by K. A. M'Lady
“If it is Light you wish to find, half-breed, then I will give you a taste of the Light!” the Queen roared, taking our moment of lapse to throw all of her anger and power directly at me. I was completely unprepared when it hit me.
As the Light burst through my body, I felt as though I had been run over by the very sun itself, and I went sailing across the room. The power was so immense that she lifted me with it and dragged me across the floor, spinning in all directions before slamming me into the wall at the opposite end of the hall.
My skin felt like it was imploding from the inside out, the Light burning the insides of my flesh. I could do nothing but lay pinned against the wall and scream. Scream in agonized terror and pain. All the while, Queen Corral laughed.
Power and Light rushed through me, filling me up with so much intensity that I was certain my body would burst from the enormity of energy being sent into me as shards of piercing flames stabbed through my limbs, blinded my eyes and tore at my flesh. I screamed long and hard, writhing against the wall until she finally decided it would be fun to slam me once more against the floor.
She did this repeatedly; the wall, the floor, wall, floor, over and over until she finally just dropped me on the ground to writhe and scream in pain while those around me battled the Queen’s army of Light. My eyes, and mind and soul were all drowning in Light, while the people I cared for were being slain by the power that we all believed was the one true source of right in this life.
There was just something so wrong with this image. Something so very wrong with the power of goodness being sent into this world to do her vile destruction. Destruction that even she was using to try to destroy not only me, but her own people. For what purpose? To what end? No Queen of the Light should hold this kind of power over her people and use it to destroy them. I suffered another blow from her painful wielding of the power of Light.
The Light was one of the two powers that were part of who and what I was. How can this be happening? How can this be? I have to stop this. I have to stop her.
I closed my eyes to the madness, took a deep breath and did the only thing that I could think to save myself. I called the Light into myself. Praying that if I managed to live through this, I could somehow set this Kingdom to rights.
Chapter Nineteen
A fire this gentle is barely enough, perhaps
Not even enough, to cast light long
on this life’s undergrowth. Only another fire
can do the rest and then more –
from Las Animas by Mario Luzi
Translated from the Italian by Dana Gioia
The warm, sultry breeze blowing through my mind and the ability to breathe clearly was my first indication that my paltry idea was working. The Queen screaming hysterically as she wavered up above the few remaining people that were still in the Throne Room proved even more that I was somehow doing to her what she had done to my mother.
I was siphoning her powers into me just as quickly as she was releasing them. The weight in my chest began to lift, the fire in my belly cooling.
“No! You vile, hateful half-breed mongrel whore!” she shouted, her large aqua eyes bright with worry. “You do not have the power to do such a thing. It cannot be! Only a Queen of the Fey has such power.”
“A Queen, or The Chosen.” This from one of the Elvin guards who had been fighting Gimlit. I turned to catch his bright blue eyes watching me from a distance. For now his sword was steady, his head arched as he watched the transfer of power from the Queen to me.
“You said the Halfling was from the Darkness, Great Queen. Sent to destroy us. Yet she has freed the Changeling from the Dark Brother.” This from another soldier in the crowd who had also lowered his sword.
“Stop her before she kills me,” the Queen raged. “Stop her, or I swear by the Prophets I will send all of you to the pits of Darkness where the Dark Brother lies. Do you hear me?” She was screaming at her own people, her golden glow withering, her beautiful flesh fading before our eyes. Her skin began sinking in on itself, her bones cracking as her life force was being completely drained from within her.
I could feel my body growing strong with it. Feel the Light filling me up, see the magic of earth and field, in my mind’s eye; smell lake and loch, and I knew that even now the land was accepting of this transfer. I would take Queen Corral’s power and she would be nothing; have nothing, and her people would be set free. The Land of Light would be set free of her and her corruption to the Darkness.
As the last of her power infused me, my mind and body felt peaceful, like home had filled my soul for the first time and I was complete. My Wolf rolled around in the glory of it and howled her delight.
The Queen fell to the dais, her four-inch frame no bigger that a ruffled ball of lint.
“I have taken what belongs to the Pixie Queen Corral; her Light as well as the corruption of her Darkness. The Land of Light will once again prosper,” I told those who remained in the Throne room. I got to my feet. I felt better than I had in days...almost too good.
“No,” she whispered, her voice hoarse and weak. “It’s not possible.”
“Guards! Take your Queen to your dungeon below. When we leave this place, I want the doorway between sealed. No one is to pass in or out of the Secret Door again. Am I understood? I will send someone from the Silent Court to collect her.”
