by N. D. Wilson
Caleb drew back an arrow on his big horn bow and leaned into the hall. He kissed the nock and held it, un-shaking.
“If the faeren will not or cannot take you to the queene, and they may not—no one has received an audience in my lifetime—then you must travel into the hills to the southeast. Search for a great triple-trunked chestnut. Wait beside it, but not for long. If no faeren show themselves, then set a flame to the tree. Tell those who come that you have a treasure for the Chestnut King from Mordecai Westmore. Give him these ancient pages and tell him what we seek, what we need, and what must be. He may help you. Do not bow or grovel or apologize. Speak to him like a brother and an equal.”
Henry’s head was spinning. He didn’t understand, and what he did understand, he didn’t like. “Who is the Chestnut King?”
“He won’t find the tree,” Caleb said to his bowstring. “I have stepped through its shroud and seen its trunks but once. The outlaw king has little love for our blood.” He straightened and whistled sharply.
Henry looked at his father and his uncle. Shouting rose through the floor. “What will you be doing?” he asked. “Where will I find you again?”
“This time,” Mordecai said, “we will seek for you.”
The huge black dog bounded into the room. Caleb relaxed his bow, dropped to one knee, and held its broad face in his hands. The dog froze, and Caleb stared into his brown bovine eyes. Then he whispered in its ear. The dog twisted in a circle and dropped to the floor beside Henry’s feet.
“Beo shares a memory of the tree,” Caleb said. “He will guide you.” Rising, Caleb stepped into the hall. “Brother,” he said. “We cannot wait longer.”
Mordecai followed him. “Work quickly,” he said over his shoulder. His face was set, his eyes black as night, faerie light draining into them. “When I call your name, do not hesitate. Pass through the doorway and set fire to the cupboard behind you.”
“Fire?” Henry asked. “I don’t have fire.”
His father smiled. “My son,” he said. “My strong son, of what are you made?” Turning, Mordecai pulled the door closed behind him. He was gone.
Henry slumped to the floor. The pony-size dog slid toward him.
“Henry!” Henrietta’s voice rattled through the room. “Henry, what’s going on?”
* * *
Coradin stood at the base of the stairs. Two others stood with him. The remaining three still pushed against the archers in the back of the house.
He had taken two long-handled swords from the armory, and he gripped them now. Both had long, slender blades, bending slightly. He had stood on many fields with swords of similar size and shape, but never quite like these. It was like every blade he had ever held had only been a promise, a taste of this pair, untouched by time and passing ages. Their weights were perfect, the silver edges sharpened into transparency. More than steel had been braided and hammered into the blades. Every life they had taken had made them stronger. Every drop of blood drawn had given up its strength and fallen away from the blades ashen. They sucked and whispered in the air now, thirsty for life, for their first feeding since the fall of FitzFaeren.
Coradin’s helmet was silver, with braided brows around the eyeholes and noseguard. On the back, in place of a plume, a single black finger curled. Three silver chains bound the helmet to a black collar and ran down to a broad black belt of steel, decorated only with a circlet of white fire on the buckle. Twin scabbards hung on his back, between collar and belt.
The others wore similar helms, but each had chosen different arms, weapons loved and used in forgotten lives—an ax, a mace, swords like scythes.
The boy was upstairs. Coradin, the swords, could taste him.
Go.
He stepped forward, but something inside him resisted. An instinct. Hold. He will strike us on the stairs. He drew his foot back.
Go.
Coradin arched as fire erupted into the back of his scalp, burned down his spine, and ripped through his mind. Breathing heavily, he was blank again. As cold and ruthless as the swords in his hands. He was a sword in another’s hand, a mindless tool.
His mouth opened, and a voice crawled out of him. His blood-mother’s voice. “Mordecai Westmore, son of Amram!”
Coradin stepped onto the stairs and began to climb. An arrow tore through his chest, and he staggered backward, catching himself before he fell. Looking down, he saw no shaft. One feather stood out alone against his ribs, scraped off by the arrow’s passing.
