by Joshua Khan
“Lady Shadow’s days are numbered anyway.” Golgoth offered him a slice of cheese. “Now that everyone in the New Kingdoms knows she’s a witch.”
“Let’s hope the other houses send better assassins than you.”
Golgoth laughed. “Oh, it won’t be the executioners you need to worry about.” He drew his fingers through stands of spiderweb dangling off a branch. “It’ll be armies.”
“We’ll beat whatever anyone sends.” He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. Gehenna was in dire straits. Lily played it down, but she was desperate. No Skeleton Key meant no help from her father. With trolls marching down from the north and these jewel spiders falling out of the sky, Thorn feared it wouldn’t take much more to bring House Shadow crashing down.
“You haven’t the men. Everyone knows that.”
“Yes, we have. Lily’s come up with reinforcements. Old Colm’s probably training them right now.”
“Reinforcements, eh?” Golgoth scratched his stringy beard. “I wonder where she found them.”
The road began to widen and the trees were thinning out. “We’re back.” He nudged Thunder into a trot.
There were still a few miles between the edge of Bone-Tree and the walls of Castle Gloom, but as soon as Devil’s Knoll came into view, you knew you were there. Thunder picked up the pace as he sensed the end of the journey. Golgoth rode beside them, and eight hooves kicked through the snow.
Castle Gloom rose steadily from the horizon. First to be seen was, of course, the Needle. The tower was twice the height of the next tallest. Smoke still lingered over the remains of Old Keep. Closer were the dark walls upon which layers of black ivy, painted with frost, sparkled with the light of the fading sun.
Something wasn’t right. There should be twenty men at the gate; Thorn spotted only two.
The portcullis rose as they drew nearer. They were on the drawbridge when the inner gates swung open.
Slowly, cautiously, they entered the courtyard.
Old Colm hobbled over to meet them.
“What’s going on? Where are the reinforcements?” Thorn jumped off Thunder and searched around him. The place was empty except for a few workhorses, a bunch of squires, and some odd-looking soldiers.
Old Colm pointed at them. “Right there.”
“Oh no,” muttered Thorn. No wonder they looked odd. They were zombies dressed in armor. So that’s why Lily had been so secretive about them.
Golgoth laughed.
Old Colm stared at him. “Why is this fool wearing armor?”
“Master Colm, meet Golgoth. Golgoth, meet Master Colm.”
Old Colm scowled. “More mischief?”
A zombie had a helmet on and a spear sticking out of his chest. It didn’t seem to be bothering him. A squire was trying to pull it out.
“They’re supposed to defend Gloom?” Thorn asked.
Old Colm looked as if he was going to cry with despair. “Meet the new Immortals.”
The Immortals. That was the name the Shadows had given their undead regiment, back in the days of the great necromancers.
“More like the Incompetents,” Old Colm continued. “We can’t get them to do anything useful. We’ve been trying to get them to line up along the battlements, but they keep wandering off. Either that or they stumble over the edge into the moat. We’ve fished two out this morning already.”
Golgoth dismounted, wiping tears from his eyes. “This is the finest jest I’ve heard in years. Wait till Duke Solar hears it.”
Thorn handed the letter over. “Is this all we’ve got to defend Castle Gloom?”
Old Colm grimaced. “Defending the castle is meant to be the executioner’s job.”
“But we ain’t got no executioner at the moment,” said Thorn.
Old Colm’s eyes narrowed as he looked over at Golgoth. “Seems to me we do.”
Thorn stirred the honey into his porridge while the old men argued over breakfast the next morning.
There was Old Colm. He banged his peg leg on the flagstones of the kitchen. “What about the trolls?” He waved a slip of paper at the others. “This came by bat this morning, from Baron Sable. He’s facing a horde, and there’s no knowing which way it’ll go. We need to deal with the trolls first!”
