by N. D. Wilson
As he drew the blade, the wind changed. It lost its salt, no longer crawling in on the back of the sea. And it was colder, the breath of mountains climbing down from the wilder heights of the sky.
The witch-dogs were moving, turning in place, straining wizard senses, tracking a stronger power.
Oars were in on the galley. Cables had been thrown, and sailors hurried to lash it to the end of the pier. A plank slid from the deck, and red-shirts, ready for their task, climbed aboard.
Coradin turned his horse away from the ship and scanned the walls. The wind was growing. Chop sprang up on the harbor’s surface, and serpent banners snapped along the great seawall and above its gaping gate. The huge portcullis crept down toward the water. The harbor was closing.
The prisoners were on the deck, limp and dripping. Seven. He’d been told seven. They were on the pier.
Coradin nudged his horse forward.
Frank watched the silver-headed horseman move toward them. He saw half a thousand red-shirts on the wharf and in the streets and on the walls, and his heart sank.
Dotty sniffed. “I want all my babies to see Kansas again.”
Frank opened his mouth. He wanted to make her promises, to tell her lies, but he couldn’t. Instead, he leaned his face over into her wet, straggling hair.
“Dots,” he whispered. “You’re my life, and I’ve loved it.” He drew in her smell, and she leaned her head against his lips. “Every kiss, every dirty look, every night we slept between clean, starchy sheets, and every night we didn’t. Every nag and needle and nudge.”
He sat up. “Your peaches,” he said. “And your applesauce. How many pies do you think I’ve eaten in my life?” He looked down at her. “Not enough.” He smiled. “If we get out of this, there needs to be more pie. That’s all the complaining I’ve got.”
“Stop it, Frank Willis,” Dotty said. She sniffed and held Penelope tight.
No more pie, Frank thought. No more anything.
The horseman in silver approached, sword in hand. Sailors and soldiers retreated as the horse clopped around the red-shirts and reached the end of the pier, stamping.
Yells rose up from the city. A downburst of wind tumbled soldiers and raised a billowing plume of dust. Wolves were howling.
Coradin’s horse reared while a dust cloud surrounded him from behind. Two of the prisoners had broken free and were running toward him. One was thin and pale, the other built like a young bull. Coradin brought his sword down at the bull, and his blade met and severed a shackle but found no flesh. From the other side, a knife dug into his back. The smaller man had ducked beneath the horse’s pawing hooves.
The horse screamed and tripped, collapsing to one side. Coradin fell to the pier while the horse crashed into the water. A foot pressed down on his sword hand, and he grabbed the ankle and jerked the young man to his back. As he leapt to his own feet, the other, slender, with a blade twined somehow with green and silver light, slashed at his throat but found only iron collar and chains. Both struggled, but neither were a match for him. Their lives were his to take. With his boot on one throat, his blade went to the other.
Bring them to their cages.
Coradin clubbed the slender one on the head and ground the throat of the other, while the man kicked and slashed at his leg with a knife.
Red-shirts pulled the two young men up.
Walking easily against the wind, Coradin turned his back on the silent crowd of sailors and followed the prisoners toward the iron wagon, his blade still in his hand. The skirmish had only slightly eased the pressure within him, and while he walked, he could feel more funneling in, pouring through the finger on his skull. He looked at his blood brothers on their eager, prancing horses beside the wagon, and the witch-dogs, pacing the streets with wind-ducked heads. The archers would be useless in the wind. Perhaps that had been the point. Red-shirts even bobbed in the harbor where they’d been thrown by the first exploding gust.
Where was this green man? His would be a life worth taking.
Mordecai knelt on the rooftop with his eyes closed. The house was halfway up the harbor street, along the quickest path between ship and palace. He could feel his wife and his daughter, the struggling of his son. But his mind stretched elsewhere. He groped in the sea, and with its strength, he pulled down winds from the sky’s roof, where storms are laziness and hurricanes are sleep.
“They have reached the wagon,” Caleb said. “Pray Phedon and his men are ready. The streets all swarm with red.”
