The Fanged Crown

by Jenna Helland

  “Everyone all right?” Harp yelled from inside the chamber. When the gritty dust cleared, he saw the fleshy chunks of Shristisanti heaped on the floor.

  Hearing his friends’ voices call back in assent, Harp stood up and brushed himself off, every muscle in his back and neck complaining of misuse. The glassy floor gave off a faint red glow, but not as brightly as it had done before. At the far end of the chamber, the Torque lay unceremoniously on the floor. Harp leaned over and tentatively touched the band of metal. It felt cool and harmless against his fingertips. When Shristisanti died, the barrier around the city that had prevented their easy entry must have fallen, leaving the Torque unprotected.

  Harp turned the Torque over in his hand and wondered at all the machinations that had gone on for a simple piece of tarnished metal, a shackle that had once bound the giant Captive. Had the plan already been in progress when Captain Predeau kidnapped Liel? When Cardew snapped his fingers and had Tresco torture Harp at Vankila? Was Boult right that everything was part of a larger order of events, and when Verran stole the blood elixir, he was acting in someone else’s theater? Who was getting revenge on whom? And had it been the Captive’s day of vengeance, above all else that had transpired during their tenday in the jungle? Harp shook his head. A man could go crazy thinking such thoughts.

  “Harp!” He heard Liel calling to him. There was a tension in her voice that made him hurry out of the chamber to see what was wrong. As he crossed through the pearl door into the great hall, he saw ropes dangling down from the hole in the roof. Several masked archers perched on the side of the hole with arrows notched and pointed down at his friends.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  3 Flamerule, the Year of the Ageless One

  (1479 DR)

  Chult

  Liel, Boult, and Kitto stood in the center of the hall with their hands on their heads, surrounded by a dozen men in leather armor and dark tunics. A handsome, square-jawed man stood off to one side talking to a hooded man in a dark cloak. As Harp emerged from the chamber holding the Torque, the man pushed back his hood revealing long gray hair and a knowing smile. At the sight of the man’s face, Harp’s stomach clenched. The last time he’d seen the gray-haired man, Harp had been strapped to a chair in the Vankila Slab watching parts of his body die piece by piece.

  “Master Harp,” Tresco sounded pleased, as if he were seeing a friend after a long absence. “It’s been so long.”

  Harp kept his mouth closed. If Tresco was here, that must mean the soldiers were husks and the man beside him was Cardew. Harp had never met Liel’s husband before. Involuntarily, he glanced at Liel and saw that she was looking at him already. When their eyes met, Liel gave Harp a gentle smile.

  “You retrieved the Torque,” Tresco said, clasping his hands in delight. “I must say I’m grateful.”

  Still, Harp didn’t speak. He avoided looking at Shristisanti’s oozing remains where he’d last seen the vial of elixir. Instead, Harp looked at Verran’s corpse with a strong sense of regret and sadness. Harp wasn’t angry with the boy for what he’d done. If Verran hadn’t stolen the blood, Kitto would still be cursed, maybe even dead. But then, Majida wouldn’t have been hurt, or maybe even dead.

  “Does anything happen for a reason?” asked Harp, looking past Tresco’s archers at the blue of the sky. “Or is it just random events ramming into each other in search of a purpose?”

  “There’s a reason, Harp,” Liel assured him, earning a dark glance from Cardew.

  “Such optimism from someone who should already be rotting in the ground,” Tresco sneered. “And yes, there is a reason. Apparently, you were meant to retrieve the Torque for me. With the barrier in place, there was no way through the ever-so-convenient hole in the ceiling that Cardew found. But once you killed the guardian, we were able to drop in, just like that.”

  But Harp barely heard what Tresco said. He was thinking about each of his friends, what might be going on in their heads, and how they might react to the situation they now faced. Kitto would be all right—he wasn’t personally involved with Cardew or Tresco. Harp was concerned about Liel. Her husband had plotted to kill her, which was was bound to shake her sensibilities. But she had given Harp that serene smile, so he figured she was in control of herself. Harp swung his glance to Boult, who looked stoic on the surface. Yet Harp knew that the dwarf must be ready to explode.

