Wraith King

by Argyle, Amber

  “Tend to your wounds,” Tam told them. “The rest of you, pile the bodies onto the trapdoor.” He and one of the pages took hold of a mulgar’s arms and legs and tossed him onto the door. Some of the others moved more bodies. Others tended to wounds.

  Unable to watch, Larkin found herself standing over Farwin. Trying hard to keep her mind blank, she turned him over and straightened his limbs. She folded his hands over each other and closed his eyes. If not for the stillness, he might only be sleeping.

  He still had acne on his cheeks and was in desperate need of a haircut. He’d probably never kissed a girl or even left the Alamant. And now he never would.

  “Light, Farwin.” How could she ever tell his mother and father?

  A crack sounded, and some of the bodies sank toward the stairway.

  Maybe I won’t live to tell Farwin’s parents anything. She was beyond feeling horror or even sorrow by the idea. Just grim acceptance.

  “Larkin!” Aaryn barked as she flared her shield and stood guard over the entrance.

  Larkin and Atara took their places beside her.

  “I don’t have another pulse in me,” Atara said.

  “Nor I,” Aaryn said.

  Larkin hauled out her amulet and gripped it between her shield and her hand. The branch slipped into her skin. “I don’t know how many this will create.”

  The three of them formed a shield wall. The remaining enchanters took their place behind them, the longest weapons they could find in hand.

  “We just have to hold out until Denan and the druids reach us,” Aaryn said. “Brace us.”

  The men set their feet and planted their hips and thighs in the enchantresses’ backsides.

  “He’ll come soon.” Larkin felt strangely calm about that.

  With another crack, the trapdoor split in two. Mulgar bodies fell into the gap and were immediately wrenched out of the way. The first mulgar emerged and threw himself at Larkin’s shield; she could feel the grime on his skin through the magic.

  With Tam bracing her, Larkin easily held back the mulgar. Together, they held the next five. But when an ardent began coordinating their heaves, Larkin felt her feet sliding back.

  “Pulse,” Aaryn said.

  Larkin flared, sending the masses of mulgars careening into each other, the bodies beneath breaking their fall. A dozen scrambled up the stairs in a coordinated effort and hit Larkin’s shield, driving it upward, and knocking her amulet free. A hand clamped down on her ankle and jerked. She fell hard on her backside and sucked in a breath, her shield held uselessly overhead.

  Having gained a foothold, mulgars poured into the gap, grabbed her arms and legs, and hauled her toward the crenellations.

  The Thread

  Larkin kicked and screamed, but the crush of mulgars overpowered her. Tam and Atara fought madly to reach her, but a wall of mulgars blocked the way. Atara managed to break through and came close enough to kill two of the mulgars holding Larkin, but more surged in to take their place and forced Atara back.

  Larkin dangled over the twenty-story drop. Below, mulgars waited with a sleek-looking boat—where had that come from? The ones holding her slipped ropes over her ankles and arms, tightened them, and braced to throw her over. She couldn’t let the wraiths have her. She’d drown herself first.

  She bucked, managing to kick one leg free. She shoved her foot through the woven crenellations, hooking it around one of the vines. The mulgars tossed her over backward. She swung, foot wrenching hard, and banged into the crenellations. Pain shot up and down her leg.

  Her amulet dangled to the side of her head. She gripped it, the sharp branch piercing her palm. She drew its magic for another pulse, sending the mulgars above her careening. The crenellations protected the ones scrabbling at her foot. She shifted her aim to pulse again when a mulgar dislodged her foot.

  She fell. The rope caught, stopping her with a jerk, before sliding out fast between mulgar hands. Those in the boat strained toward her, hundreds of reaching, stretching arms. She flared her sword and swiped at them. They reached for her with stumps. She couldn’t overpower them all. When they caught her, they would drag her kicking and screaming toward shore. And then . . . black, sucking shadows and the smell of death.

