by David Estes
“Please,” Rhea said, her eyes like melted turquoise gemstones. “We have to leave.” Screams. Shouts. Clanging metal.
“Not without my sister. Not without Shae.”
Rhea closed her eyes. Opened them. Nodded. “I can take you to her.”
“Do it.”
Clutching each other—Grease for balance, Rhea for emotional support—they hobbled to the door. Grease opened it slowly and peeked out. There were dark lumps on the floor, and something wet glistened in the light cast by the hall lamps. Two guards. Dead. Somehow dead.
“What the rot?”
“Something is here,” Rhea breathed. “Oh Wrath, it’s going to kill us all.”
Grease remembered that night at the crypts. The monster with the marked scalp. The dead knights. It had come to finish the job.
“Hurry,” Grease said. “We have to find my sister.”
They scurried along the corridor, avoiding as much of the blood as they could. It was everywhere. On the floor, on the walls, splattered on the lamp fixtures. It was even dripping from the ceiling in spots. The bodies were scattered like toy soldiers in a child’s game. Guards. Knights. All dead, most having never even drawn their swords. “Where are the furia?” Grease said.
He hadn’t really meant it as a question for Rhea, but she answered anyway, hissing under her breath. “They fled the castle. I saw them from my window. When the screams started, they rode out, led by the Three.”
The holy sisterhood had abandoned the castle to whatever evil was slaughtering at will. Although it clearly wasn’t a positive sign that the most capable warriors in Knight’s End had retreated so swiftly, Grease knew it might mean they hadn’t had time to deal with his sister.
The thought gave him energy, his legs buoyed up with a new spirit despite the fear that threatened to pull him into a ball. Hurry, hurry, hurry…
They passed through a royal ballroom, the long wooden table set and ready for breakfast. Thankfully, there were no bodies, the room bright with green and red moonlight, which winked through the large glass windows. Through the kitchens they went, the hearth warm and glowing with molten embers. One of the kitchen hands was huddled against the stonework, sobbing. “Help me,” she whispered.
Grease felt bad for the girl, who looked no older than thirteen, but there was nothing he could do for her now. “Stay here,” he said. “Find a place to hide. In a crate, beneath the straw.”
The girl only cried harder and louder as they left her behind.
“We’re close now,” Rhea advised.
They turned a corner, but Grease immediately halted and pulled the princess back. “What?” she said. “What is it?”
He could read the fear in her eyes, so deep he knew it could paralyze her if he said the wrong thing. “Nothing,” he said. “I just need to catch my breath.” The truth was, he’d seen it. The thing. The monster, its mark glowing pale-white in the dim corridor. The creature had pulled a long blade from a knight’s chest, letting the man fall before stalking forward.
Grease counted to ten slowly in his head, hoping it was long enough for the monster to have moved on:
One…Please pass Shae by, he prayed.
Two…Three…Oh, Wrath, if you have any mercy left for a sinner like me, please spare her.
Four…Five…She is good.
Six…She is kind.
Seven…Her mark was not her choice.
Eight…Nine…She doesn’t even know how to use it…
Ten—he pulled the princess into the corridor, scanning the length of the hallway, which was littered with bodies and splashed with blood. The killer was gone.
“Oh Wrath,” Rhea murmured.
Grease continued his prayer for his sister in his head. He’d never prayed before in his life, and certainly not to Wrath, unless he included the times he pretended to pray in the temple while stealing from the collection tin. Now he would pray to any god under the Four Kingdoms if it might help save his sister.
“Which way?” he asked, looking left and then right. The princess was muttering under her breath, her eyes blank. He grabbed her chin, trying to get her to focus on his eyes. “Rhea. Please. Which way to my sister?”
She looked right, where the corridor was empty and dark. Then left, where the dead guards lay in droves. She pointed toward the corpses, her finger trembling. He grabbed her hand, holding it tightly, trying to calm her. “Not far,” she said.
