by Morgan Rice
“Kate.” Even saying her name like that was hard. “What do you mean, there’s a shadow over me?”
“People think that this is a place of evil,” Lisare said. “They think that because it is a place of shadows and death, then it must be. We look into the darkness, so that we can guide people through it. What do you need to be guided through, Kate?”
“I…” Kate was about to tell the woman that there was nothing she needed, but she couldn’t say it. It wasn’t the truth. It wasn’t even close to it. “People I love are dying. My parents… I didn’t even get to say goodbye properly. The man I love… loved, they tell me he’s dead too, and I’m stuck out here. I can’t even protect the people I care about.”
She saw Lisare nod. “It’s hard. It’s hard feeling helpless. It’s hard when everything around you is dark, and you don’t know the best way to tread.”
Anger flared up in Kate at that, because it touched far too close to everything that she felt.
“You don’t know anything about me,” she said.
“I wasn’t claiming to,” Lisare said. She nodded to one of the buildings close by. “Come inside, away from the rest of it. Tell me what it is you need. There are deaths to be commemorated out here.”
She made it sound so reasonable that Kate should do what she suggested that it was almost easier to go along with her than to stand there. She was just too numb to think of doing anything else. She followed Lisare into the building, which had furniture that seemed to be made from onyx and bone, and shades that cut out the sunlight.
“Tell me about the people you’ve lost,” Lisare said.
Kate wanted to. She wanted nothing more than to tell Lisare all about her parents, and all the others who had died in the days since she had left the House of the Unclaimed. She wanted to tell her about the ones who had died at her hands, and the ones who had died in the wars she hadn’t been able to stop. There had been her cousins, so many of the people of Ashton, the soldiers she had fought.
If that had been all of it, she might even have told Lisare about it. Will though… she didn’t even have the words to talk about that pain. Just the thought of it felt as though her heart was being ripped out of her chest. It wasn’t something she could tell this stranger about. It wasn’t even what she was here for. It wasn’t the point of all of it.
“I need to be strong,” Kate said. “I used to be strong. I used to be strong enough to protect people. I’ve lost so much.”
“All those people,” Lisare said, even though Kate hadn’t told her about it.
“Not just the people,” Kate said. She couldn’t think about the people. This wasn’t just about them. “I came here for the shadow stone. I came here to get back what I was. I… we need it to defeat the Master of Crows.”
“He is a powerful thing,” Lisare said. “The dead mount. This may not be wise, though. This is a place that-”
Kate drew her sword. “I don’t care what kind of place this is. I need the power to defeat the one who killed him!”
If Lisare was afraid, she didn’t show it. Instead, she gently pushed the sword aside.
“I am not trying to stop you,” she said. “Perhaps this is a thing you were meant to do. There must be a reason that the dead put me in your path. I will need to ask them.”
“You’ll help me, or I’ll send you to join them,” Kate said, hating herself even as she said it.
“I hope that you will not,” Lisare replied. She shut her eyes, her face a picture of peace. A part of Kate wanted to slap her to bring her round, but she suspected that it might not do any good.
She was silent for what seemed like forever. Outside, Kate could hear the muted sounds of the ceremony occurring, and the drone of the priests’ voices. Finally, eventually, Lisare’s eyes flickered back open.
“It seems that I am to help you,” Lisare said. She looked at Kate with a depth of pity that was almost enough to make Kate hate her. “Are you sure that you want to do this? The way will not be easy. The stone might be able to give you back what you were, but you have already seen that such things have prices.”
“I’ll pay any price,” Kate said. “It doesn’t matter anymore. I’ve already lost all the things anyone could have taken from me.”
All that mattered now was getting back her powers. She would recover them, kill the Master of Crows, and this would be over.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Master of Crows stood in Stonehome as the mist that had filled it cleared. He could feel the power that had held it in place dissipating, and he wondered what that meant. He felt some satisfaction in the thought that it probably meant someone’s death, but it didn’t do much to cut down on the feeling of frustration as he looked around the rest of the settlement.
The violence was not done. One of Stonehome’s warriors came at him, a blade in his hand. The man was fast, as they all seemed to be, and powerful in other ways, summoning a corona of power to surround his blade in crackling lightning.
The Master of Crows swayed back from the first blow, knowing better than to try to parry a blade that would shock with the merest touch. The ones like this with magic reminded him of the way he had been once, powerful but naïve at the same time, possessing a single affinity but not yet knowing how to make it work well for them. There had been a time when the Master of Crows had been so much less; had been only a little more than any normal human might have been.
He was not that now, though. He charged forward, drawing on the strength that he had gained from death after death to move aside from strikes, maneuvering his sword around the attempts of his foe to connect with it and stun him. He dropped low, thrusting up in one movement to catch his enemy through the guts and abandoning his blade there. It was a killing blow, but not quickly. There would be plenty of time for his crows to feast.