The Queen lay on the dais and screamed as though her very soul had been taken. Maybe it had.
“Soul Eater!” she screamed as guards went to do my bidding.
The main sentry guard responded, “Yes, Deneau, we will do as you say. But who will lead our people now? Who will show us the Way?”
The Queen continued to rant as she was dragged from the room by her own Pixie Guard. “Soul Eater! This is not yet done. I will have my vengeance, Rihker Tennai. I will have my vengeance.” Her voice carried throughout the hall, the remainder of the Guards and a few of the returning Lords and Ladies watching me intently; a mixture of praise and fear on their faces.
Maybe I had become a Soul Eater. Maybe that was my new Tell. Who’s to say? Right now, we needed to get out of here.
I thought about who would lead these people, my people, with our deranged Queen locked away. The Way—What was it? I didn’t really know. We had long lost The Way—Our Way as a people. I didn’t have the answers they needed.
“As it was written, so shall it be.” This from Dax, who had slunk up beside me.
“Oh, for Prophets’ sake,” I groaned, rubbing my forehead.
“Just seal up the damned door,” I said to the guard. “I’ve a Goblin to hunt and a Death Stalker to rescue. The rest you will have to figure out on your own.” I grabbed the Changeling by the hand and started walking towards the back of the dais, my soft white boots now covered in all sorts of grime and slime; another good outfit shot in the ass once again. “Show us the way, little one,” I said, nodding at the entrance of the Secret Brother’s door. “Show us the way to the Goblin and the way out.” It was just how Maebe had said it would be—by the Mother’s Light. That is just how we’d found it.
Maybe this Changeling could show all of us The Way, I thought with a snort. And maybe I’d sprout my own pair of wings. Not bloody likely.
“My name is Prism,” she told me in her soft, singsong melodic voice and then she took my hand and led us all through the door that led straight into the Shadow Lands.
Chapter Twenty
It’s time of in the glow, with no fever and no faintness,
On a bed or in a field.
Air and a world not striven for. The Life.
— Was this really it?
— And the dream cooled off.
From Night-Watches by Arthur Rimbaud – A Season in Hell & Illuminations
In the abyss of death’s darkness there are those who wander and those who accept. We were skirting the darkness of the Shadow Land as if death were a knight’s fury on a stallion cloaked in smoke.
Prism took the lead,
for this is where Modgav kept her in her tortures when he didn’t wish to suffer her presence himself, when he didn’t wish to mete out his own brand of dark punishment on a child of the Light.
He would pass this Land of Shadows, skirting the smoke and Darkness, hiding from the earthly plane above in order to pass undetected into the Land of Light. It was the only way a Dark Lord could pass unscathed.
This is the information Prism provided us, though how she knew, I did not know.
“How long were you a prisoner of Modgav’s?” I questioned as we ran through corridors of winding tunnels and black voids where the Light feared to travel.
“Since the first Goblin War, when the Changelings were many. I was a pawn in but another game of war, Rihker. A game between many other rulers, and many would-be Kings.”
We passed over some sort of bridge, the sludge-like water beneath it sloshing against a dark bank and as we ran over and past it I swore I caught the glimmer of something out of the corner of my eye. Something…glowing.
My steps faltered. No, that not possible. Not here, I thought.
The voices started then. The moaning. A thousand moaning, screeching voices crying out for comfort in the darkness. Pain and agony, calling out for solace. Crying out for release.
“Hurry. We can not tarry here,” Prism told me pulling on my arm.
“But there’s something out there.” I was pointing beyond the banks of the shore, the muddy, sludgy dark water glistening in the opaque darkness like a living, breathing oil slick.
“No, Rihker. All that is there is death. Death is calling for you,” she told me. “Nothing glows in the Shadow Lands but death’s dark fury.”
She pulled my arm again, and we continued on. But my gut was telling me to go back, my mind reeling with it. It was a command by the time we entered another tunnel.
Shaking free of Prism’s hand, I turned and began running the other direction, back towards the direction we had just come from. Back towards the sloshing black water to the place I knew I saw the glow.
“Rihker, no!” Gimlit’s voice, echoing in the Darkness, mingling with the screeches and the bellows for redemption.
I dashed across the bridge to where I knew I had seen the glow. My heart was racing, conviction thundering through me. I knew what I saw. I had no choice but to go back. I had to be certain. I skid across the end of the bridge and it was there. Like a beacon of Heaven’s Light burning in a pit of Hell. The Book. The Tablet of the Way. I’d found it!
Now, I just had to cross the water to reach it.
