The Chestnut King: Book 3 of the 100 Cupboards

by N. D. Wilson

  Henry nodded.

  “You are a fool,” the king said.

  Henry nodded again.

  Nudd, lord of the Second World, Chestnut King, snorted into his beard and then sighed. “Little green brother,” he said quietly. “I find that I have love for you.” He cursed the ash ball, again scattering it into the grass. “Despite the gift you brought to me from Mordecai.”

  Henry laughed. “You’ll do it?”

  The king looked up. His grained cheeks were flushed. His eyes were angry. “There will be a price,” he said. “Your sister, cousin, and friend cannot stay beyond another sunset if they hope to see their world again. That magicking is beyond my strength to control and is a protection to our world. As for the rest, I shall do as my strength is able, but the cost may be too great.”

  Henry waited, and the anger in the king’s eyes became a sparkle. Laughter lined his temples.

  “What is it?” Henry asked.

  “If you live, in success or failure, you will return with Nimroth’s star. You will sit at my right hand, and, when to meet my death I return to the world where you and I were born of woman, you will be the Chestnut King.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  “What?” Henry asked. “No. I can’t do that. You’re human?”

  The big man smiled. “A moment ago, you were ready to die, and you will not do this? I once was human. By birth I was a green like you. But I have long been faeren.”

  He held out his right palm, but Henry saw nothing. The king whispered, and a burn appeared. Henry watched the king’s brand spread green leaves. In the center, purple bloomed in a bulb.

  “A thistle?” Henry asked.

  The king nodded. “But in the end, in this mound, the chestnut rules it all. If you did not know, why did you call me brother?”

  “Because my father told me to treat you like a brother. Do the faeren know?”

  “They did, but it has been long. Many will have forgotten. I was a young man with a young wife, burdened with our first child, when the faeren took me. I have walked free of this world once since that time, called by the naming of my son. I saw him christened, but no one threw the knife that would have freed me. My bonding to this world drew me back. Now I must go again. Death waits for me, and long have I put him off.”

  “But,” Henry said, “why does it have to be me? Why not Jacques? Anybody. Don’t you have any kids?”

  The king smiled broadly. “You ask as I asked before you. Clovis was the first green king of faeren. They were rogues then, haters of the human world, curses with legs and arms and spite. He tamed them, though they have never noticed, and when I came, he made me king after him. The lesser faeren ran after their book and their committees and their rules so they might stay in the human worlds. The queene bowed her head to them and broke from me. Now I fade, but not before another comes.”

  Henry was trying to grasp what the big man had said, but none of it was making sense. “Why me?” he asked.

  “Because I swore an oath to Clovis before me. I would be the guardian of the Second World and the ruler of faeren until I met another, my equal, and no faerie.”

  “I can’t do it,” Henry said.

  “Why?”

  “Well, would I have to stay in this world?”

  “After your second sunset, yes, as I have, until you have crowned your equal and seek your death.”

  Henry shook his head. “No. I can’t do that.”

  “You would rather die now? You would rather face the witch without my help, without the strength of faeren around you?” The king turned away and walked slowly to where the hill fell into its slope.

  “No,” Henry said. “But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can help me and stay the king.”

  “I will not send one from among the faeren to give his life for you without the gift of your life in return. If you want my help, if you want the Faerie King to risk the Blackstar returning to Endor’s hand, you will do this.”

  Henry looked down at his right palm and then down the steep hill at the chestnut groves. What chance did he have of living, anyway? And if he did, well … he probably wouldn’t.

  “Okay,” he said. Nudd turned. “How long do I have to do it? I know you said until I die, but how long until I get to do that?”

  “You will be king until you find your equal, not from among the faeren. Then you will see your own world again and draw your final breaths.”

  Henry swallowed, then nodded. “Today is my birthday,” he said suddenly.

  The Chestnut King smiled. “Then let us prepare you a sword and arm your faeren. A feast, an oath, a crown await your return. A song of sorrow, your loss.”