He drew a pistol, shooting down a running man. Around him, there were still moments of violence, but things were chaotic, not a true battle anymore, just a case of mopping up. He snatched another sword from a fallen man, then cut down an enemy as he passed.
On another day, perhaps he would have continued to be a part of the battle, but the truth was that none of this made any difference to him. He pushed through what was left of the battle, looking for the one thing he had actually come to Stonehome for.
“It should be beautiful,” he murmured, looking around at the chaos there. There was plenty of chaos to be found, of course, now that the battle was all but done. Bodies lay against the walls and in the streets. His soldiers marched captives out to the crow cages for his birds to start to pick apart. A crew of his men was tearing down the standing stones at the place’s heart even now.
“There’s not enough death for you?” Endi asked, walking up. If he had any remorse about what he’d helped to do here, he didn’t show any sign of it.
“There can never be enough,” the Master of Crows assured him. His creatures would never be satisfied, at least, not without the potential that the child held. “But this is not that.”
He looked around at the remains of the battle, visualizing what had happened there from the places where the bodies had fallen.
“They made a stand on the walls to buy time to get out,” Endi said. “Then there are small knots where they ran into your men in the mist.”
“Our men,” the Master of Crows pointed out. “You are one of us, now.”
“And if I had said our men,” Endi said with a faint smile, “you would have reminded me that they were your men, because you command.”
He was not stupid, then. Perhaps he would be of use in the army.
“Is there a reason that you have sought me out?” the Master of Crows asked.
“I wanted to see what the ritual I brought you would do,” Endi said.
In other words, he wanted to provide a reminder that he was still useful, and that he had fulfilled his part of their agreement. The Master of Crows wasn’t sure whether to admire that, or whether to despise the weakness of it. Right then, he did
n’t care. He had other concerns.
He sent his awareness out into the crows that hopped their way around the battlefield, ignoring the gore of their feeding and sending them up into flight to look down over Stonehome.
From up there, it was even easier to see the patterns in the death and destruction below. The Master of Crows could make out every shift and twist in the tide of the battle, from the small spots where people had tried and failed to protect those they loved to the spaces where they had been cut down as they ran.
None of it mattered. Even the flow of power from those his crows consumed counted for almost nothing. Only the child mattered, and the Master of Crows could not spot her form among the carnage.
“She is not here,” he muttered to himself, even as he had his crows swing over the settlement once again.
He looked as if he might somehow have missed the signs of her; as if she wouldn’t have stood out like a beacon shining amid the rest of it. He looked with the kind of hunger that needed her to be there, that willed her to be there, after all the effort that he had put into this assault.
He started to send his men further afield. The mist made sense now, a ploy to let the inhabitants escape. He could see some of them, running across the moorland in groups, walking in well-armed squares, riding in occasional ones and twos. He’d thought that it was just to let the people there flee, and that he would see the child’s shine through even that magic like a lighthouse at sea. Instead, there was only the dullness of the ones who scurried and sprinted.
“Where are you?” he demanded into the blankness of it all. He sent out the senses he had for power, tasting for it through beaks, watching for it through dark eyes. There were flickers around him from the dead and the dying, more from the ones out on the moors, but when it came to the child, there was no sign. Either she was gone into thin air, or someone was shielding her.
He reached for more, spending power at a rate he would never normally have countenanced, reaching for any hint of the prize that sat out in the world. Maybe it was where he stood, replete with the workings of a thousand magic users, or maybe it was the raw power that he threw out there, but whatever it was, the Master of Crows found himself seeing further than he planned, seeing things that showed the dangers to come.
He saw the spaces where the Danse siblings searched for the power to defeat him. He saw their hands clasped around stones, and weapons, and reaching for the kind of power that they had once possessed. In another space, he saw a man with a weapon that could kill even those such as him, and that could take away the powers of a foe for a fight. In a moment when he should have seen the prize for his victory he saw… what? Yet more things to fight against?
“No, I will not allow it,” he said.
Coming back to himself, he made his way to the lines of prisoners, drawing a knife as he approached the first of them.
“You,” he demanded. “Which way did the child go? Where did she flee to?”
“I don’t know anything,” the man insisted, and maybe he would have said something else, but the Master of Crows plunged his blade into the prisoner’s throat, leaving him gasping as he went to the next one.
“Where is the child?” he demanded.
“I don’t know,” the woman said, and got the same fate as the first.
“Where is the child?” he demanded of the third.
“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you anything,” a man who looked as though he had been one of Ashton’s soldier’s said. The Master of Crows killed him too.
Along the line he went, asking the same question over and over, meting out the same fate for all those who failed to tell him what he wanted to know.
“My lord,” one of their guards said. “I really don’t think that any of them know anything, and these are the ones you wanted for the crow cages. Why not see if they know anything once-”
The Master of Crows stabbed him too. How dare he interrupt? Didn’t he know how important this was?
