by Karen Chance
He’d been the last one out of the palace, and vividly remembered looking back down the corridor at the approaching foe. They’d already slashed their way through the throne room, leaving dozens of bodies in their wake. They had been old friends—good soldiers—who had volunteered to stay behind, even knowing what was coming. But they’d also known that they were providing a distraction, giving the foe the illusion that the king remained in residence and focusing their attention on the palace, while Arsen and the rest of the army evacuated the remaining areas of the city.
They had spent their lives to buy him time, and how had they met their end?
He shuddered in memory; the images burnt into his brain: of glowing eyes, of red stained mouths, of strength that had allowed the monsters to rip people apart with their bare hands, as if they were paper. Or to drain them of life until they were nothing but a husk, a used-up shell. He had wondered why the monsters had even brought swords—and those were merely the foot soldiers. Their captain . . .
Ah, yes.
He was a different story all together.
I was jolted awake again by the embrace of something that wasn’t flesh twining around my body. Something as big as an anaconda, but harder, and covered with pieces too woody to be scales. It was a tree root, I realized, blinking my eyes open. A huge old thing, half clad in brown bark and half in a sickly, skin-like hue from being long buried in the ground. It was almost thicker around than the body it was currently trying to consume—my body, I realized, as it began dragging me backwards.
I didn’t scream—I wasn’t aware enough for that—but I didn’t need to. My gasp of shock was more than enough, with a party of fey not six feet away, who had been arguing about something. The arguing abruptly stopped, and the next moment, half a dozen hands were grabbing onto me.
Never had I been so glad to be captured by the fey!
But somebody else disagreed.
“Leave the witch!” one of the guards spat. He looked like all the rest, except that half his hair was singed almost down to the skull, as if he’d fallen into a campfire. “Let the trees have her!”
“The king said all,” another one panted, tugging on me. “Do you want to explain why we left one to die?”
“He doesn’t have to know—”
“He does, and I’ll tell him!” another fey said. He was hacking away at the root with a sword, but not making much progress. “Like I’ll tell him the other witch surprised you—”
“She didn’t!”
“Then what happened to your hair?”
“The same thing that’s going to happen to her,” the fey said viciously. “Just as soon as—”
“Stop arguing and help us!” the first fey snapped, cutting in. “Or I’ll report the both of you!”
The bald fey cursed. But a second after that, a spell sizzled past me, close enough to blacken the top of the prickly bush, and to curl up its leaves. But it did worse to the tree.
The bright red spell hit the trunk directly above me, causing an explosion of fiery wood and bark. I covered my head protectively, and when I looked again, the tree was thrashing and creaking and groaning, probably because of the blaze now glowing inside a hole in its trunk, like a fiery heart. It let me go, the root that had encircled me abruptly releasing and pulling back, because it was needed for other things.
I lay there, amidst a group of staring fey, half suffocated because the wooden embrace hadn’t allowed my chest to expand. But I would have been breathless anyway. Because the tree suddenly got up and moved off, the soil churning around its thrashing roots, while its limb-like arms flailed like a wounded man’s.
It went barreling through the forest, moving fast, and causing a distressed shuffling among the other trees it passed, as if they were trying to move away from the sparks it was shedding. I stared after it, easily able to track its progress by the fire that had now spread to its branches. And by the terrible groaning that was coming from the wood, as if a hurricane was whipping its limbs back and forth, and sighing through the spaces in the leaves.
It threw me, more than anything I’d seen so far, I wasn’t sure why. Maybe because I could accept beautiful cities in the clouds, or great flying creatures with noble bearings, or even mobile castles, because all of those went into the crazy dream category in my head, or the fey-will-be-fey category, or—in extreme cases—the I’ll-think-about-this-tomorrow category, which was then never opened again. But the mundaneness of this, of a perfectly normal-looking oak tree, just slightly bigger than those found on Earth, lifting up its skirts like a startled maiden and taking off through the forest . . .