“Signal,” Mordecai said quietly. Straining, with sweat on his head beading and drying and beading again, he drew the strength of another gust and piled it down into the street. Opening his eyes, he watched Caleb draw his bow, a bundle of quivers hanging on his back. The flaming tip of an arrow kissed his knuckles, and he let it fly into the storm.
A moment later, a shout rose up from the streets. The doors of houses and merchant stalls and warehouses were thrown open. Men with sword and pike poured into the red-shirts, and Phedon, the emperor’s son, in full armor, was at their head.
“All are in the wagon,” Caleb said. “They will cut the horses. Witch-dogs lead, red-shirts, pike and bow, surround. The finger-men press close to pace the stallions. The horseless one climbs onto the wagon. He rides a stallion in its harness.”
“To the street,” Mordecai said. “It is time.” Breathing slowly, evenly, he stood. “How much would I give for an army of faeren?”
Caleb didn’t answer. He walked in front of his brother to the stairs. Four flights down, they found their horses and the three men of Hylfing who had ridden with them in Endor. Mounting, Mordecai and Caleb took up their positions in the street, the others beside them. The animals shifted their weight on the cobbles and whickered at the blowing dust, but the men said nothing. They sat, and they waited. And then, staring down the bent harbor road, they heard the feet and the howling and the heavy wheels on stone.
Caleb whispered to an arrow and then fitted it to his string. All but Mordecai held bows.
The first chained wolves came into view, and four of them tumbled whimpering in the dust. The rest were slipped from their chains. The wolves came snarling, one after the other pierced and falling, tumbling, dying, and the horses pawed the street. One reached Caleb. Twisting, his horse put a hoof into its skull. Arrows flew while wizards flung their curses to bend the shafts away. The wizards were clumsy, weak city dwellers, but there were enough of them, and strength pushed from behind. The wizards parted, and a swarm of crossbow bolts flew up the street, breaking in the green man’s wind, rattling against houses and twisting onto roofs. But not all of them.
Beside Mordecai, one of the horsemen collapsed into a wall, his horse with a bolt in its shoulder and a wolf on its rump. Mordecai poured all that he had gathered from the sea into the street in front of him. Cobbles exploded beneath the wizards, and the bearded men tumbled and flew backward into the red-shirt archers, slashed and beaten by whistling shards of stone. A wind, dragging plaster from the walls of houses and ripping away awnings, roared into the men with bows, shaking the iron wagon and blinding the horses.
From where he rode, with the stallion’s anger beneath him, Coradin watched the green man work. He leaned forward against the wind and felt his body shake. He watched the wizards fall, but he had known they were weak. He watched the archers waste flights of arrows until the first horseman fell. The red-shirts pressed forward too slowly, afraid of four men on horseback barring the way. Afraid of one man who brushed their bolts aside.
You are wasting time.
Coradin slapped the horse beneath him with his sword. He urged it forward into the archers, butting and trampling through the red rows. His brothers stayed close beside him.
The stallion was mad beneath him, lips curled, neck writhing. An arrow glanced off its skull plate, and another sliced into its shoulder. Gripping his sword, Coradin guided the pair of horses toward the green man, and the two struggled to a gallop, the wagon bouncing behind them,
four horsemen in black beside them.
It was the brother who came to meet them—the archer—drawing his horn bow as he rode, a knife blade in his teeth.
As they neared, Coradin raised his sword. The archer turned from him, and his arrow, lightning from the string, found the other stallion’s eye. The horse staggered and tripped, dead even as it fell to its side.
The wagon began to twist. It would topple. Coradin’s own horse leaned, turned.
With one slash, Coradin cut the dead horse free, and the wagon rumbled on. Two of his brothers had fallen to the street, and another of the horsemen. They had reached the green man, and Coradin raised his sword to throw.
Come, and he will come. Reach me.
Arrows flew for Coradin’s horse, but its armor held. Its rider’s sword flicked shafts away.
A burst of heat from the green man lifted Coradin from the horse. He hit the wagon and spun, bouncing in the street. Red-shirts swarmed around and over him. The wagon raced on.