There was Sir Grimsoul, leader of the few Black Guard who had remained behind at the castle. He was older than Old Colm, and some of the squires believed Grimsoul was actually a zombie. He’d always been so dull and doddering that nobody could tell whether he was alive or dead. Grimsoul waved his spoon at Old Colm, flicking watery porridge over the weapons master’s face. “Listen here, sonny. Listen here. Listen. Are you listening?”
“Get on with it, you old git!” snapped Old Colm, snatching the spoon out of his hand.
Grimsoul screwed up his eyes to stare hard at Old Colm. “We’ve been given a job to do, and that’s what we must do. Guard Castle Gloom. And that’s the front and back of it.”
And then there was Golgoth.
Considering that he was their sworn enemy and had recently tried to kill their ruler, he was making himself quite at home. He picked a bun and sliced it into quarters with two swift strokes of his knife. “The trolls are not behind the kidnapped villagers; we know that now. That is the work of these magical spiders. While Lady Shadow investigates them, we need to prepare ourselves against further attacks. And”—he looked meaningfully at Thorn—“find a way to rescue our loved ones.”
The trouble was, all of them were right. But each thought he was more right than the others, so they couldn’t agree on anything.
Thorn didn’t know what to do. So he grabbed the milk jug.
As he poured himself a second—or it could have been a third—mug, he noticed someone waving at him from the doorway. The air wasn’t clear in here; it was a mix of floating flour dust and steam, but it looked like…
One of the Shade brothers.
What did they want? They usually haunted the maids’ changing rooms.
Thorn wiped his bowl clean with a piece of bread and shoved as much of it as he could in his mouth, then went to see the spirit.
It was hard to think of Mal Shade as a ghost. Aside from the pale, semitransparent form, he looked and acted just like a squire. But ghost he was, and so was his brother. Gart hung farther back, in the corridor, playing with Custard.
“What’s up?” Thorn asked.
“You want to tell him?” Mal asked his brother.
Gart tickled the pup’s nose. “We’ve spoken to Lord Shadow.”
“You?” Thorn exclaimed. “Why hasn’t he contacted Lily?”
“He’s tried, but something—or someone—is stopping him,” said Gart. “He wants to know how she is.”
“She’s fine, last I saw of her.” That wasn’t entirely true, but there wasn’t much anyone could do about it, even if Lily let them. “Iblis is worried about something?”
Mal gestured at the kitchen. “They’re talking. The servants and soldiers and the squires. We hear it all.”
“When you’re lurking in the changing rooms, right?”
If a ghost could blush, then Mal would have. “We don’t do that anymore. You tell him, Gart.”
“We don’t,” said Gart. “We’re good little ghosts.”
Mal continued. “They’re blaming Lily for their troubles. They think her using magic has brought the curse of the Six Princes upon the country. They think that’s why the trolls are attacking. That’s why the villagers are disappearing and we have these spiders plaguing us. All because of Lily.”
“That’s stupid,” Thorn declared. “She’s only trying to help.”
“The Gehennish are a superstitious bunch, Thorn.”
He was never going to get used to this place.
“The number of sleepers are growing, Thorn. Those villagers taken from Pitch Farm and Three Barrows? They’re not the only ones, just the latest.”
Thorn thought back to when he was in a spider-induced sleep. “The sleepers will wake up s
oon, I reckon. Meantime, they can’t do nothing to no one.”
“They can dream,” Mal said.
“What difference does dreaming make?”
Mal shrugged. “We’re dead. We don’t sleep, and we don’t dream. But Lord Shadow believes dreams can give power. Those spiders live off them, don’t they?”
Thorn agreed.
“What if they’re not the only things that feed off dreams? What if there is something else, greater than the jewel spiders? Growing fatter and more powerful all the time? That’s what Lord Shadow’s afraid of—not the enemy we face, but the one hidden. He told us to tell you: Dreams are pure imagination, and imagination is the fuel of magic.”
“Why tell me? Why not Old Colm? Or anyone else?”
They all turned at the shout. Old Colm was standing, his chair knocked back, glaring at Sir Grimsoul.
“That’s why,” said Mal. “They’ll be bickering till Doomsday.”