My brain just sort of broke. It didn’t have a category for that; it just didn’t. Which was why, instead of trying to escape like an intelligent person, I just sat there, staring.
Judging by the Svarestri’s expressions, they were equally freaked out. Several of them looked around at the forest, as if seeing it through new eyes, and one made a small sound that didn’t translate. But they weren’t distressed enough to forget about me, when I finally got to my hands and knees and then tried to run.
Only to be brought down all of a second later, by all three fey piling on top of me.
And then Faerie grabbed me again, because I guessed I didn’t have enough problems.
Arsen’s fist tightened on his glass, remembering the leader’s face. It had been beautiful in a way that he hadn’t expected from a human, or one of their twisted cousins. A fierce, hawk-like visage with golden eyes, like twin lamps set in flesh. They had shed a sallow light over his features, glinting off the extended fangs, highlighting the blood splatter from his latest kill, and dancing like fire on the edge of the wicked blade he held. He had kicked over the bodies of some of Arsen’s men, with no more concern than one might have had for a dead animal. But he had stared into each face carefully, as if looking for someone.
Aeslinn, Arsen thought. He wanted the king. And was furious when he could not find him. He glimpsed Arsen a moment later, down the corridor at the end of the hall. He should have been all but invisible at this range, shrouded in gloom, yet the creature’s eyes picked him out just the same. And then he leapt for him, astonishingly quick—
Only to be denied by the first of a series of wards that Arsen’s people had erected, donating magic that they could ill afford to slow these horrors down.
It had worked—but not by much. The ward stopped him for a moment. But then his eyes burned brighter and his body pushed deeper into its deadly embrace, and he just kept coming.
The ward had seared him, burning off his clothes, dusting away his hair, and turning the sword in his hand a bright reddish gold as if it had just come out of a forge. His skin, too, had suffered terribly, flushing red and then black, as the ward burnt him alive. But he had healed almost as fast, muscle and skin flowing back over his bloody form as he stepped through the magical barrier, and out the other side.
Arsen had stared at him, standing there nude and bloody and terrible, with the crisped remains of his skin knitting back together and the splotchy patches of his own blood drawing up and disappearing, until they were entirely gone. Leaving him pale and perfect once more, with a mane of mahogany hair sprouting from his scalp to flow down onto his shoulders. It was the most impressive thing Arsen had ever seen, and the most frightening.
There were two more wards, but Arsen had not waited to watch the monster wade through those as well. And he would—Arsen knew he would. He was like a man possessed, or possibly mad. Because the whole time, he had said the same thing, over and over, even when his lips were melting off his body, when his tongue was on fire, when his hair was alight: Where is she? Where is she? Where? Where? Where?
Arsen had had more than one nightmare about that day, and they always, always featured the vampire captain. And the bodies of his fey, lying dead in drifts, like bleeding snow. Aye, he remembered those as well.
And yet, when he had returned here, with the remains of his army, leading a host of frightened refugee
s, where was the king?
No one knew; no one had seen him. And he had not returned for several more weeks. When he finally did show up, he had declared that he and his contingent of soldiers had been almost caught several times on their way back by some of Caedmon’s troops, and had had to take detours that ate up much time.
But Caedmon’s fey had all been at the capitol.
And how had he lost his hand, if he saw no fighting, as he claimed? And to a demon’s whore, at that? If there was an answer, Arsen did not know it.
He did know that the fleet, almost a thousand of the small vimāna that the gods had taught them how to make, had been deployed, but not to battle. Caedmon had owned the skies that day at the capitol, or Lord Alacono as the king insisted on calling him, as it was one of his names from before he ascended to the throne—a throne that Aeslinn claimed. The small vessels they used for scouting and patrolling the borders could have helped greatly in the evacuation, and might have even turned the tide of war.