  Cardew was Boult’s accuser and the object of the dwarf’s hatred for years. At its core, every action Boult had taken for a decade was a calculation on how to slay the man who had doomed him to a life in the Vankila Slab and had ruined his name. Boult must have figured out that Tresco was the mastermind of the Children’s Massacre. Harp had no idea what Boult was about to do, but unless something shifted in their favor, it was unlikely that a dwarf on a rampage would accomplish much except another dead body on the floor.

  “Your skin has healed since last I saw you …” Tresco began to say to Harp.

  “What’s this guy’s name again?” Harp interrupted. “I can’t quite keep it straight. Practitioner? Ermine? Treecow?”

  “Murderer?” Boult asked.

  “Scum?” Kitto offered.

  “Coward?” Liel suggested.

  “I prefer that one for Cardew,” Boult said.

  Cardew stirred angrily and opened his mouth to speak, but Harp cut him off.

  “So that is Cardew,” Harp said, nodding toward the tall man. “Liel, you could have done so much better than him.”

  “I did,” she said, smiling at Harp again. “You.”

  “You have no idea what’s going …” Cardew began.

  “Cardew,” Tresco warned. “I insist you keep your mouth shut, or I’ll have to kill your whoring wife.”

  With his shoulder down like a battering ram, Harp launched himself at the cloaked wizard. But several of the masked soldiers intercepted him. They surrounded him, grabbing his arms, while one of the men punched him in the stomach. As they forced Harp to his knees, Liel slammed her elbow across the face of the nearest soldier. The soldier grabbed his nose, blood gushing between his fingers, while another man swung his sword at Liel. She sidestepped and knocked his hand away, then kicked the man’s leg above the knee, forcing it back unnaturally, before two other soldiers grabbed her from behind.

  They dragged Liel over by Harp and pushed her down beside him. Harp really wanted to stand up and gut Tresco. He really, really wanted to see Boult cut off Cardew’s head with a meat cleaver.

  “Hand it over, Harp,” Boult said grimly. “There’s not much you can do about it.”

  “Yes, Harp,” Liel said in a monotone voice. “Give him the Torque.”

  Harp looked between Liel and Boult in surprise, trying to see if there was a hidden message in their acquiescence, but he didn’t hear anything but defeat. He looked at Kitto, who shrugged noncommittally. Harp held out the Torque to the nearest soldier, who carried it to Tresco and bowed slightly as he handed it to his master. Tresco took an audible breath and accepted the Torque, his face lighting up as he touched the curved band.

  “I did it, Evonne,” Tresco said, cradling the Torque against his chest. “I did it for you.”

  When Tresco fit the Torque around his neck, the air yellowed and seemed to settle around him, as if it had tangible weight and definition. Tresco’s body became indistinct, the way an object appears through a grimy window. He looked down at Liel and Harp like they were nothing but ants beneath his feet.

  “You have no idea how powerful I am,” he said to no one in particular. “No one will ever underestimate me again.”

  Tresco turned his back to his prisoners, and a dark shadow formed in the air in front of him. Wisps of smoke appeared, and an acrid smell wafted across the air, as if the shadow were burning the air as it materialized in the stillness of the hall. The shadow elongated and took the shape of a rusty doorframe with a barred metal door that looked like it belonged on a prison cell.

  Through the open bars of the metal door, they could
see a windswept moor and a castle on a hill in the distance. A cool breeze swept in from the desolate countryside bringing the scent of autumn to the sweltering ruins. The familiar smell made Harp long to be in the cool quiet of a real forest and not that hot, fatal jungle. He glanced at Liel’s profile, but her attention was focused on Tresco and his portal back to Tethyr.

  “Cardew, you have your instructions,” Tresco said, turning his head slightly and speaking over his shoulder. “Bring me flesh tokens, and I shall embrace you. Ysabel may have given up on you, but I have not.”

