I told them the monster swallowed my arm. As if that was all it took.
~ Private writings of Ormonde
LIKE SMALL PEBBLES falling from the stark Argonyx above us, dark shapes separated from the rocks—and as they surged closer, they got bigger. Much bigger.
“The horde comes,” Vreas called in a clear voice. “Hold fast, defenders of the Living Lands.”
Running fast made more sense to me.
Demons boiled down from the crags—shadows with shining teeth and malevolent eyes. The nighttime attack in Velderrey had been confusing and terrifying, monstrosities tearing through the cavalcade like nightmares in the dark. Now they were nightmares in the light.
In fascinated horror, I found myself searching for ones like those in the library—scaled and spiked and clawed, scabrous and mangy, flesh and fur and feathers hued like death—but every demon was distinct in its own terrible way.
Everyone is a thread in the weave of the world.
And every demon was a fatal flaw.
While I didn’t know all the specifics of demonic theology—it hadn’t seemed so important before when I figured hunger or headthumpers would get me first—even I knew that demons were twisted, failed reflections of auric energy. Everything that was noble and vibrant and beautiful in pure auras was rotted and putrefied in demons. That evil hungered endlessly for what it wasn’t—and would pollute everything it touched.
But the horde didn’t immediately overrun us. Instead, dozens of demons split around the edges of the vale, well back from the bristling points of the marshal’s guard. They encircled our circle and I wondered who was better at this strategy. Unless we could fly our way out.
“Summon the prince,” I whispered harshly. “Why are we waiting?”
Lisel shook her head. “The marshal said to wait.”
No, he’d actually said he wouldn’t summon the prince at all, out of a hate and fear that while perhaps not completely unjustified was certainly not helpful. We were going to be massacred in the bottom of this bowl because she wanted the praise of the father who’d rejected her than in her own preservation.
I pivoted to Dyania. “Lady—”
But her eyes were widening in shock—for once, not at me. Her dark-light gaze was focused past me toward the mountains.
I spun around.
He was standing atop a cracked boulder, a crimson cape billowing around him. A curved sword, like a crescent moon, swung from his gloved fist, the blade so long that, even as tall as he was, the point hung below his boots braced on the edge of rough stone. The moon-curved metal glowed faintly, not a reflection of the indifferent daylight but some secret inner illumination. The hood on the cape covered his face, and with the gloves and boots also red, he appeared bathed in blood.
This wasn’t a demon.
He stood beyond them, dreadful and dire. A demon master.
The faintest shock—not even breath, more like the little hairs on everyone’s body prickled at once—swept around our huddled circle.
“The Dragon Prince,” Captain Elaf muttered. “Damn him to the dark.”
No. He might be a prince far above me, but I couldn’t have misjudged him so badly. Also, Aric wouldn’t deign to pose in red.
The terrifying presence on the boulder shoved back his hood.
For a heartbeat, I thought I was wrong and the Dragon Prince stood above us with the horde fawning at his feet. Then I blinked, and the illusion faded. But I understood why my eye had been confused.
The lordly figure, tall and lean, standing above us was like the vivid twin of the Dragon Prince, a sinister reflection in a pool of molten silver and gore. Long, flowing hair of argent-white rippled past the red hood and down over his shoulders. The pale locks caught on the restless breeze and drifted like spider silk, a-glitter in the faltering sunlight. His sharp, elegant features looked cut from crystal, flawless. But his eyes…
His eyes were abyssal voids of midnight black where no light had ever shone or ever would. I found myself pitching forward, as if falling into that bottomless night. But I’d faced temptations that were traps before, and I pulled myself up short.
“Who are you, who stands with the horde?” Vreas called. Did anyone else hear the tremor in his words? For our sakes, I hoped not. “Name yourself.”
“My name? I have no need of a name, not when I stand alone.” His voice rang like a bell, clear and bright. “But for the sake of your hopeless prayers, you may scream out Claeve.”
Even Orton, the first time he discovered that I’d borrowed from him, hadn’t promised such arrogant, offhand brutality. I slanted a quick glance at Imbril and Dyania to see if the name meant anything to them. But their expressions were as shocked and frightened as I supposed mine was.