  Henry shoved his fingers into his hair. He wasn’t exactly sure what he’d just done. “I hope you have a tree close to Dumarre.”

  “Oh,” said the king. “I can do a prince of this kingdom better than that.”

  Coradin walked his horse through the quiet streets. He had ridden through fallen cities before. Dumarre felt no different. Faces peered out of windows. Doors shut silently. The markets were empty. The bodies of rebels lay in the gutters with only the birds and the dogs to tend them.

  The girl behind him was awake again but silent. The air was flavored with smoke. The higher he climbed in the city, the more the wind from the sea cleared it away.

  The brothers are inside the walls.

  “Yes.”

  They will go first to the harbor.

  “Yes.”

  Henrietta groaned. She had been in and out of consciousness since the finger-man had hit her on the slope above Hylfing. They had come out of another door in a hill, beside a ruined tower. By moonlight, she had seen two seas fenced apart by a long bridge of land. And now the sun was up, and they were in a city. An empty, smoky city.

  “Yes,” the finger-man said. She didn’t know who he was talking to, and she didn’t care. The other two horses, and Zeke’s body, were behind them.

  “Yes,” the man said again, and he kicked his horse forward.

  The pain in her bones with each bouncing clip of the horse’s iron shoes on the cobbles was more than she could handle.

  She twisted, but got only more pain. The horse’s rump bounced against her ribs, and she wanted to pass out, to find that blackness again, but without being brained by a sword hilt. Henrietta bit her lip and squirmed and clamped her eyes shut. And then she held her breath. If she went long enough, she knew she would black out. Gasping, she failed and tried again. Her lungs burned, and she forgot her other pains. Her vision wavered, and the animal below her slowed and stopped, stamping its rear foot, sending shocks up its leg and into her body. The fingerling slipped off the horse, and Henrietta let her breath explode out of her.

  “Where are we?” she asked. Looking down the street behind them, she could see the first ten feet of buildings but nothing more.

  The rope between her wrists and ankles was cut, and her arms and legs swung free. She slid backward, falling off the horse. Strong hands gripped her, and she was handed to men in red shirts.

  “To your queen,” the fingerling said, and the red-shirts carried her through a gate. Henrietta tried to kick, but her legs were useless, and her arms were worse. She saw the fingerling climb back onto his horse and turn away. She saw Zeke hanging limp over a red shoulder, and then they were in a courtyard, surrounded by heaped-up columns and statued walls. They were carrying her beyond a fountain and into the shadow of intricate ceilings. They were climbing stairs, climbing and climbing, and then huge black doors were thrown open, and they were in a room. A cold room. A cold she had felt before.

  “Prisoners, Empress. Children!” a voice shouted.

  Henrietta’s legs were dropped down to the floor. Hands gripped beneath her arms and dragged her forward through a silent crowd. Men with pale faces and tall collars, dressed in black. Women with ash for skin and gold dust in their hair, and gowns layered thick with night.

  She was nearing a throne, nearing the cold. Henrietta sh
ut her eyes as she was dropped onto her knees.

  Something else crumpled onto the stones beside her. Breathing slowly, untying the knot in her stomach and wrestling the horror in her mind, she opened her eyes.

  Zeke lay on his back. One of his eyes was swollen shut; the other was open, staring up at the ceiling. Black dried blood was crusted in his hair and around his ear.

  Henrietta looked up at the throne in front of her. It was small, too small even for the old man who sat on it. He slumped over one of the arms. His eyes were shut, and drool dangled from his mouth. His clothes looked like they’d been stitched together from sacks. A delicate crown, a queen’s crown, perched in the oily knots of his hair. Behind him, there was another throne, higher and bigger, intricately carved, with three serpents rising from its back.

  On that throne, with a heavier crown on her head, sat Nimiane of Endor. She wore a gown colored like an angry setting sun, and her ringed fingers held her white-faced cat. The cat’s eyes met Henrietta’s.

  “The first birds are caged,” Nimiane said. “The others come. A new world comes.”

