Crown of Three

by J. D. Rinehart

  It was Limmoni’s head.

  The grief churned in Gulph’s belly. He felt faint; he wanted to throw up; he wanted to scream at Nynus, at the very heavens.

  What have you done?

  The head became a glowing orb of dazzling light. It expanded, swallowing the legionnaires and reducing them instantly to dark smears that dissolved into the air like ink into water.

  The light hovered: a pulsing, blinding bubble. Then it exploded.

  The blast slammed into the crowd. People fell, screaming, clutching at each other. A tall statue of an ancient king fell sideways, crushing a group of courtiers. Dust rose in vast, billowing clouds.

  By the time it hit Gulph, some of the shock wave’s energy had dissipated, but it was still powerful enough to knock him off his feet. As he struggled upright, the ground beneath him bucked like an unbroken stallion. At his feet, the chains coiled and uncoiled like angry snakes.

  Clouds rolled over the mausoleum, throwing the great circular building into shadow. Gray ash rained down from the clouds. Soon, the entire structure was covered.

  Gradually the dust settled. Those who had fallen rose unsteadily to their feet. The injured called out for help. Looking around, Gulph saw Ossilius lying awkwardly on his side, a tangle of chains piled over his legs. He pushed the chains away and helped the man stand.

  “What happened?” Ossilius said.

  “They killed her.”

  Saying it aloud made it real. A lump rose in Gulph’s throat. It was over. Limmoni was gone.

  On the mausoleum roof, something moved.

  Despite the horror of everything he’d seen, Gulph felt himself grinning. Gripped by a ferocious excitement, he watched as a figure clambered out of the ashes. She was alive! Somehow—through some magic he couldn’t comprehend—Limmoni had cheated death.

  But the figure was not Limmoni.

  “What passes?” said Ossilius. He repeated the phrase over and over again. It filled Gulph’s head. “What passes? What passes?”

  The figure rising from the ashes was tall and broad: a man. Its body was skewed sideways, as if the bones in its back were not properly aligned. Its head was misshapen. Light showed through holes in its chest. Its flesh—clearly visible through tattered rags that had once been clothes—was rotten and squirming with maggots.

  Its eyes were empty sockets.

  Slowly, with stiff, shuddering movements, the figure raised its arms to the sky. Half the fingers on its twitching hands were naked bones. As it turned its head, the exposed tendons in its neck stretched like bowstrings.

  “What passes?” whispered Ossilius.

  “It is Brutan,” said Gulph, saying the words but not believing them. My father.

  On the mausoleum roof, the animated corpse opened its mouth and emitted a long, keening cry that was devoid of all humanity.

  King Brutan of Toronia was risen from the dead.

  CT THREE

  CHAPTER 26

  What’s happening?” said Elodie. “It looks like the end of the world.”

  She tapped her heels against Discus’s flank, urging him forward to the front of the Trident line, where Fessan was consulting with his lieutenants. Two of the three men seemed no older than Fessan; the third had a thin white beard and a weather-beaten face, and looked as if he’d seen action in every battle of the Thousand Year War. They all wore light helms and breastplates; they all looked uniformly grim.

  As the view opened up further, Elodie gasped. Idilliam rose before them, a gigantic city built from gray stone and partly veiled by a rising cloud of dust and smoke. Surrounding it, festooned with turrets, was a sloping defensive wall. Behind the wall rose a dizzying sprawl of buildings, some of them many stories high. Castle Vicerin would have fit inside it a hundred times over.

  No, thought Elodie. A thousand.

  Though she couldn’t see the streets themselves, it was clear from the pattern of the roofs that they all radiated out from a central point. It was just as clear what occupied that center: Castle Tor.

  The castle dominated the skyline, a brooding mass of stone ramparts and fierce battlements. Crimson flags shuddered in the wind. A thousand windows stared back at Elodie like brooding black eyes. It was a hulking, alien place, and it filled her with dread.

  So why does it feel like coming home?

  Outside the city wall, perched on the edge of the chasm, stood siege engines, though they were oddly configured; their battering rams appeared to be pointed at the ground. Nearby was a circular building. Its domed roof was cracked and slumped, as if a giant had trodden on it. This was the source of the smoke.

