Kunin Gatar took Hweilan’s right hand in both of her own, and very gently opened her fingers. Hweilan was too shocked to resist.
“What is this?” said the queen, studying the scar.
“Curious, isn’t it?” said Menduarthis.
“What does it mean?” the queen asked.
“I don’t know,” Menduarthis said, and at the same time, Hweilan said—
“Death.”
The queen looked up, and Hweilan felt the Presence in her mind flex its claws. “What?”
“S-so Lendri told me,” said Hweilan. “K-A-N. The runes are Dethek. But Lendri says it is a word of the Vil Adanrath for ‘death.’”
“Hm,” said Menduarthis. “Curiouser and curiouser. You are a mystery, little flower.”
Hweilan felt a sharp pain in her palm. She gasped and looked down. A thin shard of ice pierced the middle of her palm. The queen held the other end, and even as she watched, the ice turned red with blood.
The queen pulled it out and held the red icicle in front of Hweilan’s eyes. “We shall see.”
Kunin Gatar closed her eyes, her lips parted, just slightly, and slid the frozen blood into her mouth. She leaned her head back and swallowed. A slight, almost ecstatic tremor passed through her, and the queen sighed, long and low.
“Oh, Menduarthis,” she said, “you are a liar.” The queen lowered her head and looked Hweilan in the eye. “But not today.”
The ice holding Hweilan disappeared, and she fell at the queen’s feet.
She heard the queen say, “Menduarthis, what is the word mortals use?”
“See?” Menduarthis laughed softly. “In her blood. Something … other.”
The threads of Hweilan’s emotions had been pulled as far they would stretch, and finally they snapped. She sat on her knees in the chamber of the fey queen and broke into an uncontrolled laughter until her gut ached and tears made it halfway down her cheeks before freezing solid.
When she was able to gain control of herself at last, she looked up. The queen was sitting upon her throne, looking down on her with an amused expression. Menduarthis was still circling her like a cat considering what to do with a mouse.
“You’re mad,” she told him.
“You wouldn’t be the first to say so,” he said. “But even a madman can tell you which way the wind blows.”
“What game is this?” said Hweilan. “You capture me and drag me off to this godsforsaken wasteland, and now—”
“Now you find out you’re one of us,” said Menduarthis. He stopped his pacing, stood before her, and gave an exaggerated bow worthy of a drunken bard. He spared a glance to Roakh and the queen. “A mortal nature? Yes. But also … something else. Something magical.”
“I’m not like you,” she said.
Menduarthis laughed and said, “Well, there’s like and there’s like. I was born eladrin, as was Our Lady Queen. But we have … improved ourselves, yes?”
Kunin Gatar smiled.
“Your parents were your parents,” Menduarthis continued. “I’m not suggesting otherwise. But your father’s father? Your mother’s father? Or your grandmother’s grandfather’s grandmother? Who knows? The blood runs thin in you, perhaps, but it runs true. Someone from … well, somewhere else planted a seed in your family garden. You’re Damaran, to be sure. If you say you’re kin to Lendri there … well, I have no reason to doubt you. But make no mistake. You’re something else too. Something … more.”
“I don’t believe you!”
“Believe what you like.” Menduarthis rolled his eyes. “Believe Toril is flat and dragons lurk past the edges of the map. Believe a lie, but it won’t stop the world from turning. And it won’t stop you from being a god walking over ants.”
“Shall we find out, Menduarthis?” Kunin Gatar rose from her throne and walked past him. She had a most eager look in her eyes. Hweilan had once seen that same look in the eyes of two Nar boys after they’d pulled the wings off a grasshopper and headed for the nearest anthill.
Menduarthis scowled. “Find out …?”
“Find out whose seed went into whose garden.”
Menduarthis blinked twice, very quickly. It was the first time Hweilan could remember seeing him shaken. “Wh-why?” he said, and gave what even Hweilan could see was a false smile. “We see the flower in bloom before us. Does it matter who planted it?”
