Tam nodded to Larkin, his expression telling her he would look after her husband. She nodded back. She and Atara left the room at a jog, half the pages and guards falling in behind them.
Dying Light
The night was still and hot. With Atara and Maylah leading the way, Larkin jogged along the bridges that connected the trees, sweat soaking her tunic. Behind her came two more guards and two pages, one of them Farwin.
Judging by the moonrise, it had to be sometime around midnight, but nearly every hometree in the Alamant was lit up. Children, obviously woken by the warning horn, wailed as their parents left them in the care of their elders and joined the procession of enchantresses and enchanters streaming toward the wall.
Those soldiers before her stepped aside to let her pass. More than one had a face streaked with tears. As Larkin met their gazes, she felt an overwhelming sense that she had to protect as many as possible. Send as many as possible home to those crying children.
Out of breath, Larkin crossed the last bridge into the dead space between the city and the wall. Before Larkin stood the steel-reinforced main gate—the only part of the wall not made by living trees. It rose out of the water, an intricate pulley system for each side. All along the wall, catapults crouched, ready to loose the payload stacked to the side of them.
A high tower on each side of her, Larkin stepped under the leafy, arched colonnade, complete with arrow slits. Enchanters and enchantresses lined the walkway. Young men bustled about, setting up bundles of arrows, piles of rocks, and buckets of water with ladles for drinking.
Larkin sidestepped a running squad of enchantresses and spared a glance back the way she’d come. Denan and his guards weren’t in sight yet. A week ago, he would have outrun her by double. Now he couldn’t come close to keeping up.
“Larkin.” Atara motioned for her to hurry from where she waited at the entrance to the eastern tower.
Pushing her worry away, Larkin hustled to catch up.
“Watch the entrance,” Atara said to the two trailing guards. She led the way up the winding steps, with the pages bringing up the rear.
They stepped through the trapdoor to the top of the tower, a handful of guards and a dozen pages eyeing them. Aaryn stood on the far crenellation, which jutted out thirty feet from the main wall. Leaving Aaryn a respectful bubble of space, two dozen archers ringed the exterior, bundles of arrows at their feet.
With a goodbye nod, Atara directed Farwin and the other page to set the chest down out of the way at the back of the tower and then join the other pages. She took her place with the other guards. Larkin stepped up beside Aaryn. Her mother-in-law took one look at Larkin and handed her a waterskin. She drank greedily.
The lake was still—so still it reflected the starlight and moonlight, leaving the night unnaturally bright. About a hundred yards away, an enormous, ugly raft with a battering ram bobbed in the water. Behind it, a dark line of mulgars marred the shore. Thousands of them. They stood eerily still, not a sound, not a movement. That eerie silence sent a shiver down Larkin’s back.
“They can’t really believe that ram is a match for the barrier,” Aaryn said.
All the dreams the White Tree had sent Larkin—about how to make the barrier that encased the wall—sent a nervous jolt through her. She flared her magic and examined the faintly different filaments of light woven in a complex pattern—a pattern familiar to her because of the dreams. Geometric shapes, mostly triangles, overlaid in a locking pattern, every strand in perfect order. It somehow reminded her of an impassable mountain range of craggy cliffs and sharp peaks. It fit over the wall like a second skin.
She sank onto her heels in relief. The barrier was impervious to everything but magic. And magic was something ardents and mulgars couldn’t bear. With the wraiths unable to cross water, the only way for the enemy to get into the city was over the wall. To do that, they’d have to go through the Alamantian army.
“We’ll hold them.” Aaryn shot a look at the sister tower. Larkin could make out Gendrin ordering about his aides and advisors. Denan should be the one giving those orders.
“Ready to kill some mulgars?” a familiar voice said breathlessly.
Larkin turned to see Tam muss Farwin’s hair and tweak the other page’s nose. Only then did Larkin notice the fear in the boys’ eyes. She’d been so wrapped up in other things that she hadn’t noticed. Tam had. He was good at calming everyone.
He nodded to the other guards and came to lean against the crenellation. He had always been an adviser as well as a guard. Larkin felt better with him by her side.