“Come on,” Thorn said to the two ghosts. He was fed up with hanging around. “I’ve got to make two stops, and you can tell me everything along the way.”
First it was back to his room for weapons—bow, a quiver full of arrows, and a long knife—and the warmest coat he had. The twins repeated what they’d already told him, but the second time around, it felt clearer.
“The jewel spider’s bite sent you to sleep. The dreams were being gathered for some reason.”
But by whom? And for what?
Thorn searched the dull gray sky as they crossed the courtyard to Murk Hall. The answer was up there, somewhere.
It seemed that there was no escaping the mist. It filled the roofless hall so much that Thorn could hardly see anything. He peered hard, and only then did he recognize a vast, snow-covered mass perched on a broken column. “Hades?”
The bat replied with a deep, rumbling snore.
Mal gestured back over his shoulder. “I could go get a sheep. Once Hades smells it, he’ll be licking his chops. Might wake him up.”
“He’ll just gobble it down and then be out for another three days,” said Thorn. “All he’s interested in when it’s cold is eating and sleeping. Lazier than a cat.”
Thorn stroked Hades’s chin, brushing off dangling icicles. “What are you dreaming about, boy?”
Hades’s ears twitched. His eyes remained closed.
Thorn rested his head against the giant creature’s chest. The bat was so warm, and he felt his massive heart beating like a drum. Boom, boom, boom. The bat smelled, but Thorn loved the strange odor of moist, warm fur.
It seemed a shame to wake him.
The other bats flittered overhead.
“I need your help, Hades, and I need it now.”
Thorn tugged an ear. Hades twitched, and the snore became a snarl.
“I know you don’t like it, so why don’t you just wake up?”
Lily was waiting on him, and Thorn needed Hades. He tugged harder—
Hades rammed his head into Thorn’s chest. Thorn fell back and crashed to the floor. Before he could blink, Hades was on top of him, pinning his arms with his claws, his snarling face inches above his.
“Get off me, you hairy bag of wind!”
Hades hissed.
“And when did you last clean your teeth?”
Hades flapped his wings and rose a few feet. Snow and mist swirled around him, creating ministorms within the hall. Thorn rolled over and stood. “Good. You’re finally awake. We’ve got work to do.”
“One day you’re going to push that beast too far,” said Mal. “Where are you headed?”
“Up.”
The quiver of arrows he buckled to his belt; the bow he slung across his back. Then Thorn climbed up between Hades’s shoulders, tucking his heels well in. He scratched the monster at his favorite spot between the ears. “Lily’s counting on us, boy.”
Each wing sweep lurched boy and bat another ten feet higher. Within seconds, they were out between the broken roof timbers of Murk Hall.
What a miserable gray day.
It didn’t look like the mist was going to clear anytime soon. They’d be flying blind.
Luckily, that wasn’t a problem for bats.
They rose higher, losing sight of the ground, the castle, the world beneath them. Thorn wrapped the scarf over his ears. It was cold enough on the ground, but up here the icy winds howled and cut his skin like razors. His fingers froze even inside the thick, fur-lined gloves.
Hades sailed northeast, across Spindlewood and toward Three Barrows. What had taken them all day by horse would only take him an hour or so.
Thorn settled himself and let Hades take charge of business. With his heels locked under Hades’s shoulders and seated neatly back, he hardly needed to hold on, so he tucked his hands under his armpits to keep them warm.
Where did the jewel spiders come from? Gabriel had been pulled up the chimney. The webs had covered the treetops, and there was the lack of footprints back at Pitch Farm.
The answer’s up here, somewhere.
But how would he find it? The clouds surrounded him. Gehenna spent all of winter cloaked in fog, and even riding high on Hades, he only fleetingly glimpsed the sun.
Then, after an hour of gliding through the brooding gray curtains, Thorn glimpsed something.
What was it? The freezing wind bit his eyes, making it hard to see. He blinked away the tears as best he could.
Small flashes of rainbow-hued light sparkled up ahead. They swooped closer toward—
Hades shrieked and swerved sharply; Thorn grabbed his fur before he fell off.