They blazed a winding path down the stone hallway, once more avoiding the dead. Grease tried not to look at them, but couldn’t seem to stop. A burly knight’s helmet had been cloven in half, his skull shattered. Another had no noticeable wounds, but his face was frozen in a silent scream, stricken with fear. Some were missing limbs. Like me, Grease thought darkly.
The corridor felt endless, iron doors passing on both sides. Cells, Grease realized. Cells for the worst criminals, those sentenced to death. Finally, Rhea stopped and said, “Here.” She motioned to a cell door on the left. “We need the key.”
A guard was slumped against the wall. “Help me,” Grease said, squatting down and patting along the man’s waist.
“I can’t,” Rhea said. She was frozen in place.
Frustration boiled over. “I only have one godsdamn hand, so please help me find the rutting key!”
Tears poured down Rhea’s cheeks, the dam finally bursting. Grease would’ve felt bad for making her cry, but Shae… Thankfully, the princess dropped to her knees and joined the search, sobbing the whole time.
Something jangled. “Pull them out,” Grease said, trying not to shout and upset her more. She did as she was told, extracting a keyring with a dozen keys on it. Together they stood up and the princess tried the first key. No good. The second. Nay. The third. Wouldn’t even fit. Screams echoed down the corridor. It was taking too long.
The fourth key turned the lock and Rhea actually managed a thin smile of relief. Grease licked his lips and shouldered through the door, shouting, “Shae!” as he entered.
The cell was empty, save for discarded iron manacles chained to the floor, their edges crusted with dried blood.
Shae was gone.
They were too late.
Princess Rhea wouldn’t leave him alone, hovering behind Grease as he made his way toward the main entrance leading out of the nightmarish castle. He refused to look at her, refused to listen to her sobs, refused to let her grab his hand—his only hand. Shae was gone, and it was both their faults. They’d both wronged each other, and Shae had been caught in the crossfire.
He felt numb, devoid of emotion. He stepped over corpses, splashing through their blood. None of it mattered.
Rhea tripped and lost her shoe, crying out, and when she started to turn back to retrieve it, Grease finally grabbed her hand. “No time,” he said, pulling her forward.
He descended a staircase, halting halfway when he saw a shadow blocking the way out. Rhea crashed into him from behind, and he nearly tumbled down the steps, uttering a curse.
The figure wobbled slightly, as if off balance. “Father?” Rhea said, hope in her voice. That’s when Grease noticed the golden spikes of the crown atop the shadow’s head.
King Gill Loren, the Holy King, slowly turned around.
The king’s throat was a crimson smile, sliced open from ear to ear. His head lolled back, flopping grotesquely before tearing from his neck and hitting the floor with a hollow thud. His body followed, crumpling like a poor child’s ragdoll.
Rhea screamed, clutching Grease so tightly her nails dug into his arms.
Grease felt hollowed out, but he was aware enough to catch the princess before she toppled down the stairs. With only one hand, he felt awkward and off-kilter, but he managed to clutch her arm with one hand while steadying her with his stump. He forced her to stumble down the steps to the atrium, and then past her father’s decapitated corpse, blocking her view with his body.
He pushed out into the night, where it was beginning to rain, a fine mist cleansing the earth.
A phrase he’d heard uttered by Sir Barrow in the Cryptlands entered his mind: Kings’ Plague. The northern king was dead, as was his queen, Rhea’s aunt. And now King Loren too. After what he’d seen tonight, Grease didn’t believe in coincidences, and monsters were no longer confined to childish dreams.
Huddled against his side, Princess Rhea was babbling nonsensically to herself. “C’mon,” he muttered. “Let’s get you somewhere safe.” She didn’t acknowledge that he’d spoken. Didn’t even look at him, her eyes glazed over, blinking against the rain.
Not surprisingly, the guards at the castle gates were dead, struck down where they stood. Instead of cranking open the enormous gate, Grease led Rhea through a side door typically used by small troops of guards entering and exiting the castle.