Nimiane’s laugh poured out of him. “Death is not so easily delivered to these, my messengers! Come and see if the two brothers can stand before them.”
A burst of air rolled down the stairs, gathering dust and ash, pushing the fingerlings back.
“Nimiane!” Mordecai’s voice swirled with the air. “Your soul shall be shriven from the husk of your flesh, your darkness unmade. Death finds you. We shall be his guide.”
Coradin laughed. His pierced body quaked. The high voice, not his own, echoed in his helmet, through the dust, and filled the ancient house. “Death? Death does my bidding. He and I are one, as fused as Nimroth’s body and soul. While there is life, I will live, drinking of it, feeding on it, feasting on its death. When you have killed all living things, then I shall go hungry. Then I shall fade. Not before.”
Zeke sat up. “Henrietta, why are you yelling? Just wait.”
Henrietta glanced at him and then shoved her mouth all the way against the cupboard to yell again. But her lips didn’t touch the wood. Her face slid forward through the wall, and suddenly, she was blinking in a lit room mounded with papers and books and scrolls. The room seemed to be shaking. With wind? Was there a storm? And someone was shouting. A woman.
A pile of papers moved toward her, staggered, and almost overbalanced. She jerked back, into the dimness of Henry’s old room.
“Wow,” said Zeke, and then Henry, groaning under the stack of manuscripts, tripped into the room, collided with Henrietta, and sat on Zeke.
Caleb’s dog leapt out of the wall, knocking Henrietta through the doors and into the attic. The little room was officially full.
Dropping more as he came, Henry followed her with his pile. When he banged it onto the floor, the whole attic shook.
“Help me,” he said. “We don’t have much time.” And then, ducking back into his little bedroom, Henry walked into the cupboard wall and disappeared.
* * *
Henry loaded his arms with books. Coughing, accidentally inhaling dust, he staggered back around and faced the grapevined doorway his father had made. Zeke and Henrietta stood on either side of it, looking around the room. The windows rattled, and the house shook. Dust drifted down from the walls.
“Over here,” Henry grunted. “These piles go through into the house. As many as we can take.”
The big dog knocked Zeke and Henrietta from behind and loped around the room, tipping book piles.
“Stay!” Henry yelled, shifting the weight in his arms. He’d never had much interaction with Caleb’s dog, though Beo’s sire still lived in his dreams and infant memories. He tried to whistle but only managed to spit. The dog ignored him, bounded around the table, snarled at the closed door, and collided with Henrietta.
“Beo!” Henrietta yelled. “Down!” The dog dropped to his belly and froze, staring at the door with his ears up.
Henry puffed his cheeks and slid back through the expanded cupboard and into the old house. When he set his pile down, Henrietta and Zeke each dropped a pile beside his.
“What’s going on?” Henrietta asked, but her cousin was already running back into the little room toward the cupboards.
“Fingerlings!” Henry shouted. Henrietta and Zeke followed him. In the library, Henry shoved his arms beneath another leaning pile, the smell of dust and ancient paper filling his nostrils, sweat beading on his forehead. “Caleb and my dad are fighting them. They told me to get these through the cupboard.”
Henrietta laughed. “Poor fingerlings.”
Zeke smiled. Henry looked at them both and bit his lip with effort, wobbling beneath his new burden. Zeke steadied the pile with one hand.
“Caleb”—Henry groaned—“said it would be hard. And my dad”—he tripped and swayed—“doesn’t have much to work with. This place is—” He stepped through the cupboard doorway and wove his way around the little bed, out into the attic, and dropped the books onto sighing floorboards. “This place is dead,” he said quietly, and ducking around a wobbling Zeke, he hurried back.
Coradin looked at the men on either side of him. One was crawling slowly to his feet. Another lay unconscious, beaten down with blows of air whenever a foot touched the stairs. All lived. All had been pierced with arrows, but arrows were nothing. Somehow, he knew that to die, he and his brothers must lose their helmets. And their helmets were chained to collars and belts. The other three, also with feathered shafts in their bodies, walked into the grand entryway. The light in the house was orange and fading.