“By the authority of His Illuminance King Mikhalthe l’Thine, ruler of the Living Lands, I order you to remand yourself to our custody.” The marshal’s words rang with impressive authority. Not that such orders had ever impelled me to give myself up, and I doubted they’d be any more effective on a man who stood above demons, but I appreciated the attempt.
From the laugh that pealed across the vale like the chill wind, inescapable and piercing, it seemed Claeve was not as impressed as I. “You have no power beyond your walls, and your king even less. At least you are the one who stands here against me.” The arc of his smile held the perfect, scintillating symmetry of a rainbow—and the sharp cruelty of his curved sword. “I will issue no counter commands to you and yours, but I invite you to step out of that frightened circle and join me, be free.” He opened his unsworded hand in an elegant gesture and the surrounding demons faded back.
Vreas scoffed. “Join your demons in death?”
Claeve’s gloved fist closed. “Your death is here regardless,” he said with a dispassion worse than menace. “But with me, your aura will shine on as no’Invari.”
Though no one within our fortified circle moved, I nevertheless felt a shudder in our combined resolution. Even I, who never listened to anyone, much less believed them, felt the ring of truth in his claim.
I edged closer to Lisel. “Use the whistle. Summon Prince Aric. Now.”
Her body was so stiff I thought she’d swallowed her pike. “It’s not my place. Fei, I can’t.”
With a muttered curse filthier than anything Vreas or Zik had ever dreamed of, I dug my hand into her pocket and rummaged around with none of my usual nimble dexterity. Maybe no one else trusted the Dragon Prince—and maybe I didn’t either—but I wasn’t going to die for their misgivings.
“Feinan, no.” But her reach for me was halfhearted. No one here grabbed like Sevaare’s watch, and a rush of wry wistfulness countered some of my panic.
I scuttled back to Dyania, waving the bone like a very tiny, dull, dusty sword. “My lady—”
A torrent of fire roared over the rocks, drowning my words.
For a heartbeat, I was frozen, Ormonde’s whistle almost dropping from my hand. Had the dragon come before our call?
But the fire was belching from within our circle, aimed at Claeve’s boulder.
“More oil,” Vreas bellowed. “Spin harder!”
It wasn’t like the festive fireworks I’d glimpsed a few times in the courtyard of Sevaare’s nobles with delicate sparkles in all the hues, nor even the bold, steady blaze of a torchiere. This was just a gout of raw flame, and white as a silkha pendant.
The device, about the size of one of the yaxen, had been was strapped to the bed of a wagon. A snaking conduit led from a huge canister cradled in a separate wagon. The fire erupted from the nozzle spewed out in gusts, powered by two guards spinning a large wheel to drive the pressure.
“A flamecaster,” Lisel said. “I’d heard about this, but I didn’t realize they had one ready for use.”
Now I understood why the marshal thought he could avoid calling the Dragon Prince; it seemed the king and his advisors had all sorts of grand schemes. The realization that my little library group wasn’t on its own should have been reassuring. But even as I watched, the demons slyly evaded the awkward spurting fire. Could we ever overcome an enemy that had challenged us for so long?
But Marshal Vreas had been aiming at Claeve, and if that one was human—or at least more human than demon—maybe we had a chance.
Vreas held up his fist, and the wheel guards stopped spinning. As soon as they did, the fire guttered out.
Sitting in a puddle of melt, the boulder was scorched and empty.
“You could have just said no.”
The mocking drawl came from the opposite side of the circle, and all of us whirled around as one in a way that would’ve made for amusing theater if we weren’t now facing Claeve, charging toward us with that moonglow sword, the crimson cloak billowing behind him
My fist tightened on the bone whistle—and just as quickly loosened lest I crush it to even more dust. I’d told the marshal and then Lisel to summon the prince, but now I hesitated. We’d seen him decimate the Velderrey horde, but how would he fare against this silver twin?
If our circle was overrun, it would be a tragedy, in my very personal opinion, but if the Dragon Prince fell here, so fell the Living Lands.
For the first time I truly understood Dyania’s dilemma. Except it wasn’t a dilemma; the moment of our deaths might be the only thing we could choose.
