First Blood

by K. Gorman

  The fey walked ahead, Caracel leading with Yena following softly in his footsteps. Past them, light appeared on the stone, dancing like water. She was reminded of the crystal they’d passed earlier, the way its light had flickered and danced, utterly silent, caressing the shivering wrinkles of the small pool beneath it.

  A shadow crossed it once.

  She tensed as a low, harsh voice spoke, its grating words hissing into High Fey.

  “Come in, star born. Sate an old man his due.”

  Gods, it was hard to understand. The words were old, and an odd energy shivered through the air as they came, folding over them like old paper. She caught the smell of hot copper and stale, clotted blood like when she had her monthly bleed. She bared her teeth and wrinkled her nose, the smell overpowering.

  In front of her, Yena tensed.

  Then, with what looked like great difficulty, the small fey forced herself to relax her shoulders.

  “Good morrow, Dark Father.”

  The tone was light, lilting. Polite.

  It had an undertone of steel that drove down into her spine.

  Magic shivered, cold as ice. Her runes prickled. Yena sped up, ducking past Caracel. When she got to the top of the stairs, she lifted up her hands, pushed through a wall of magic, and attacked.

  Magic cracked through the air like a thunderstroke. Catrin jumped, one hand going to her ears. Sulfur and another smell, dark and shivery, like thick air in a dark cave, choked the air. Energy warred, snapping like the explosive lights the Teilanni set off for summer fêtes.

  A second wave of magic rolled over her like electricity. Her muscles numbed in a wave. She staggered into Nales, felt his sword clunk against the wall again.

  For a second, she forgot to breathe.

  Then, between one heartbeat and the next, one magic started to win.

  Reeling from the power, Catrin gritted her teeth and put one foot in front of the other, fighting against the energy that beat at her like the pressure of a thousand thunderheads.

  The tower opened into a small, square room. She caught a brief glimpse of the space—gray stone walls, tools and herbs and weapons at the sides, orb in the center, floating over a stone dais—before her attention was drawn irrevocably to the magic fight taking place to her direct left.

  She wasn’t sure what the demon had been expecting when he’d sensed Yena on the floor below, but she doubted it had been ‘bloodlined fey high priestess.’ Yena had the creature flattened to the tower’s old bricks, crackles of magic billowing from their encounter. The thing was a quadruped, with long, gaunt limbs that ended in digits that looked more like tree roots than anything mammalian. Desiccated skin hung in wrinkled lumps, a series of nasty sores running along the undersides of his arms and at his knees, chest, and elbow. A bald head revealed a stark, scabbed face with a sharp nose and a mouth full of ugly, triangular teeth.

  He might have been human, once. Or elf. But that had been a long time ago, and evil had twisted his bones since.

  In front of him, Yena’s face was a snarl, the long fingers of her hands flexed into claws, the tattoos on her skin shivering with power—as if she existed in two places at once. Caracel stood at her back, tense, guarding her.

  “I may not be able to fix the world,” she said, her voice deadly calm. Anger fluttered at its edges. “But you, Dark Father? You, I have power over.”

  She made a violent gesture with her leading arm, and swiped down.

  The creature screamed. Magic snapped and broke, fractured like a split rock.

  He crumpled to the floor and sagged. Bone snapped, then cracked, and his head curled under, eyes closing, and a gauntness appearing at his temples. A cacophony of crunching bone rang through the room as Yena’s magic crumpled him into a small, fleshy ball.

  Slowly, the magic dissipated. In a few seconds, the pressure in the room eased off.

  Catrin could breathe again.

  She sucked in a breath. It felt as though her entire chest had been kicked—from the inside.

  “What was that?”

  “A Void Wraith. A creature of the between. Very rarely do they cross into Tir Na n’Og.”

  Behind her, Doneil’s eyebrows shot into his forehead. “I can see why.”

  “I have limited combat magic, but a void wraith is special.” Yena flexed her fingers, then turned to regard the orb. “This, too, I can be helpful with.” She made a gesture. “You see the reflecting mechanism?”

