Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey

by Rusch, Kristine Kathryn

  Shima shook her head. “The wood won’t hold against these gates. No. It’s better to return to the ships. We still have supplies there.”

  “But the ships are in Shadowlands,” Jewel said. She stopped in front of them, her back to the other troops. “And I can assure you my father will not get them out.”

  “Your father’s carelessness got us into this mess in the first place!” Shima snapped. “Year-old maps. No schematics of the buildings. No knowledge of the Islanders themselves. Lucky for him they’re sheep. What was he thinking, bringing us here unprepared?”

  “He prepared as best he could. If we had sent Fey here with Nyeians, we would have lost any element of surprise.”

  Shima started to answer her, but Jewel held up her hand.

  “We are losing that element of surprise now,” Jewel said. “As you so aptly pointed out, we do not know what these people are capable of.”

  “You forget yourself,” Shima said, straightening to her full height. She had nearly half a head on Jewel.

  Jewel took a step back so that she did not have to look up. “I believe you forget yourself,” she said. “And if I have to, I will take over this troop so that my father’s mission will be carried out.”

  The lieutenant was standing to the side, his eyes wide, his face flushed with the heat. A silence was growing around them as other members of the troop realized that a power struggle was going on. Only the laughter of the taunters in front of the store provided a distraction from the tension. Jewel could hear nothing on the other side of the gate. It worried her. She knew they could hear the argument, but she wasn’t sure if they understood it.

  Shima’s gaze moved away from Jewel and surveyed the people behind her. Something in their posture must have convinced her, for when she looked back, her angular features had tightened even more. “I take it you have a solution.”

  Jewel nodded. “Send a small band for reinforcements. We need a double team. Then divide us in half. One half remains here to batter down this gate. The other half divides into thirds. Each third will guard a gate. That way if anyone in the palace tries to bolt, we have the advantage. We will also be able to enter that second way.”

  Shima nodded at the lieutenant. “Grab four and head for the docks. We need another hundred as quickly as possible.”

  The lieutenant bowed once, then scurried away. Jewel did not watch to see whom he chose as his companions. Her gaze was still on Shima.

  Shima’s entire frame had acquired a rigidness it had never had before. She barked orders at the remaining troop, dividing it now along the lines Jewel had suggested, and ordering the battery to begin as soon as the soldiers were in place. Then she looked at Jewel.

  “The plan is a good one. Did you pull it from some military history lesson that I forgot?”

  Jewel understood the nature of the question. Shima was still a good commander, although she was not as flexible as she should be. “No,” Jewel said. “I Saw it.”

  Shima took a step back. A Fey with Vision was always powerful; a member of the Black King’s family even more so. “I cannot risk you now.”

  “You have no choice.” Jewel let her hand drop against her scabbard. “I have come here to fight.”

  “At my side, helping me envision the battle.”

  “No,” Jewel said. “You don’t need me. You are simply letting your anger at my father’s tactics interfere with your good sense. Think for a minute. He can envision a battle better than any of us. His mind is so expansive, it can make a Shadowlands large enough to hold all of our ships. Do you believe that he would have brought us here if his Vision had failed? Or do you believe he would willingly lead us into a defeat?”

  Shima looked away. About thirty soldiers were disappearing around the wall. The remaining soldiers had rolled the ram into place. “I believe,” she said slowly, “that your father’s thirst for conquest has tainted his Vision.”

  Jewel drew in her breath in shock. No one had dared speak out against her father before.

  Shima grabbed her hand. The woman’s grip was tight, her skin hard and callused. She leaned forward so that only Jewel could hear her words. “Every night since we left Nye, I have seen my own body, broken and bloody on the banks of that damned river. And I am not alone. There are hundreds of dead Fey. These people may not look menacing, but my Vision tells me they will kill us.”

  Jewel shuddered. She remembered the Vision she had had, the deep pain, the man whose features were not Fey, and the concern he was expressing over her. Was she dying in that Vision? She couldn’t tell.

  “My father would not have brought us here if that was true,” Jewel said. “Fey die in battle. It happens in every campaign.”

  “But not to the extent I saw. Not in such a hideous way. It was as if they had partial Foot Soldiers’ skill.”

  Jewel made herself swallow. Of all the Fey, the Foot Soldiers disgusted her the most with their love of torture, their willingness to use their bare hands—to use touch—as a method for killing. Each victim of a Foot Soldier died of mutilation and blood loss rather than direct assault. “There’s no point in telling me this now,” Jewel said. “We’re here. We’re committed.”

  “I’m telling you this because I don’t think I can lead with that Vision clogging my sight.”

  Jewel nodded, understanding finally reaching her. Shima was not making mistakes because she was angry. She was making mistakes because she was afraid.

  “I’ll stand beside you,” Jewel said.

  Shima looked at her for a moment, and Jewel thought she saw fear in her commander’s face. Then, as suddenly as it appeared, it was gone. That glimpse, more than the verbal confirmation, made a shiver run through Jewel. Commanders weren’t supposed to be afraid. They were supposed to be confident and strong.