  I can’t let them take me. She managed to pull herself up and grab the rope, climbing hard and fast. Three mulgars suddenly blasted over the edge and fell, one of them banging into her. The rope jerked. She barely held on. Blinking through the stars in her vision, she looked up, expecting to see mulgars throwing themselves at her to knock her off.

  Instead, she searched her husband’s frantic face. She let out a sob of relief.

  “Larkin!” Denan cried. He was covered in blood and gore, same as she.

  Someone out of sight yanked her up fast. As soon as she was in reach, Denan grabbed her wrist, hauled her into his arms, and crushed her to him.

  She held on just as tightly as her head swam and her heart pounded. “You came. I knew you would come.”

  “Always,” he murmured against her. “I thought I was going to have to dive in after you.”

  The fall would have likely killed him. “That would have been a colossally idiotic move.”

  “I would have done it anyway.”

  For a moment, all else fell away, and it was just Denan. The solid strength of his body and the gentleness of his soul. And then reality crashed down. Farwin was dead. She’d come within a hair’s breadth of being captured. Her left ankle swelled tight in her boot. She let out a single sob.

  “Lock it away,” he whispered. “To be dealt with later.”

  He was right. She couldn’t fall apart. Not yet. But when it came . . . She imagined her iced-over lake. Imagined her shoving the fear and the pain and the dread deep inside an iced-over chest. And then she threw that chest into the blackness, forced it to ice over again.

  From the deep, a rumble sounded, the ice shuddering. But it held.

  “Better?” he asked.

  She nodded and made herself pull back. Take in her surroundings. Denan reluctantly released her. The tower was flooded with druids, who beat back the mulgars with vicious precision. As she watched, the last mulgar died.

  One of the men turned to her.

  It was West, wearing druid black, one side of his trailing mustache red with blood. She blinked at him, not understanding. He took a step toward her before coming to an abrupt halt. His expression clouded over, shuddered.

  He turned and ordered the druids, “Throw the bodies over.”

  The druids moved to obey, taking hold of the mulgars by ankles and wrists and tossing them over the side.

  “How?” she murmured to Denan with a significant look at her former guard.

  “I figured we might need the druids’ help,” Denan answered. “Found West there, already trying to convince them to join in the fighting. I put him in charge, and the druids accepted him.”

  “He’s the new Master Druid?” she asked in disbelief.

  Denan nodded.

  It was too much to wrap her head around. And there were more important things, like securing the tower.

  Aaryn leaned over the crenellation and shouted orders to her enchantresses. Atara glared at the trapdoor as if daring any other mulgars to come through. The archers were all dead, as was another page—the injured one—but two guards were still alive. There was only one person missing.

  “Where’s Tam?” she asked.

  “Here.” Eyes closed, he leaned against the crenellations behind her, a wicked knot on the side of his head. “Next time, Larkin stays in the hometree. Agreed?”

  “Agreed,” Atara said.

  Denan made a sound that was half growl, half grunt of agreement.

  “Is it over?” Larkin asked.

  “Not until the sun rises,” Denan said.

  The sky was still dark with stars. Mulgars still scaled the ropes. The Alamant had rallied—thanks to the druids—but that charge had weakened them.

  “What are we going
to do?”

  No one answered.

  She turned to find Denan crouched beside Farwin’s body. His gaze went to the other dead pages, a profound grief etched in his face. He closed his eyes and breathed deep. She knew what he was doing. Deep beneath her own frozen lake, a tremor shook Larkin’s foundations. When her grief came, it would shred her in pieces.

  Denan wavered under the anguish that passed over him before he caught himself. He stood. “Get her out of here.”

  Tam pushed to his feet. Atara marched over. Larkin didn’t bother to argue—she was a liability to all of them. She’d limped half a dozen steps toward the trapdoor when her sigils suddenly opened of their own accord. There was something empty beneath the warm buzzing of magic. Some yawning nothingness that brought tears to her eyes.

  She looked up from the lines on her skin to find every single enchantress and enchanter lit up, all of them staring in bewilderment at their sigils.

  “What is this?” Atara asked.

