.”
We ran.
The hill on which the castle sat had no trees, probably for defense. But down below, a small orchard ringed the base, the dense foliage swaying in the rising wind. Beyond it, I could see the walled town, its cook fires glittering in the night and sending thin threads of smoke skyward, which were being pulled off center by the winds. And which looked so small and insignificant next to the power of nature.
Everyone else must have thought so, too. Because there was frantic activity around the festival tents, as vendors and partygoers alike scrambled for cover. While out in the harbor, the boats dipped and rolled, the water beneath them cresting gray and white, like clutching hands, cold and angry.
“Come on!” Pritkin told me, pulling on my hand, because I’d unconsciously stopped to stare.
“Sorry.”
We’d just rounded the side of the castle when a thin, cold rain began to fall, the first outriders of what looked to be an onslaught. It hit a moment later, drenching us as we pelted across a garden clinging precariously to the slope of the hill, tripping on cabbages and mushing beans. And then through a door, our muddy feet messing up the clean-swept hall next to the kitchen.
Cheerful golden light splashed the stones in front of us. While behind, the moonlight was eclipsed by clustering clouds, cutting off as suddenly as if someone had flipped a switch. I turned around to stare at it, a weird feeling coming over me, while Pritkin wrestled with the heavy slab of the door, trying to swing it shut with rain lashing at it in gusts like hammerblows.
But he got it done, just as the cook poked his head out of the kitchen, a spoon in one hand and a bowl in the other. And a frown on his face. “What’s this, then?” he asked as some kind of sauce seeped onto the stones. “What’s happening?”
“Storm blew up,” Pritkin said dryly.
The man sighed. “And here I was, hoping to sneak off down t’ the faire later. Just my—”
He broke off when a shudder ran through the stones under our feet, hard enough to send us stumbling against the wall. That would have been worrying enough in a modern structure, but this wasn’t one. This was basically a mountain made out of stone.
Which had just shaken noticeably.
“All right, what is this?” the cook demanded, about the time we were mobbed by a mass of people coming from inside the castle. One that quickly filled the tiny corridor.
“What is this? What is this?” the outraged cook was yelling, barring the way into his precious kitchen while we hugged the wall on the other side to avoid being trampled.
And then some genius opened the door.
The hall immediately became a maelstrom of flashing light, screaming people and lashing rain. “Close the door! Close the door!” e
veryone at this end yelled.
But the ones getting drenched weren’t listening. Or maybe they couldn’t hear over the booming thunder, because the whole place sounded like we’d been caught in a giant kettledrum. It was deafening to the point of being painful, and I guessed they thought so, too. Because they were turning around, they were rushing back this way, they were—
“Myrddin!” I yelled.
“Stay with me!” He pushed me ahead of him as the stampede hit, sweeping us and everyone around us along with it. We burst into the area with the stairs, which was considerably larger than the hall, but no less packed. And was getting worse, because more people were flooding in all the time.
Along with something else.
I stared for a moment, nonplussed. Because a frothing mass of water was churning around the fleeing crowd, gushing down the stairs like an indoor waterfall. And causing them to trip and fall and others to pile up behind them. We fought our way to the side and watched them sort themselves out, panicked lords and ladies in their finery, wide-eyed servants in their livery, and several furious-looking actors, each carrying half of a wooden horse.
Pritkin grabbed one of them by the arm. “What’s going on?”
“What does it look like?” The tall man with the sharp cheeks was livid. “Had to ruin everything, didn’t they? The fucking fey! First decent-paying job we’ve had in months—”
“Ruin what?”
“My purse, for one thing! Who’s going to pay to see us now? With that for entertainment!” He gestured savagely back at the stairs.
“Entertainment?” I said worriedly. “What entertainment?”
“They’re fighting,” the big tambourinist said, his voice slow and thick.
The tall man nodded angrily. “Dinner hadn’t even started before that damn cold-eyed fey—”
“Which one?”
“The Winter King, they call him. I know what I’d like to call him!”
“Aeslinn?” Pritkin’s grip tightened. “What did he—”
“I’m trying to tell you, aren’t I? Son of a bitch picked a fight, with that crazy-eyed sea witch—”
Someone fell into us, and he broke off, cursing.
“What happened?” Pritkin demanded.
“She got mad,” the tambourinist said.
“What do you think happened?” the tall man yelled. “Now let me go. I’m getting out of here!”
Which, yeah, would be a good plan, I thought, as they swept around us.
Except that we needed the sword, and the sword was up there.
“Is there another way?” I asked Pritkin, who was staring at the stairs-turned-waterfall.
“Not from here. Not without—” He broke off when a slender opening appeared in the throng. “There!”
“Not without what?” I asked, one hand in his, the other protecting my head as we plowed into the fray.
“Not without going back outside,” he yelled to be heard above the din.
And okay, that wasn’t appealing. I could hear the thunder from here, sounding like the whole castle was under siege. And feeling like it, too. The room shook again, people screamed, and the crowd got even crazier. A panicked guy ran into me, and then kept on going like I wasn’t even there, threatening to trample me.
But Pritkin pulled him off and shoved him on his way, and somehow forged us a path up the middle of the stairs. There was less water there, people’s bodies dispersing it to either side, although that changed as we climbed. The people grew fewer, yet the tide seemed to be growing weaker.
No, not weaker, I realized.
Just changed.