  There was movement around the building, but it was too far away for Elodie to make out the detail; they might as well have been ants as people. Nor was there any way to get nearer. Idilliam lay on the opposite side of a vast chasm, and the only way across was a natural bridge of rock spanning the abyss from one side to the other. That was no surprise to Elodie; everyone in Ritherlee—perhaps even everyone in Toronia—had heard of the Idilliam Bridge.

  What surprised her was something nobody could have anticipated.

  The bridge was broken.

  Something echoed behind Elodie, like the memory of hoofbeats. She glanced back to see Samial, who’d shadowed her on the final leg of the journey to Idilliam, riding up on his ghostly steed.

  “There has been a battle,” said Samial. His horse champed restlessly at the bit. Behind him, the ghost army seemed to swell as, one by one, the phantom knights gathered at the edge of the chasm, forming ranks beside the Trident troops.

  There was a rumble like distant thunder. At the far side of the broken bridge, part of the mausoleum wall collapsed into the chasm, raising fresh clouds of dust.

  “It’s still going on,” Elodie murmured to him. She turned around. “Fessan, what’s . . . ?”

  She stopped, puzzled, as Fessan raised something to his eye: It looked like a square of leather rolled into a tube. Wrapped into the leather at each end was a glass disk.

  “Fessan—what are you doing?”

  “Hush, please, Princess. I am counting.”

  “Counting what?”

  Fessan stared into the strange device for a moment longer, his lips moving silently. At last he sighed and handed the leather tube to Elodie.

  “Counting our enemy. Here. Perhaps you will see something I do not.”

  Fessan turned away to consult with his lieutenants while Elodie put the tube cautiously to her eye. She found herself looking into a long, dark tunnel. At the far end was a tiny scene: Idilliam and Castle Tor reproduced in perfect miniature. It looked incredibly far away.

  “I don’t see what . . .” she began.

  “Turn it around,” said Samial.

  Elodie obeyed, and was startled to find the castle looming over her, impossibly huge. Crying out, she shrank back in the saddle, waving her free hand to fend off the huge stone battlements that appeared to be surging toward her.

  “It is a spyglass,” Samial explained. “It brings the world closer.”

  Elodie experimented with the tube, bringing it down from her eye, then replacing it. Finally understanding its purpose, she used it to scan the scene of devastation on the far side of the chasm.

  The movement she’d detected was that of hundreds of people—perhaps thousands—retreating in panic from the circular building. At the same time, soldiers were pouring out from gates in the city wall and forcing their way through the crowds. Within the chaos, groups of men stood unmoving. Elodie wondered why they weren’t running like the rest. Then she saw their legs were in chains.

  “What’s happened here?” Elodie said, returning the spyglass to Fessan.

  “We’re not sure,” Fessan replied, “but it gives us an advantage. The enemy is in disarray, their backs are turned. This is the perfect time to strike.”

  “Strike?” said Elodie. “I don’t see how we can.”

  “She’s right,” said the youngest of Fessan’s lieutenants, a tall youth with a mane
of black hair and a wild look in his eye. “The plan’s in tatters, Fessan. You said we’d be able to just ride straight in, but there’s no bridge. So much for the surprise attack.”

  “Plans are flexible, Ghast,” said Fessan briskly. “Bridge or not, we must press our advantage home. Timon—do you agree?”

  “I do,” said the man to his left, whose barrel chest was so big he wore a pair of overlapping breastplates instead of just one. “But how are we going to get across?”

  “Siege engines,” said the older man, stroking his white beard.

  Fessan nodded. “My thoughts exactly, Dorian.”

  Ghast frowned. “I don’t understand.”

  “The advance party,” Fessan explained. “They have been here for two days now, felling trees and constructing trebuchets. We will adapt their engines and use them to bridge the gap.”

  Elodie had been listening eagerly to the exchange. “Trebuchets?” she whispered to Samial. “What are they?”