  Now that the magic battle wasn’t beating her brain senseless, she could examine the orb better. It was smaller than she’d thought it would be, about the size of an apple, and floated softly in the air, a storm of light rushing silently within, with a small, star-shaped pool that rippled like quicksilver beneath it. Her mind flashed, reminded of the floating crystal she’d seen earlier, the way their light had pulsed and jerked like crackling fire.

  She nodded. In her peripheral vision, the others slipped into the room, their faces lit up by the orb’s flickering light.

  “It’s part of an old network we used to use. Energy transfer. Now, if my guess is right…” Yena pulled the sleeves of her cloak up to her shoulder, revealing slender arms of taut musculature and tattoos that wound an old, angular alphabet into the more recognizable mercari, and reached into the pool below.

  It wasn’t water. It was more viscous than that, coating Yena’s skin like a covering of smooth, metallic mud when she pulled back. To Catrin’s surprise, her tattoos seemed to repel it, leaving a chaotic imprint cut through the mud that glowed a faint blue at its core.

  The priestess felt around for something, her expression unreadable. Then, disgust crossed her face.

  She pulled back, clutching a beating heart in her hand. The liquid oozed off as she held it up, her thumb pressed in an indent between ventricles.

  Slowly, light became visible. Tiny fragments of white crystal, stitching across the heart like constellations.

  “An Ilmari entrapment spell. He bound the orb to himself.”

  Catrin watched the thing beat, entranced. “Is that his heart?”

  “I do not know.” Yena tilted her head, the light reflecting in her black eyes. “Let’s find out.”

  Her thumb pressed sharply inward, its claw gouging deep into the heart’s flesh.

  Magic crushed the air. Once again, she felt that sensation—like a thunderstorm pressed in on her mind and body. A scraping roar raged up from the bowels of the castle, pained and loud. Angry. Filled with power. Blood spurted, thick and red, dribbling over Yena’s fingers in a slick ooze.

  She crushed it with the rest of her fingers, claws cutting deep. Magic thrashed, energy cracking like a horsewhip. Catrin flinched. Crackles and arcs of electricity crawled over Yena’s hand like tiny feet, biting into the flexing tendons.

  Then, the crystals burst with the sound of cracking glass. Light flared briefly.

  The heart collapsed in on itself.

  Yena held onto it for a few seconds more, her face twisted as she kept her claws in the thing. Sulfur sputtered into the air as smoke from its surface, and more thick blood choked out of it as the thing shrunk and convulsed.

  Then, finally, it sagged.

  With a look of disgust, Yena set it on the stone edge of the dais and wiped her hand off.

  “No,” she said. “Not his. This was a stand-in. Probably carved from some poor soul. It looks a little small. Oh, well.”

  Acid touched the back of Catrin’s throat. She stared at the lump of flesh.

  A little small.

  It still flinched occasionally. The smell of sulfur hung in the air, along with something else. She’d smelled it before, in a tannery.

  The heart twitched, and something dropped in her stomach.

  Right there, she decided that she wanted nothing to do with the more serious, darker magics.

  She’d stick to summoning spells. And kimbic, if the mercari equivalents wouldn’t work anymore.

  Magic zipped. The light shifted. With a jolt, she reali
zed that she’d been so engrossed in the disgusting, flaccid lump of the dead heart that she’d missed whatever Yena had been saying about the orb. When she looked up, the fey was lifting it out of the air the same way she would lift a ball off a shelf. A small imprint of the orb’s former position lay curved in the air like a soft frost.

  At once, the thick, humming sensation in the walls went still.

  The energy diminished. Like removing a ray of sunshine from a castle window.

  The walls seemed to dim. Frozen back into regular, solid rock, rather than the awareness she’d felt earlier.

  “It is done,” Yena said.

  As if on cue, another roar boiled up from deep within the castle—loud and solid, furious, full of hate.

  And magic. She couldn’t miss the magic.

  “I thought you said he’d be weakened,” she said dryly.

  “He is. He can no longer draw power from the orb.”