Claeve’s rallying cry was answered from a hundred demonic throats of different sizes and configurations, blending into a malign yet strangely harmonious orchestra. Like a hundred dulcichordias, erratically tuned but striving toward one melody: our doom.
Vreas’s circle of guards held bravely, their polearms and long swords keeping the horde at bay while delivering terrible wounds as the flamecaster belched more fire. Except, in the light of day, I learned that demons don’t die. Spitted, they screamed. Hacked, they writhed and thrashed. Slashed apart into gruesome pieces, they thrashed and writhed and screamed some more, leaving revolting trails of tarry goo as they kept reaching for us.
But they did not die.
Now, too late, I understood the dragon’s awful power.
Without the dragon to devour the stolen auras of the demons, sucking away the animating force that imitated life, there was no way to end this attack.
As terrifying as that thought was, even more horrific was the realization that this was what happened to auras torn from people by the demons: endless pain and undying suffering, a scream that never ended.
The fire weapon at least turned them into smaller lumps of immobile charcoal, staining the melting snow, when the guards could aim the flame long enough to let the fire burn. But it took multiple soldiers to pin a demon in place, to douse it in so much oil that the fire might reduce it to ash. Even as we fought, the massive canister of oil ran dry, and though one of the biggest guards tipped it on end, no more flames emerged. The marshal and his men couldn’t do this alone.
The demons screamed again—glee, I thought, at the taste of victory snagged in their fangs.
“Last chance,” Claeve called out. Unlike Prince Aric’s rasping growl, the demon master’s voice might’ve belonged to any of my clever street-wise brethren, his timbre as silver and flowing as his hair.
One of the guardsmen who’d wielded the flamecaster and now had only a pike, stumbled to the edge of the circle. With shrieks of anticipation, three spindly, spidery demons leaped for him.
“Spare me, master,” he cried back.
But the demons tore him apart, and if his aura kept shining as Claeve promised, it wasn’t apparent through the resulting spew of blood and gristle.
I clutched Ormonde’s whistle to my chest. We didn’t have a choice.
Dyania grabbed my elbow. “Feinan, no. It’s too late.”
But it wasn’t. We still had a chance. Just because everyone else hated and feared the Dragon Prince didn’t mean I had to die for their distrust.
Where the guardsman had fallen, a dozen demons boiled over an upturned chariot, their talons scratching and clawing. My muscles seized as if they were already tearing into me. More cries of pain and terror as other points along our circle fell.
A huge demon, bigger than any I’d seen or any depicted in the library, vaulted over the flamecaster wagon and galloped toward us. Blackened tusks, dripping with viscera, jutted forward at an angle meant only to rend and tear. And its array of multi-faceted eyes, like those of a monstrous bug, were all fixed on the lady.
Something more horrible and inexplicable than anything I’d seen so far happened: I jumped in front of the demon.
As if I was possessed by something beyond my control, demonic in its own way, or so it seemed to me, I spread my arms wide. What had happened to my poleax?
I screamed, “Our auras are not yours to steal.”
As objections went, I really had nothing to back it up. But to my shock, the demon lurched to a halt, ripping up geysers of muddy gravel as it tossed its tusked snout.
I stared in bewilderment as it dragged its talons through the scree and snowmelt but did not charge, instead pivoting sidelong, those buggy eyes glittering.
When I swiveled to keep it in view—as if seeing my oncoming doom made it less likely?—it sidled farther yet, away from my fist.
The hand holding Ormonde’s bone.
“Stand aside!” Imbril’s cry jolted me out of my stunned stillness—and I was jolted even farther as his shoulder bumped me, making room for Lisel and two other guards to charge the demon with their pikes.
The demon bellowed and swiped out at the bristling points. One of the guards was knocked sideways, letting out an awkward oomph when the butt of the spear jolted the air from him. He stumbled into Imbril, who scrambled to evade, only to sprawl into me.