  “Giant catapults,” Samial replied. “Simple machines of tree trunks and ropes. They will hurl rocks at the city wall. I saw many during the War of Blood.”

  “Hurl rocks? How does that help us build a bridge?”

  Samial shook his head. “That I do not know.”

  The debate between Fessan and his lieutenants was growing more heated.

  “Even if it works, it will take days to cross the chasm,” said Ghast, echoing Elodie’s doubts. “And you still say you want to surprise them?”

  “It won’t take that long,” insisted Fessan.

  “Assuming we do get across, what happens when we get to the other side?” said Timon.

  “Whatever destroyed that building wasn’t natural,” said Ghast. “There’s evil in that city, you mark my words.”

  Dorian stroked his beard again. “I say we act now. But before we advance, we must scout ahead,” he said.

  “And how long will that take?” said Ghast.

  Elodie could hold back no longer.

  “Dorian’s right!” she said. They turned to her in surprise. “We’re just wasting time. My brother’s in that city, remember. No matter what evil is there, we have to find him. And if we stand around all day arguing, it’ll be too late.”

  Fessan’s eyes gleamed. “A voice of reason at last,” he said. “Thank you, Princess Elodie. How do you suggest we proceed?”

  All four men were staring at her expectantly. Could these experienced soldiers really want her advice? And was this the right moment to tell them about the ghost army that stood alongside Trident? Wherever you lead, we can follow, Samial had said. But what if she promised Trident allies, only to learn the ghosts couldn’t fight in this battle? Would she lose their support? They could declare her mad after all and not worth fighting for. She wished she had told Tarlan about the ghosts and asked what he thought she should do.

  Nonetheless, ghosts or not, Elodie found that she did have a plan.

  “Have the siege engines brought out of the woods,” she said. “While that’s happening, send out the scouts. By the time the engines are set up, we should have all the information we need.”

  Samial smiled at her and Fessan looked impressed. “A sound strategy, Princess,” he said.

  Elodie felt her cheeks tinge. She imagined Palenie’s surprise; Elodie might not have taken to her friend’s swordfighting lessons, but she wasn’t hopeless in a battle. She stared across the chasm and frowned. “I just don’t know how the scouts are going to get across.”

  “They will fly!”

  The voice was accompanied by a great gust of air as Tarlan brought his thorrod mount over the cluster of Trident soldiers. Discus reared; Elodie held tight to the reins as her hair blew wildly in Theeta’s wake.

  Elodie’s stomach turned into a bundle of knots. She could still hardly believe that her brother had dropped out of the sky and into her life. The idea of losing him again after just a few days was unbearable.

  “No!” she cried up to her brother. “It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m from Yalasti,” Tarlan replied. “I’m used to danger, Elodie.” He gestured to Idilliam. “Besides, we need to get Gulph out of there.”

  She knew what the set of Tarlan’s jaw meant; after all, she’d seen it reflected back at her in a mirror enough times. He’d made up his mind.

  “Then be careful!”

  “Don’t worry,” Tarlan told her. “I’m coming back. I promise.”

  With a whoop, he tugged at the thorrod’s neck feathers. The giant bird rose vertically, the down draft from her wings nearly knocking Elodie from her saddle. The other two thorrods followed him out over the chasm in close formation. The tigron and the wolf emerged from a nearby thicket of trees, ran to the edge of the abyss, and watched them depart, ears pricked.

  Elodie stared as the three birds dwindled. Seen against the enormity of Idilliam, the massive thorrods looked no bigger than insects.

  “I hope he knows what he’s doing,” she murmured.

  “They will return.”

  A hand closed around hers. It was icy cold, but its grip was firm and confident. It belonged to Samial.

  Elodie gasped. She clasped her fingers over the boy’s smooth, cold skin.

  “So that’s why you always pulled away,” she said slowly. “So I wouldn’t realize that you’re—”

  “Dead,” Samial finished. He smiled. “Living people hate the cold. You would have fled.” Elodie smiled back. “You’re right. But now, I want to stay.”

  Fessan’s voice rose above the murmuring that had begun in the ranks.

  “It is decided!” he announced. “We will restore the Idilliam Bridge and cross to face the enemy. Our queen has commanded it!”

