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 fri
ghtening.
Matthias clutched his robe around his chest and hurried past the closed and locked offices, past the ivory busts of previous Rocaans, past the gilt-framed portraits that hung from the corridor walls. One of the Auds, a small, balding man he didn’t recognize, grabbed him by the arm, oblivious to the breach of etiquette.
“Please, Respected Sir, we need palace guards here. Only they can save us.”
The man’s grip was strong. It rooted Matthias into place. He glanced down at the hands on his arm. They were bare, in accordance with an Aud’s disdain for ornamentation, the fingers thick and blunt, the nails bitten through. Matthias slowly brought his gaze to the Aud’s face.
“The only one who can save us,” Matthias said slowly, “is the Holy One carrying our prayers to God.”
Matthias shook free and continued down the corridor, not waiting for the Aud’s response. More servants ran past him, carrying sticks and bits for firewood. One large man in chefs white lugged a large sacred sword ripped from the Servants’ Chapel door. Matthias bit back a reprimand. The man could wait for discipline if he survived the day.
Which, Matthias was fairly certain, none of them would.
He took a deep breath to calm himself. He had never seen such fighting. It had begun shortly after he’d sent the Danites to the King. People were slaughtered all over the streets by Fey with swords. Then this latest group of Fey arrived, and with a simple touch, they could flay a man alive. Matthias had watched three such killings from the Rocaan’s windows before he’d realized deep in his soul that the pain and suffering were real—that neither the Holy One nor Roca himself would swoop down from the heavens to protect the true believers.
Although, so far, they had protected the Tabernacle.
But that wouldn’t last long.
Finally he reached the bend in the corridor that attached the newest wing of the Tabernacle to the earlier kirk. There the stone was older and flaking, the carpets threadbare, the lighting simple candles placed in tiny gold holders. He grabbed one of the candles, then shoved a key into the lock of a small wooden door.
The key turned slowly and the lock itself groaned at the use. For a moment he was afraid it wouldn’t open at all. Then he felt the mechanism give. He pushed the door open and coughed at the dust that floated out to greet him.
He glanced over his shoulder. No one was in the corridor. He stuck the candle in first, then followed it, closing the door behind himself.
The candlelight was meager. It illuminated only his hand and arm and small patches of the surrounding wall. He couldn’t see the stairs, didn’t know if they had rotted away from disuse. The air was stale and dust-filled. He took a step, using the toe of his leather shoe as a guide to find the edge of the stair. He found it and stepped down gingerly.
Something caught in his hair, and he muffled a cry, flailing with his left hand until his fingers tangled in the sticky strands of a spider’s web. He grimaced but made himself move forward, hand extended outward in front of his face to prevent any of that gooey stuff from touching him again.
By the Blessed Sword, he had never envisioned himself doing this when he had awakened that morning. He had expected to go through his routine, to finish negotiating with the Rocaan over the land south of Killeny’s Bridge for the Auds, to speak with the King’s son Nicholas about his lack of faith, to sup with the Rocaan. Matthias had never imagined that by evening the world as they knew it might be gone.
But no one had envisioned this, and even if they had, they hadn’t known how to prepare for it. They had no soldiers, only guards who had trained on stories of peasant battles generations old. The sea and the rocks had guarded Blue Isle. Until now.
The deeper beneath the Tabernacle he went, the colder the air grew. The chill had a dampness to it. Water dripped somewhere ahead of him. There was a rank smell down there of swamplike decay, and he didn’t want to think what manner of creatures he might find as he went forward.
The stairs twisted into the darkness. Matthias leaned on the rotted railing, counting the landings, two, three, four. On the fifth he stopped, holding his candle forward in the vain hope that he would be able to see the bottom.
And he froze. The edge of the landing had fallen away. The stairs were gone. These passages were not the answer. He had hoped to hide the Rocaan down here. But not even a young man would survive the jump to the bottom.
He swallowed. His throat was dry. He had never realized how much being alone terrified him. He clutched at the sword around his neck more from habit than any desire to call upon the Holy One. He had to get back upstairs and find another solution.
But he didn’t want to go back to the chaos. He wanted to wake up and discover this was all a nightmare, that he would be warm in his bed, and the rain would still be beating outside, marking the continuation of the unnatural summer. He wanted to start the day all over again, not visit the Rocaan’s hellhole, not see those ghostly masts on the Cardidas, not feel that frisson of terror rising in his stomach.