“They circle on horse,” one said, and he nodded at the stairs. “They avoid us and wait on those above.”
“The boy flickers,” said another. “He dances between worlds. They have an escape.”
Coradin nodded and twisted his swords in the air. The blades whispered with forgotten voices and quivered with stolen lives. The men on the stairs were patient and did not show more than shadows of themselves. They must be pressed on all sides. He pointed at two of the new men, his brothers. “Seek another stair,” he said, and his voice was his own. Pointing at two others, he gestured in front of him. “Press here.” While the others moved slowly away, he filled his lungs. He would take the prey.
Kill.
Coradin knew the voice was in all of their heads. Their mother had commanded that father and son be brought alive.
Kill, she said again.
Coradin turned, and sheathing the swords on his shoulders, he walked through to the back of the house. He would find a window.
Henry wiped his forehead. Beo the dog watched him. The bright faerie light was dying, but gray light filtered in through the windows. He wanted to take his sweatshirt off, but he knew he would regret it. It would end up like his backpack on top of the bell tower.
“Are we done?” Zeke asked behind him.
Henry looked back at the piles more than head high that still filled one end of the room. He shook his head. “No. My dad said to take as many as we could before he yelled. When he yells, we have to get through fast.”
Zeke filled his arms again and moved back through the cupboard. Henrietta stepped beside Henry, blinking and sniffing in the dusty air, running her eyes over the disturbed piles. The house was still.
“What are we looking for?”
Henry shrugged, rolled his shoulders, and walked back to another stack. “A secret,” he said. “The secret to Endor. The secret to killing the witch.”
“But who’s going to go through all this?”
“I don’t know,” Henry said. “My dad wants me to take it to the faeren. I think he’s hoping we’ll find the real Black-star or something.” He staggered and nodded at Henrietta. She set ten more inches on top of the stack in his arms. “I don’t think we will,” he said. “Not in time.”
Zeke stepped back out of the cupboard and reloaded. “In time for what?” he asked.
“In time for me,” said Henry, and he disappeared.
All the way through his room and in the attic, Henry felt the pull of his father. He felt Mordecai grasping for strength where he could find it, and the air moved, chased by a distant rumbling.
Henrietta screamed.
Henry dropped his pile and rushed back into the little attic room and through the cupboard wall.
“Maccabee!” he heard his father yell. “Maccabee!”
The dog was on his feet, hackles up and lips curled back, a rumbling in his chest. Zeke was on his back, the load he had been carrying scattered around him.
In the window a man crouched, his eyes hidden in the shadows of a silver helmet, a long sword in his right hand. His left gripped Henrietta by the hair, winding tighter in her curls. She stood on her toes in front of the man, biting her lip, with tears streaking down her dusty cheeks, thrashing and thumping her fists against his shins.
“Coradin,” Henry said. He knew who it was, even without the notches in his ear. His shirt was ripped where dandelions had sprouted from his chest.
“Brother,” Coradin said, and slid into the room. Lifting his long blade, he set the edge against the back of Henrietta’s neck. “Brother, what will you do for your cousin?”
“Nothing,” Henrietta grunted. She tried to twist, but the whispering sword edge against her neck changed her mind. Her eyes widened, and Coradin let her sink to her heels. Henry watched a trickle of blood appear on the side of her neck. The blood stopped, grayed, and then drifted away in powder. “Go, Henry,” Henrietta said. “Go.”
Henry backed up to the closed door. Beo was motionless, frozen, poised to attack if the man should step free of Henrietta. The house shook, the door rattled, and air swirled into the room from the windows. Mordecai was busy. Zeke slid backward toward Henry and then stood up.
“Brother,” Coradin said, his voice crawling out from the silver helmet. “Come to me. I do not need your cousin’s blood. I do not need your friend’s. Our mother calls for you.”
Henry slid his hand into his pouch and felt the tiny kitchen knife nestled with his baseball. Coradin’s helmet was chained on. He didn’t stand a chance.