  A sudden, sharp pain lanced Larkin’s back. With a cry, she dropped to her knees. Her monarch sigil was on fire, burning into her skin. Magic rushed into it, so much magic she thought it might kill her.

  She was conscious of Atara kneeling beside her, taking her hand. “Larkin, what is it?”

  Larkin couldn’t answer. Not just because of the pain. Because with a sudden snap, her monarch sigil split. Panting, she turned wide eyes to Denan, who lay flat on his back, his jaw locked and the sinews of his neck standing. Yet none of the other enchanters or enchantresses seemed racked with pain.

  The burning in Larkin’s back eased a little at a time. Enough that she dragged herself over to Denan and grabbed his hand.

  “The White Tree?” He directed the question at Tam, a desperate undercurrent in his voice.

  Tam understood what Denan was asking before the rest of them. He grabbed a telescope, crossed to the opposite side of the tower, and lifted it.

  A breathless, heavy moment passed, and then he lowered it. “The White Tree . . . it’s gone dark.”

  “That’s not possible.” Aaryn snapped the telescope from him and peered into the Alamant. The telescope dropped from her limp fingers. “Sela said we had a year! It’s only been a week!”

  The druids exchanged blank looks, clearly not understanding.

  Larkin was tempted to fight the truth with the rest of them. But she could feel it in her monarch sigil. It was still alive, but . . . cut off, no longer an unending flood of magic but a winding stream.

  Still. She had to see for herself. She left Denan, picked up the telescope, and scanned. She found nothing. No moon-bright White Tree peeking between the branches of the hometrees. Because it no longer gleamed.

  The White Tree was dead.

  “The wraiths knew it would happen tonight,” she said in despair. “How could they know?”

  “The mulgars are breaking through!” Atara cried.

  Larkin hurried to her friend’s side. Mulgars by the thousands used handheld hooks to chop through the wall as if the barrier didn’t exist. In minutes, they would overrun the city’s defenses.

  “But we still have our magic,” Atara said. “How can the barrier fail?”

  “Sela said this would happen.” Said the barrier would fail when the White Tree died. It had sent so many visions, but Larkin had been so tired she hadn’t paid attention. She wasn’t sure she could fix this.

  “Lower the boats!” Gendrin cried from the other tower. “We have to stop them as they break through!” If they didn’t, the mulgars would slip into the lake and be impossible to find until they reared up. It would be a massacre.

  Larkin flared her magic. The geometric pattern of the barrier came into focus, strands of light woven into mostly triangles, but larger circles and some squares added for strength. But unlike before, there were obvious gaps. The weave itself wavered, the edges dissipating like smoke on the wind.

  “You have to fix it,” Aaryn said to the men.

  Tam shook his head. “We don’t know how. Not anymore.”

  “You can do it.” His teeth still locked around the pain, Denan forced himself to his haunches and met Larkin’s gaze. “I know you can.”

  I thought I had more time, she thought.

  With Tam’s help, Denan managed to reach his feet. He gave her a solemn nod. Knowing she would need all the magic she possessed and more, Larkin hauled the amulet out from her dress and squeezed, the point slipping into her skin. “Flare your shields.”

  Eyes never leaving her husband’s, Larkin hummed the melody. He pulled out his panpipes and motioned for Tam and the other two men to play with him. With her sigils lit, she could see a fine mist of color about them.

  Tam leaned over the parapet and motioned to the pipers along the wall and in the other tower. Was it enough? She wasn’t sure, but it was the best they could do. She took hold of the edge of the barrier and tossed it toward the night sky. It expanded, the missing threads glaringly obvious now. Aaryn gasped.

  “I didn’t even know that was possible,” Atara said.

  Larkin gathered the men’s and women’s magic and compressed it into a fine ribbon. She studied the barrier, filling in the missing threads in the existing pattern of geometric shapes within shapes. A maze of different strands of light. If she missed just one, the entire thing would fail. The unraveling barrier stilled. The weave stopped fading. She forced her fingers to be sure, her eyes shifting frantically in search of any missing pieces.

