Tatters of the King (The Warren Brood Book 3)

by Bartholomew Lander

  “This girl is mine, and you shall not touch her. Return whence you have come. Trespass not upon these lands again.”

  The Leng cat lowered its head, a sorrowful sag to its neck, and it growled a crackling peal. My liege, it seemed to intone in an alien beast-tongue. With that, it threw its head back and barked thrice. The sound was harsh, the aural equivalent of stakes plunging into Spinneretta’s ears. Silence followed, and then a distant answer came from the other Leng cat. Then, the creature turned sadly and skittered away into the depths of the fog. Soon, the brushing and cracking of bone vanished, and only the low hum of the breeze remained.

  Spinneretta was alone again.

  Her breathing grew labored and uneven. Fire scoured her lungs. Her whole body trembled like it was covered in rime. What the hell was that? There was only a single explanation, and that steady revelation came upon her like the swelling of a tempest. The realization hit her right in her heart. She suddenly understood the meaning of what had just transpired, and, more dreadfully, the truth about what dwelt within her mind—within her soul.

  She rolled over, hands searching for ground upon which to steady herself. Her stomach twisted. Despair engulfed her, eclipsing the imminence of her death mere moments before. That voice, now quiet, was unmistakable. From the very core of her being, she now knew to whom it belonged. The alien thoughts that had swum through her mind for months; the other self that had stirred and driven her to stand when Kaj had held Kara’s life underfoot; the voice that had just cut through her thoughts and driven off the hungry Leng cat. All those words and sensations, all those inexplicable mantras and ghosts of thoughts masquerading as her own . . .

  Each of them—every single one—belonged to the Yellow King.

  Mark awoke from his usual dream, a groan squeezed tight between his molars. Sweat clung to his neck and body, and the heat of the sun burned against his skin. He panted, one hand on his head. That hand was as heavy as a cannonball, and it took a great effort to prop himself up off the seat.

  He paused. Seat? He started upright at once. The pleather interior of Annika’s Ford greeted him. What happened? He couldn’t remember falling asleep since they’d arrived in Manix. No, he couldn’t have fallen asleep. He was too busy, doing . . . What exactly was he doing again?

  “Good evening,” came a voice, making Mark jump. In the front, Annika’s head lolled back across the cup holders between the seats. As his eyes adjusted to the pale tint of early morning, he found her socked feet pressed against the driver side window, her legs folded in midair. It was a vaguely insectoid position that reminded him of Spinneretta.

  Spinneretta. Spinny. Then it hit him. “Shit, Kara!” He tried to bolt from his seat, but the attempt was cut short by the belt buckled about his waist.

  Annika giggled. “Relax, Mark.” She rolled around until she was facing him. “You need rest. Bad. I haven’t seen anything like that happen to you before.” Her cheeks were full and flush; the smell of that liquor she liked hung on her breath.

  Mark’s stomach boiled. “You’ve been drinking? Instead of looking for Kara?”

  “Bottle was almost empty. It’d be a waste not to. Besides, what can I do that the Vant’therax couldn’t? I’m just a girl.” She giggled again and let her head flop over the edge. Her hair flowed to the floor, and an upside-down grin floated in her features. “And besides besides, I had to keep an eye on you. You really had me worried, you know. Thought you up and died on me.”

  He remembered the pain behind his left eye, and then the question he’d nearly forgotten returned to him. “What happened?”

  “You screamed and fell down. Need me to draw you a diagram?”

  Fell? His hand gravitated toward the throbbing heat behind his eye. A separate, superficial pain burned in his shoulder. He touched his fingers to the skin beneath his shirt and winced. A crusty scab, still half-wet with blood. That’s right, he thought, the memory of the fall returning to him. That’s never happened before. But he’d almost never expended so much magic without resting before. And yet he couldn’t rest. Anything he did to himself should heal in time; time itself was their only limited resource.

  Mark shook off his weariness and unbuckled his seat belt. If the sun was already out, then too much time had already passed. “Come on,” he said, expecting another swift dismissal and plea for rest.

