by KJ Baker
Is this where Raven received his crown? I wondered, looking around at the cavernous, light-filled chamber. Is this where he became King Arion Storm?
The thought sent a pang right through me and I pushed thoughts of him from my mind. I couldn’t afford to think about him now. If I did, I would break.
“What will you do?” Samuel said, cocking his head at me. “When you’re free? Will you go home to the mortal realm?”
I blinked. I hadn’t even thought about it. Go home? To what? I had no family since my grandma’s passing. My best friend had forgotten my existence, and my livelihood had been ruined. What did I have to go back to?
“I...um...I don’t know,” I said. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”
“Taviel will take you wherever you want to go. If you want, he will use one of the portal cubes to take you home. Or you can stay here. There will be a place for you here at the Spire, if you wish it.”
The door opened and I looked up as Taviel entered. Felena accompanied him, and I bristled at the sight of her. I couldn’t help the jealousy and anger she awoke in me. She was the woman who had taken Raven from me. She was the woman who—
Was betrayed by Raven as much as you were, I reminded myself. And who had a claim to him long before you did. She isn’t your enemy.
I climbed to my feet as Taviel approached. He held out his hand. “Shall we begin?”
I glanced at Samuel, who smiled reassuringly. I took a deep breath and slipped my hand into Taviel’s. His skin was as cold as ice.
My voice shook only slightly as I said, “Yes, let’s begin.”
RAVEN
“This is unwise,” Telia Rowan growled at me. “You’re letting your heart rule your head, Arion. It would be wiser to wait for darkness.”
I glanced at her, at all my commanders arrayed around the table in my tent. Their eyes followed me as I stalked up and down like a caged lion. “They’re still reeling from our attack this morning. It makes perfect sense to strike now, whilst they’re still in disarray.”
“Mirak is no fool,” Telia snapped. “We caught him unawares this morning. It will not happen again. My scouts have reported a doubling of their guard and they’ve brought their war engines up to guard against a frontal assault.”
“Then we take the flanks,” I snapped. “A token force to march against their lines at the front as a diversion whilst the cavalry ride to outflank them.”
“That will take us up the valley sides!” Telia said. “The terrain is too steep for horses!”
I glanced at Hawk and Bowen who’d just returned from the scouting mission I’d sent them on. “Can it be done?”
Hawk rubbed his chin. His blond hair was dusty from his long ride, and he looked in desperate need of sleep. Still, his voice was strong as he said, “I believe it can. There’s a narrow defile that cuts through the eastern side of the valley. If we could get through that undetected then we should be able to outflank them.”
“Good. I’ll lead the charge.”
“Arion, no!” Telia snapped. “This is madness! You think they won’t know about that defile? You think they won’t have tortured every last bit of information about this terrain out of their Moon Court captives? It will be a death-trap!”
“That’s a risk I’m willing to take. This is the only way to break through their lines. The only way to reach the Spire.”
The only way to reach Asha. Oh Fates, Asha.
Telia stared at me, her jaw tense. Around the table, the other commanders watched our stand-off. I held her gaze, daring her to challenge me. Yes, the strategy was risky. Yes, I was allowing my heart to rule my head, an elementary mistake for any commander. But I had no choice. I had to get to the Spire. I had to get to Asha before they did...whatever they were going to do.
“Telia,” I said softly. “Support me in this, please. It will work. It has to.”
Still she stared at me. If she refused, if she withdrew the forces of the Court of Rain, we were finished. She closed her eyes and let out a long, slow breath before opening them again.
“I swore an oath,” she said at last. “I swore to follow you when I agreed to our alliance. The Court of Rain upholds its oaths. We are not Unseelie, to blow with the wind. We are Seelie and our word is our bond. Very well. It will be as you say.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t even known I’d been holding.
“But Arion?” Telia added. “I really hope you know what you’re doing.”
So do I, I thought. So do I. But I let none of my inner turmoil sound in my voice. I nodded. “Ready your forces. We attack within the hour.”