I went down hard, even less gracefully than the robed lor, my face mashed into the earth. At least the melted mud hadn’t trickled this far, or I might’ve drowned. Ducking and covering, I instinctively wrapped my arms around my head—the same way I’d done that one time the lightkeep watch caught me and decided I needed to be taught a lesson at the steely toes of their boots—but my whole body tensed for the inevitable wrenching pain of demonic claws.
Gravel and dust in my mouth made me cough.
And a strange noise wheezed out of me. An oddly musical squawk, almost a whistle.
Oh. Oh no.
I tried to clamp my lips shut, but somebody trod across my bowed back—and I was weakly grateful that somebody had boots, not talons—squeezing the last little bit of air from my lungs.
The skirling gasp that came from me was worse than all the screaming and shrieking.
I’d heard something like it only once before…
Before I could try to cough out the dust in my throat, another scream—more furiously discordant than all the rest—rang overhead. Seemingly right over my head.
The only thing more frightening than seeing monsters come for me was not seeing monsters come for me. Uncurling, I flopped to my back, my eyes rolling wildly to take in the yelling, scrambling guards, Lisel bundling Dyania under her pike-bearing arm, Zik pulling Imbril to his feet.
And the dragon streaking past above us.
Black as night, like the obsidian mountain falling on our heads, she sliced through the winter sky. She cried out again across those broken octaves.
As one, the horde crouched to the ground, threw back their grotesque heads—fangs and slaver flashing—and answered her.
She spun, as lithe in the air as a fish in the water, and shrieked at them again. Altogether, their voices rattled the very stones.
As in Velderrey, the dragon belched a seething vortex of emptiness, like the flamecaster but eerily reversed, sucking inward. Unlike Velderrey, instead of fleeing her rage, the demons stayed cowering beneath her, those misshapen heads still raised toward her.
As if in sacrifice.
Without the lure of the bloodfire rune to gather them, the demons were scattered about the broken circle of our wagons like forgotten hedrons, and the dragon’s breath of nothingness guttered and leapt to target only the horde. But still I saw at least one soldier fall, too close to a demon and caught in the backwash of the void.
When the dragon circled tight and low, I caught a glimpse of Prince Aric yoked to her hungry fury. I hadn’t quite realized that, despite her size and vicious strength and his own black armor, the way he was lashed to her breast left him dangerously exposed, vulnerable to attack.
He didn’t even wield a weapon—except for the dragon herself, of course, but no sword, glowing or otherwise, was in his hand. His black hair was whipped to tangles that almost covered his icy eyes.
Almost. And yet somehow I felt the piercing awareness of his attention as they swept past.
I scrambled up to my hands and knees, which left me in a stance a little too much like the mesmerized horde as the dragon slaughtered them all, gorging on the scraps of twice-stolen auric energy.
No, not stolen this time. Sacrificed. My thoughts kept circling back to that word like a panicked chook seeking unlikely shelter.
As the dragon ravaged, a shivering silence fell over the vale, somehow even more unnerving than the shrieks and screams. Probably I was only imagining it, but it seemed to me that black tatters of faded and frayed auras flickered at the edges of my vision. Did Aric feel the remnants streaming past him? Were they soft like shadows or sharp as shards of obsidian?
But this wasn’t a sanctified Feast, and we already knew there would be no Devouring.
Aric had said demons kept the auras they stole but that the dragon’s chains were woven from pure auras, and if she fortified herself with too much darkness, she might escape him.
And she was feeding well today.
“Not stolen, sacrificed,” I gasped. To cut her loose? “Aric, stop her!”
Or that was what I tried to say. Instead, that strange whistle—oh, no, no—emerged from my lips again.
Clamping a hand over my mouth, I thrust to my feet and staggered toward Dyania.
Everyone was—sensibly—recoiling from the demonic slaughter, as if that would protect their auras, angling instinctively toward the center of our ragged circle.
I tugged at her sleeve. “Lady, trouble.” I barely mouthed the words to prevent the unnerving whistle.
“Feinan. What did you do?”
I grimaced. Such qualms after all our time together. So unfair. “Whistle. Broke. Crushed.” I pointed at my throat.
Zik blinked at me. “You ate King Ormonde’s finger bone?”
“Not on purpose!” I kept my outrage to a whisper, then let out a delicate little cough to try to clear my throat again. “Turned to dust. Need to stop the prince.”
