by Ellyn, Court
The ballroom door opened. In a rush of voices, the servants demanded answers; instead, they received another prisoner shoved among them. The door shut again. The newest dove flushed from the hedges appeared to be a young nanny. She carried a child.
He remembered seeing a little boy at the banquet, seated near Kelyn, in fact. Valryk hadn’t counted on any of the heirs or squires being children. In the narrow view between two of the thrones he counted at least a dozen prisoners under twelve. The nanny hugged her little boy close as she tried to find space for them to stand. A valet wearing the white primrose of Nathrachan waved her to the dais and kicked a squire out of one of the thrones so she and the boy could sit. “Did you see all the blood?” the child asked. He sat facing his nanny; his eyes were large and green. The servants had to be escorted through the banquet hall to reach the ballroom; many of them arrived sobbing because they had seen horrors Valryk could only imagine.
“Don’t think about it,” his nanny replied. “Shall I sing you a song?”
“I want my mum.”
“Shh, you’re tired. It’s past your bedtime.”
“I was asleep! I never sleeped under my bed before. Why did those mean men bring us down here? Are we going to eat? I’m hungry.”
She lifted a dark lock from his face. “You’re always hungry, Lassar. But it’s time for sleep. You can eat in the morning.”
Valryk shut the peephole. “Can’t they just get it over with?” he said, turning to Lasharia.
She stood on the threshold with Dashka. Their whispers broke off. The Falcons captain clicked his heels and bowed. “Sire, Lothiar is arrived. He’ll meet you in the King’s Hall.”
“The hell he will. I’m not going in there, not till it’s cleaned up. If he wants an audience, he can come to me here.” Valryk waved the man a dismissal, and then something happened that confounded him: Dashka remained on the threshold looking at him blankly for a moment too long, then he and Lasharia exchanged a glance, and it was the small jut of her chin that sent the man away.
“I pay that man good money to do as he’s told,” Valryk said.
“It’s been a long, hard day for all of us, beloved.” She took his hands. “I know you don’t want to, but think how hard Lothiar has been working, day after day, to keep the wards in place. You’ll meet him halfway, won’t you?”
It was a bad habit he’d started, following that elf’s orders, but he couldn’t refuse Lasharia. How bad could it be? It was only a battlefield. He had read about a thousand of them. He straightened his doublet, raised his chin, and followed Dashka out. The reek of blood and opened bowels was worse in the corridor. Valryk whipped out a perfumed kerchief and pressed it under his nose.
“Watch where you step, sire,” said Dashka holding the side door open. The doorposts and lintel framed more than Valryk cared to see. This was worse than he had imagined. The high table had been overturned; bodies were sprawled on both sides; one was draped over it, arms dangling, red rivulets twining about gray fingers. One of the White Mantles. Valryk’s narrow frame was full of White Mantles, their sweeping cloaks and enameled armor stained red. They must have made their stand in this corner. A few Falcons in black lay among them, a couple of highborns in velvet. Was that the fat, mopey Prince Da’yn on the far side of the dais? Underneath the bodies lay cold sticky pools. Valryk put a hand to the doorpost, wanting nothing more than to turn around and run to a scalding bath, but Lasharia stood in the corridor behind him. She would think him a mewling babe. I didn’t know I was squeamish, he wanted to tell her.
She laid a gentle hand to his shoulder and whispered in his ear, “Remember, they would all have been traitors. They would have torn your empire to pieces.” Yes, a change of the watch.
Valryk took one more step and the whole horror opened up before him. As Lothiar had ordered, nothing had been touched, not one hair or stick of furniture moved. Falcon guardsmen—Doreli mercenaries actually—stood along the walls to ensure this order was carried out. Lothiar said he wanted to do his own searching.
I don’t have to look, Valryk told himself, raising his eyes over the carnage, but blood streaked the walls, too. Some desperate soul had tried to climb the impossible height to the windows; a bloody hand had painted the stone with long dark smears. A change of the watch, a change of the watch. His mother’s voice intruded: Make sure your legacy is one you’re proud of. Was he proud of this? What would the bards sing? Thirty years from now would he look back on this day and say, “Yes, it was worth it and to hell with the bards and their songs?” All the Northwest would be united under one banner, one law. No more wars. Who could threaten Lasharia then? Yes, this sacrifice was worth it. Oh, Goddess, he had to make sure of it, or this horror would drive him mad.