My stomach was jacked with a turbulence of emotions. I could do this. I had to do this. It was just a small bit of water. I backed up, checked the distance. Backed up a little more and started my run.
“Come for this?”
The gruff hatred in the voice as he mocked me made me want to burn him alive where he stood. I skidded to a halt, watching in horror as his meaty little sausage fingers wrapped themselves around my book.
“Give me my book, Goblin.” I growled, so filled with fury that it was seeping from me.
“What right do you have to it, half-breed? You’re not even a true Pixie.”
“Modgav, I swear if you don’t give me that damn book, I will rip it and the arm you hold it with clean off your body.”
Modgav’s laughter could be heard echoing around the chamber that we stood in and as he was busy mocking me, all the cold fury that had been buried in me for the last eight years exploded from me at the sight of him.
I was in mid-leap when I felt my Wolf break free of my body, the fur bursting in a flowing flux. My bones shifted, claws extended and muzzle filled with chomping teeth just as I latched on to Modgav’s wrist. He began screaming as my canines pierced his flesh.
The next few minutes are pretty much a blur for me; there was blood, a lot of blood, both his and mine as we fought each other for possession of the book. His dagger pierced my side as he sent me slamming into a wall. But I made sure I made it up to him, as I ripped three of his fingers clean off, spitting them into the cold, dark waters beyond us.
“Fucking whore!” he growled, still clutching the book and his blades as well.
From there, I don’t remember anything other than getting my teeth on the book. I tried to make a run with it, but Modgav tackled me. I somehow managed to tear a few pages out and rather than have him get them back, I chewed them up and swallowed them, the zing of their magical essence filling me all the way down my throat.
I had no idea what I had taken into me, but there was no way in hell the Goblins would be getting them back. Not now, not ever.
When he pulled Kushkun’s Zion, I knew I was pretty much screwed. I took off through one of the interceding corridors with hell on my tail—literally. I ran until my legs were burning, my chest heaving and death no longer mattered to me.
It was some twelve hours later I woke up outside in the field about eighty yards from the tree at the Hill of the Clans. Gimlit and Jade were wandering around the field, searching for me. I was completely naked, and blood stained my entire body.
“Where’s Mercy?” I asked.
Gimlit wrapped me in a blanket and carried me to his Jeep. “She is back at the house, tucked away in the crypt for the day. Healing,” he said, his voice low, worried as he took in the sight of me.
“And the Changeling, Prism?”
“She is there as well.”
“I found the book, Gim,” I whispered, my voice as tired as my body was wounded.
He looked at me with bright hopeful eyes, and then they fell, knowing that all had not been restored to the Land and the Children of the Light.
“The Goblins have taken it. Modgav has taken it,” I said anger filling my gut once again.
“It is as I thought,” he replied. “But I am afraid we have bigger problems.”
“Bigger? What could possibly be bigger than that?” I asked, knowing as he set me in the front seat of the Jeep, bundled in a blanket, naked, sore, angry and cold that I truly didn’t want to know.
“Your police have left a message that your remaining Necromancer is missing.”
“Son of bitch,” I said with feeling, hanging my head. Wondering how the hell I was going to fix this when I couldn’t even fix myself.
“That is not all of it.”
I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. Whatever it was I knew it was seriously going to be the biggest, most massive piece of shit on toast that I’d had to deal with yet, and that it just really needed to be chucked and not even dealt with. Maybe I could just run away and hide somewhere.
“All right,” I said, not bothering to look at either of them, “just give it to me straight.”
“Jade can no longer sense his brothers, and Jirvel has sent you a personal invitation,” he said, not wanting to look at me either.
“A personal invitation to what?” I asked, finally looking at him askance.
“I’m afraid, Mistress, it is a Halloween Party. However, this invitation comes with special instructions, and I quote, “If she ever wishes to see any of her people alive again—tell her to come alone.”
Great. Just what I needed. The White Blood-sucking Bitch of the West was having a Monster Bash—with us as their main course.
When the grave dust begins to smell like shit, you know you’re in serious trouble. But who knows, maybe we could do a little monster mashing while we were there. Yeah, and maybe I’ll sprout fucking wings. Not bloody likely.
K. A. M’Lady
K.A. M’Lady lives in the ‘burbs of Chicago with her husband, three children and her beagle, Spike. She’s been lost in the world of fiction since she was a small child, and frankly, never wants to be found—at least not any time soon. “Myth and magic builds dreams and inspirations – and in an insane world, it is our dreams that spark the revolution of change. No matter which world is being conquered. Within our dreams – all things are possible.”
Book Two - Shadow Slave