  Not inexperienced, like Jewel.

  “We should use this gate,” Shima said. Her tone had a question in it, as if she were asking if this gate fit into Jewel’s Vision.

  “It’s beside the stables,” Jewel said. “We can free the horses and prevent any escape or notification.”

  They both knew total prevention wasn’t possible. Any commander inside would understand what was happening the minute the battering ram hit the gate and would prepare his people to come out the other sides, fighting.

  But they didn’t know if there were commanders inside. For the first time Jewel began to understand Shima’s frustration.

  Jewel glanced around. The taunters had left the building. The door was closed. The dust had settled on the street, and only a small fighting force remained. Several of them stood around the battering ram, ready to pick it up and move into position. Picking it up was the most difficult task of all. It had once been an ancient oak tree, its thick trunk shorn of leaves and branches. The Spell Warders had warned her father to build a ram once they arrived on Blue Isle, but he insisted on bringing it with them, although its weight required them to bring an extra ship.

  “Let’s go in!” Shima said.

  The small troop cheered. The twenty soldiers stationed beside the ram hefted it together. They looked small next to the bark sides, their faces red with strain. They stood for a moment, catching their breath, then jogged forward until the end of the ram slammed into the gate door.

  The sound boomed through the street. Jewel felt the ground vibrate beneath her feet. Her entire body was tense. There were chips in the gate where the ram had hit. The troop stepped back in precision, then jogged in again. Another boom and vibration. Jewel listened, but could hear no response from behind the gate.

  Across the street the door opened a little way. The sunlight reflected off white skin. Jewel could almost smell their fear. No one had ever tried to break into their palace before. One of the few things anyone knew about Blue Isle was that it had never been invaded.

  Another boom. This time tiny pieces of wood flew in all directions. Jewel glanced at the gate, afraid the wood had come from the ram instead of the gate itself. But the gates were splitti
ng down the middle, dry pale sticks pointing toward the bright-blue sky.

  The troop was silent as it watched. The only sounds were the soldiers’ boots scuffling against the dirt in a rhythmic pattern, followed by the boom and vibration as the ram hit the gates. Shima watched, arms crossed, features smooth. Jewel wondered if she had spent the entire trip from Nye with this kind of taut fear in her system, and if she had, how many others had as well.

  Voices echoed from down the street. The heavy sound of booted feet moving in unison eclipsed the sound of scuffle. Both Jewel and Shima glanced up. They couldn’t see the reinforcements, but they could hear them.

  The ram slammed into the gate again, and this time the sticks fell, leaving a small hole. Goose bumps rose on Jewel’s arm. She could see more cobblestone and the gray stone of a building, legs scurrying by. Horses whinnied in panic, and voices speaking in a language not Fey carried across the morning air.

  Only a few more hits and they would be inside. Jewel glanced up to see Burden staring at her. The sun caressed his face, shining on his high cheekbones and beautiful dark eyes. When he saw her, he smiled. She smiled back. A kind of curious joy filled her. She loved battle. She shouldn’t have let Shima’s fear infect her.

  Shima walked behind the ram to wait on the other side for the reinforcements. The ram pounded the gate again, splitting all the way through the hole. The rammers pulled it out and backed up. The hole was large enough to put soldiers through, but no one had attacked from above. They still felt as if they had time to enlarge it, to open the gates forever.

  The reinforcements arrived, a fighting force as large as the troop Jewel was a part of. They spanned the road—trim, slender soldiers in identical leather, family swords hanging from their hips.

  The group carrying the ram ran forward and slammed it against the gate, a little lower this time. With a crack and clatter, the remaining wood gave way. Someone screamed inside, and it took Jewel a minute to realize that the scream had come from a horse. The soldiers set the ram down, grabbed their swords, and ran inside.

  Half the reinforcements did the same, sounding their battle cry. The rest of the reinforcements ran to their positions at the other gates. Jewel unsheathed her sword and followed the troops inside. She assumed Shima was behind her.

  The first soldiers had already set the horses free, and the frightened animals were stampeding through the melee, trying to find a way out. Grooms struggled to close the stable doors. The troop was squeezed into a narrow corridor between the stable and another building. Some of the soldiers on the periphery were fighting guards, the clang of metal upon metal resounding over the din. Babies were crying, women screaming, and horses rearing up, trying to kick anything in their way. Still the troops pushed forward, and ahead Jewel could see the stone walls of the palace’s first tower rising above her. This palace had windows, and from above she watched someone push a tapestry aside and overturn a bucket onto the troops, the falling liquid so hot that it steamed in the warm air.

  Jewel screamed a warning, but it was too late. The liquid coated the troops beneath the window, and their screams mingled with those of the horses. Jewel turned away, still trying to push forward through the teeming mass of moving bodies. The bitter stench of sweat and fear filled the area and mingled with the dust, making her want to sneeze.

