by Alex Bledsoe
Then he turned to me and drew in a huge, long breath. I was the first man he’d sniffed in detail. “You’ve been around her again since that day at the castle,” he said softly, although in his case “softly” meant everyone in the room could hear. “The smell was very, very stale before. Now, it’s—” He took a long, deep snort. “—fresh.”
“It’s probably just the rosewater I washed up with,” I said.
His mountainous hand rose and tapped my cheek. His touch was light, his skin leathery, and his sense of power apocalyptic. “Don’t worry, I’m not here for you or your lady.”
He raised his head, drew in another long breath, then slowly looked around. His head sat so low on his shoulders that he had to swivel at the waist in order to turn his head. He raised one arm, almost as long as I was tall, and pointed.
Right at Isadora.
She stood behind her father and Jack, who tried to shield her from Tatterhead’s view. There was no hiding from this Gargantua, though.
“Is that her, TH?” the older soldier asked.
“Oh, yes,” he said with a slow, satisfied sigh.
Cassandra suddenly stepped between Tatterhead and her family. In her black dress, hands on her hips, she was the very figure of a moon priestess, even though I knew it had to be all bluff. She said, “You will not touch my cousin.”
Tatterhead’s head tilted, like a puzzled dog. He said, “Aw, you’re afraid of the big man.”
“You’re not a man,” Cassandra said. “You’re a vile, smelly monster. And I’m not afraid of you.”
He sighed again, this time heavy and sad. “Vile. Smelly. A monster. Yes, that’s what they tell me.” His voice deepened without losing any volume. “Am I truly so horrible? I can appreciate beauty as well as any man. Better than most, even. I can find a girl once I’ve breathed her scent, even after years. Can any of your poor farmer lads do that?”
Cassandra’s expression softened. I’d seen this happen to actual moon priestesses, who had the ability to see past appearances to the soul beneath. It appeared she had, in fact, found her true calling. “But you’re scaring people,” she said gently.
“We’re wasting time, TH,” the older soldier said.
Tatterhead nodded and flicked his forefinger at Cassandra, the way I might try to dislodge a piece of lint. It struck her right between the eyes and she dropped where she stood.
I tried to make eye contact with Jack, but his attention was riveted on Tatterhead as he tried to block sight of Isadora, as if that would help. The boy was brave enough, but he didn’t have the experience to understand what was happening. And when Tatterhead returned his attention to Izzy, Jack would leap to her defense, after which Altura, like their neighbor Mahnoma, might very well find itself without a royal heir.
Tatterhead stepped up to Glendower and Jack. Towering over them as he did, he had no trouble seeing Isadora. She did not move, but her eyes were wide with both fear and fury. She wouldn’t let this beast do anything without a fight. But what the hell did he want?
Tatterhead leaned closer and sniffed again. He pushed Glendower and Jack aside like a man parting tall grass. The old man caught himself on the table, but Jack nearly went out the window. “It’s you, all right,” Tatterhead said to Isadora. “You are pretty. So grown up. Opulora will be so pleased.”
Isadora stood her ground. “I don’t know who or what you are, but—”
He raised one hand to her, and she slapped it away and warned, “Next time you’ll draw back a nub, wise guy.”
This was my chance. The two armed men watched Tatterhead instead of the room. If anything was going to happen, it had to be now.
So I slapped my hands to my cheeks and screamed as high as my voice would go.
Everyone turned and looked at me, including Tatterhead. I continued screaming, “Oh, God! We’re all going to die! Oh, God, please, help us!” I ran around in a circle, until finally I grabbed one of the two henchmen by the shoulders and said, “What gods do they worship here? I don’t know who I’m praying to!”
His eyes were wide with surprise, and he started to say something, but then I grabbed his sword away with my right hand, and gave him a solid uppercut with my left. I spun and clashed blades with the other henchman, who’d immediately come to his compatriot’s defense.
We locked eyes as well, and something about him was familiar. We were roughly contemporary, so we could’ve met anywhere, at any battle I fought as a mercenary, or on any case I’d worked as a sword jockey. But a name came to me out of the mists of my past. “Strato,” I said.