The floor was slick under his toes. He had to look down to avoid stepping in gore. He was standing beside a woman with fair hair and green eyes. A black flower had bloomed in the middle of her back. A fly crawled on her cheek.
Three quick, careful steps brought him to the dais. A strong night wind blew through a gaping hole in the wall. So that’s what stirred up the stink. “How did this damned hole get here?”
“I’m sure Lothiar will want to know as well,” Lasharia said. She leveled a cold eye on Dashka and the man’s face blanched a fraction. “The string of bodies leads out into the city.”
“Ah, Goddess,” Valryk swore, seeing the smoldering remains of the houses beyond the broken wall. Flickering streetlamps revealed dark lumps on either side of the street. Unaware of Lothiar’s orders, the citizens had laid the bodies in neat rows. But how had these houses and shops burned down? The street was a rumpled ruin. “He was here after all. Look what he’s done to my city!”
The doors of the King’s Hall crashed open. Lothiar’s arrival was as startling and daunting as that of a thunderbolt waking one in the night. His was the kind of aura that Valryk hoped to project, but every time he was in Lothiar’s presence he realized how short he fell of that dream. His armor was massive yet graceful, fashioned of steel that rippled with the colors of a bruise. Lasharia said such steel was infused with magic, that it couldn’t be hewn even with the sharpest, luckiest blade. Bellowing dragons were molded into the breastplate, pauldrons, and gauntlets; spiked horns adorned the helm tucked under his arm.
The ice-eyed Elari called Wingfleet accompanied him. Valryk had met him only once. He’d not said a word, this elf, but Valryk got the distinct impression that he regarded the human king only a little higher than a slug. He seemed to prefer supple gray leather and a shirt of scales made from this enchanted dark steel.
Two enormous monsters brought up the rear. Valryk staggered back into the overturned table, felt himself gaping, and closed his mouth. He had glimpsed these foul creatures through Lasharia’s portal years ago, the first time she’d come to him wearing armor and the blood of her enemies. She had called them “infantry.” Valryk called them battering rams. At the smell of blood their muzzles drew tight across scarred tusks. One had disproportionately large hands, tiny red eyes, and a scraggly black braid wagging from the top of his pointed head. The other wore what looked like a leather hat; only when he turned around to examine the battlefield did Valryk see that this hat was made from the skin of a dwarf’s head. The eyes and mouth were stitched shut and the wiry, orange beard cascaded down the ogre’s back.
“We expected you hours ago, sir,” said Lasharia.
“I wanted to be here hours ago,” said Lothiar. “But when I let the wards dissolve I … lost consciousness. That worries me.” He pointed at the hole blasted through the wall. “Is it a blunder of yours, Dashka?”
The guards commander bowed an apology. “No, sir.”
Lothiar’s eyes narrowed, demanding an explanation.
“I assume it was Dathiel, sir.”
“You assume?”
“He hurled me into the wall. I don’t remember anything after that.” He gestured to the corner where this mishap took place. “When I woke, the hole was there and I was b
uried under a pile of bodies.”
“You were supposed to apprehend him!” Color flooded Lothiar’s face. “Failing that, at least neutralize him.” Bone crunched, and he rounded on his ogres. “Fogrim! If you have not the grace the Goddess gave a cow, remove yourself. Crush a face before I can identify it and I will cut off your feet a toe at a time.”
The ogre wearing the dwarf’s head snarled in response, baring conical teeth like those of a Zhiani water dragon, but he lifted his great foot out of the middle of some Leanian’s back and stopped meandering about.
“Dathiel was not alone, sir,” Dashka added.
“His apprentice, aye.”
“ ‘Apprentice’ he may have been, but no longer. I could not fight them both, not once Dathiel got his hands on his staff. It’s fortunate I didn’t end up like these.” Swaths of Falcons and garrison soldiers appeared to have been hewn down like grain. Only, this sickle had a blade of lightning.