Somehow the rain seemed to come down harder the moment they were outside the walls. But this was his territory now, and Grease didn’t falter, even when they were drenched from head to toe in seconds. He headed for the main thoroughfare, counting on the furia to have chosen speed over stealth as they retreated from the castle. He didn’t care what happened to him, he needed to know whether they’d killed Shae before they fled. If so, he wanted her body. He needed to bury her himself. Only then could he die.
After the horrors and death inside the castle, it was strange seeing Knight’s End so peaceful. A number of townsfolk were milling about the cobblestone streets beneath canvas awnings, speaking in hushed voices. There were no bodies. No lakes of blood. Evidently Death’s servant had no interest in the commoners.
Grease marched up to the first familiar face he saw. Jordan Vaughn, a bootmaker. Grease wouldn’t call him a friend, but he wasn’t an enemy either. He grabbed the thin man’s arm. “Did you see the furia?” he asked.
Vaughn’s storm-gray eyes flicked from Grease to the princess, widening with realization. “But she’s the—that’s her—you’ve got the—”
“She’s Princess Rhea, aye,” Grease said. “I don’t have time to explain. Did the furia pass by or not?”
Vaughn licked his dry lips, still staring at the princess. “A night to remember,” he muttered. “I heard their horses first. I’m a light sleeper as it is, and they charged past like a royal battalion chasing the enemy. There were so many. I’ve never seen so many together at one time, all wearing red. At the front were the Three.”
Grease remembered the way the Three had laughed at him in the Temple of Confession. The way they’d held him down. The way the leader had raised the blade… “They were headed south?” Grease asked, shaking away the dark memory.
“Wrath, what happened to your hand?” Vaughn said.
Grease held up his stump. “I let someone borrow it. Now please, were they headed south?”
The old man nodded grimly. “I watched ’em go. We all did. Then we heard screams from the castle.”
“Was there anyone with them?” Grease held his breath as soon as he asked the question.
Vaughn frowned. “Like who? It was just furia. They were magnificent. Frightening, but magnificent, like Wrath’s army charging into battle.”
More like retreating. A woman who must’ve overheard their strange conversation drifted closer. “I saw sumthin’,” she said.
“What?”
“One o’ the Three was holdin’ someone in front of ’er. At first methinks ’twas a sack, but then I saw a face peekin’ out. ’Twas the damndest—Wrath, forgive me language—thing. The girl was bundled up in a blanket, ’er hair spillin’ out the sides like streamers.”
“What color?” Grease asked.
“What’re you sayin’ now?” the woman said, her eyes narrowing.
“What color was her hair?”
The woman’s eyes lit up. “Oh, yes. Lovely hair, that one. Even in the moonlight it ’twas clear as day, like golden strawberries it was.”
Shae. You’re alive. Oh gods, where are they taking you?
“Thank you,” he said to the woman. Turning back to Vaughn, he said, “I’m leaving the city and I need a favor.”
“I’ll help if I can,” the kindly man said.
“Keep her safe.” He nudged Princess Rhea toward him.
Finally, something registered in her expression. “Don’t leave me,” she said. “Take me with you.”
It was the second time she’d asked him not to leave. The first time he’d ignored her, and it had cost him his hand and put his sister at risk.
He looked at the shock and sorrow on her face, at her soaked hair dangling from her scalp, at her bloodied, drenched nightclothes clinging to the curves of her body. In another life he could’ve loved her, could’ve treated her better. If he was a different person, or if she was born a commoner, or if the stars were aligned perfectly in the night sky, twinkling as the moons kissed at midnight. But he wasn’t. He was an orphan and a thief and the brother of a marked girl who needed his help more than Rhea did. And she was a princess of the western kingdom. And the moons and stars? The moons were at opposite ends of the darkness, as far from each other as he’d ever seen them, one green and one red; the stars were scattered throughout the night sky, sparkling like fate’s gemstones—ruby, emerald, and topaz. Occasionally the rubies streaked across his vision, while the emeralds seemed to explode again and again and again…
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t.” He wrenched her hands from his arm and strode off into the pouring rain, heading for the southern gates. Surprising even himself, he stopped and whirled around, looking back. He could see the hope in her eyes. That he wouldn’t leave. That he would rush back to her and hold her in his arms.