I saw from his expression that I was right, but he didn’t let it throw him. “That was clever,” he said with no malice.
“Only if it works,” I said.
I kneed him hard between the legs. His dropped where he stood. I kicked his sword under the table, where I hoped no one would grab it and try to help.
Then the crowd, as I expected, panicked.
Women screamed. Men screamed. That dog barked. People ran in every direction. And now I had to deal with Tatterhead.
Jack beat me to it, unfortunately. He launched himself at the monster, who caught him around the waist the way a child might catch a thrown doll.
The great monstrosity then raised Jack overhead and threw him at me. I dodged, and he hit the floor where I’d stood, hard. He slid to the wall and did not move. People stepped over him in their terror.
Isadora screamed.
Unfortunately, I couldn’t get anywhere near Tatterhead before he grabbed Isadora by the back of the neck and bent her over the dining table. He held her there with one hand, while his other reached for his pants.
When he saw this, old Glendower jumped on Tatterhead’s broad back. “Stop it!” he yelled, trying to lock his arms into a choke hold. “Stop it right now!”
Tatterhead shrugged his gigantic shoulders and dislodged the man, then kicked him without looking. Glendower slid across the floor and, like Jack, didn’t move.
There was no way I could just stand by and watch this. I shoved people aside with as much viciousness as necessary and jumped up on the table. I barely avoid stepping on the unconscious Gordon Glendower. I put the edge of the sword against Tatterhead’s throat, just above the metal collar where, on a human, a big artery lay just beneath the skin.
“Let her go,” I said. “Now!”
He turned, caught my sword between his teeth, and tossed his head. The strength was unbelievable, and I had no time to react by doing something sensible like releasing the hilt. Instead I went with it, slung across the table so hard that my arm almost pulled from its socket.
I hit the wall, taking most of the impact on my back, which momentarily knocked the breath from me. As I winced and wheezed, I watched him remove, not his own male member, but a glass ball. As soon as it got near Isadora, it began to glow so brightly, I could barely look at it.
“Ow!” she screamed, trying to free herself. “What the hell? Let me go!”
I pushed myself upright against the wall. People knocked into me in their mad attempt to escape.
Tatterhead moved the ball closer to Isadora’s bare back. The bruiselike remains of her tattoo began to smoke.
“Hey! Hey, that burns! Stop it!” Isadora demanded.
Tatterhead put the ball away, said, “That’s what I needed to know,” and tossed Isadora over his shoulder. He smacked her behind and said, “Keep still.”
“Jack!” she yelled, still sounding more outraged than frightened. “Mom!”
I scooped up my sword and this time, having learned my lesson, slid it up between his legs to nestle against whatever he carried there. “Stop it. Put her down.”
“Do what he says!” Isadora said, kicking and punching to no effect. “Let me down!”
“Put down your sword,” Tatterhead said, “or I put her through the wall.”
“No,” I said. “You’re here to get her. You won’t hurt her.”
He smiled, all yellow teeth and thick lips. “You’
re so sure of that.”
“Yep,” I lied.
“Put me down!” Isadora bellowed, and tried to kick him in the head.
“She’s not going to go quietly,” I observed.
“Stop it, you—,” Isadora said, and then she locked up, frozen in mid-thrash, repeating, “Stop it, you—! Stop it, you—!”
Tatterhead’s brow creased with worry. He forgot about me, and the knife against his balls, and instead reached back into his trousers for another of the glowing orbs. This one shone red, and when he touched it to Isadora’s skin, she went limp and silent. Her eyes were still open, but they looked like a dead person’s, a sight I knew very well. Had he killed her? Just like that?
“You just be quiet,” the monster said to her, as if she were a doll. “I’ll be gentle, and soon you’ll be back home.”
Back home? In Mahnoma, with Opulora—that was home?