Imbril flinched back, his expression skewed with revulsion. “What have you done?”
I wrinkled my nose at him. “Not my fault,” I hissed. “You bumped into me.”
“You’re blaming me?”
“This isn’t about blame,” Dyania said. “We can’t be attacking each other—”
A shadow swept over us, and we all quailed.
It was too late to call the prince away from the fight. The battle was over.
The dragon settled on one of the cracked boulders. Not the same one where the demon master had posed and pontificated.
The silence that had settled in the wake of the scourging had been bad enough, the horrified shock of the High Keep fighters now was even more profound. From the way they gawked while trying not to look directly at the dragon, I realized this must be the closest and longest anyone here had seen the prince and his demon, in the daylight no less. I stared too.
In the sky, on the wing, she was a monstrosity. Before us, she was…worse. Black and sinuous like a lizard, with leathery, serrated scales that ranged from the size of my head to smaller than my fingernail, the edges glinting like the broken shard of the obsidian, a dangerous smoky shadow. Her head was a nightmare version of the elegant harts, as if one of their skulls had been smashed asunder and burned down to blackened bone, then swept back together by a careless hand—except with the vicious teeth of a remorseless predator exposed. Ragged, broken antlers jutted from a uneven ruff of patchy fur and feathers, like something that had been left to molder in the rain. Except where an enchaining collar ringed her neck, jagged spikes marched down her spine in mismatched rows, ending on a mace-like flail at the tip of her tail, the long thorns cracked and weeping a black ichor that glistened like poison.
When she landed, that deadly tail gave one flick before she settled to preternatural stillness, no sign of her recent exertion or even breaths. With those veined black wings hanging lax on either side, she hunched there—just another fallen corpse upon the mountain, that awful head in profile and only one eye visible. Matching the rest of her, the eye was blackest black, but crazed with a spiderwebbed filigree of thin, pale lines, like the cutting edges of shattered glass. Despite her seeming somnolence, my shoulders hunched under the malevolent weight of that insidious stare.
The prince released himself from the harness around her rib cage. With one hand on her collar, he stepped down to the broken boulder. Did his step falter? Maybe it was just the uneven surface.
Or maybe the flight and the fight were even harder on him than any of us realized.
But he jumped down from the rock readily enough, a short, black cloak billowing behind him like wings. I heard the harsh inhalation from those around us that he was stepping away from the demonic beast behind him, leaving her unrestrained, but she stayed perched where she was like a particularly large, ugly, and evil chook.
He stalked across the churned-up gravel and stopped in front of Vreas. “Blade to bone, why did you wait so long to call for me?”
Apparently Imbril and I weren’t the only ones willing to throw around some blame when warranted.
Vreas scowled. “We had the battle under control.”
“Ah.” The prince tilted his head. “Perhaps I misunderstood the situation. From above it appeared that your defenses had been overrun.” He lifted his chin, his focus going past the old man. “I didn’t realize you had such a glut of conscripts that you could afford to toss them away by the handfuls.”
“You can’t see anything,” the marshal snapped. “Not from so far, not from those scarred eyes.”
Beside me, Lisel stiffened, and I imagined that she knew that scathing tone too well—or maybe she thought she would have to rush in to defend her father from the prince.
But Aric only nodded. “I’ll leave you to it then,” he drawled. “Don’t forget to burn the demon-touched lest they turn on you while you celebrate your victory.” He pivoted on his boot heel.
“Actually, it’s worse than that,” I blurted.
My voice wavered with that weird warble again, and the prince spun around so viciously everyone around me flinched aside.
I would have too, but he covered the distance between us too quickly and wrapped his hand around my throat so hard I couldn’t move, the calluses on his palm rough against my windpipe.
He had grabbed me before, but not like this. I’d thought him peremptory but not punishing. Now he glared down at me, a muscle writhing in his jaw under his scarred skin. He hadn’t brushed back the knotted tangles of his wind-swept hair, and through the black locks, I caught a glimpse of his pale eye. Still icy, but this close, I thought I saw something move underneath that cold scrim of anger, something trapped under the ice.