Lothiar crowed at the ceiling, sounding more amused than angry. “Dathiel, curse his bones. His chains remain empty, Dashka.”
“Yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir.”
The ogre with the oversized hands leaned close to Lothiar. “Dis naeni eat him for you, Cap.”
Lothiar crossed his arms and sucked his teeth, considering it. “Of all the avedrin in the pit, Dashka, you are the only one who was skilled enough to aid me. I won’t let Paggon eat you, not yet. We’ll talk of this later.”
The pit? When Lothiar presented Dashka to Valryk as his new guards captain, he hadn’t thought to ask why the man looked so pale and bruised and hollow-eyed. He pleaded only “seasickness” from the long voyage west. The Valroi recovered quickly and obeyed Valryk’s orders with immediacy, competence, and exquisite attention to detail. It wasn’t long before the moody and suspicious Captain Lissah became a dim, distasteful memory.
Lothiar climbed onto one of the central tables, stepped over a centerpiece whose flowers were smashed and strewn, nudged a severed hand from his path with his toe. Turning slowly, he studied the fall of bodies and soon growled in frustration. He slapped eyes on Valryk. The acknowledgement was long overdue in Valryk’s opinion.
“Well, emperor, where is he? The Son of Ilswythe, your War Commander.”
“You don’t see him?” Valryk leapt onto one of the other tables. The view was just as horrifying from up here. “Kelyn sat over there.” He pointed, and at the end of his finger found his great-aunt Rilyth. She slumped sideways in her chair, an ugly black gash opening her from shoulder to sternum. Valryk whirled away.
“Unable to gaze upon your handiwork?”
“You said you would know his face. If you want him, you find him!”
Lasharia raised a hand and helped Valryk down from the table and over the pile of White Mantles to his safe, clean corner of the dais.
Lothiar glared down at Dashka. “Don’t tell me Dathiel’s brother escaped with him. What about the War Commander’s daughter?”
“Carah should be upstairs as I ordered,” Valryk volunteered.
The avedra cleared his throat. “Her room is empty, sir.”
Lothiar roared, stepped down from his table, and strode over bodies to get to the breach in the wall. “And the White Falcon?”
“Gone.”
“All of our primary targets? Damn you, avedra! How did your kind ever defeat mine? You’ll end up on an ogre’s spit, I swear to the Goddess! Has the city been searched?”
The Valroi fought to keep a measure of calm in his voice. “We are searching now, but …”
“But?”
“But many won through the outer breach.”
“Outer—” Lothiar squinted into the darkness. Valryk wanted to look, too, but instead he edged away from the Elari. He was soon glad he had. Lothiar whirled, bellowing some curse in his own tongue and snatched up the first item at hand. The candelabrum was bent, but it flew straight, striking Dashka full in the chest. The man dropped with a grunt. Lothiar descended the dais, snatched the avedra to his feet and tossed him half the length of the Hall. “Trackers! Get trackers on them. Wingfleet, lead them. Bring the War Commander and his daughter back tonight. Not tomorrow. Tonight!”
The ice-eyed Elari saluted with a fist to his chest and strode from the Hall. Dashka stumbled out after him.
A bright ray of relief ignited inside Valryk’s chest. Part of him was pleased that even Kelyn had escaped this horror. An ignominious death for such a man. Valryk hoped to offer him a better one soon. “Should we count the dead?” he asked. “I can help you identify them.” That offer was more than generous, he decided, considering how distasteful the idea was.
Lothiar ignored him. He sank wearily onto the edge of the overturned table. “Oh, Lasharia, I was sure I would have one of the three avedrin after today.”
“I’m sorry you’re disappointed, Captain. We have Bramoran though.”
A grin built on Lothiar’s face. “ ‘Bramor.’ That was the name we gave it when we built it. Just ‘Bramor’. Yes, a strong headquarters.”
“With all due respect, Captain,” Valryk said, “I won’t have the seat of my empire overrun with those … those monstrous things.” He flicked a hand at the ogres. Fogrim and Paggon stopped salivating over the bodies and pinned Valryk with cold reptilian glares. He stood his ground. “I’ll give you the Green for that, but they’re not to come inside the city or my castle again.”