“Where’s Denan?” she asked.
“Sent me ahead.” He sniffed. “Said my expertise was best served guiding you womenfolk.”
She drove her shoulder into his arm, knocking him off-balance.
“Hey!” Tam said in mock anger.
She almost smiled. The pages weren’t the only ones Tam was good at calming.
“Here.” Atara handed Larkin a telescope.
Larkin peered through the concave glass. Ardents prowled in front of their army and watched their former homes with the kind of voracity reserved for wild beasts driven mad by hunger. Some had even lit a fire, which threw terrifying shadows across the eerily silent army.
Behind them, the faces of dozens of mulgars jumped into view. The vast majority looked tattered, spent. Like corpses whose bodies hadn’t been allowed to decay. Some wore rudimentary armor. Some were naked—as if their clothes had rotted from their bodies. Others were missing arms or legs. One woman was missing her left breast, the scars thick and twisted. But each had the telltale tined black marks and the all-black eyes.
Perhaps even more disturbing were the couple hundred whose armor still shone with polish. They weren’t even dirty. Where had they come from?
“There’s a whole bunch of Black Druids to the east,” Aaryn said.
Larkin swung her telescope, catching sight of a knot of three hundred or so druids amid the mulgar army. The second company from the Idelmarch wasn’t coming. Not anymore.
“What are the wraiths waiting for?” Larkin paced. “What do they know that we don’t?” Because the wraiths had spent nearly three centuries plotting for this moment. They had a plan. And Larkin needed to know what it was if she hoped to counter it.
Tam studied the mulgars through one of the telescopes. “Maybe they’re as desperate as we are. Maybe their tree is dying as well, and this is their last chance at destroying us.”
Tam always had been too hopeful. Aaryn wore the same tight expression Larkin did. Then Tam growled low in his throat.
“What is it?” Larkin whispered.
Mouth tight, he moved her telescope and pointed down the length. It took her a moment to find what he’d seen. Shadows tore apart and writhed like snakes in their death throes. Slowly, they stilled. Coalesced.
Ramass lifted his head. The Wraith King’s sickly yellow eyes stared at her, as if he knew exactly where she was.
How could he possibly know?
The Wraith King motioned. A mulgar shambled up behind him. Unlike the other mulgars, Venna was clean and wearing a ridiculous pink dress. If not for the black tined marks and soulless eyes, she would be beautiful. Next came Talox. His clothes were threadbare and stained black. His bottom lip had been rent in two, one piece hanging limply. But it was his eyes that tore at her—eyes full of hate where before there had been only gentleness.
He’d become this to save her life. He’d paid too high a price.
The Wraith King reached toward her, his fingers curling, beckoning her to him. His words through Raeneth’s mouth sent a tendril of ice down her neck. Come to the forest, Larkin, Ramass had said. And I will give you back Venna and Talox. I will give them all back.
He was a liar. She shot him a very rude gesture. Let his army come. Let them bash themselves to pieces against the wall and its barrier.
As if he’d seen her refusal, he again motioned. Another mulgar came forward. One of the men with armo
r that shone in the moonlight. One arm hung limply, as if the shoulder had been broken. And the face was badly bruised and swollen. But still, Larkin recognized Harben.
Her father was an mulgar.
Her father.
So many memories.
His fist slamming into her cheek. She cowered in the mud. Spit flew from his mouth. Veins stood out in his reddened face.
But there had been a before. A before of horsey rides and teaching her to plant a field and bringing her home a blue hair ribbon even though they couldn’t afford it.
And there had been an after. An after of heavy sorrow and the beginnings of forgiveness.
And now there was an end. Because her father was gone.
Larkin’s legs sagged. Tam caught her.
“Ryttan,” she managed. “Ryttan has fallen?”
Tam and Aaryn exchanged a look. “She doesn’t know?” Aaryn asked.
Mouth in a thin line, Tam shook his head.
Frowning in disapproval, Aaryn pointed to the west. Larkin didn’t see anything at first. But then . . . a faint red-orange glow gleamed, like the last traces of a dying sun. But no. The sky was too dark, morning too far off. That was fire.
