I took another step back, preparing my mind for a spell.
The anthrophage let out a horrible rasping laugh. “Delightful! She will die in ignorance and fear. All the more seasoning for the meat!” I took another step backwards, moving to the left, and the anthrophage followed, its eyes fixed on me. Clearly it did not consider Alexandra to be a threat.
It also did not appear to notice the branch two or three feet over its head, heavy with blue-glowing leaves.
I took a deep breath and cast a spell, focusing my mind. The anthrophage grinned its fanged smile and started its warding spell again, but I wasn’t aiming for the creature. I wasn’t very good at the spell I cast, and couldn’t control it well. When someone like Morvilind used it, he could snap his fingers and cause a book to leap from a shelf and land gently in his outstretched hand, cradled in invisible bands of telekinetic force. When I used the spell, I tended just to make a mess.
But I had enough focus to push upon the tree branch with a burst of telekinetic power.
The branch wobbled as if someone had sat on it, and a dozen leaves smacked the anthrophage in its face. Maybe the leaves were poisonous, and would leave burns down its face like mutant poison ivy. Or they would excrete a sleeping pollen or something.
I did not expect a dozen arcs of blue lightning to erupt from the leaves and stab into the anthrophage with enough force to throw the creature backward. Dozens more of the tiny lightning bolts erupted from the leaves, ripping into the anthrophage. The creature struck the ground, bounced, and clawed to its hands and knees, its white suit charred and smoking, hideous burns marking its face and arms.
The anthrophage glared up at me, its eyes filled with insane rage.
“Run!” I shouted, grabbing Alexandra’s arm and spinning her around. We sprinted for the edge of the forest. The wounded anthrophage did not pursue us. Perhaps the lightning had injured the creature. A hideous, grating scream erupted from the forest as we burst from the trees and raced across the plain. A cold jolt went down my spine. I recognized that terrible scream. It was the hunting cry of the anthrophages. The bloated anthrophage had called its pack to hunt us.
Not good.
“Faster!” I shouted, putting on a little more speed. Alexandra, thankfully, kept pace with me. In fact, she had longer legs, so she started pulling ahead. Sprinting at full speed across a grassy meadow while wearing high heels was not an experience I ever wanted to repeat, but by some fluke or good luck or the simple grace of God, I didn’t snap my ankle and land on my face.
Again the tearing howl rang out from the trees, and this time answering cries rose from the surrounding plain. I saw gray shapes moving through the pale grass with terrific speed. Dozens of anthrophages converged on us. The creatures had abandoned their efforts at human guise, and ran on all fours, the movement making their gaunt, gray-skinned bodies seem insect-like. A second group came from another direction, and with a sinking feeling I realized that they would cut us off from reaching the ruined castle.
They were going to surround us, and they were going to kill us.
“Stop!” I shouted, skidding to a halt near one of the gray obelisks. One of my heels sank a little into the ground, and I had to flail my arms to keep my balance. “We won’t make it! I’ll have to open the rift way from here!”
Alexandra stopped. “But you don’t know where it will go.”
“Nope,” I said, gathering magical power. The power roared up at my command and I fought to control it, to force it into a spell. It was harder than it had been a few hours ago. I had cast multiple spells, and the magical effort was wearing on me. “But if we stay here they’re going to kill us. Better to take our chances.”
The anthrophages moved into a loose circle around us, drawing closer with slow, cautious steps. Likely they were waiting to see if I would cast another globe of lightning, or if I had a more powerful spell I could unleash.
I didn’t, and I hoped they wouldn’t realize that before the rift way opened.
“You should thank me!”
The bloated anthrophage’s voice boomed in my ears, and I saw the creature sprinting from the trees like a white blur. Its great mass did not slow it in the slightest. If anything, it was faster than the gaunt anthrophages of its pack. Maybe anthrophages got stronger as they ate more people.
White light and gray mist swirled around my hands as I struggled to hold the spell together. Just a little more effort…
Something invisible smacked me in the side of the head, and I stumbled as cold power washed over me. The bloated anthrophage had hit me with a spell, and I felt my magic drain away, the casting disrupted. Frantic, I started pulling together the threads again, but it was too late.