  Suddenly, the city’s warning horn sounded so close Larkin could feel its low tones resonate through her body.

  “They’re breaking through!” someone cried.

  The horn sounded again and again, warning those in the city that the wall had been breached. The only people left in the city were those who were too old, too young, or too maimed to fight. They would huddle in their hometrees behind their panes. The mulgars would chop through the supports. The strongest would face them. They might end some of the mulgars, but eventually they would be overrun.

  The piper music cut off as every spare man joined the fight. Larkin reached for another strand of magic. Her hands grasped at nothing.

  The enchanters were too busy fighting to play. Beneath her feet, a fine vibration spoke of axes biting into the wood. Sweat streamed down the sides of her face and soaked her tunic. She longed to wipe the moisture away and drink to quench her thirst.

  Was it over before they’d even begun?

  But then she heard more music coming from behind. The enchanters in the city must have heard the music and guessed the need. She reached out and pulled the music toward her, it came in streams that broadened to rivers.

  And she wove. Even as the sounds of battle grew louder, more frantic, she filled in the remaining pieces. Would any of them bear any magic after this or would it all be trapped in the wall? She wasn’t sure. But at least they’d be alive.

  A shattering sound. She startled and looked back as mulgars charged into the tower. Denan and the druids met them. As did Aaryn, Atara, Tam, and the rest.

  Denan’s movements were slow; he had yet to recover from his long illness. A mulgar slipped through his guard, his blade slicing across Denan’s thigh. Denan growled in frustration and anger. He grabbed the mulgar by the wrist, hauled it forward, and headbutted it. The creature reeled back. Denan lunged forward, his sword cleaving head from shoulders.

  Then Denan staggered back, his teeth locked, his head tipped back as if he were holding in a scream. Larkin saw it then. The tined lines on his neck. The same as Garrot.

  And she understood.

  When the tree died, more than the barrier failed. So had her monarch signal and, as a result, his weir. Denan had known and chosen not to say anything so she could repair the wall. Known he was going to turn.

  No. No. No. No.

  She ran toward him, her fingers already beginning the weir.

  Denan pointed behind her. “Larkin!”

  She turned back in time to see everything she’d been w
orking on unraveling. She grabbed the end of the thread, holding it tight, and looked back at the man she loved. For a moment, their eyes locked.

  She would have to choose between saving the barrier or saving Denan. Saving their kingdom or her husband.

  “We put our people first,” Denan said.

  She shook her head. She couldn’t do it. Couldn’t lose him.

  Anger flashed across his features. “Save my parents and my brother and my people. Save your sisters and mother. The babies.”

  Everyone she loved. Or the one she could least afford to live without.

  “Denan,” she cried in utter anguish.

  “We do what we must, Larkin. Always.” Without looking back, he dove into the fray. Into the men and women dying to keep her safe long enough for her to repair the barrier. Repair it before all was lost.

  Heart breaking, she turned back to her work, weaving and spinning. Hooking and bending, until the wall weave looked just like it had in her dreams.

  It was finished.

  She shifted it back into place over the wall. The barrier pulsed, cutting the mulgars inside the wall in half and sending thousands of others free-falling. In her hand, the amulet broke into dust that stained her hands with ashes. She spared a glance to make sure the enchantment held.

  It did.

  She turned. All but a handful of the mulgars that had invaded the tower were dead. The druids lay among them. Denan wasn’t one of those standing. She found his mother first. Aaryn knelt beside her son, his hand in hers, Tam on the other side.

  Pale, cold terror sliced through Larkin. There’s still time. There must be. She ran to him, slipped in red and black blood, and fell hard to one knee. She scrambled up and shoved Tam aside.

  She drew magic from the women, her bloody fingers forming the pattern. Denan grabbed one of her hands. The weave fell to tatters. She tried to jerk free, but his grip was like iron. She opened her mouth to yell at him. But then she saw his face. Saw the corruption clawing up his cheeks.

  “It’s too late,” he said, his voice choked with pain.