“Zeke,” Henry said. “Go.” His mind groped around for strength, but everything in this land had been drunk dry long ago. He couldn’t reach into the sky as high as his father. He had only himself and the heat in his blood. The golden and green laughter. But there was no laughter in him. The dandelions burned in anger, and every inch of Henry’s skin flushed with the heat. His eyes turned as black as Nimroth’s marble, and the world shifted.
Zeke hadn’t moved.
Coradin’s sword was forged of lifeless steel but woven and triple-braided with gray death strands. Henry could see his own strands mingling with the death all around him. The dead woods, the dead papers, the dead stone, all gray and stiff and motionless. Only Henrietta and the dog and Coradin swirled with life. Henrietta was all fear, the dog all anger, Coradin all strength and confusion, bound by the thick gray ropes that stretched back from his head.
The heat in Henry grew painful, building to a golden explosion. He couldn’t hold it. He had nowhere to put it.
“Let her go,” he said. “I’ll come.” He stepped forward.
“No,” Henrietta said. “You moron. Go. Get out of here.” She jerked and tried to push back against the sword. Coradin pulled it away with her motion. “Come on, Mr. Finger! Cut my head off.” She looked back at Henry. “Leave!” she yelled, and choked on a sob of anger.
Henry took another step closer. He was beside Beo now, and he could feel the dog’s growling strength and anger. It fed his own heat.
“Henrietta.” Henry’s voice was flat and calm. “I’m dead anyway.” Henry lifted his right hand and held the palm out flat. His dancing dandelion brand was huge, but it was as small as he could make it, living its anger, blazing its life, telling the story of its strength in flame. Henrietta blinked. She could see fire on her cousin’s palm. Henry watched its reflection twist in the silver of Coradin’s helmet.
The fingerling’s sword flicked up and then slashed down at Henry’s forearm. Henry jerked back in time, pulling out his kitchen knife as he did. He swung his right hand across stacks of ancient papers, and his dandelion anger rushed out through them, crackling, blazing, exploding toward the ceiling in golden flame, dancing in strange colors where the fire found charms and ancient inks.
Coradin came forward fast, dragging Henrietta and slashing at Henry.
As the blade flicked through flames, Beo leapt, his jaw cracking shut on Coradin’s wrist. The sword dropped as Coradin staggered under the weight of the snarling do
g. Henry lunged for Coradin’s other arm, slashing the kitchen knife between Henrietta’s scalp and the fingerling’s hand. She fell free, her curls left behind.
“Go!” Henry yelled. Coradin’s fist thumped into his cheek and then closed around his left wrist. Henry dropped the knife but shoved his fiery hand at the fingerling’s head, forcing it up beneath his helmet.
The room was a bonfire. The air was disappearing fast. Zeke dragged Henrietta away toward Mordecai’s opening, and the two of them disappeared in the smoke.
Beo dropped Coradin’s wrist and lunged for his throat as the man writhed beneath Henry’s burning touch, skin and hair singeing. Kicking the dog, he grabbed at Henry.
The door burst open as Henry was thrown to the floor, ripping the sword and scabbard free of Coradin’s shoulders as he fell. The flames, licking the high ceiling and funneling out the windows, suddenly bent toward the two fingerlings, who staggered back into the hall.
Henry slid across the floor toward his father’s swirling doorway, still tall and uncollapsed. Beo snapped at Coradin’s collar, pushing the fingerling farther into the flames. Henry couldn’t whistle. He whooped for the dog, called his name, and crawled through into his old attic bedroom.
Dropping the sword, he spun on his knees and grabbed at his father’s magic, struggling to collapse the seam, to let the little pyramid burn.
“Beo!” he yelled. The doorway was shrinking. Heat—painful, blistering heat—surged from the cupboard wall as the seam closed.
The dog leapt through, knocking Henry onto his back. Henry grabbed for the sword and drew it, expecting Coradin to follow. The seam closed, and only smoke and heat wormed through into the attic.
Henry slid farther back from the wall, panting. What had happened to his father? His uncle? Would the whole house burn? That’s not what his father had told him to do. Was his father’s body in the house? Would he burn, too? A tiny flame danced in the mouth of the cupboard and then died. The heat and smoke faded.