“What was that? Just go through the cloud!”
But Hades snarled and dove through a break in the clouds.
Brushing along the edge of the dense mist, Thorn discovered what was creating the rainbows.
Jewel spiders.
The sun pierced through gaps above him and struck the creatures, which refracted the light like a prism.
Up Hades flew, alongside columns made of cloud, hundreds of feet high. Wispy tendrils twisted and bent in the wind, ripped apart, and then re-formed farther along. They spread out like branches of some immense tree, their limbs supporting the upper sections of the cloud. At the top, Thorn swore he could see different levels, with floors and walls and platforms, all crawling with glass spiders, great and small.
The cloud’s solid.
Thorn tentatively touched a column; it resisted a little, as if he was pressing through wet sand, then thickened to stony hardness.
Hades spun sideways.
Thorn grabbed on. “Hey! You almost dropped me!”
Then Thorn realized Hades had just saved them both.
Hanging between the columns were webs. Hundreds of feet wide, their strands pulsed with hundreds of colors. And trapped within them, some cocooned and others dangling like puppets, were people. Men, women, and children.
“By the Six…” Thorn whispered, horrified.
The jewel spiders climbed from one victim to another. One man still moved, and his eyes met Thorn’s as he circled above him.
“Help me!” he shouted. “Please!”
Thorn grabbed his bow. His frozen fingers fumbled on the arrow, and he drew slower than he wanted, his arms and shoulders stiff with cold. He aimed—
The spider crept over the villager’s neck, and bit.
Thorn cursed, and loosed, knowing he was too late. The spider broke apart as the arrow pierced it straight through.
“Help…” The man sagged and was asleep.
More spiders slid along the web, and Thorn backed away. He couldn’t risk getting bitten all the way up here.
A castle in the clouds. How is that even possible?
This was how the jewel spiders were being transported across Gehenna; this was why the attacks had been impossible to trace.
It wasn’t a castle in the sky.
It was one of House Typhoon’s fabled cloud ships.
Hades rose higher, up into the shallow domes above the field of webs. He dug h
is claws into a smoky beam, and folded his wings.
Thorn remembered his talk with Ying, about how the cloud ships needed huge amounts of magical energy to fly, let alone sail all the way here from Lu Feng.
So how was this still up in the sky?
It’s because of the dreamers.
Dreams were a sort of magical energy.
Yes, it had to be. The people trapped in the webs were powering the ship. Their dreams were keeping it aloft.
Thorn watched in surprise as men slid down the spider silk. They wore strange blue armor with cloud symbols engraved upon the breastplates. Their hair was up in topknots, the same style Ying wore.
Thorn felt as if he’d been stuck wandering through fog for days, hardly understanding what was happening around him. Now that fog was lifting.
Lily used her learning to solve a puzzle. She would search through her books about the history of the New Kingdoms. Thorn couldn’t do that, but he could track and hunt. He solved mysteries by looking at what was in front of him and trying to match it with what he knew.
Ying and the Feathered Council had overthrown House Typhoon, defeating the ancient sorcerous family with new science. The few sorcerers serving House Typhoon had fled, taking whatever treasures they could lay their hands on. One of these sorcerers had managed to lay his hands on this, a whole cloud ship.
Normally it would take the power of dozens of sorcerers to fly even the smallest ship, or so Ying had told him.
But how many sorcerers would you need if you could harvest all this…dream magic?
A handful? Maybe even just one?
The cloud ship was a living thing. The dreamers produced the energy, and the webs took that energy and spread it throughout the body of the ship, holding it together, and holding it up. But there would need to be someone directing it, a will, a mind, to control it and keep it from just…drifting off. And there was one obvious suspect for the ship’s captain.
A renegade sorcerer of House Typhoon.
He rubbed Hades’s left ear as he pondered. It all fit, didn’t it? He’d guessed how the cloud ship had gotten here, and that a sorcerer was controlling both the vessel and the jewel spiders. What he didn’t know was why.