  Silence fell. Everyone turned to Elodie. Slipping her fingers from Samial’s, she guided her horse alongside Fessan’s. Her gaze swept across the sea of faces, living and dead, each looking back at her. She turned to face Idilliam, where her brother Tarlan and his loyal thorrods were just specks of dust against a tableau of war. Above them rose the indomitable heights of Castle Tor. Somewhere over there was Gulph.

  She felt that the past few weeks had been designed to bring her here, to this place and this moment in time. I don’t know if it was an accident or the prophecy, she thought. But here I am.

  “I say Fessan is right,” she said. “Have we come all this way just to turn around and go back into the woods?”

  “No!” roared the surrounding soldiers.

  “Then we attack. We mend what is broken and we take what is ours. We attack, Trident. WE ATTACK!”

  Her words were like sparks igniting Trident into flame. The column—which up to that moment had been resting in a long straggling line stretching far back into the forest—surged into action. Shouts rang out and swords were drawn.

  Elodie’s whole body was tingling. She urged Discus out of the way as teams of horses hauled six enormous machines out from the cover of the trees. The trebuchets. They looked like great hunched beasts, poised to spring on their prey. The horses dragged them on sleds—there’d been no time to make wheels, she supposed—and even before the teams reached the bridge, they were foaming with sweat.

  Fessan ordered the soldiers of Trident into line behind the trebuchets. The bridge was wide enough for them to ride thirty abreast and still leave ample room on either side. Elodie was glad of this: The Idilliam Bridge had no parapet, and anyone straying too close to the edge risked certain death in the chasm below.

  But it was a very long way across.

  Ready as she was to lead her army into battle, Elodie could hardly believe it was happening. It was less than a month since she’d been living her pampered life in Castle Vicerin, only vaguely aware of the harsh world beyond, believing the crown would simply be handed to her.

  So much had happened since then.

  Ahead, barely visible as tiny specks against the gray stone of Idilliam, were Tarlan and the thorrods. Beyond the city wall was Gulph.

  Beside her, floating in the
air as if riding on an invisible bridge, rode the ghost army. Among them was Samial.

  This is exactly where I’m meant to be, she thought.

  Elodie straightened her back and lifted her chin.

  A bugle sounded. She dug her heels into Discus as the army picked up its pace.

  Trident rode out to battle.

  CHAPTER 27

  With a groan, the rest of the mausoleum wall collapsed. Roof tiles clattered like giant hailstones into the rubble. A fresh wave of dust blasted out over the screaming crowd. Gulph twisted his face away, clawing the powder from his eyes.

  Looking back, he saw Brutan, the undead king, descending the sloping field of debris.

  He could scarcely accept what he was seeing. How could that monster have been his father?

  Brutan’s movements were slow and jerky. With every step, he studied his juddering legs like he was seeing them for the first time. He stretched his arms and flexed his fingers, naked to the bone, as if testing their strength. It was impossible to tell where his torn robes ended and his tattered flesh began.

  When Brutan reached the ground, he stopped. Sunlight streamed through his perforated flesh. His head swiveled in little jerks on creaking tendons. With each jerk he paused to survey another part of the scene: the wide root of the broken bridge, on which the upturned battering rams had fallen silent; the crowds of peasants pressing against Nynus’s soldiers, who were holding them back; Nynus himself, wearing his mask, seated on a raised platform between the mausoleum and the city wall.

  How can he see it all? Gulph wondered. He hasn’t got any eyes.

  Even as he thought this, flames lit up inside the undead king’s empty eye sockets. Brutan unhinged his jaw and emitted a dry, penetrating scream. The scream went on and on, grating against the inside of Gulph’s skull. Fresh ash fell, shrouding Brutan in a cloud of gray.

  “Ossilius!” Gulph yanked on the chain to get his friend’s attention.

  Ossilius shook his head as if coming out of a dream. “I did not think the old stories true.”

  “Stories?”

  “From the dark times. Stories of wizards.” He stopped to rub his eyes, as if he didn’t trust what lay before them.