He continued, “So come along, my—”
You’d think I’d see a fist the size of a small pig coming, but nope. I was so distracted by the mention of “home” that he blindsided me. He punched me in the side of the head so hard, I dropped right where I stood on the table, practically atop Gordon Glendower. The last thing I remember was Tatterhead’s low, deep voice saying a single word, one that threw everything I thought I knew, which granted wasn’t much, into chaos: “—sister.”
I went into a hazy semiconscious dreamworld. At first I saw nothing except vague shapes moving through the fog in my brain; then they resolved into human forms. The first one, I thought, was Liz; then I realized it wasn’t. It was her dead twin sister, Cathy, whom I’d known briefly many years earlier. The one I’d failed to save from Stan Carnahan.
“You’re not going to lose this one, too?” she said, her voice similar to Liz’s but softer and younger. “I mean, you let me die because you weren’t smart enough. Is this girl going to die for the same reason?”
Before I could reply, another shape can out of the fog: Janet, the princess I’d watched die at the hands of the bandits. I winced at the jolt of pain that ran between the scar on my chest and the one on my back, marking the path of the sword thrust that should have killed me.
“Really, Eddie,” she said, scolding and mocking at the same time. “How many young women are going to die because of you? How many are going to miss the chance to grow up, fall in love, have babies, because you just weren’t sharp enough to save them?”
A third woman emerged as well: Laura Lesperitt, tortured to death by henchmen looking for the last viable dragon eggs. “You tried to save me, once, too, and failed pretty miserably. Maybe saving people just isn’t your thing.”
“Stop it,” a new voice said. My three accusers faded back into the fog and a new form emerged. She had blond hair, kind eyes, and the knowing smile of a woman much wiser than any mere mortal. I recognized her, too: Rhiannon, current Queen of Arentia, the human incarnation of a the goddess Epona, although she’d hidden that knowledge from her human self.
She continued, “They’re not real, Eddie. They’re your own personal ghosts, conjured up by your conscience.”
“Are you real?” I asked. My voice sounded thin and pathetic.
“I’m more real, at least. And yes, you failed to save each of them, but you tried. That counts for something. And remember, you did save Princess Veronica. And your friend Jane Argo. And Bob Kay. And most important, Liz.”
“And Isadora? Will I be able to save her? You’re a goddess, right? You know the future.”
“You won’t save her wallowing in guilt about your failures, will you?” She touched my chest, over my scar.
“Wait, how can you be here if you’re also in Arentia as a human being with no memory of the fact that you’re a goddess?”
She laughed. “That’s the Eddie LaCrosse I know. It’s because I am a goddess, Eddie. I’m more than a mortal can comprehend. Or,” she added with a wink, “maybe I’m just a figment of your imagination, too. Either way, it’s time to stop feeling sorry for yourself and get to work.”
My eyes popped open.
I was out for only a few minutes, long enough for most of the guests to flee into the night. I awoke to Liz wiping my face with a wet cloth. She said, “Welcome back, hero.”
The side of my head was numb. “Where—?”
“Gone. With his two friends. About twenty minutes ago.”
“I was going to ask where I was.”
“Flat on your back with your lights out, like all the other heroes. How many times do you think you’ve been knocked out in your life?”
“Too many.”
“I remember the moon priestesses saying the damage could add up.”
“Who are you?” I deadpanned.
She tweaked my nose. “The only person who’ll always be there when you wake up, however you happened to go to sleep.”
I managed a smile at that. Then I asked, “Where’s Izzy?”
“Tatterhead took her. Beatrice tried to stop him, too, with just a dinner knife, so I had to . . .” She looked down.
“What?” I prompted.
“Knock her out,” she said guiltily. “I haven’t punched anybody I liked in a long time.” Her voice grew softer. “Did he kill Izzy? She looked dead.”
“I don’t know,” I said as I sat up. It burned me up to think that after all this time, Mahnoma had succeeded in killing the baby I once found in the woods, and right under my own damn nose, at that. And then I remembered that insane final word, and wondered what the hell freak story I’d actually stumbled into.