The fight left him behind, and he stood slowly among the bodies of whimpering wolves and wizards. Red-shirts, motionless or groaning, lay on the cobbles. More smoke was swirling in the air. Turning, looking down the hill toward the sea, Coradin saw flames rising above the roofline.
The wharf was burning.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Henry sat in the room where the king had left him. Shelves heavy with books lined the walls. The room was bright, thanks to the yellow glowing chestnut clusters that covered the earthen ceiling. He was deep in the mound, in the Chestnut King’s personal chamber. Behind him, the king’s bed began as a tree, but branches flared out from a trunk base and held up an enormous mattress. Thinner limbs and leaves rose to the ceiling around the edges. Henry wasn’t exactly sure how or where the broad man would get in. But right now, he didn’t care.
A rectangular box sat in front of Henry, grown from a chestnut. He had not been able to see any seam or hinge, but a lid had fallen open at a word from the king. Now Henry sat alone, staring at its contents. Brittle leather was packed tight inside, and in that nest there was a single egg, smooth and round and black as emptiness. Faint white light wavered around its edges like flame. Nudd’s ash had left him here, swallowed silently by the flame.
Henry held out his left forefinger and stuck it in the white light. He felt nothing. And then, gently, he touched the Blackstar.
He had expected cold, but nothing like what he felt. The blood in his finger stopped moving, and he felt the skin on its tip begin to harden.
Jerking his hand back, Henry squeezed his finger. It hadn’t felt evil, not the way that Nimiane’s cold had felt. It hadn’t pulled at any of his life or strength. But it had stopped both.
Henry tucked his cold finger underneath his leg and held out his right hand. He watched his dandelion grow. It had no fear of the white light or of the stone. The star was a prison to evil, and evil lurked within it, but it was not evil itself. Henry pressed his palm against it, and his heat remained. He gripped it and picked the stone up. His dandelion surged and bloomed around it. The white halo of light mixed with the gold, and the green leaf blades flattened against it, twisting over its surface.
The door to the room opened, and Henry quickly dropped the stone back in the box.
“Henry?” his sister’s voice asked. He spun on his chair.
“Henry!” Anastasia ran toward him, bouncing. She threw her arms around his neck and then jumped back and laughed.
Una walked toward Henry, smiling. His small sister looked tired but happy. She looked like their mother. Her arms went around him, and she squeezed hard and long. His ribs popped.
“I know you’re not,” she said. “But you seem bigger.”
“I feel smaller,” Henry said, but he wasn’t sure if that was true. Not right now.
Richard had come in behind her. He stood stiffly in front of Henry, nodded, and stuck out his hand to shake.
“Henry York, I am greatly relieved to see you alive,” he said, and spread his thick lips in a wide smile.
“Henry Maccabee,” Anastasia said. “His name is Maccabee, Richard Hutchins.”
Henry laughed. “I’m glad to see you, too, Richard.”
Anastasia grew suddenly serious. Henry’s laughter died.
“Is Henrietta alive?” she asked. “You went into the fire for her.”
“Yes.” Henry grinned. “She’s in Hylfing with Zeke.”
“Zeke?” Richard asked. “What is Ezekiel Johnson doing in Hylfing?”
“It’s a long story,” Henry said. “Too long for right now.”
“Grandmother?” Anastasia asked.
Henry looked at her. “What?”
“Did you save Grandmother?”
“I did,” Henry said. “For a little while.”
Anastasia’s eyes widened. “For a little while? And then what?”
Henry looked from his cousin to his sister. Both were very still.
“And then she saved me,” he said. “And she’s gone.”
Anastasia slumped into Henry’s chair. Una stepped beside her and put her arms around her little cousin’s shoulders.
“My condolences,” Richard said. “I am very sorry.”
Through the doorway, the sound of voices and feet and yelling tumbled into the room.
“I’ll be a wizard first!” a voice shouted. “Before I’ll be made a jigging little chestnut farmer!”
Jacques stepped into the room, followed by four large faeries carrying a stiff-bodied but shaking and shouting Fat Frank.