But they had not been there, and they were not here now. The great bays stood empty; the fleet gone along with a goodly number of the fey who Aeslinn had taken with him from the capitol. Scattered, or so it was rumored, looking . . . for what Arsen knew not.
Aeslinn had been less than forthcoming about all of this, even as the queen went missing, too, as well as the prince, and Arsen spent his days trying to feed the refugees now flooding into the city, not only from Issengeir, but from the surrounding towns and villages, from half the realm. For Caedmon was now on the move, not content with the easterly lands, but seemingly determined to take all. And what occupied the king’s mind?
Some hellspawn, some half demon he’d been obsessed with for years. It made no sense! And it was going to get them all killed.
“Auggghhh!” Someone was screaming, possibly me as I’d just been kicked in the head.
I fell back, into the middle of some kind of attack. I looked up to see spell bolts shooting though the night air just above me, and wildly whipping trees, and a lot more fey—it looked like reinforcements had arrived, although why they had thought they needed them for me, I didn’t know.
And then I realized: they weren’t for me.
Rhea shot a blistering spell that knocked a fey clean off his feet, sending him flying, and then grabbed me. She was saying something, yelling it even, but I couldn’t hear her. I couldn’t hear anything but the howling of the wind.
Because this immersion had been deeper than the others as Faerie pulled me down, and tried to drown me. To the point that it had literally felt like I was Arsen. I could smell the wine he drank, feel the thickness of the glass under our fingers, taste the fruit. I felt the chillness of the wind, stealing across the balcony, and the ache in his shoulder from where Aeslinn had gripped it.
Even more, I felt his confusion at his king’s actions, which made no sense from either a political or military standpoint. I shared his pain at the lost lives, many of them old comrades for, in some cases, hundreds of years. Knew his impotent anger. Saw again the face of the fey he’d raced to the city, the young, laughing countenance that he’d last seen lying waxy and pale on a heap of others, having been drained by a monster’s kiss . . .
It hurt, as if I’d lost a friend of my own, and trying to separate myself from him now was like trying to clean off a body that had fallen into a vat of molasses. He clung to me like an ill-fitting skin, but one that was tightening all the time. And nothing Rhea did was changing that.
I dimly saw her yell at Guinn, who was taking on half a dozen fey at once—and winning. Because the trees were helping her. I did a double take, even as out of it as I was, but it was true: heavy wooden knots were being brought down onto fey heads, huge limbs were slashing across vulnerable bodies, and masses of leaves were suddenly dumping onto archers, burying them and their weapons under mounds of tree gunk.
Maybe the trees were angry that the fey had burnt their friend, or maybe the Svarestri felt alien to them, like invaders in their forest home. It didn’t look like Aeslinn’s fey knew much about green, growing things, but Guinn seemed to have figured them out. Because she circled a hand through the air and the trees crowded closer, hedging us in, and grabbed the fey with hungry roots.
It was the perfect time to escape, but I couldn’t move. Because I was already moving, as Arsen got up, drained the glass, and went back inside. He passed through an expansive sitting room, then down a hall with many doors and into a large bedroom at the end, where he began taking off his armor to examine his wound.
I fought him the whole way, but it did no good. The best I could do was to keep my head above water, and my consciousness from being fully subsumed. I hadn’t sunk entirely into Arsen yet, but it wouldn’t be long. I could feel the undertow dragging me down, but what I couldn’t feel was Rhea’s hand gripping mine. I couldn’t hear the spell she cast, holding off two more fey. I couldn’t—
Do anything but stare at my reflection in a mirror.
It was hanging on a wall in Arsen’s bedchamber. A moment before, it had been reflecting back a heavily bruised shoulder, which had been revealed after he removed the breastplate and the armor on his arms, and pulled aside the underlying gambeson to take a look. But that wasn’t what was showing now. Instead, I met my own blue eyes, wide and shocked and staring out of a dirt-streaked face.