  Catrin waited, but the fey didn’t continue. Instead, she tucked the orb into a pouch at her waist. Its light vanished from the room, and Catrin squinted to blink the orb’s after-image from her eyes. When her eyes adjusted, Yena had stepped back to Caracel’s side, a hand resting on his arm for protection.

  “And that means…?” Catrin prompted.

  “He can’t destroy the world anymore, but he’s still going to be a mean fight,” Nales said.

  In the explosive crash of magic, she’d forgotten he was there. He stood at her flank, his face shadowed and grim. This close, she could smell him, blood and sweat, his presence quiet but solid at her side.

  The greater demon roared again, louder, full of snarl and teeth. The walls shook with it, and she felt the floor vibrate under her feet.

  It sounded closer.

  Her mind envisioned the tight, curled stairs behind them. Their only exit.

  She unsheathed her daggers. “We should go. Keep the gate closed until we need it. Let’s see if we can avoid him. Can you still use glamour?”

  “Yes,” Yena responded. “The orb will give me a boost.”

  “Good.” She turned to the stairs. “We’re going to need it.”

  Chapter 27

  It felt odd to be giving orders, especially to a fey high priestess who had just crunched a sentient being into a painful, broken lump with some seriously powerful magic, but the rest fell in behind Catrin. The halls rushed past in a whir, one after the other.

  She had no idea where she was.

  Six squads had passed them, all heading back toward the small tower that had once held the orb, and they’d flattened to the wall each time. She held her breath at the scent of rot that went with them.

  It seemed that most of Grobitzsnak’s troops were undead, their mottled brown-gray skin devoid of life.

  She grimaced.

  The undead were harder to kill.

  Ten minutes later, their luck ran out when she walked out into an empty hallway and a crackle of magic exploded into her side.

  Pain screamed through her—erupting, and all-consuming. Her entire arm was on fire, flames rooting deep into her flesh. Energy whipped into her face, splitting her skull in sheer agony. The mercari on her armor flared bright gold, trying and failing to shield her.

  Boots pounded the floor. She heard shouts, yells. The whining discharge of Matteo’s gun from somewhere close. Swords clashed. Someone stepped over her, shielding her.

  The fire stopped. Abruptly. Healing magic flooded into her. Slowly, she became aware of Doneil’s touch on her arm.

  After several seconds, the pain began to lessen. Golden magic spun through her side, knitting muscle, smoothing skin. He pried her hand, finger by finger, from the hilt of her blade. She sucked in a breath as some of the flesh stuck, ripping free. He healed that, too.

  Then, he was finished.

  He helped her shaking body to sit up. She sucked in air, forced her eyes to look down the hall. Four dead demons lay on the ground, with Nales and the two fey standing around them. One of them must have hit her with a fire spell. The demonic equivalent of Nales’ Kimbic Two, it felt like. Doneil and Matteo stood by her. One of the demon’s heads had the distinct look of being chewed up by shots from his weapon.

  Everything, from start to finish, had happened in less than a minute.

  Nearly every part of her shook. Her mind still reeled from the fire. The runes on her arm prickled against the new skin, sensitive.

  She struggled to get up.

  “Easy, rnari,” Doneil murmured, his hand holding her down on the shoulder. “Let it flow through.”

  Anger spiked, hot and sharp, mixing in with fear and confusion, but it was an automatic response. Some part of her recognized the shock threading through her mind like a fog, the way she’d begun to dissociate. She needed to sit down, let it run through as he suggested. Take the time to mentally address it and shove it far, far down into her psyche. Otherwise, it would ride with her for the next several hours, a direct line to fear and panic, influencing her every decision and ready to split her into dissociation. A single lapse could make her go from alert and functional to numb and frozen—deadly in a fight.

  She shuddered again, just her spine and shoulders this time. Then, slowly, she grounded herself. Took a minute to sort out her thoughts, process her emotions, and address the shock and trauma deep within her.

  When she stood, she was still shaking, but it wasn’t as bad. Acid crept into her throat as she realized the smell of her burning flesh hung in the air. Matteo caught her eyes, shock and concern stark on his face.