The limb-locked Frank was tipped onto his feet and stood rocking like a jostled bowling pin about to fall. “Your fat-faced king has claimed me, and that’s his right! But I’ll not be swearing any oaths or dancing through your ritualing!” Frank’s eyes shot around the room. “Henry?” he asked. “Poor lad, the chesty nuts have trussed you as well?” His eyes widened. “Have you been a day? Do not be staying another.” He nodded at Richard and the girls. “Get that lot gone and hop to, or they’ll be bonded. It’ll be this world and no other until their hearts break or their minds crack.”
“Let him go,” Henry said.
Jacques snorted, tugged his mustache, and stepped dramatically toward Henry.
“Greenling,” he said. “Hold your tongue if you’d like to keep it.”
Nudd, the Chestnut King, loomed in the doorway. He carried Coradin’s sword in one hand and a bundle in the other. “Jacques,” he said. “Arm yourself and form up the ranks in the hall.”
Jacques blinked, opened his mouth, and then shut it again. Turning, he and the other faeren stepped out through the doorway. The king shut the door behind him. Breathing heavily, his face shone with recent effort.
“What king holds children?” Frank asked. Nudd turned slowly. He gestured with a single, thick finger. Frank’s limbs fell loose, and he staggered forward.
“Put these on,” the king said, handing his bundle to the faerie. “And quiet your awkward soul or I’ll be forgetting a bargain made.”
Turning to Henry, Nudd held out Coradin’s sword. “I have not labored so hard in my long memory. The blade has been turned. The hole has been filled. No longer does it gutter and suck, though it will kill you no queen.”
Henry took the sword. Heat rushed up his arm when he gripped it. Drawing the blade, he blinked. It was the same curve, the same vanishing edge, but it whispered with gold, and as it moved in the air, it took on some of Henry’s life, tracing fast-vanishing colors as it passed. Henry laughed and sheathed the sword. He handed it to Una and turned, poking the drawstrings of his hoodie back over his shoulders.
“Could you tie it for me?” he asked. “And at my belt.”
“Henry?” Anastasia asked. “What’s going on?”
“I’m going to Dumarre,” he said. “I have to kill the witch.”
Una tugged the first knot tight and then turned Henry around, looking into his face. “Why you?” she asked. “Where’s Father?”
“I don’t kn
ow,” Henry said. “I hope he’s there, and Caleb, too.”
“Excuse me,” Richard said, facing Nudd. “I’m going to need a sword.”
The big king laughed. “I have no other. You must carry arms like Franklin.” All eyes turned to Frank. He was adjusting a smooth breastplate, glistening like glass but grained like the shell of a chestnut. It looked like it had sucked on to his shape. A tree-grown chestnut mace, triple-knobbed on top with green spiked konkers, hung in his belt. He looked up and scrunched his face around his knob-nose.
“Henry York,” he said. “You and I have been a-brawlin’, but going for the witch is something else then. You’ve a surety about this?”
Henry nodded. “Yes. Well, maybe. I hope so. But you don’t have to come. I mean, I assumed you would. But I’d forgotten about your magic.”
Frank glared at him.
“You don’t have to,” Henry said. “That’s all I’m saying.”
The former faerie faced Henry and put his hands on his hips.
“Fat Frank don’t have to? Just because I’m yellowing? Don’t be forgetting that I saw you yammering in your first fight, nothing but a lump waiting for death to sit on him. Now you think you’ll go a-warring without me? You wouldn’t make it as far as I can fall.”
Muttering, Frank turned away and cinched up his belt. “What do I have to lose, then? Come good or ill, I’ll be chalk in a ditch before the moon wanes.”
“Brother green,” the king said, ignoring Frank. “You have your sister, your cousin, and your friend beside you. You have Fat Frank and a blade remade. You have the Blackstar, and a faeren troop awaits you. Is our bargain binding?”
“It is,” Henry said, and his heart beat cold.
“The Blackstar?” Fat Frank looked from the king to Henry, his big eyes wide. “The Blackstar?”
“What bargain?” Una asked. She squeezed Henry’s arm. “You made a bargain with faeries?”
“Excuse me,” Richard said. “When do I get my mace?”