Ryttan was burning.
All those new mulgars . . . they were all that was left.
Ancestors save her, they’d sent her father to Ryttan. Sent him to this death.
“It’s why the warning horn sounded,” Tam admitted.
If Tam knew, then so did Denan. Someone must have told him while she’d been washing away Maisy’s blood. Light, I’ve lost so many of them. Larkin squeezed her hands into fists to keep the anger from erupting and jerked away from Tam. “Why didn’t either of you tell me?”
Tam’s jaw tightened. “Because he knows the danger of fighting distracted.”
Is that why Denan had asked Tam to stay behind—to convince him to spare her the horror she was feeling now?
Aaryn wrapped an arm around Larkin’s waist. “Denan knows that there is no time for grief in a battle.”
At that, her anger softened. In Denan’s place, she might have done the same. She had to accept that her father was as good as dead. His body a puppet for the Wraith King, who would kill them all. She needed her focus on the lives she still had to save, not the ones she had already lost.
So Larkin took her father’s not-death and buried it deep in her imaginary lake. She wiped the tears from her cheeks and faced the Wraith King. She didn’t know how, but he could hear her.
“I’ll die before I let you take me.”
Ramass didn’t react, but the ardents and mulgars tipped back their heads and screamed, their cries rending the night.
Battle
Mulgars swarmed into the lake, kicked up purple algae, and disappeared beneath the water. Wave after wave of them dove out of sight, until the shore was bare of everything except four wraiths standing just far enough back that the water wouldn’t touch them.
The lake grew still again, as if nothing had happened. But beneath the surface, her father and her friends were coming to kill them.
“Where’s the lethan when you need it?” Tam muttered.
Larkin shivered at the mention of the creature with its sucking tentacles and sharp beak.
Using poles and oars, the ardents pushed the massive raft forward. To think of the creatures breaking into the city, launching unseen out of the lake to attack each hometree in turn . . . It would be chaos. It would be a slaughter.
We must hold the wall.
“Enchantresses,” Aaryn called. “Prepare to shield.” The command rang up and down the line. Enchantresses stepped forward, sigils flaring to life.
“Ready the catapults!” Gendrin called from the other tower. A command that should have been given by the king.
“Where is Denan?” Larkin asked. He should have joined them by now.
Tam motioned to a random page. “Find the king. Report back.”
The boy left at a run.
Larkin was glad Tam hadn’t sent Farwin. High and heavily guarded as this tower was, this was the safest point along the wall. She wanted the boy near her in case things went wrong. She lifted the telescope but found no sign of mulgars beneath the still water.
“Release!” Gendrin called, so loud that it made Larkin jump.
There was a heavy thud like the beat of an enormous drum as the catapults launched. Rocks and gravel sailed overhead, arced downward, and slammed into the lake. Purple water rocketed upward.
Larkin waited for any sign that Gendrin had hit his mark—blood or bodies. There was only the gradual fade of the algae to black.
“He’s firing blind,” Tam said through gritted teeth.
“The mulgars are probably too deep,” Aaryn said.
If only they could see what they were hitting! A sudden idea struck Larkin. She turned back to the pages. “Bring me all the extra lampent blossoms you can find. Hurry, before they attack.”
About ten of them took off.
“Two of you stay back,” Aaryn said.
The rest left at a run, and this time Farwin went with them. Larkin had to stop herself from calling him back. Light, she was growing as overprotective of the boy as West was of her.
The catapults groaned as they shifted and twanged as they launched, closer this time. More water surged. Before the water had even settled, the catapults twanged again. Again, the shot hit another location. Gendrin was searching for a target.
Farwin returned, his tunic loaded with lampent blossoms. Larkin took one and smashed it into a ball, the juices making her palms glow faintly. She hurled it out into the water, where it sunk just beneath the surface. The juices illuminated the water around it.