  Henrietta struggled to her feet. She looked from the cat’s eyes up to the witch-queen’s face. “You’re a ghoul, not a queen,” she said. “You look like a great big scab.”

  The queen smiled, but not quite at Henrietta. Then she pointed at the wall. A soldier grabbed Zeke’s ankles, and two others grabbed Henrietta by the arms. Iron cages lined the side of the room. Zeke was dragged into one, and Henrietta was thrown in after. A door banged shut behind her, and chains rattled into place.

  She slammed her hands against the iron slats and shouted, “Mordecai will come for you! He’ll find you!”

  Laughter trickled through the watching crowd.

  “Little wretch,” Nimiane said. “Mordecai is already here.”

  Henrietta drew another breath, but the witch spoke again, a strange guttural tongue, and silence fell around her. The crowd was still laughing—she could see their eyes and open mouths, straining to seem more comfortable than they were, fighting against their own terror. But she could hear nothing. And she knew she could not be heard.

  Slumping to the floor, she crawled over to Zeke.

  “Ezekiel Johnson,” she said. “You had better not be dead.” His eye was still open, goggling at the bars above them. She closed it with her thumb and stuck two fingers on his neck. After a moment, she found his pulse, the beat of life, slow and soft. His heart still throbbed, but barely. “No dying,” Henrietta said. “That’s a rule.”

  Frank Willis crouched on the deck beneath the morning sun. Monmouth was at the tiller. Meroe was crawling around the guns. The others were all clustered with Frank, squatting in the aspens on the bow.

  When the four sailors had come to, James had cut their bonds and sent them out the death hatch. Land was not so far away now. The towers and walls of Dumarre climbed up out of the sea in front of them. Red banners were just visible, flicking on the wind. Empire galleys were clustered around the enormous sea gate.

  The cry of orders crawled across the water from the small galley ahead of them. Oars were out and pulling. Signals flickered on the stern. The merchant ship seemed to be holding back, pushing farther out to sea.

  “What is it?” Dotty asked. “Why haven’t we turned?”

  “We’ve tried,” James said. He began to crawl away, back toward Meroe. “He cabled our galley to his,” he said over his shoulder. “Couldn’t see it in the darkness. Just beneath the surface until it climbs up into his stern.”

  “We cannot cut it?” Hyacinth asked. “We will go into the city?”

  Frank tightened his lips into a smile for Hyacinth. Her hand was smoothing Isa’s auburn hair. Her eyes were wet.

  “Hy,” Frank said. “It ain’t over yet.”

  She looked at Frank and blinked slowly. “Your mother,” she said. “Francis, your mother. I heard a whisper in my sleep.”

  Penelope straightened. Isa twisted and looked at her mother. Dotty pulled her knees to her chest and leaned against Frank.

  “What did she say?” Frank asked.

  “Good-bye,” said Hyacinth. “To us all, but to you especially. Her recovered son.”

  Frank sighed. In Kansas, he had said good-bye to the memory of his mother long ago. But that mother had been younger, and strong. He put his head down. He’d never expected to see her again, to find her alive, even if broken and blind. Mordecai spoke to her in dreams. He never could. He had the wrong kind of mind. But he’d had her smell again, her touch, her pinch, her kiss. For that, he had ached with gratitude. And now it was gone. What of his daughters, Anastasia and Henrietta? What of Henry? What of his brothers and his niece? How many had already gone ahead?

  Looking up, he narrowed his eyes and stared past the wooden bow, past the sky and the world. And he saw nothing. He could feel Dotty’s touch and Penelope’s squeeze. He could hear Isa’s tears.

  James slid back up beside him. “It’s time for a fight. Mother, you should take Isa belowdecks.”

  While Dotty and Hyacinth took their daughters below, Frank crept with James back to Meroe and the guns.

  When Meroe nodded to Monmouth, the young wizard drove the tillers as far to the side as he could. The big green galley began to creep starboard.

  “Farther!” James yelled, and he scrambled onto the stern to help Monmouth. Meroe and Frank put their backs against one of the big guns, trying to shift it in its housing. They needed to come almost perpendicular to the smaller galley if they wanted a shot at it or the cable that pulled them toward Dumarre.