ASHA
“Drink this,” Taviel said, holding out a cup. “It will make things easier.”
I took the cup and sniffed it. It had a horrible metallic smell. “You want to drug me?”
Taviel shrugged. “It’s just something to help you relax. To help your mind relax. This won’t work if you’re so wound up you won’t let me in.”
I glanced at Samuel. He nodded, giving me an encouraging smile. I lifted the cup to my lips and drank. Almost immediately a warm lassitude began to spread through my body. I was still in control, still aware of everything that was happening around me, but my fear and my worry receded, just a little.
“Good,” Taviel said, nodding. “Now close your eyes and try to relax. You’ll feel my mind touch yours. It will seem strange at first, but you have to try not to push me out.”
I swallowed thickly. Closing my eyes, I laid my head back. We had traveled the paternoster to Taviel’s study and through the high, open windows on each side, I saw the sky. Clouds moved lazily through the blue expanse. It was beautiful.
Taviel took my hand, his skin cold against mine, but his touch was gentle. Something brushed against my mind, a gossamer touch as light as a feather. Even so, it was enough to make me gasp, sit bolt upright, and slam my defenses up against him.
“Easy,” Taviel whispered. “Let’s try that again.”
I willed myself to relax. Told myself this was for the best. This was the only way to be free.
Softly, Taviel’s mind brushed against my own again. I gritted my teeth, fighting against the urge to shove him away.
That’s it, his voice said in my head as he slipped into my thoughts. Show me Raven’s hold on you.
Thoughts of Raven filled my head. His smile. His eyes. His touch. In response, the bond we shared flared to life and my sense of him with it. He was still far away, but getting closer, and right now he was a whirlwind of turbulent emotions: anger, fear, determination. I had a brief sense of him moving stealthily through a tight, enclosed space, before Taviel’s voice spoke in my head again.
Now pass it to me.
His mind seized those memories of Raven and pulled them close. An alien power wrapped around the bond and stretched it rigid.
Now comes the hard part, Taviel said. Brace yourself. I’m afraid this will hurt.
RAVEN
The sun was sinking towards afternoon by the time we reached the high slopes of the valley. It had taken the better part of two hours to get this far, moving slowly and cautiously, wary of enemy scouts. We had wrapped the hooves of our horses in cloth to muffle the sound of their shoes and covered every piece of bronze on the bridles to stop the sun glinting off it and giving us away. It had been a slow, torturous trek. My instincts bellowed at me to hurry. To mount my horse and send her thundering through the Unseelie lines and to the Spire where Asha was.
But that would be suicide. I retained enough control over myself to see that at least.
There was movement ahead and I held up my fist to signal a halt. Behind me, the column of people and horses came to a juddering stop. I peered into the gloom beneath the trees.
Bowen materialized from the undergrowth. “The defile is just ahead,” he said in a low voice. “It appears unguarded.”
Appears. Yet we all knew that appearances could be deceptive. I nodded, then looked back over my warriors. Hand-picked men and women f
rom all the Seelie courts waited patiently behind me. They’d been chosen for their skill as warriors, their riding ability, and their loyalty. They were the best the Seelie had to offer.
I nodded to Bowen and he moved off, passing the message down the line. I turned to look towards the valley floor. It was hidden from view by the carpet of trees that flanked the valley sides, but in my mind’s eye I imagined what was happening down there. The Seelie forces, under the command of Telia Rowan of the Court of Rain, would be moving into position. The foot soldiers would be marching to the front line. The archers would be forming up in ranks, ready to cover their advance.
All we had to do was wait.
A horn call sounded down in the valley, three short blasts followed by one long one. The hairs on my neck rose. That was it. The signal. The afternoon silence was suddenly shattered. The drumming of thousands of booted feet filled the air. The hum and whine of released bow strings sounded. And then the roaring clash as lines of warriors crashed into each other.
It had begun. There was no going back now.