“Ah, Menduarthis, you forget. This particular flower may need plucking. It would be wise to make sure we aren’t trampling in the wrong garden.”
Roakh made a noise that was something between the clearing of his throat and the caw of a raven. “Does this mean you won’t be needing me further, my queen?”
Kunin Gatar kept her eyes fixed on Hweilan as she answered, “No one likes a glutton, Roakh. Haven’t I already fed you today?”
There was no reply, and Hweilan could not tear her eyes away from the queen to look at Roakh.
“Careful, Ro,” Menduarthis called to him. “If she is Vil Adanrath, she might eat you.”
The queen stepped in front of Hweilan and looked down on her. Had she grown taller? It seemed—
Kunin Gatar placed a finger under Hweilan’s chin and pulled her gaze up so that she stared right into the queen’s eyes. Hweilan could feel the sharp nail pressing into her skin. So cold.
“Let’s see what we can see.”
Hweilan could not break her gaze from the queen. Close up, she thought herself a fool for believing there was any blue in those eyes at all. They were two orbs of white, cold and pitiless as winter. They grew in Hweilan’s mind, and she fell into them.
The Presence in her mind was no longer the tiger lurking in the grass. The tiger had pounced and was devouring her, raking through her mind, taking great bites out of her, swallowing, tearing, then digging deeper, digesting every morsel. But then the Presence came to a deep part of Hweilan’s mind, a tiny spark. And where the queen was cold incarnate, this spark burned hot. When the Presence bit down, something bit back.
Kunin Gatar gasped and fell back as if struck. She and Hweilan hit the floor at the same time. Menduarthis simply stood there with his mouth hanging open.
The queen rose first. Hweilan lay on the black floor, watching, but unable to move. She felt like a wineskin that had been filled to the point of bursting, then emptied completely.
Kunin Gatar pushed herself to her feet and swayed a moment. Hweilan saw something strange. The queen had been the very image of cold, all whiteness like frost, broken only by cool shades of blue, gray, and black. But no more. A trickle of red ran out one side of the queen’s nose. Blood.
“Wh-what just happened?” said Menduarthis.
“Get this creature out of my sight,” said the queen, and she turned away.
“She is to live, then?”
The queen laughed, but it was a mirthless sound. “I very much doubt it, Menduarthis. But she isn’t mine to kill. Someone else has a claim on her.”
Someone else? Hweilan’s vision began to blur. She could no longer see Kunin Gatar. The queen was fading into a whiteness that seemed to be overtaking everything. Even the floor was more gray than black now. Menduarthis remained the only bit of color in the world, and his voice cut through the steadily building hum in her mind.
“What would you have me to do with her?”
“I told you. Get her out of my sight! Use your imagination, Menduarthis.”
Hweilan heard a raven cawing.
Then Menduarthis shouting.
Then nothing.
CHAPTER TWENTY
BEHOLD YOUR NEW ARMY,” SAID ARGALATH.
Guric swallowed hard. He had to take careful breaths through his nose to keep the contents of his stomach from coming up. The stench in the enclosed cavern was overpowering.
“Not an army proper, perhaps,” said Argalath. “But the troops at your back will be only for show. These”—he motioned to the standing corpses, still starting at them—”will be all the army you need, once the Damarans see what they do.”
Their eyes had the same look as his beloved Valia’s, that horror staring from the black eyes of her lovely face.
Before becoming a squire, Guric had studied with the clerics of Torm in Damara, and he knew of demonic possession. He’d never seen an exorcism himself, but his fellow students had told him that their teacher had once been famed in his crusades against evil spirits. Whatever profane pacts Argalath worked with his northern devil-gods, it was nothing like any possession Guric had ever heard of.
“What is this abomination?” said Guric.
Argalath frowned. “Not an abomination, my lord. When the rite to restore your beloved Valia … did not go as planned, well, we seem to have stumbled upon this rather happy accident.”