  Annika sighed and rolled in the driver seat, miraculously coming to an upright position. “I guess I can’t very well refuse with you burning the hay from both ends.”

  “I thank you.” He was already halfway out of the car, pulling a sight spell from a familiar pattern of magic.

  But before the magic could take hold, a black blotch in the ground grabbed his attention. He paused, and his spell scattered. With a sticky upward lunge, the blotch grew into one of the Vant’therax—the one calling itself Silt. “There you are,” the creature spoke.

  Mark’s heart skipped a beat. It was hard not to think of the thing as an enemy when it appeared so abruptly. “What happened? Have you found her?”

  To his surprise, the robed thing nodded. “We found Nexara and the quoll eating a jackrabbit a couple miles into the desert.”

  “Oh, God! Great! Where is she now?”

  Silt nodded into the distance. “Faul and Dirge are bringing them to the plaza. Meet us there. I imagine you will be far more diplomatic than I in this situation.”

  Hope swelled in Mark’s chest. “Right. Got it.”

  Without another word, Silt vanished into the scattered shadows of the parking lot. Mark turned around just as Annika finally opened the car door and stumbled out.

  “The hell was that?” she asked, her voice slurring a little.

  “They found her. Can you drive?”

  She sputtered. “This shit again? Fuck no.”

  “Then give me your keys again. We have to get to the plaza.”

  Though Spinneretta had fought hard to keep herself from crying, she’d lost that struggle like so many others. Her cheeks were wet, and her forehead ached where her knees pressed into it.

  It wasn’t fair. She’d thrown everything away, pinning all of her hope onto a single lofty ambition that, if nurtured to fruition, would have at least given her life meaning. But now, that hope had vanished in the blink of an eye; it was a defeat more total than being devoured by the starving Leng cat would have been.

  All this time, the voice she could not place had been the Yellow King’s. And that meant that he knew everything. In order to speak so surely from the depths of her mind, he must have known everything she did; his edict to the spider beast was incompatible with any other explanation. And that meant he was aware of her intentions and plans. He knew she intended to murder him, and exactly how she planned to do it. The more she tried to deny it, the more she saw the finality of the truth.

  The churning fog blanketed her, wrapping her in its chilling embrace. Her limp spider legs sagged around her, their autonomous twitching the only thing differentiating them from inanimate sculptures. Echoes of the King’s words spun around her in a hurricane of hopeless, impotent rage. It wasn’t fair. After all she’d been through, after all she’d given up, this couldn’t be where the journey ended. It just couldn’t.

  From the distance, a sound dared disturb her quiet despair. “Spins? Spins, where are you?” the mist spoke.

  She didn’t answer. She just hugged her knees tighter against her chest. But before she knew it, he stood above her, a monolith looming from the primeval steams of creation, a monument to ruin and helplessness. She could only sit and stare upon the enshrouded shape, whose furtive steps brought it steadily closer.

  “Holy shit, Spins,” Arthr said. “Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”

  “No,” she lied, snapping from her trance. Everything hurt.

  Arthr hunched down, his long legs bending like a praying mantis’s. He leaned close to her, but she refused to look him in the eye. Fear from their encounter stretched Arthr’s face thin, and she could read
the effort it took to keep his expression steady. It made it all the more difficult to speak the words that her tongue had spent minutes vocalizing in silent pleas to any god that would listen.

  “It’s over,” she said, the well of hopelessness in her chest overflowing. “We lost.”

  He leaned even closer, eyes wide and perplexed. “What?”

  Frustrated tears seeped between her clenched eyelids. She felt violated. “We lost. The King knows. He knows we’re coming, and he knows that I plan to . . . I didn’t think the chance of succeeding was certain, before. But I didn’t think it was zero.”

  “Wh-what? How? How could he know?” The realization broke over his features like a black sunrise. “And how do you know?”