  Tresco pushed on the door, which made a harsh grating sound as it opened onto the field of gorse and purple heather. Without a glance behind him, the old man stepped through the door, which closed with a metallic clang and dissolved into nothingness. With the ringing sound still reverberating off the walls, everyone looked at Cardew. Cardew looked vaguely surprised at the sudden attention, and then his shoulders slumped.

  “Liel,” he said, walking in front of where she kneeled on the ground. He stood in front of her and leaned down so he could look down at her face. “I’m very sorry to have to do it.”

  Liel looked up at him. When Cardew’s eyes locked with hers, he took an involuntary step back, the fear evident on his handsome features. Liel’s palms were open to the sky, her head tipped back to the sunlight, and from her lips tumbled the words borne of all the power the jungle had to offer.

  “Idiot,” she snarled at him. “You forgot that when the Torque left, my magic came back.”

  As Liel rose to her feet, her body quivered with ferocious energy and her presende dominated the hall. Cardew and the husk-soldiers shrank away from her presence, and she swung her head around to look at her friends.

  “Get behind me,” she commanded them, and they scurried to obey. Above the hole in the roof, the swatch of blue sky darkened into a vortex of black storm clouds. The soldiers on the edge of the hole lowered their bows and looked up in confusion as a volley of lightning cracked out of the sky. It slammed into one of them, scorching his body into a burned slab of flesh. The impact knocked the other archers off the edge and sent them tumbling down into the hall. When their smoking bodies hit the ground with a sickening thud, the soldiers on the ground turned and ran.

  Before they could scramble up the debris pile and out of harm’s way, gusts of air spun down from the sky and formed a wall in front of Liel. She rammed her arm straight out from her shoulder and, at her command, the currents of air swirled across the hall in an unavoidable torrent. Catching men both dead and alive in its wake, it tossed them across the hall as if they were no weightier than fallen leaves. Bodies slammed against columns, their spines breaking on impact. The stained glass cracked inside the window frame. As the wind died down, the loose glass fell from the frames and rained down into the hall in a cascade of red and blue fragments that smashed onto the rubble-strewn floor.

  Unmolested by the wind, Harp, Boult, and Kitto gawked at the extent of the destruction wrought by Liel’s spell. The rush of wind stilled, leaving only white currents of air that eddied around the bases of the pillars. Liel pressed her hands together, and the white currents joined together to form the links of an ethereal chain. One end of the chain wound itself around the leg of a body slumped at the base of a column. Liel jerked her arm backward. As if pulled by an invisible hand, the chain dragged the limp body across the expanse of broken glass where it came to rest in front of her.

  “You’ve gotten some serious power since I saw you last,” Harp said in awe, staring down at the broken body of Cardew lying at the elf’s feet.

  “He’s not dead,” Boult said as Cardew moaned and blinked his eyes.

  “Liel,” Cardew whispered, his blood-splattered lips barely moving. “Please help me.”

  “Don’t even think about it,” Boult insisted. “After that display of magical prowess, healing the bastard would be anticlimactic.”

  “Boult would be most disappointed,” Harp agreed. “It’s all right that Liel killed him and not you, right?”

  “Oh yes,” Boult said. “It just feels right, don’t you think?”

  “I’m going to give him a chance to save himself,” Liel said quietly.

  “What?” Boult sputtered. “You can’t be serious.”

  “Tell us what we need to know, and I’ll save you,” Liel promised Cardew.

  “Of all the idiotic …” Boult began.

  “Just let Liel talk to him,” Harp put a restraining hand on the dwarf’s shoulder. “Go look for the elixir, why don’t you?”

  “Why don’t you look for the elixir?” Boult said stomping off to the debris pile. “There’s no reason in the infinite heavens to let that dog live.”

  “What is Tresco planning?” Liel asked.

  “Overthrow Anais and put Ysabel on the throne,” Cardew whispered.

  “We know that already!” Boult yelled from across the room.

  “Why did he say that Ysabel had forsaken you?” Liel asked.

  “Somehow she figured out what we were doing in the jungle. It disgusted her. I disgusted her.”

  “You disgust everyone,” Boult yelled again, kicking chunks of the guardian’s flesh around on the floor as he searched for the vial.