“Accident?” Guric seized Argalath’s robes in both his fists and shook him so hard that his hood fell back. “Happy accident!”
The acolytes began to approach, weaponless but fists clenched tight, but Argalath shook his head, and they stopped.
Guric lifted Argalath off the ground until their noses were only inches apart. “Give me one reason I shouldn’t snap your neck right now.”
He saw no fear in Argalath’s eyes. Only a little surprise, but he buried it in what Guric was suddenly sure was an entirely false deference.
“I have three, my lord. The first and most immediate are your new troops. Killing me would rather upset my acolytes, I fear, and they might not be able to control our new creations.”
“Without Valia, I don’t care.”
“Which brings me to my second reason, my lord,” said Argalath, and the bastard even had the boldness to smile. “The forces we are dealing with … they do not know pity or remorse or fear. Only hunger. Their only delight is in death. The power is great, but the pacts we make with them … they are not bargains or alliances. We force them to bend to our will by words of power and deeds of blood. But they hate it. Hate it. It only fuels their hunger and malice. That thing up in the castle? The being using your beloved Valia’s body like new clothes? Do you really think it will give her up unless we force it? It is trapped, my lord. We called it forth—”
“You!” Guric said, and shook him again. “You did this!”
“At your behest! At your command.”
“Because you said it would bring her back.”
“And it will! It will, my lord. But not without sacrifice. These things you see before you. Abominations, you named them. They are … an experiment of sorts. And it worked. It worked, my lord!”
Guric’s resolve fractured. He kept a tight hold on Argalath’s robes, but he lowered the man’s feet back to the ground. “Explain.”
“That thing in your wife, I do not think it will leave as promised. Its hunger is insatiable, and now that it has come into the world, surrounded by so much life, it will not go back willingly. And truth be told, it is beyond my skills to force back. But we can send it elsewhere. Give it a new home. A new body. A body we can control.”
Guric looked to the creatures, none of which had moved during this confrontation. “We can control them?”
“A new army, my lord. One that does not know fear or feel pain or cold. One that can endure injuries that would kill the hardiest soldier. We were forced to allow such a being in Soran. But I realized, if this can be done once, why not twice? Or thrice? Or a hundred times? Yet with even one of them at your side, you will not need me to take the cities and forts of Damara. We will need to devise a new ruse, to be sure. So there are my three reasons.” Argalath’s voice softened. “All true. And all give you your heart’s desire.”
Guric let it sink it. “Yet every one requires murder.”
Argalath sighed and looked away. “So it does, my lord. But if you will look”—he pointed to the first of the creatures on the left—”there is Lakan, one of the Creel responsible for the mishap with Valia’s rite. The man you ordered slain, as you’ll recall. Next to him is another of the same order. That hulking brute beyond him was found raping the hostler’s wife in Kistrad—which was strictly forbidden, and by your orders punishable by death. You see my point. Is it murder if we use those deserving death anyway? This is Narfell, my lord. There will be no shortage of such men.”
Had it really come to this? Guric had told himself that the death of the house of Highwatch was only justice for what they had done to Valia—and a small price to pay to get her back. But this …
Still, if it was the only way to get her back …
“Show me,” he said.
“My lord?”
“You ask me to put great faith in these things. Show me what they can do for me. Show me now.”
Argalath smiled. “As you command.”
Guric let him go. Argalath pointed at the creatures and said something in a language Guric did not understand. All but one of the creatures walked out of the bowl, stepping through the body parts and vermin with no reaction. The one who remained had once been a Nar warrior—average height for his people, but this one was unusually muscular. He was dressed only in a ragged loincloth that fell to his knees. The strike that had killed him—a precise thrust of a knife between the ribs and into the heart, had been expertly stitched over.
Argalath turned to his acolytes. “Bring them.”
Three of the Nar walked around the edge of the room and disappeared behind the altar. Guric looked to Argalath.
“A storage area below the altar, my lord,” said Argalath. “Quite sizeable.”