The drip-drip-drip of the water was fading behind him. His meager candle was burning low, the wax warm as it melted across his fingers. He didn’t move very quickly, afraid of being alone in the darkness, but the force of his imaginings kept him moving. He knew, in the rational part of his mind, that he would go upstairs to find things still the same: the Auds and servants panicked, the Danites prepared, the Officiates blocking the door to the Rocaan’s suite, but the part of his mind that held dreams and terrors had locked on to the images of death it had seen that morning.
He didn’t want to die that way.
He didn’t want to know that nothing lived beyond the grave, that Rocaanism was the vision of a crazed, charismatic man who had managed to collect believers all over the Isle centuries ago. Matthias paused and rubbed his free hand over his face. In times of trouble the true believers were turning to their God, and he—scholar, leader, rational thinker—had nothing to turn to at all.
Even though he had tried to believe. He had tried to believe, since he was born the second son in a land-owning family, the son who would live in his brother’s shadow or make a shadow so large in the Tabernacle that no one—not even his brother—could ignore it. The moral part of him had thought it wrong that he was using the Church for personal gain, and that part was crying the loudest now, telling him that this fix he was in was his fault for denying the power of the Words Written and Unwritten.
He climbed the stairs two at a time, clinging to the rotting railing for support. The candle’s flame guttered; in a moment it would go out entirely. His fear of the darkness won over his fear of the real world—he pushed the door open with a strength he didn’t know he had—
—Only to feel the door open a few inches and then jam. Light poured in as his candle flickered out. Voices, shouting in a language he didn’t recognize, echoed through the corridor, followed by screams and thuds. For one crazy moment he thought of running back down the stairs, but knew he couldn’t. He had a duty to the Rocaan—a duty he valued as much as his life. He couldn’t forsake the old man now.
Matthias shoved on the door again, this time opening it far enough to stick his head through. To his great relief the corridor was empty except for the prone body of an Aud blocking the door.
God. They were inside now.
The terror he had felt below rose like bile in his throat. He shoved again, a strength born of panic coursing through him. The Aud’s body slid to the side and he got out, slamming the door behind him. Blood was spattered all over the stone walls and was running down the door.
He had to get upstairs. He had to see.
The screams and clangs were coming from the direction he had originally come from. He would have to go through the servants’ wing.
Matthias stepped over the body of the Aud and ran down the corridor. The shouts grew fainter as he moved. There were signs of turmoil everywhere: candles knocked on the floor, tables overturned. Someone had slashed a portrait of the Tenth Rocaan, the canvas curling fo
rward, chips of paint scattered on the floor.
Matthias had rounded the final corner past the Servants’ Chapel when he saw them. A band of twenty Fey, tall, slender, and frightening in their dark leather. They were standing over the body of another Aud and arguing in that guttural language. A deep laugh interrupted them, and a shorter Fey, wearing a red cap, his features gnarled, reached down to the Aud, took long, dripping strips from the body, and stuck them into a bag around his waist.
It took a moment before Matthias realized the strips were the man’s skin.
He couldn’t repress the groan of shocked horror that left his throat. The Fey turned in unison, and Matthias’s gaze met all of theirs, their eyes equally dark, bleak, and empty.
The little man took a step forward, and that broke Matthias’s paralysis. He screamed as he turned, unwilling to die as the Aud had but knowing that he probably would. If he ran down the corridor from which he’d come, they would catch him, and flay him, leaving his blood to drip down the walls. He had nothing to defend himself. He would be helpless before them.
Instead he turned toward the Servants’ Chapel, thinking he would grab one of the ceremonial swords. They were the right size, and Roca would not mind if his symbol was used to save one of his faithful’s life.
If Roca existed.
If Matthias was considered faithful.
Still, at this moment, his soul was less precious than his life.
He pushed open the double doors into the chapel, placing his palms on the empty spot where the sacred sword had been. His feet slipped on the slick stone. Someone had kicked the carpet aside and spilled liquid on the floor. It took a moment before he realized that the wetness was blood.
The pews were overturned and bodies were everywhere, most of the feet bare and intact. Danites, Auds, servants, all dead. But he couldn’t stop to absorb the destruction. He had to keep moving, to find a weapon that would save his own life.
Sacrifice: The First Book of the Fey (The Fey Series) Page 9