At least the others had the sense to stay back while he worked his way along the line, from the first until the very end, not caring about the blood that sprayed to coat him, or the hatred in the eyes of those he killed. He didn’t even care that his crows showed him the way his own men looked at him while he worked: as a mad thing to be avoided, something they only kept from cutting down because none of them was strong enough to do it. By now, it was as much a ritual as a real chance of finding out about the princess, a thing that had taken on its own momentum.
He stopped eventually, but only because there were no more prisoners left to question. It would have been silent, except for the cawing of the crows who hopped in his wake, already jostling and fighting for space on the bodies of his victims. The Master of Crows looked around, seeing his men looking on with obvious horror, none of them daring to interrupt, none of them daring to run.
“What are you all waiting for?” he demanded, in a cracked voice like the screeching of his birds. “Search the moors! Search the kingdom! Find me that girl!”
Nothing else mattered now. He had seen the things that were coming for him. He had spent so much strength in the past days, even as he had feasted on a kingdom. In the face of the dangers that were coming, there was only one thing that he could do. He had to find the girl. He had to become still stronger. He would not lose after all he had done.
He would not!
CHAPTER TWELVE
When Henry d’Angelica’s parents arrived at the Duke of Axshire’s estates, Henry had them housed both as comfortably and as far away from him as possible. If there was going to be any benefit to be had from having declared himself king, it should be that he shouldn’t have to put up with their jibes.
Even so, he found himself avoiding the house, just to be on the safe side.
“Anyone would think that you’re scared of them, Henry,” Loris said, as they surveyed their growing army out on the south field. Henry leant on the spear he had taken from Loris’ family tomb, while Loris had an ornate walking cane. Henry knew that his old friend would never really understand it. He’d never contrived to be a disappointment to his parents.
“Sometimes it’s not about fear, husband,” Imogen said. “Sometimes it’s enough that someone just calls you less often enough, and then shows up when you do something impressive like become king, as if it was all their idea in the first place.”
She understood, even though there was no way she could ever have disappointed anyone. She was the most radiant, the most beautiful… no, Henry would not think like that. Not even when she’d suggested that they should be more. Maybe especially not because of that.
“Well, put like that, I’ll make sure that they don’t bother you. I’ll say you’re busy with the army or something.”
“It’s even true,” Henry said.
There was so much to do with it. There were more soldiers arriving every day, and more nobles running from the war, and more… well, more of everything. Well, almost everything. They could have done with more food, and more places to put them all. Even though the estate came with a medium sized town, there was only so much room in which to put soldiers, and nobles, and refugees who were only too quick to bend their knees to Henry in return for safety.
“Maybe you could use the spear on them,” Imogen suggested.
“It deals with witches,” Henry said. “I suspect that it would take more than that to get rid of my mother.”
“She can be quite…” Imogen seemed to take her time searching for the right word.
“Yes,” Henry agreed. “She can.”
“We have other problems,” Loris said. “Problems that make even your parents pale into insignificance.”
Henry nodded. He was aware of how dire things were. “More refugees from Ashton?”
“Yes,” Loris agreed. “The city is all but gone, from what they say, and the New Army occupies the remains.”
“Maybe that’s just as well,” Imogen said. Her husband looked shocked at that, but Henry understood what
she meant.
“It means that the pretenders won’t be able to base their claim on occupying it,” he said. “Imagine if we’d had to march up to Ashton with the Dowager’s son and the Danses’ daughter in residence.”
“People would have recognized their rightful king!” Loris said. “They would have stood on the side of justice.”
Henry wished that the world worked like that, but he was not a fool.
“They would have seen us as the attackers, Loris,” Imogen said. “They would have cheered for a witch and a murderer, because they were in the right place.”
“Now this is the right place,” Henry said. “People will come here. Is there news of what happened to Prince Sebastian and the others?”
He would not dignify the man by calling him a king after the way he had betrayed Henry’s cousin Angelica.
“The people coming in are saying he and some of the others fled to Stonehome, but now…”
“Now there are reports that Stonehome has fallen,” Henry said.
“How did you know that?” Loris demanded. “I’m only just hearing the news from people that the New Army has moved that way.”
Henry sighed. “I have spies telling me. When did I become the kind of man who has spies?”
“When you became a king,” Imogen said, looking faintly amused by his discomfort. Perhaps she was aware of just how distasteful he found the whole business. Still, Henry would do what was necessary.
“Of course, our would be queen is safe across the ocean,” Loris said.
“She will return,” Henry said. He hefted the spear he had found in Loris’ family tomb.
“Are you sure that will stop her?” Loris asked.
Henry shrugged. “It is Witchsnare, the spear of Lord Thomasin.”
Loris looked blank.
“Thom Witchbane, husband,” Imogen supplied.
“Ah, I used to love those stories as a boy,” Loris said. “My fearless ancestor who fought the wicked and brought low the magical. I half imagined that someone had made him up. Are you sure that the spear isn’t some confection made to look the part? A lot of my ancestors liked to do that kind of thing. Why, one of my uncles built an entire tower that-”