I raised my fist. Noiselessly, everyone mounted their horses. I set my heels to my horse’s flanks, drew one of my twin silver blades, and led my warriors towards the defile. The valley walls pulled in, getting steeper and steeper, until finally the trees pulled back entirely and we found ourselves riding over bare rock. High cliffs towered on either side, sheer and unscalable. The path narrowed and narrowed until it was barely wide enough for me, Hawk and Ffion to ride side by side.
Up ahead, the mouth of the defile loomed, looking black and threatening.
There is no way they wouldn’t know about the defile. It’s a trap.
Telia’s warning echoed in my head, but it was too late to back out now. I glanced back at my warriors, gave them a tight nod, then plunged into the defile.
Blackness closed about me immediately, the sky becoming only a thin strip high above. But I was the lord of shadow, and the darkness was no impediment to me. My night vision revealed a narrow floor of packed earth and broken rock, and sheer walls that leaned close on either side. I threw my senses wide, searching for any hint of danger.
I heard and sensed nothing. We traveled in silence, moving through the defile like ghosts, swift and silent. We had almost reached the end, the exit glowing with sunlight, when the attack came.
It was so swift and sudden that it took me completely by surprise. The rock walls, so close on either side, suddenly moved. No, wait. It wasn’t the walls that were moving, but creatures who’d been hidden within, creatures of rock and stone that had melded with the walls themselves. No wonder I hadn’t sensed them.
They emerged from the walls in a silent flood, vaguely humanoid in shape, but blocky and crudely formed as though made from unfinished clay. They were on us in an instant, swords and axes of stone wielded in their crude fists. My horse reared as the creatures converged on me, and it was all I could do to calm the beast. I ducked under the swing of one of those stone axes and it smashed into the wall in a shower of rock and dust.
I hammered at the creature, slamming my fist into its face with all my strength. It would have felled any normal opponent, but the rock creature barely flinched. I cursed under my breath. What were these things? Some Unseelie abomination called from the pit?
All along the line my warriors were fighting for their lives. Our weapons made little to no impact on the stone creatures. They moved ponderously, inexorably, swinging those stone weapons and dragging my warriors from their horses. The defile rang with the sound of battle.
I clenched my jaw. No! This is not how it would end!
To my left, Hawk had been pinned against the wall by one of the creatures. He hammered at it with his sword, but the bronze made no impact on the creature’s limbs. Hawk growled and jabbed his fingers into what passed for the creature’s eyes.
It hissed, released its grip, allowing Hawk to wriggle free. He stooped, grabbed a rock from the defile floor and smashed it down on the creature’s arm. The arm broke free in a shower of stone fragments, but the creature didn’t stop, didn’t slow. It merely turned and lumbered towards Hawk who began backing away, crouching like a wolf at bay.
My fingers flexed. I was the lord of shadow and the darkness was my ally. I closed my eyes, sent my magic blasting out in a summons.
And the Shadows answered my call.
The darkness began to slither like pooled ink, sliding down the walls, across the ground. It rippled towards the rock creatures, slithering up and over their blocky bodies. The rock creatures faltered, turning this way and that to try to dislodge the Shadows that poured over them. But there was no defense against the Shadows, not here where the darkness was almost absolute with no sunlight to destroy them.
The Shadows found the slits that passed for the rock creatures’ mouths and slipped inside like poisoned water. The rock creatures choked on shadow, collapsed to the ground, writhing. All in silence. They uttered not a sound.
Then they shattered. Their bodies exploded into shards of dust and rock, and I flung a hand over my face as a cloud enveloped me. When it cleared, it revealed my warriors covered in dust, coughing to clear their throats, but alive and whole. Of the rock creatures, only piles of dust remained.
Grimly, I released my magic. Was this the best the Unseelie could do? If so, they had badly underestimated me.
“We ride on!” I shouted.