  The ship strained, moving forward awkwardly. And then the tension seemed to relax, and the green galley began to turn. The smaller galley had reversed oars and was doubling back.

  James jumped down to his uncle and Meroe. The big man lowered a lit brand to a small hole in the brass serpent’s back.

  “Hold,” James said. “Hold.” Meroe lifted his hand while James bent over the big gun.

  Smoke burst from the side of the smaller ship. Thunder boomed across the water, and something shrieked through the air above the green galley.

  “Now!” James yelled, and he jumped to the side and covered his ears.

  Meroe lit the charge. For a mere moment, the serpent hissed. And then it was a dragon. Fire erupted from its mouth. The galley shook, and planks popped free of the deck. James tumbled backward, and Frank staggered and fell. Only Meroe kept his feet, eyes on his enemy.

  The smaller galley’s center mast spun into the air. Sails toppled, but the oars stroked on.

  The three men moved to the next gun.

  “Which way?” Monmouth shouted.

  “Straight on, lad!” Meroe boomed. “And keep your head down.”

  Again, smoke and thunder burst from the smaller ship. This time, the green galley rocked as its upper bow exploded. Wooden shrapnel whistled across the decks, but James clung to his brass serpentine gun.

  “Now!” James yelled again, and he ducked away.

  This time, there was no hiss. The gun belched its thunder, and its housing shattered in the blast. The brass beast kicked and cartwheeled over the side, taking mast and rail and Meroe with it. James slammed into the other gun. Frank rag-dolled up onto the stern and cracked into the ship’s rail.

  Monmouth dropped to his knees between the tillers. Only he saw the smaller galley crumple around a gaping hole at its waterline. Men streamed off the ship while it rolled to its side, taking in the sea.

  “Frank?” Monmouth crawled to Frank’s body and felt for a pulse. It was slow, but it was there. Jumping to his feet, he ran down the stairs. Before he reached him, James flopped onto his face, sputtering.

  The deck hatch opened, and Hyacinth peered out.

  “Come up!” Monmouth said. “Hurry. We got them, but Frank and James are hurt. Meroe’s gone.”

  Beneath them, the galley began to tip. Timbers, cabled to a sinking ship, groaned in panic.

  Coradin shifted on the back of his horse and looked aroun
d. Five hundred red-shirts—more than a third of them archers—held their positions around the wharf as the galley stroked closer. Only one had reached the sinking green ship before it had vanished beneath its bubbles, and he did not know what they had found. Hopefully, what his mother needed. Living bait.

  Most of the soldiers stood in rank along the water, but smaller clusters had been placed in each street and along the city wall. Two dozen men with dogs and wolves on chains kept their own command, but Coradin watched them and knew what they sought. They would be the first to know when the green man gathered strength or prepared to strike.

  And he was here. Somewhere. Waiting with Coradin, to see what the galley had salvaged.

  Coradin looked at his brothers, also on horses, two with silver helms and chains like his, two with the black helms and the three-snake horn of the emperor’s cavalry. He looked at the iron-plated wagon between them, hitched to two armored stallions, rippling, stamping warhorses. Ropes anchored the horses to cleats on the pier, and they strained against them. They knew their home and their path. There would be no driver.

  The queen thought much of these Hylfing brothers. How could she not?

  Breathing slowly, Coradin shut his eyes. He felt something greater than he could ever remember feeling, greater even than the rush of his first battle and the triumph of his first kill. She had made him strong. She had poured the strength of a dozen men inside him. And now she was feeding him more. He felt no pain, not from the burns beneath his helmet or the weed that had rooted in his chest or the weariness of his journeys or the agony of the mountain race the boy had run. When he turned or bent, he could still feel the steel tips of two arrows within his chest and belly. But they felt only curious and out of place. The others had come out easily.

  Strength. It was good to be full. To be painless. To be the earth, ready to quake. He needed to feel a sword in his hand, to release some of the pressure within him, to clench a hilt.