“What are they doing?”
Argalath nodded in the direction of the altar, and Guric looked. The Nar were returning, one leading and two following a procession of five men, all with arms bound and joined by a chain that ran through a collar around their necks. All of them were Nar—Creel as near as Guric could tell—but they were a dejected, disheveled lot.
“Criminals, my lord,” said Argalath.
“Nar deal with their own criminals.”
“Ah,” said Argalath. “These five did not break any laws of their own people. They violated your commands, my lord.”
Guric grunted in response. He knew what those were likely to be. He had very few commands enforced on his Nar allies. During the taking of Highwatch, they had killed and pillaged at his command. Everything in the village and every weapon taken in battle was theirs for the taking. He placed only two restrictions upon them. Women and children were to be spared, and raping was strictly forbidden. Breaking either of these commands was a death sentence.
The prisoners were led into the bowl. Their eyes went wide at the sight of the carnage, and their steps faltered, but the Nar pulled them on. At the sight of the creature standing amid the charnel and more of his fellows looking down upon them, two dropped to their knees and screamed for mercy. The others tried to run.
“Be still!” Argalath shouted. He raised one arm, and the sleeve of his robe fell back. The mottled blue patches of skin along his arm and head began to glow. His reputation among the Creel was well known, and the prisoners stopped. “Hear me,” Argalath continued. “You men are condemned to death for crimes against Lord Guric. But your lord is not without mercy. Among his people of the west, his gods of justice allow trial by combat. This man”—Argalath pointed to the creature, still standing motionless several feet from the prisoners—”is Lord Guric’s champion. Kill him and prove your innocence. Stay alive, and you will leave here free men.”
Argalath stepped away and called to one of the Nar. The man untied the prisoners and removed the collars from their necks, then he and the other Nar stepped back. The prisoners still looked scared, but they were warriors. The thought of leaving this place had enlivened them, and the promise of a fight seemed to have given them strength. But as they rubbed blood back into their arms, every one of them kept looking at the torn body parts all around them. Guric knew such a sight would have completely unmanned one of his own knights.
“Argalath?” said Guric. “You said this … experiment was a success.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then
whose are the body parts?” He pointed at the carnage in the bowl. “And why are they … in pieces?”
Argalath shrugged. “The end result was a success. But I fear it took … several attempts.”
“Criminals all?”
“Of course.”
Guric didn’t believe it. But he realized that he no longer cared. They were Nar after all, and Creel—the lowest of a low people. If killing a few of them brought Valia back, he would lose no sleep over it.
Two of the acolytes stepped to the edge of the bowl. They had long wedges of sharp steel that Guric supposed were some sort of swords, though they seemed to him more like cleavers. The Nar tossed the blades down to the prisoners. They picked them up, dropped into defensive crouches, and surrounded the creature.
The man directly in front screamed and charged, while the man behind him came in quietly, but just as quick.
The creature didn’t move. Didn’t even flinch.
The Creel prisoners knew their business. The one charging head-on brought his blade around in an arc and buried it in the flesh between the creature’s neck and right shoulder. Guric heard bone snap, but the creature did not fall, barely even stumbled at the blow. The man coming in from behind showed less skill, but put much more strength into his blow, aiming for the creature’s back.
The creature moved at last, with a quickness beyond anything human. He turned to the man behind him. The one in front still had hold of his blade and was dragged along, apparently so surprised that he didn’t think to let go. The second man’s blade fell, but the creature’s arm shot up and caught the man’s wrists. The creature squeezed, and even over the man’s screams Guric heard bones crumbling. The first man still hadn’t let go.
The creature brought the second man around, smashing him into his companion. Both went down. The creature stepped over the second man’s discarded sword and reached up to grab the handle of the blade still embedded in his shoulder. As the blade came free, the men at his feet screamed and scrambled in different directions.
Chosen of Nendawen Book 001 - The Fall of Highwatch Page 18