  More guards spilled out of the palace, and the clash of steel against steel became almost deafening. Other Islanders joined the fight, carrying whatever they could find—axes, knives, sticks. Jewel could see it all but couldn’t participate in any of it. She was still trying to pull out of the mass in the center. Finally she broke free near a pair of double doors on the lower part of the palace itself. The heat from this corner was immense, and she fancied she was near the kitchen. She glanced up—no windows above her.

  Then the doors opened, and a small group of men emerged, most of them older, brandishing makeshift weapons. The man in the lead held a long serrated knife, his white clothes coated with dirt and grease. Jewel noticed the details even as she lunged for him, swinging her sword at his belly. He bent over to dodge the blow. She slammed her sword into the leader’s knife, the shiver of impact running down her arm. His knife slipped through his fingers, cutting his hand, and she rammed him through.

  He stumbled backward, almost taking her with him, but she tugged on the sword, and it pulled free from his body. Blood seeped onto the white cloth, and he stared down at it as if shocked that he could bleed. Then he tumbled over, still alive, but harmless.

  His other companions had scattered. She would leave them to the fighters behind her. She wanted to see what was inside.

  She pushed in through the door and found herself in the kitchen. The walls blocked the noise of the battle, making the large, hot room almost unbearably quiet. Bread burned in the brick-lined ovens. A hearth fire was unattended. At the edge of the kitchen, near the pantry, servants were running pots of hot lard and boiling water up the back stairs, making a kind of chain so that they could continue scalding the invaders.

  Jewel backed out slowly. This was not a place to go alone. She needed help, others to help her destroy that chain.

  She went back outside into the noise and the dust and the blood. The screams were fainter now, overcome by the grunts and clangs of battle. She peered out over the melee, and suddenly her vision blurred.

  She was standing beside the river with her father, his voice rising in panic. Bodies were strewn across the shore, Fey bodies, their features hideously changed, as if they had melted in the hot sun. She was coated in blood. Her father was shouting orders, but no one seemed to be listening to him. They were all staring in disbelief at the bodies before them.

  An arm tugged her into the hollow of a wall as a knife whistled past her face. Burden stood beside her, his skin coated in sweat. “What in the name of the Powers were you thinking?” he shouted. “You nearly let that man kill you!”

  She didn’t know which man he meant. She hadn’t seen anything but the knife. For a moment her mind had been somewhere else entirely.

  “We need to get you out of here,” he said.

  She shook her head. “Grab some more soldiers. We have to go inside. I know how to stop them from pouring garbage on top of our people.”

  He glared at her for a moment, then let her arm go. They didn’t have time for discussion, and he obviously knew it. He went to the edge of the crowd, grabbing arms and pulling soldiers out of the fray.

  She clutched her throbbing elbow, breathing deeply. Shima had infected her somehow. Jewel hadn’t felt fear until she’d learned of Shima’s Vision. When this was over, Jewel would have to talk with the Shaman to see if a Vision could crawl from mind to mind like a snake.

  Until then she refused to let the fear overtake her. For if it conquered her in battle, she would die.

  TWELVE

  Outside the window a man screamed. The sound was hoarse, loud, and long, more like that of an animal in agony than anything human. Matthias froze on the steps, his right hand on the damp stone wall to brace himself. There, on the staircase between the first and second floors, the battle felt closer.

  He swallowed the lump of fear in his throat and, with shaking fingers, pulled the cord holding the tapestry. The thick fabric unrolled and slammed against the wooden window frame, blocking some of the sound. The scream continued, growing higher and more pain-filled with each instant. Matthias hurried past the window, hating the sudden darkness that made the steps treacherous, but feeling it necessary.

  He had seen too many people die that day.

  In hideous ways. The stripping of the flesh inch by inch made his stomach turn; the blood darkening the mud outside; the bodies strewn around the Tabernacle, abandoned and without hope. So far the Tabernacle itself had been spared, although he didn’t understand why. It was clear, from the sumptuous towers, tapestried windows, and jeweled doors that the Tabernacle contained more wealth than any other building in Blue Isle except, perhaps, the palace itself.

 
; Bile rose in his throat and he swallowed again. If the Fey weren’t there to plunder the Isle, then why were they there? The only answer he could come up with after seeing their horrifying performance on the streets below was simply that they enjoyed killing.

  He hurried down the remaining stairs to the first floor. The Danites crowded against the doors and windows, holding anything they could find as weapons. Some even clutched their tiny symbolic swords, a fact that would appall any other Elder. Matthias believed that God would understand a man who would save his own skin any way he could.

  Understand and maybe even forgive.

  A few of the Auds and some of the servants ran back and forth through the red-carpeted rooms. The men’s faces showed their confusion. Some of them even tried to peer over the Danites to see what was causing the noise outside.

  The scream finally ended in a bloodcurdling howl. The silence that followed was even more frightening.