I half closed my own eyes, expecting him to tighten his grip past where I could breathe, and through the stubby veil of my lashes I glimpsed a strange, almost opalescent flash, an eerie inverse of the dark tatters of aura torn from the butchered demons.
His fingers tightened just another notch, his thumb forcing my chin higher. “What did you say?”
I reached up to put my hand over his, and for a heartbeat the gesture was shockingly intimate. Then I wedged a finger behind his brutal grip and pried at his hold like I was uncorking the cheapest rotgut boosted from the worst tavern is Sevaare. “I said you were wrong,” I croaked. “It’s worse than you ever thought.”
My throat ached from the cruelty of his grip, but the pressure seemed to have knocked loose whatever cadaverous desiccation had been there, left behind by the bone dust.
His glare narrowed. “Not what you said. But how you said it.”
I shook my head, at least as well as I could with his fingers still wrapped around my neck, tighter than the dragon’s shackling collar. “It’s the meaning that matters right now, Your Radiance.” I did not want to explain what had happened to Ormonde’s whistle. “The demons follow a master now—a man.”
The prince straightened. “The demons have no master. They take no order. They follow no one.”
“She follows you.” I jerked my chin at the dragon.
Whether it was the veracity of my words or my motion reminding him that he still held me, his fingers sprang open. As I dropped gracelessly to the ground on my heels, he took a long step back, pivoting toward Vreas. “Is this true about a demon master?”
The marshal glanced away. “There was…someone,” he admitted with great reluctance. “Although perhaps it was a trick, a demonic illusion.”
I glared at him, finding my voice again in my indignation. “An illusion in immaculate red that spoke to us, a trick that tried to bait us outside the circle, and then attacked us with a glowing sword.” I turned back to the prince. “He said his name is Claeve. Do the demons name themselves?”
Maybe we’d all expected the prince to react in some way—I felt our collective held breath—but he didn’t flinch at the name. “Tell me of this sword.”
I blinked. “It was…big. And looked sharp, as most swords do, I suppose. And as I said, it glowed.”
Lisel stepped forward. “It was a hand-and-a-half, double edged, and hollow-ground in cross section, but also curved.” She shook her head. “No bladesmith would dream of hammering out such distorted distal taper, nor would any swordsworn go into battle so unbalanced.” She trailed off when we all just stared at her. “Also, it was glowing.”
Imbril cleared his throat. “There may be a reference to such a weapon in the archives. I’ll need to verify the passage, of course, but I seem to recall a sword of somebody or other, fallen to the horde during the Great Gorging.”
“Did that one glow?” Zik’s whisper was surprisingly loud in the stunned, disheartened lull still hanging over the vale.
Imbril nodded. “That’s what made me remember the quote, something about ‘by the incandescent rapture of his mighty blade’. It sounded merely poetical at the time.”
“Or pornographic,” I muttered but softly enough that no one had to shush me.
Except the prince cast his icy gaze my way. “Why did you wait so long to summon us?”
For a moment, I only gaped at him. “I didn’t…”
Or had I? That bone dust in my throat seemed gone now. Was it in me now? Ugh.
“I need a drink,” I muttered.
“Did you kill him?” Vreas asked the prince, his interruption edged in aggression. “Claeve, or whatever he called himself.”
The prince shook his head. “I didn’t see him, whoever he was. And the dragon didn’t react as she does when she takes a human aura, only the demonic scraps.”
But I’d seen a soldier fall. Did that mean he’d already been demon-touched? Poor wretch. The dragon hadn’t missed after all; she’d taken what she wanted.
Shuddering, I sneaked a glance at the monster. She hadn’t moved, still hunched with that bony, dead-hart head in profile, but I thought a flicker in her shattered-glass gaze seemed to refocus on me. When I looked at her, she darted a narrow, forked tongue out from between her fangs and slicked it across her eyeball.
Ugh again. Never mind the drink. Maybe I needed dinzah.
“Numinlor Kalima needs to know about this,” Imbril said. “And King Mikhalthe too. We must return to the High Keep immediately.”
Did that count as running away or running back?
Somehow, I doubted it mattered anymore.