Dozens of anthrophages stood in a ring around us, tongues darting over their fangs, their yellow eyes fixed upon us. The bloated anthrophage strolled to the edge of the ring, grinning its inhuman smile at me. Its white suit was charred and blackened, but the burns in its gray hide had healed. Purplish-black fire crackled around its right hand, another spell ready to disrupt my magic if I tried to open another rift way.
“Do it,” whispered Alexandra, frantic. “Do it.”
I shook my head, dread choking me. “Can’t. Sorry.”
“Behold,” said the anthrophage, pleasure filling its inhuman voice, “you are about to die in agony. But, really, it could have been worse. So much worse. For the servants of the masters consulted the oracle bones and beheld your future. Would you like to know what your fate would have been?”
“To listen to boring speeches from freakish monsters?” I spat, trying for defiance. I think it just came out shrill and terrified.
“A day would have come,” said the anthrophage, “when your life would have reached its climax. You would have been locked in a room with the people you loved most in all the world…and you would have murdered them in cold blood. Every single one of them. So this is a mercy, really, that you die today. My children!” The anthrophages looked at him. “Feast!”
The anthrophages screamed their delight and surged forward. I heard Alexandra screaming and crying for Jesus to save us, heard the bloated anthrophage laughing with delight.
“Russell,” I whispered. The frostfever was going to kill him now. “Russell, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry…”
The gray obelisk behind the anthrophages melted.
I blinked in astonishment, wondering if my mind had snapped in the final instant before the claws and fangs of the anthrophages sank into my flesh. That would be a mercy, really.
But the obelisk stopped melting, and it reformed into a man.
Specifically, a warrior.
A giant nine feet tall, clad from head to foot in gleaming steel plate armor colored a deep electric blue. Runes and sigils marked the plates, and they shone with a harsh white light, the color of lightning at midnight. The helmet was a featureless mask, adorned only by an eye slit and small holes for breath. A gray plume rose from the top of the helmet, and a gray cloak streamed from the armored giant’s shoulders.
In his fists he held a sword longer than I was tall. More symbols of harsh white light burned upon the blade, and the weapon gave out a peculiar buzzing noise that I felt against my entire body.
The warrior released a hand from the sword’s hilt and pointed at the anthrophages. The charging creatures did not notice, but their bloated leader looked at the warrior…and terror went over the creature’s face.
Lightning exploded from the warrior’s hand.
It was a globe of lightning like I could conjure, but nearly a yard across, and it was as bright as a miniature sun. The globe smashed into an anthrophage, killing the creature at once, and its charred carcass fell limp to the grasses. The globe kept going, leaping from anthrophage to anthrophage, and in five seconds nearly thirty of the anthrophages had been killed.
Whoever the armored warrior was, the anthrophages wanted no part of him. The creatures ran, scattering in all directions. The fat anthrophage outpaced the rest of them
and vanished into the blue-glowing trees. The globe of lightning shot after the fleeing anthrophages with the speed of a bullet, jumping from creature to creature and leaving charred carcasses in its wake.
In less than twenty seconds, the blue-armored warrior had wiped out about two-thirds of the anthrophages and sent the rest of them fleeing.
That said, I wasn’t about to hang around. I didn’t know who the armored giant was or what he wanted, but just because he had killed the anthrophages didn’t meant that he wouldn’t hurt us. It was time to get out of here, and I started summoning the power for a rift way spell.
The featureless helmet turned towards me.
“No.”
The voice was like a metallic thunderclap, and the warrior gestured with his free hand. He was working another spell, but he was too late. I cast the rift way spell, mist and white light rippling before me and…
Nothing happened.
The spell fell apart. For an instant I thought that I had botched it. Then I realized that the warrior had cast a counterspell of some kind, a ward that had sealed off this part of the Shadowlands.
Making it impossible to open a rift way.