“Ancestors, you’re brilliant.” Tam took one of the flowers and copied her. Other soldiers caught on. Lampents were picked from where they grew wild in the canopy and along the parapet. Crumpled flowers sailed over the wall, landing in the still water. Some sank, some floated, and some hovered in between.
A shout. A soldier leaned over the parapet and pointed. At first, Larkin saw nothing. But then, in the stillness, a ghostly figure slid beneath the water. They weren’t blind anymore. And the creatures were much closer than Larkin had anticipated—almost as if some had been waiting in the lake all along. Waiting and watching her. That’s how the wraiths knew where she was and what she had said. A shiver of unease coursed through her.
“Catapults reconfigure and fire at will!” Gendrin cried.
The catapults groaned as their captains shifted them into position. The first one twanged. Rocks slammed into the water, and between the gleam of lampents, black blood plumed. The first body, broken into pieces, floated to the surface. Then another. And another. Then a dozen. The pipers cheered, their fists raised to the sky.
Larkin didn’t join them. Was Harben among those bodies? Talox? Venna? The idea horrified her, even as the logical part of her knew it would be better for her friends to die than be slaves to the wraiths.
Soldiers kept throwing lampents. Round after round came from the catapults. But fewer bodies floated to the surface.
“They’ve gone deeper,” Aaryn said.
The catapults adjusted and began striking closer and closer to the walls. The raft with the battering ram slid ever closer. Then the first of the mulgars came too close for the catapults to hit. Close enough that Larkin could make out the flash of a beaked nose, a bald head, a smooth calf ending in a mangled stump. Could smell the stench of death that surrounded the mulgars like a miasma.
The cheers fell silent. An air of anticipation grew, for the assault that would begin any moment.
“How many are there?” Larkin whispered, as if afraid to break the hush.
“Perhaps ten thousand,” Tam said.
Ten thousand mulgars against three thousand Alamantians. Light save us.
“Archers at the ready!” echoed along the wall. Archers, including those in the tower with Larkin, drew their bows.
“Arrows won’t kill them,” Lar
kin said.
“But they will slow them,” Aaryn said.
“Makes them easier to kill,” Tam added.
Up and down the wall, dozens of mulgars churned just below the surface like fish writhing in full nets. Crossbows floating on small rafts suddenly emerged—how they’d sunk them and managed to move them through the water, Larkin didn’t know. Mulgars swarmed onto the small rafts and loaded the cross bolts with grappling hooks.
“Light!” Tam swore.
“Enchantresses, shield!” Aaryn cried.
Behind her, one of the enchanters played notes on his pipes. Enchantresses flared their shields wide, spreading them over the parapet and the colonnade.
Larkin flared her own sigils. “Will those hooks reach the tower?”
Tam studied the crossbows. “We’re too high.”
Larkin wanted to believe him, but she’d learned long ago to never underestimate the wraiths. So she kept her sigils lit, and she didn’t miss that Aaryn did the same.
Below, hundreds of crossbows released with a discordant snap. Larkin flared her shield—whether she needed it or not, she felt better with it in her hand. Hooks shot up and over the enchantresses’ shield walls and the woven colonnades, catching on the woven branches.
Larkin had an instant to feel relief that none of the hooks came anywhere close to the towers. Then the ardents hauled back, and the hooks caught, dark ropes going taut. Mulgars exploded from the water and scurried up like spiders. If they made it over the wall . . . Cold fear clenched Larkin’s stomach. She swallowed at the bile rising in her throat.
“Cut them down!” Aaryn shouted.
Enchantresses flared their weapons and hacked at ropes as thick as their thighs. Their magical blades should have cut through as easily as a hand through cobwebs, but the cursed things didn’t even fray.
“How is that possible?” Larkin asked.
“Archers!” Gendrin called before anyone could answer her.
The archers drew their bows and sighted their targets.
The enchantress units lowered their shield wall. The archers released. A hundred twangs sounded. A flock of arrows illuminated by the lampents sliced into the mulgars. The creatures bristled with them, but there were no screams of pain. No grimaces or hunching over wounds as black blood spread through the purple-tinted water like ink. If a mulgar died, three more rose to take its place.
Wraith King Page 26