“My real name isn’t Grease Jolly,” he said. “It’s Grey. Grey Arris.”
Once more, he spun around and raced toward the gates. As he ran, he felt a piece of himself break off and fall away as he heard her sobs, but he didn’t look back again.
Nineteen
The Northern Kingdom, Silent Mountain
Bane
Bane was covered in blood, slumped against the wall of the cave, staring at his hands. His fingers were spinning a knife, and he watched the firelight reflect off the lifeblood of the dozens of men he’d killed in a single night, including the western king himself.
Demon! many of them had cried. Other words as well: monster, beast, creature, evil.
He was all of those things. Not that it mattered. You can’t change what you are. A wolf was a wolf, and would always hunger for fresh prey. Although Bear Blackboots claimed it was his choice whether he was evil or not, Bane knew it wasn’t true.
Bear hadn’t even bothered to wait for him to return from his killing spree, as if he was afraid to see what Bane had become.
Monster, creature, beast, demon.
Evil.
Some had prayed to their god, Wrath—not that it had changed anything.
He could still hear the beating of their hearts in his head, slowing, slowing, stopping. He pressed a hand to his own chest and felt nothing. Did he even have a heart, or was it an empty chasm roaring with Death’s fire? And if he did, why could he not feel its beat? Had it long ago turned black and hard, a lump of compacted obsidian in his chest?
The surface of his head was on fire, and he knew it was because another eighth of his deathmark had been filled with blood. The blood of the western king. He didn’t know if the king was a bad man or not, only that he had to die. Bane’s carnal instincts had urged him to kill dozens of the knights and guards, too; the fear the massacre would cultivate was somehow important to the cleansing of the Four Kingdoms, the fulfilling of the Western Oracle’s prophecy.
He wondered if his skin would ever be clean again.
With an angry snarl he wrenched off his blood-drenched cloak and flung it into the fire. Next was his shirt, his trousers, his socks, his undergarments. His boots he kept; he would try to scrub them clean because they weren’t as easily replaced.
Naked, he watched the blood of the west crackle and burn. In the flames, he swore he could see every moment of his life flashing by, o
ne by one. He saw good days, like painting pictures on the cave walls with Bear, and he saw bad ones, like when he’d slipped and fallen, breaking his leg in the process. Each memory was devoured by the fire. Gone. Incinerated.
Once the fire had consumed the sins of the night and the memories of a life he once loved, he had nothing left, tumbling onto his side, spent. His body shook as if struck by lightning bolt after lightning bolt. He lay by the ring of stones and closed his eyes, waiting for his deathmark’s next instructions.
A vision blazed through his mind. As he watched the events unfold, he twitched at the sheer violence of men. Of him.
When the images faded away, his eyes flashed open. He knew where he would be called next.
Raider’s Pass.
And there would be blood.
Exhaustion took him once more.
PART III
Roan Annise
Grease Rhea
The deathmark and lifemark are the greater of the fatemarks, while the rest are lesser. But that does not diminish their importance, as all who bear marks shall have a role to play in what is to come.
The Western Oracle
Twenty
The Eastern Kingdom,
Northwest of Ferria, Ironwood
Roan
Gwendolyn had apologized for dumping him out of her hammock. Roan was surprised, considering she’d never apologized before, not even after she’d stabbed him in the gut.
Women are strange and unpredictable, Roan mused as his horse trotted along beside hers. At least this time around he wasn’t tied up, even if he felt the king’s men watching him like ore hawks. They’d been traveling through the immensity of Ironwood for hours, heading northwest. Toward home, Roan mused, shaking the thought away as quickly as it had sprouted up. I have no home.