I couldn’t even fathom the amount of magical power that would take.
“Who are you?” I said, once I had found my voice.
“I am the Knight of Grayhold,” said the towering warrior in that voice a metallic thunder, “and you have trespassed upon my demesne.”
“We didn’t meant to do it!” said Alexandra.
“Right, yes, exactly,” I said. “If you just let us go, we shall depart immediately and never return.”
“No,” said the Knight. “There is a mystery here. You will give me the truth.”
He gestured, and white light swallowed everything.
Chapter 6: A Deal You Just Can’t Refuse
I flinched, half-expecting to feel a blast of lightning ripping into my flesh.
Instead I only felt cold air blowing against my face and hands and legs, and I heard the loud click as my heels struck stone.
A hard, polished, smooth stone floor.
I spun, blinking in surprise.
Alexandra stood next to me, her jacket and torn blouse blowing in the cold wind. We were still in the Shadowlands, and the ribbons of fire played across the empty sky over our heads.
This time, though, we were in the mountains.
Specifically¸ we were in a mountain far higher than anything found on Earth.
I saw snow-covered slopes stretching away below us, a range of mountains spreading away to the left and right. Below were foothills and rivers and forests of those blue-glowing trees that had stunned the fat anthrophage. I spotted a mass of gray stone far below, and realized it was the ruined castle that we had sought.
The Knight’s magic had moved us a long distance in an instant.
I turned again, trying to get my bearings. We stood upon a broad terrace of gray stone, not far from an intricate railing. I took a cautious step forward and peered over the railing. Far below, I saw the slope of the mountain. It was at least a thousand feet down.
I wasn’t going to escape in that direction.
“Oh my God, Irina,” said Alexandra. “Look.”
I turned once more, seeking the Knight, and blinked in astonishment.
The Knight stood behind me, a tower of blue steel and white light, but that wasn’t what had caught my attention.
The massive, half-ruined castle rising behind him was unlike anything I had ever seen before.
It was huge, as big as one of the skyscrapers in Seattle or New York, though its half-ruined look put me in mind of the spell-shattered towers in the wreckage of Chicago. I thought of the structure as a castle, yet it was a strange mix of castle towers and cathedral spires and ziggurat terraces and palace colonnades, a dozen different architectural styles blended together, all of them half-damaged and crumbling. If you gave a deranged architect a trillion dollars, a bathtub full of mescaline, and a thousand years, he might have come up with something like the castle sprawling along the mountainside.
“What is it?” whispered Alexandra.
“Grayhold,” said the towering Knight, his metallic voice as final as the closing door of a tomb.
“Right,” I said, trying to think. “Grayhold. And you’re the Knight of Grayhold. Which means that you are our host, and we are your guests…”
A rasping hiss came from the Knight’s helmet. It might have been a sound of amusement. “You think to claim guest rights? You have a bold tongue. But, no. You are not guests. You are intruders, and I shall decide what is to be done with you.”
“But we didn’t mean to intrude,” said Alexandra.
“Alexandra,” I said, but she pressed on.
“We were fleeing for our lives, and we entered your domain by accident,” said Alexandra. “If you let us depart in peace, we shall be more than happy to leave and never return.”
“I am aware of the circumstances,” said the Knight. “I wish to learn more.”
“We are both employees of Duke Carothrace of Madison,” said Alexandra. Which was stretching the truth a little, at least in my case. “His lordship the Duke would be displeased to learn of this.”
“I am the ruler of Grayhold,” said the Knight. “I am not a subject of the exiled High Queen Tarlia. Her law has no power here.”
“That’s elfophobic,” said Alexandra, automatically.
I sighed and braced myself, but the Knight again made that rasping metallic hiss.
“Elfophobic, is it?” said the Knight. “How well Tarlia has trained you. You are the architects of your own prisons, and you know it not.”
There was movement in the shadows behind him. A colonnade ran along the base of Grayhold’s towering wall, and a robed man stepped from the gloom.
His robes…
I blinked in surprised recognition.