Beatrice lay on the table as well, along with the still unconscious Jack and Cassandra. Phoebe attended to the prince, while Clancy held his sister’s limp hand. Gordon had been placed on one of the benches. His two daughters, like grim little harpies, stood watch over him. I got the impression they’d bite off the fingers of anyone who came near. And eat them, too, probably.
“So no one’s dead?” I asked.
“No,” Liz said. “Just banged up a bit.”
I swung my feet off the table. The two soldiers I’d incapacitated sat on the floor, gagged and tied up back- to-back. They did not struggle, but just watched with eyes that missed nothing.
“We thought you might want to question them,” Liz said.
“I will, when my head stops moving on its own. But I know what we have to do next.”
“We go after them,” Owen Glendower said. He cradled one arm in the other. “We get back my granddaughter before something terrible happens to her.”
“That’s my plan, too,” I said. I couldn’t tell him what I’d heard, and truthfully I began to doubt my own memory. I mean . . . sister? He must’ve meant it metaphorically, maybe as a fellow Mahnoman. Right? There couldn’t be any actual blood relation, could there?
“But I still don’t understand the why of all this,” Liz said, breaking me out of my reverie. “Why would Opulora want Izzy?”
“It isn’t Opulora,” a new voice said from the shadowy foyer. “At least, not directly. It all goes back to King Gerald.”
I couldn’t make out the face of the man speaking, but his voice was familiar. “Yeah?” I challenged. “And why would King Gerald care about a peasant girl from Altura?”
“Because,” the newcomer said, “once upon a time, he drank, and saw the spider.”
Part III
Isidore Redux
Chapter
NINETEEN
He stepped into the dining hall as casually as if he’d been entering his favorite tavern. He was my height, slender, with dark skin and close-cut, wiry black hair. He had a pack slung over his shoulder that I knew carried the tools of his trade: pens, ink, and lots and lots of vellum sheets.
It was my turn to say, “You.”
“Indeed,” said Harry Lockett. “Pleasure to see you again, Mr. LaCrosse. You’re a long way from Neceda.”
“I’m on vacation.” I climbed off the table, wobbled a bit until my head cleared, then shook his hand.
He looked
around at the damage and casualties. “I’m not familiar with this definition of ‘vacation,’ but you seem to be having a hell of a time.”
“I assume you’re working?” I said.
“I am. Always. We don’t get vacations.” He turned to Liz.
“And Miss Dumont. Good to see you again as well. Your hair’s longer.”
“Only until I cut it,” she said.
“You should keep it long. It suits you.”
I first met Harry Lockett back in Neceda, where he’d appeared searching for the real story behind reports of fire- breathing dragons and the cult that worshipped them. He still didn’t know the whole truth about that, but he’d helped me out when he didn’t have to, which put him in the good-guy column as far as I was concerned. His appearance here was a surprise but not a shock. Scribes answered only to themselves or their Society, asked the questions no one else could ask and generally did their bit to keep kings and other throne-holders honest. “Who is this?” Glendower demanded of me.
“You can ask me directly,” Lockett said. “I speak your language.”
“Who are you, then?”
“Harry Lockett, Society of Scribes.” He offered his hand, then saw Glendower’s injury. “Whoops. Sorry.”
“What has happened here?” King Ellis said from the foyer.
He and Ajax stood there, as aghast as Harry was calm. Ajax had his sword in his hand, and flexed his fingers eagerly around the hilt. I would’ve loved to see Tatterhead mop the floor with him.
“You left the party too early,” I said to Ellis. “A monster belonging to King Gerald’s court sorceress came and stole your son’s girlfriend.”
“I beg your pardon?” Then he saw Harry. “A scribe,” he said disdainfully.
Harry bowed his head, the most respect a scribe had to show anyone. “Harry Lockett. You’re King Ellis, I take it.”
“Yes,” Ellis said, annoyed as only a king can be when presented with someone who’d note down his every word. “What brought you back?” I asked.
“We saw . . . well, your monster, I suppose, with a girl over his shoulder, heading away from here. So I insisted we come back. And on the way—” Then he saw Jack. “Son!” Jack blinked awake, winced at the pain, and tried to sit up.