I lost my footing and staggered against a wall, my fingers brushing through something hard and cold and crumbly. Which threatened to freeze them in place before I snatched them back. As it was, the pads had wrinkled up and turned faintly white, like frostbite was imminent, even after such a brief contact.
“Pritkin—” I said nervously, forgetting to use the right name, but it didn’t matter.
Because a booming voice overrode mine, magnified by the stairwell. “Not in my house! Not in my hall!”
“Where, then?” a man’s voice demanded. “For I will have recompense—”
“Oh, and in full!” That was a voice I knew: Nimue’s. And sounding furious.
Okay, the waterfall was starting to make more sense now.
Pritkin had crawled up the remaining stairs, to peer out the top. I tried to join him, but the strange frost covered everything. It glittered in the spill of light from above like diamond dust, turning our surroundings into a beautiful, glistening ice cave. But it burned on the slightest contact, like cold fire.
“Here.” Pritkin pulled off his outer tunic and tossed it down to me, and I gratefully put it on. It was damp, but not as much as my own clothes. And better still, it provided a barrier to the frost. I let the sleeves hang over my hands, like makeshift gloves, and crawled up the remaining stairs.
Despite the crowd down below, there were still people in the great hall—a lot of them. And from what I could see, they were all fey. Including someone in the middle of the room, who I saw in glimpses through a forest of legs. Someone wearing elaborate black and silver robes that glittered like starlight. Someone with long silver-white hair, a gleaming circlet on his brow, and eyes like storm clouds.
Someone I’d seen before.
“Their king was the one chasing us through Faerie?” I whispered, but Pritkin didn’t reply. Maybe he didn’t dare, since we were within earshot of the fey. Or maybe he was too busy staring at the woman facing off with Aeslinn.
Nimue had found time to change, because she was now all in blue: a long, dark velvet robe with white and green embroidery, so subtle and so fine that, even without enchantment, it flowed like the sea whenever she moved. It was a hell of an outfit, but she didn’t need it. Her long hair drifted out about her, as if floating on invisible ocean currents, and her eyes were lightning. I’d thought she looked scary facing off with Morgaine, but apparently that had been, in Tami’s terms, merely a paddlin’.
I didn’t think that was what she had planned for Aeslinn.
Yet this was the guy who had brought down a mountain—hell, almost a whole mountain range—trying to bury us. I felt another shiver run through me. This . . . wasn’t going to go well, was it?
As if in answer, a deafening crack caused the staircase to shudder, hard enough to send a cascade of ice down the stairs. And to send us tobogganing down with it, maybe a quarter of the way, before Pritkin managed to catch us. He braced on the now ice-free rock at a turn of the stairs while I held on to his arm and Aeslinn’s voice boomed like we were in an echo chamber.
“Careful, Sea Witch! You come perilously close to naming me coward!”
“Indeed?” Nimue’s tones rang out, clear as a bell. “That was not my intent in the slightest.”
“That is fortunate, for your—”
“I meant to state it outright.”
The room above exploded in loud voices, along with what sounded like actual explosions. Another crack caused the rest of the ice from above to suddenly cascade down the steps. Onto us.
“You dare—” Aeslinn thundered while Pritkin thrust me at the wall, shielding me with his body. And somehow holding his position while flakes of the stuff burst around us, hitting the curve and going everywhere. And burning whatever they touched, like sparks from a too-close bonfire.
“Yes, I dare!” Nimue’s furious tones shivered across my skin like a physical thing. “As you have dared, for centuries, making war with me by proxy, not willing to face me yourself! Too long have you squeezed us, forcing the creatures of the dark onto our lands, allowing the abominations—whom you armed—to burn our towns, kill and ravage our people—”
“Abominations?” The contempt dripped. “I should think you would welcome them. Everyone knows your peo
ple are nothing but mongrels, intermarrying with vermin, destroying—”
“Have a care!”
“Oh, I will. I do. And when my armies march into Avalon, I will put your half-breeds to the sword, along with any polluted blood I find—”
“Your armies march only in your dreams, Dirt King.” There was a savage form of mirth in the words now. “You will never have the numbers. The only way to take my throne is if I offer it to you—”
“As if anyone would want that collection of bogs and marshes—”
“—and I do!”
The room above suddenly went deadly quiet.
“Face me in combat,” Nimue challenged. “Now, tonight, according to the ancient rules you’re so fond of. And we will settle this. The winner becomes ruler of both kingdoms; the loser . . . receives the appropriate funeral rites. Duel me, King of the Wastelands. Or, once and for all, declare yourself coward before all Faerie!”
There was no sound for a long moment; even straining, all I could hear was my own frantic heartbeat.
“The only thing I will declare is your line extinct, once I finish with you.”
The room detonated, in shouts and curses and more of those strange crashes. And then Arthur’s voice cut through the din, loud as a foghorn. “If you want to kill each other, do it outside!”
The fey must have agreed, because the next noises echoing down the stairs were bootheels on stone, and a lot more shouting.
Pritkin crawled back up the stairs again, to peer out the top. “They’re leaving,” he said. “Everyone’s heading for the Table—”
“Even Arthur?”
He nodded. “And he’s not wearing his sword.”
“So what are we doing here?” I asked, jumping up. “We can get it in the confusion. Come on!”
And then somebody kicked me in the chest.
It was just that fast, and wholly unexpected because there was no one there. And just that painful, since it felt more like someone had just driven a boot through my body, the shock alone overwhelming. I fell backward, clutching for purchase I couldn’t find on the slippery stairs and couldn’t see.