James and Lucy Marney were regular churchgoers, and they had brought up Russell in their faith. The Marneys rarely got me to go to church with them, but Russell was effective at guilt-tripping me into it. So sometimes I went along, and to pass the time I flipped through the colorful pamphlets of Bible stories next to the hymnals.
The robed man who walked to join the Knight looked exactly like the pictures of the ancient Babylonians and Assyrians in those pamphlets. He wore the same ornamented robe of red and gold, the same elaborate headdress, the same golden torques and amulets, and he even wore his long black hair and beard in the same style. The robed man had cold black eyes and a hooked nose like a bird of prey, and he regarded Alexandra and me with clear disdain.
“You have returned, great lord,” said the robed man. “Have you brought guests, captives, or concubines? Speak, and your will shall be done.”
“Concubines?” said Alexandra, appalled.
Again the Knight made the rasping sound of amusement. “Neither. At least, not yet.” That made me wonder what he intended to do with us. His helm swiveled to face me, and then back to the robed man. “I believe she may be the one we expected. Bring the bracelet, and meet me in the Hall of Attainder.”
“As you will, great lord,” said the robed man, offering a bow to the Knight.
“And just who are you?” I said.
The robed man sneered. “Bah! You modern women have no sense of your place. In my day, you would have been shorn bald and sold in the public marketplace as a prostitute for speaking out of turn to your betters.”
“That doesn’t answer the question,” I said.
This time the Knight did bark a short, harsh laugh.
The robed man drew himself up. “I am Sipad-Zid, Seneschal of Grayhold, and I received my seal of office from the hand of the Great King of Akkad himself. For forty-five centuries I have fulfilled my office, assisting the Knights of Grayhold as they defended the sunlit lands of Earth from the darkness that dwells beyond the Shadowlands.”
“There is your answer,” said the Knight. “Seneschal, meet us in the Hall of Attainder with the
bracelet. You two, come.”
He beckoned, and again white light swallowed us.
When the glow cleared I found myself standing in a cavernous, gloomy hall that looked like a cross between a Gothic cathedral and an art museum. Dozens of stone pedestals stood scattered throughout the hall, and upon each pedestal stood a nine-foot tall suit of steel armor similar to the Knight’s armor. The armors were all different colors – blue and red and green and black, and the symbols cut into the armor all gleamed with harsh white light.
Alexandra and I followed the Knight as he strode down an aisle between the pedestals. Between the clang of his metal boots and the click of our high heels against the stone floor, we made quite the cacophony. Vaguely I wondered what would happen if I tried to open a rift way here, or if I attacked the Knight with a lightning globe and tried to escape. Given the absolute power that a lord of a Shadowlands demesne wielded within his domain, I expected my end would be both quick and messy.
Yet I was still alive. If the Knight wanted to kill us, he could have let the bloated anthrophage and its pack do it for him. He had gone out of his way to save our lives.
Maybe he needed something from us.
“Your names?” said the Knight.
“Alexandra Ross.”
“Irina Novoranya,” I added.
The Knight stopped next to an empty pedestal. “You speak the truth.” His helmet swiveled to face me. “You speak a lie.”
He stepped onto the pedestal. A series of clangs came from his armor, and it started to unfold, opening around him like a giant metallic flower. I braced myself, wondering what kind of horror lurked beneath the massive armor. Some sort of giant? Maybe an orc, perhaps? I had never seen an orc in the flesh, but I knew that the rebel Archons of the Elven homeworld used orcs as shock troops.
Then the armor opened all the way, and the Knight of Grayhold stepped out in the flesh.
I blinked in surprise.
The Knight was human, stood a few inches over six feet, and looked to be in his late thirties or early forties. He had dark blond hair tied back into a ponytail and a close-cropped blond beard, his eyes a bright shade of blue. His clothes were utterly prosaic – a green camouflage jacket, a worn blue work shirt, jeans, and steel-toed work boots. A sheathed sword hung at his belt, and a peculiar gauntlet of gray metal covered his left hand, its plates written with magical symbols.
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