  Ah. Apart from his own fracture, this would have been the first time he’d seen any sort of major healing. A minute ago, she’d been screaming on the floor, a quarter of her body lit up like a bonfire, her flesh making smoke in the air. Now, she was walking again.

  It was a shocking thing to witness, even for those who were familiar with healing. Some primal part of their brains simply couldn’t process the swift transition. The first time she’d seen one, she’d almost thrown up. Others had been reduced to gibbering lumps, the shock too much for them.

  She touched his wrist, then held out her arm so that he could see the bare, unblemished skin between her shoulder pauldron and bracer. It was still hot to touch, some of it red and flushed with the regeneration, but it was healed.

  They exchanged a nod, and she dropped the arm, giving herself a shake and rolling her shoulders as she walked it off. After a few steps, another shot of healing magic hit the air—Doneil, likely helping to ease Matteo’s own shock. Her newly-healed flesh buzzed briefly with its proximity, like an echo.

  She gave herself another shake, pushed it all behind her, and headed for the group.

  “Everything okay?” she asked.

  Yena nodded. “Yes. We are unharmed.” She gestured to the mangled remains of one demon. “This one had a special seeing script.”

  Ah. So that’s how they’d gotten through the glamour.

  Not that she’d trusted it completely. By the way the demon earlier had simply heard its way through, the glamour spell had already proven vulnerable.

  It was likely sheer luck that Grobitzsnak had not seen through it before. That, and he’d been distracted.

  Caracel was wiping the blood off his sword with a piece of the demon’s clothing. Nales stood nearby, silent and stoic, ready to move. His sword was in his hand, sitting at an angle similar to how Treng had held it.

  “How far is the gate?”

  Yena tilted her head, focus going to the mid-distance, like Catrin’s did when she was consulting her woodcraft.

  “Not far. Below us.”

  So, they needed to find some stairs, and to beware of demons that could see through glamour. Catrin let out a breath, some of her earlier frustration sliding back in. This place was too big. The halls seemed endless, stacking one after the other. She had no idea of the castle’s layout. The magic, and then the run, had obliterated any mental map she’d been attempting, the pieces fragmented in her mind. She had a vague idea that they
should be going left, but without the woodcraft, and with her normal meticulousness smashed down like a storm dam, she didn’t trust it.

  “The library is to the left.” Nales gestured with his sword, its tip swinging up and pointing toward an intersection back up the hallway. His voice was without inflection, and he sounded tired. “We can orient ourselves and take the stairs we found earlier.”

  Her instincts screamed, a distinct repulsion at stepping back into the paths they’d already walked, now more likely to be filled with enemies. It was also close to where they’d released the forest lord earlier.

  Suns, that thing’s magic had already knocked them on their asses once, and stripped their glamour in the process.

  But they didn’t have very many choices.

  Her breath hitched. And then what? Theoretically, the fey would go through the gate. Then, the rest of them would be left, without glamour, attempting to sneak out of a fortress full of demons and the undead—all of them likely heading to the gate once they activated it.

  It’d be like trying to fight their way through a never-ending stream.

  Her teeth gritted together.

  That was going to be an interesting run.

  Caracel watched her. She wondered if he had guessed what she was thinking.

  She gave herself a shake. Nothing for it but to do it. They didn’t have a choice—and they would be much worse off without the fey.

  “Okay,” she said, pivoting. “Nales, you lead.”

  They picked up another jog and were off again.

  The halls rushed past in a whir, one after the other, as if someone had duplicated them in a repeat. She wondered if it had been an architectural style in the demonic world—a way of showing wealth and power—or if it had the simple purpose of confusing enemies. Currently, it was doing a really good job of the latter.

  Fortunately, Nales seemed to know where he was going.

  Three more squads passed them, undead bodies running in a hushed rush of weapons, armor, and pounding boots, some so close, the stench of rot smothered her nose and caused acid to trip from her throat. The fourth squad sparked with magic.