  Her lips quivered. “He spoke to the Leng cat. Just as it was going to . . . ” The breath caught in her throat, and she choked on it. “The Leng cats were originally his creations. So they must still serve him, even if the kingdom is gone. He called out to them and demanded they leave us be.”

  “What? That gibberish was him?”

  “Gibberish?” She discarded the thought. “The point is, the King is in my mind. He’s in my head, and I . . . I think he’s always been there.” Her jaw tightened against her will, and a sob emerged. She recalled so distinctly how that voice had awakened her in the NIDUS labs, how it had spurred her to action. At the time she’d believed it to be the Instinct—what a hopelessly idealistic theory! All this time, it had been the King’s psychic infection, desperately trying to sustain her life for the Coronation.

  Every private thought she’d ever had, every dream, every desire—to think that every one had been open to him . . . The deep, toxic breaths flowing into her lungs grew more frantic. The despair in her heart spontaneously collapsed inward and ignited. She shifted and then stood, seething with indignant fury that bloomed like a nuclear fireball. “That bastard,” she said. “All this time. All this fucking time, he’s been there. He . . . he’s probably the one who decided to send me here in the first place. On this damn mission that he thinks will end how he wants. And if that’s true . . . If I don’t even have free will, nothing else matters.”

  “Spins?”

  “I don’t care anymore. About anything. If I never had a choice in the matter, then there’s nothing I can change. But even if he’s expecting me. Even if he’s waiting. Even if he’s the one that planted the thoughts that brought me here. He will die.” She clenched her fists and flexed her spider legs in a menacing posture, hoping the voice was listening. “I won’t let him get away with this. I will make him pay for violating my mind like this. For making me a goddamn puppet. I don’t care what it takes. Even if it kills me. Even if I have to give up everything I have left. I will rip him apart with my own legs and put him in the fucking ground!”

  The misty hollow rang with the declaration. Her heart hammered her ribs with rage. There was no longer any question nor doubt; the reality that this was a suicide mission was not lost on her. But at the same time, she had never been so certain of anything in her life.

  Wrath guiding her steps, she marched into the mist over the mounds of broken bone and toward the pulsing heart of Zigmhen beyond the valley. “Come if you must, stay if you can’t,” she said, not caring one way or another for her brother’s answer. This was her fight to finish, her righteous battle to end.

  Arthr hesitated. She felt the nervousness in his shaking limbs and the sweat gluing his shirt to his skin. “Coming,” he said at last.

  She didn’t protest. He was no longer her concern. Her mission was now more important than ever, and guilt had no place in the world she’d create. Anger twisted her thoughts into serrated barbs. Can you hear me? she thought at the voice in her head. Are you there?

  A long silence followed as she reached and goaded at where she knew the voice resided. Yes, came its reply after a few moments. This time it was muddier, less aggressive than when her life was at stake. She couldn’t tell if it was truly answering her or if her own imagination was filling in the gap.

  Her fingers wrung against the layers of blood and bone dust clinging to her skin. It’s true, isn’t it? That you’re the Yellow King.

  Yellow King? Her own sad laugh seemed to follow. I seem to remember being called that, once.

  Again, the ambiguity of the voice’s clarity left her no more certain. Licking her lips, she drew in acidic air her tingling lungs didn’t want. You know everything I know, don’t you?

  Indeed.

  She shook her head; that one must have been her own thoughts growing restless with the quiet. Steeling her resolve, she bared her teeth and growled, hoping that the ties that bound them would carry her declaration to her other father. I’m coming for you. And you knowing changes nothing.

  No reply came, and she didn’t care.

  With that, their trek continued on toward the broken slopes, whose sheer faces rose from the valley and rejoined the pass far above. In silence, the mists seethed. Obscured by the great waves of fog, the trapped star of the Web neared the horizon once more.