“Indeed?” Lothiar glanced at Lasharia, gestured with a jut of his chin.
“Sire,” she said, “let’s be away from here, get some rest.”
Was he being dismissed? Valryk glared between the two of them. Lasharia tried to take him by the arm as if he were a child who had overstayed his welcome, but he stepped away.
Lothiar paid him no mind. “Fogrim, fetch twenty of your denmates. Set them to gathering all the furniture, rugs, and drapes they can find. You with me?”
The ogre nodded ponderously.
“They are to pile all those things in here on top of the bodies.”
That seemed to confuse the ogre. Valryk, too.
“What about eats, Cap?”
“Not these,” Lothiar replied. “And never in my presence, you know that. Fill your belly with the horses they rode here. If you’re good, I’ll give you a prize later. Agreed?”
“They eat the dead?” Valryk demanded of Lasharia in an angry hiss.
“I’ve seen them eat the living, too,” she said. “Sire, please, come with me.”
“No!”
“When those in the ballroom are disposed of,” Lothiar went on, “you will add them to the pile of furniture as well. Then I will light the fire myself, understood?”
The ogre’s shoulders drooped and his heavy brow pinched low over his eyes. He didn’t like that plan. Neither did Valryk.
“This is my Hall!” he cried. “My throne room.”
Lothiar turned in a surprised manner, remembering the Black Falcon’s presence. “Your Hall, their Burning Yard.”
“I forbid it!”
With long, casual strides, Lothiar approached him. His grin was smug. “Bramoran was a long siege, emperor. Years long. But it took only one battle, and you opened the gates. You have my thanks.”
Valryk turned to Lasharia. Her glance darted away.
“Yes, Bramoran is Lasharia’s victory. Now for the rest of them, all the temples and castles that belonged to us first. Ilswythe was one of our holiest sites. It will fall tonight. Lunélion will too, and Tírandon, Mithlan, Athmar, Arwythe. So many others. We will reclaim everything that your kind stole from mine.”
Panic ripped through Valryk like a scream through silence. “But the—the—the dwarves!”
“What about them?”
“They drove your children to starvation, they—”
“Oh, right.” Lothiar waved a dismissive hand. “No, the dwarves were just a training exercise, and a reckoning for my naenion. But this is our year. The Year of the Elarion. A millennium is long enough to cower in hiding, don’t you think?
”
“Lasharia?” cried Valryk, desperate for a different truth, but she would not look at him.
Lothiar’s steel-gloved fingers seized him by the throat. “Leave her be! She’s had a bellyful of your whining. Her loyalty is to me, as it has been for a thousand years. She did nothing without my order. Nothing. I ordered her to lure you with her harp and a song. And that first night she spent with you? I ordered her to return and fuck you. It wasn’t her desire to couple with a human, no, she might as well have fucked a pig. It was my idea. All the times since? She was under orders to do whatever it took to keep you close. How else to convince a boy to sacrifice his wisest advisers and most experienced warriors?” Lothiar dealt him a shove, sent him tripping over the mound of White Mantles. Valryk crab-crawled over them. No matter where he set his hands, they slipped through thick, cold puddles of blood. “You are my reckoning, dwínovë. You and the Sons of Ilswythe and all your kind. A change of the watch, emperor. A change of the watch.”
Lothiar’s words reverberated inside Valryk’s head. Where was the fear he should be feeling? Buried under the collapsing debris of lies and illusions. He pressed his back to the wall, his hands to the floor, but his head kept spinning. Any moment Lasharia would kneel next to him and pluck him gently from the floor and whisper a sweet balm in his ear. Yes, that would fix everything. Just one word, one touch, and everything would make sense again.
“Paggon, we have a room prepared for our emperor, don’t we? Yes, the cell he likes so well. He’s even decorated it to his liking. He’ll be comfortable there.” Lothiar pulled a chain from inside his breastplate, laid it in the ogre’s enormous hand. From it dangled the key to Valryk’s secret room in the prison tower. How did the elf get his hands on it? No one knew where Valryk kept it. Only Lasharia.