I put my heels to the flanks of my horse and sent her cantering through the darkness towards the bright strip of light that marked the end of the defile. I burst out into blinding sunlight. Below me on the right lay the valley floor, a seething mass of fighting warriors, the sunlight glinting off countless weapons. The air was filled with screaming and shouting and the whump and whir of catapults and other war machines. But now we were behind the Unseelie army, with only a few squads of reserves and the baggage train lying between me and my goal: the Spire.
It rose in the distance, glinting like a metal spike in the sunlight. The lake that surrounded it shimmered blue along the horizon, and I thought I could just make out one of the white bridges that spanned the distance from the lakeshore to the island on which the Spire sat.
Asha, I thought. Hold on. I’m coming.
My warriors spilled out of the defile behind me and together we thundered down the slope towards the Unseelie line. All their attention was focussed on the battle in front of them, on Telia’s attack, and our sudden appearance took them completely by surprise. As we smashed into them, cutting left and right with our blades, their line began to crumple, and we cut a swathe of carnage deep into their center.
Somewhere a commander was shouting for them to turn, to meet the threat coming at them from behind, but the forces were slow to respond. I cut right and left as I spurred my horse into the heart of the battle. I didn’t look at the faces of the people I killed. I didn’t want to know who they were.
Soon my arm was aching and my blade was slick with blood. Ffion fought on my left, Hawk on my right, the rest of my warriors keeping a tight battle formation as we razed through our enemy.
Something slammed into me and knocked me from the saddle. I twisted as I fell, managing to land on my feet, and spun just in time to evade the bronze mace-head that would have caved in my face.
My attacker was a huge bear of a man with red hair and the sharp features of the northern Unseelie Courts. I recognized him immediately.
Mirak Willow. The Unseelie commander.
“Bastard,” he growled. “I’ll kill you for this.”
“So stop talking and get on with it.”
I flung myself at him. If I could take this man down, the Unseelie forces would be in disarray. Taviel might be the overall leader of the Unseelie now that Eliana was dead, but it was this man who was the master tactician, the general that commanded the loyalty and respect of the Unseelie warriors.
I cut high and low, spinning and slicing, trying to get through his defenses. He blocked all my blows with effortless ease and then tha
t mace was swinging for me again, coming at me so fast the spiked head was a blur in the air. I rolled under it, jabbed with my blade, and was rewarded when I felt it slice into Mirak’s calf. He hissed and stumbled back a step.
Fine. I would take him a piece at a time if I had to.
He flung away the mace and drew his sword instead, a great two-handed bronze broadsword carved with runes. We battled back and forth, blades clanging as we thrust and parried, trying to find a way through the other’s defenses. We were evenly matched. Mirak Willow was good. Really good. In another time and place, perhaps he would have been my equal with the blade.
But not today.
My blades were a blur as I moved and now he was on the defensive, trying to deflect my twin weapons with his single one, and I began forcing him back. He jabbed at me, trying to regain the offensive, and I caught his sword’s cross-guard on my own and yanked the weapon out of his hand. It went spinning through the air and landed in the dirt with a thud.
Mirak straightened, his lip curling in a snarl. I held my blades inches from his face.
“Go on, Seelie scum,” he growled. “Do it.”
I readied myself for the killing blow. But at that moment, something ripped right through my soul. Searing pain beyond anything I’d ever imagined sheathed my body in pure fire.
And then my bond to Asha fractured like spiderweb cracks across a sheet of glass.
My sense of her vanished, to be replaced by a deep, dark hole opening up inside me like an abyss. I staggered, my blades thumping to the dirt by my side.
Mirak snarled, spun, and his boot crashed into my face. My head snapped back, blood spurted from my mouth.
I screamed one last thought in the depths of my mind. Asha! Then everything went black.
ASHA
Hot iron pokers were digging into my mind. Dimly, I was aware of my body convulsing and someone—Samuel?—holding my arms, talking to me softly. It hurt. God, it hurt.
Taviel’s magic wrapped around the bond and little tendrils of that power reached into it, like fingers of ivy curling around the branches of a mighty oak tree, gradually suffocating it.