  The remaining loyal have fallen. I believe I am all alone now, and it seems the fire in the sky seeks the one who incited worship of that treacherous idol. At last I understand what the eyes have sought to accomplish, and it is only the furtive nature of the invader that keeps its objective in check. The smoke seeks the release of Mother Raxxinoth, though to what nefarious ends I cannot imagine. And it seems only the creature of prismatic flames can open the gate. I understand now. The idolatry begun by Hasirith the Elder, preached by traitorous Heinokk, was not an incidental descent into madness. It was carefully contrived to lure the flame to Mother Raxxinoth’s rest.

  I have been a pawn the entire time. But now, I have the chance to stop Mother Raxxinoth from becoming a martyr upon that lurking smoke demon’s altar. I shall slay the invading flame. I must. Even if it costs me everything.

  Chapter 35

  Homer Nods

  Sweat clung in stagnant streaks to Mark’s hands, and it had nothing to do with the heat. The sky was beginning to glow orange as the sun approached the horizon once more. Creeping shadows from the adobe walls ringed the plaza. Mosaic-like concentric designs glowed on the ground, and upon them lay a dozen robe-clad corpses undisturbed since their deaths. They were a stark reminder: time was nearly up. He could see it ticking away as the gaps between the tiles began to lengthen with the setting sun.

  Nearby, Annika stood with her arms crossed and chin dipped against her collarbone. Her eyes were closed, as if in meditation. Mark envied her stoic resolve; the walls of his stomach were alive with festering sores and skittering roaches.

  “Let go of me!”

  The shrill scream from the other side of the plaza alerted Mark to their arrival. A rush of blood tried to knock him off his feet.

  Two yellow robes struggled around the corner of an edge building, holding a flailing shape between them. The leftmost Vant’therax also had a smaller creature clutched in his misshapen fingers, which was held far enough away that it could not bite him as it thrashed around. Mark ran toward them as soon as they appeared. Seeing Kara’s face, even if it was contorted in terror and rage, was an overwhelming relief. “Kara!” he shouted.

  The struggling spider-girl looked up at him in surprise. Her disheveled blond hair caught the sun and blazed as bright as fire. “M-Mark? What are you doing? Help me!”

  Nearby, the black pool of Silt’s shadow-transit reappeared. As soon as his body reformed, Mark made a sharp gesture at him. “Release her!”

  Faul and Dirge exchanged an uncertain look. Silt gave them a slow nod, and the two complied silently. Kara fell to the ground, where she found her feet and legs with a felid alacrity. She glanced over her shoulders at the Vant’therax, rubbing her wrists and appendages. Then her gaze found Mark. Her splayed legs twitched. It looked like she was about to bolt, but was held in place by a leaden question that burned in her irises. “What’s going on?” she asked. “Where’s Spins?”

  The questi
on brought a chill to Mark’s bones. A grim severity overshadowed his relief at having found the youngest Warren child. He walked up beside her and took a knee. “Kara,” he said in a gentle tone, “I’m sorry. I know this must have been very rough on you. But everything’s going to be okay.”

  Confusion dominated her expression. Her dirt-smudged cheeks were pale and thin, her clothes painted by streaks of sand. “What do you mean?”

  He took a deep breath to reset. “Kara, we need your help. We found Spinny after the big fight that split you two up. The Vant’therax kept her safe from the cult. But before we could find you, she opened a portal to the Web and slipped away from us, taking Arthr with her.” He shook his head, trying to believe they still had time. “Now she’s in danger. Her life is at risk if we don’t go after her.”

  Kara’s lips shook. “What?”

  “She . . . I can’t imagine you don’t know this, Kara, but Spinneretta intends to kill the Yellow King. And she’s willing to throw her life away for the chance.” He steadied himself and stared into Kara’s unmoving pupils. “I’m not going to lie. Based on what I know about the Repton Scriptures and the spider cult—what I know about being Chosen—your sister doesn’t stand a chance if she attempts to see that plan to completion. If Spinneretta tries to fight the Yellow King, she will die. And right now, you’re our only hope of saving her.” He sank lower and slid right up next to her. “Remember when you saved us from the Web before? By opening that portal?”

  She nodded slowly, the rest of her face blank.