There was spell fire behind me, and attacking trees and running fey. There were probably going to be a lot more fey, very soon, because the camp wasn’t far and we were making a hell of a clamor. But I couldn’t hear it.
All I could hear was the sound of Arsen’s blood in his veins, beating faster and faster as he stared back at me. All I could feel were the soft tendrils of his hair, sliding against our neck. All I could taste was the remains of the wine on our lips, as our tongue flickered out nervously to wet them.
“What sorcery is this?” he whispered, his fingers coming up to touch the mirror.
I couldn’t seem to speak, maybe because he was already using our vocal cords. But I could feel the glass, slick and cool under my touch as I raised my hand. And then warm skin, when his fingers met mine.
The shock sent a ripple through me that I couldn’t name. And it looked like he felt the same, jerking slightly. Yet he didn’t draw his hand back, even when my fingers slid into the spaces between his, when they gripped his hand, when they clenched.
And the next moment, a fey general sat on the dirt beside me, every bit as real as I was.
Chapter Thirty-Three
I stared at Arsen and he stared at me. And then his hands went for my throat, because of course they did, I thought, as my back hit the dirt. Of course, they damned well did!
But he didn’t succeed in choking the life out of me, because Rhea hexed him the next second, and then Guinn was shouting at us. “Here! Up here!”
I looked around, confused, until I spied her, sitting twelve feet up in the cleft of a huge old oak. She was looking a lot more like a fey suddenly, with her hair a dark poof around her face and filled with leaves and sticks; her heavy, if stylish, coat gone, and the sleeves ripped off her shirt; and what looked like one of the missing sleeves tied around her forearm. She was acting more like a fey, too, making a sweeping gesture that one of the huge branches of the oak she was riding mimicked exactly—and knocked three running soldiers off their feet.
“Are you deaf? Come on!” she yelled, when I just blinked at her.
And then her tree . . . started moving closer. It had been partway down the path in front of us, but now it reversed course, the roots spidering over the ground in ways that roots should not do. Causing me to have to fight a serious and profound urge to run screaming in the other direction.
I refrained, since the other direction held fey. Like the ones who were now shooting at the shield that Rhea had just thrown up. I glanced around, but if there was an alternative way out of here, I didn’t see it. So, we scrambled up the tree, which turned out to be the race car of the vegetable world, because as soon as w
e were up—
“Holy Crap!” I said, as the thing took off, trundling through and in some cases over the confusion like we had four-wheel drive. Or a tank. Or an out-of-control bulldozer, that put two huge limbs out in front of it and just scooped fey out of the way.
That was lucky, as they were everywhere now, leaping up from the ground as if they had springs in their feet, shooting arrows and throwing spells, and using some of those weird energy spear things that I’d seen them employ a few times before to devastating effect.
But the effect wasn’t so devastating now, as a phalanx of trees had formed up all around us. They were lashing out with limbs and roots, knocking fey out of the way, slamming them back into the forest, and trampling them underfoot. Or under root, I guessed, which made my head hurt and complain about the things I got it into. And then, in one memorable event, several fey were sent ping ponging between the wildly waving branches of half a dozen trees, until they finally managed to find free air—about thirty feet up.
I didn’t think their adventure in horticulture had managed to kill them, as they’d had shields, but it hadn’t made them happy. I, on the other hand, was feeling the first optimism I’d known in a while. I looked at Guinn, and shouted to be heard over the creaking wood and yelling fey and exploding spells.
“How are you doing this?”
“I was always told that grandfather could hear the plants sing!” she said, looking back at me with wild eyes. “I thought they were merely stories. It seems I was wrong!”
Looked that way, I thought, holding on. And then reaching out for Rhea, when a harder than normal bump sent her bouncing off the branch and into the air. Because there were no seatbelts in this thing!
I caught her before she fell off our crazy ride. But the shock interrupted the shield she’d somehow been maintaining, causing it to drop. And the second it did—