  “If Tresco finds out how much she knows, he’ll kill her,” Cardew moaned. “You have to protect her. She’s an innocent in all of his plans.”

  “Did Tresco mastermind the Children’s Massacre?” Harp demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Cardew said. “He must have been involved … But I don’t know.”

  “Where is Ysabel?” Liel asked.

  “At Kinnard Keep. She’s been in Tresco’s care since the massacre,” Cardew whispered.

  “Does Tresco know about the elixir?” Liel asked.

  “What elixir?” Cardew rasped. His breathing was labored, and blood seeped out from under his body, staining the dusty floor.

  “The elixir I have,” Boult said triumphantly, holding up the slimy, though unbroken, vial of blood. “Safe under Shristisanti.”

  “Poor Verran,” Harp said as he watched Boult slipped the elixir into his pack.

  “He was one, you know,” Kitto said. “A warlock. I saw the marks on his back when I pulled out the glass. They looked like brands.”

  “So he made the pact,” Harp said sadly. “Just like his father.”

  “But he wasn’t all bad,” Kitto said. “He just didn’t know what to do.”

  “I need to get the elixir back to the dwarves,” Boult said, covering Verran’s body with a cloak. “I need to find out if Majida is all right.”

  “And we need to get to Tethyr and help Ysabel,” Harp said.

  “Can you reopen a portal?” Harp asked Liel.

  “Only with the scroll,” she explained.

  “The spell scroll in the colony,” Boult reminded them. “I left it under the floorboards in the hut.”

  “I know where you’re talking about,” Liel said. “But we’ll have to get back there fast.”

  “Are you sure you want to split up?” Harp asked Boult.

  “I have to get the blood back to the Domain,” Boult said urgently. “It’s the only place it’s safe.”

  “Do you want me to go with you?” Kitto asked Boult.

  “We need you,” Harp told Kitto. “We’ll probably have to fight Tresco while he’s wearing the Torque.”

  “Which means that Liel won’t be able to use her magic,” Kitto pointed out. “If that happens, I won’t be able to do much.”

  “Hit him on the head with a rock and steal the Torque?” Harp said after a moment.

  “It’s so stupid that it’s brilliant,” Kitto grinned faintly. “You’ve really outdone yourself, Harp.”

  “That’s Captain Harp to you, sailor,” Harp grinned back at him.

  “What are you going to do about Cardew?” Boult asked Liel.

  “I don’t know,” Liel said helplessly. “I guess I’ll heal him and take him back to Queen Anais. Let her decide what to do with
him.”

  “He can tell her what Tresco has been doing in Chult,” Harp pointed out. “What do you think, Boult?”

  Boult hesitated. “I’ve wanted him to suffer for so long. I wanted him to die as painfully as possible. And now that the moment’s here, I just don’t care.”

  “All right, we’ll let Queen Anais decide,” Harp agreed.

  But Kitto stepped forward and calmly shoved his sword into the base of Cardew’s throat. Cardew opened his mouth in surprise, but no words came. Kitto pulled his sword out, and blood welled out of the wound, flowed down Cardew’s neck and chest, and stained his snow-white shirt. In the time it took for the others to comprehend what had happened, Cardew was dead.

  “He tried to kill Liel,” Kitto said unapologetically. “He framed Boult. He tortured Harp. What about what he did to me? The Branch of Linden owned Captain Predeau. Their coin kept him going. He treated me like a slave and nearly beat me to death. If you weren’t going to kill him for yourselves, then he was going to die for me.”

  “All right, fine with me,” Harp told him without hesitation.

  “Good riddance,” Boult agreed.

  “I have an idea, Boult,” Harp said as they prepared to climb up the ropes that had been left by Tresco’s men. “Instead of Tethyr, let’s meet on the Moonshae Isles.”

  “The cove?” Liel asked as a huge smile spread across Kitto’s face. “Does Boult know about the safe haven?”

  “Harp’s talked about it so damn much, I could find it in my sleep,” Boult said. “How long do you think it will take you to reach Ysabel?”

  “As long as it takes to get to the camp and open the portal,” Harp answered.