The Dark Throne, page 59
The pale light from my taebramh washed over a scene of carnage. Those of us still on our feet stared at each other, almost unrecognizable under layers of spattered gore, our faces drawn with exhaustion. My breath caught in my throat as I counted the standing warriors: eighteen, not including the Queens. The courtyard pulsed with power; my eyes were drawn to Mab, the darkness about her swirling with stars and shimmering, icy green and blue. Donovan knelt before her, and she held a naked blade above his head, laid flat on her palms. Behind her, the lifeless eyes of the Unseelie knight who had been her Vaelanmavar stared sightlessly into the darkness. Emery lay beside him, his eyes closed, finally free from the ghosts that had haunted him since the Battle of the Royal Wood. I felt woodenly numb to the pain that I knew would crash over me later, when it was all over. For now, all I could acknowledge was a dreary satisfaction that I’d survived. My breath rasped in my throat, my chest aching emptily.
“Your brother and his comrades are alive,” said Luca. Several gashes stood out on his face and arms, but none of them looked serious from what I could see beneath the layers of filth staining his skin.
“Good,” I croaked, my dry throat protesting. At that news, at least, a spark of relief flared within me. Time seemed to undulate, stretching again into long moments as we took stock of our injured and dead. We didn’t have time for the proper rites; all those who could still hold a blade gathered around Vell and Titania. The two queens looked as blood-spattered as the rest of us, but no weariness strained their faces. I straightened my own shoulders at the sight. Mab finished baptizing Donovan as her new Vaelanmavar, the tight power about her suddenly vibrating and funneling into him. He took the Brighmavar without ceremony, the blade pulsing in his hand. Mab glided through the shadows and joined the other two queens before the massive gate in the wall of the courtyard. Titania, her tawny skin glowing in the darkness, raised her sword. Niall and Ailin strode past their queen, their blades held alertly as they approached the oily blackness of the great arched gate.
A few of the shadows coalesced, and a cloaked figure rose bonelessly from the ground. My heart caught in my throat as I recognized the sorcerer who had trapped us on the bridge across the Darinwel. My lips drew back from my teeth in a snarl of wordless fury, my exhaustion forgotten; but before I could move, the sorcerer flicked his wrist and an invisible force slammed Ailin into the wall of the courtyard, his sword-arm caught at an impossible angle. Titania shouted a single word, her mellifluous voice bright with anger, and golden flames enveloped the sorcerer. Niall lunged forward and plunged his sword through its chest, heedless of the flames; and the cloak collapsed with a silent explosion that made us all stagger. A few stones tumbled from the walls of the courtyard.
Ailin regained his feet, sword held in his other hand, his face white but determined. Now more warriors joined the front rank: Finnead and Donovan, and others whose names I didn’t know. Their swords glinted in the darkness. I caught my orb overhead and sent it sailing through the gate. The doors gleamed wetly in the light, as though they were soaked in blood. I kicked the smoking cloak of the sorcerer vengefully as I passed through the archway, and Robin gave me a little grin, his hair bright as flame in the lingering shadows.
We walked down a long dark corridor, the silence strange to our ears after the chaos of the courtyard. My orb of light followed us overhead, and now and again we glimpsed something slithering in the deepest recesses of the shadows, but nothing attacked. My skin prickled uneasily. The corridor was wide, but we strode carefully down its middle. Another set of great doors came into sight at the end of the corridor. These gleamed white as bone, white as the staff thrust into Vell’s belt. Our small company stopped before the doors, shoulder to shoulder, swords held warily outward, eyes watching the shadows. These doors were barred, a great studded lock at their seam.
Vell strode up to the doors, gleaming even more brightly than Titania. A hazy aura followed her as she moved, wrapping even her blood-drenched blade in soft light. She took her ivory staff from her belt, the crown blazing against her dark hair as she gathered herself and then thrust her staff into the gaping mouth of the great gray lock. The doors bowed outward, flexing as though from a great pressure within, and most of us instinctively shielded our faces—but Vell shouted a word and wrenched her staff, and the great doors exploded away from her, sharp shards arrowing away into the darkness beyond. Screeches and howls warned us that more creatures awaited us beyond the doors—and some had been unlucky enough to catch the spear-like remnants of the great doors.
“The only way out is through, and the only way through is forward,” said the High Queen, her voice not loud but echoing all the same, and she stepped past the doors into the darkness. We raised our blades and followed. I switched my plain blade into my left hand, and gripped the hilt of the Caedbranr with my right hand, its power surging and blazing brightly through my war-markings. My hands ached, and the cut on my back stung with sweat.
We stepped through the shattered doors and into what seemed to be a great cavern. Ghostly lights flickered in its far reaches, and my skin crawled as I saw the ranks upon ranks of foul creatures gibbering and hissing at us from the shadows, an echo of what we had faced in the courtyard. A cold malevolence squeezed our chests, a feeling separate from us but beckoning to our deepest fears. Our breath plumed in white mist before us.
“Why do they not attack?” Robin muttered from my side.
“Because he does not command them to attack,” replied Luca, his blazing blue eyes fixed on something in the center of the great cavern. I followed his gaze and a thrill coursed through me as I picked out the figure sitting on the throne, wrapped in the darkest of shadows. My orb of light still hovered overhead, and I sent it forward with a flick of my wrist. The terrible sounds of the creatures in the shadows intensified, and one cadengriff lunged out of the darkness, closing its jaws around a fighter’s arm; the three wolves immediately attacked, Beryk at its throat and Kianryk sinking his teeth into its belly, Rialla shredding its wings with single-minded ferocity. The fighter’s shout still echoed against the walls of the dark cavern as the creature coughed its last breath in a spray of blood. The other creatures howled, a cacophony rising about us, but they surged and roiled in the shadows, trampling each other in their bloodlust but not attacking.
The shadows coiled about the Dark Throne laughed at the light of my orb, twisting and twining like a great nest of snakes. The Three Queens together shone with a heartening and pure light. The silver glow of the star in Mab’s crown enveloped her, and golden rays emanated from Titania, rippling outward from the Seelie Queen like waves in a lake. And Vell shone with a light that tied both of the Sidhe Queens together, a light born from both the cold beauty of the brightly burning stars and the dancing heat of a midsummer sun. The Queens’ light pushed back the shadows and made it easier to breathe. The cold still prickled upon our skin. I thought dazedly that I hadn’t been this cold since my fall into the Darinwel.
My feet moved of their own accord, and the pendant at my throat heated, chasing away some of the iciness from the air about me. I knew in my bones that the Three Queens would bind Malravenar, but it was my place to face him. I sheathed my gore-spattered plain blade; I wouldn’t need it for this fight. I slid past Vell, her light bathing my skin. The sting of the cut on my back faded, and I felt a little less tired. My war-markings blazed and my footsteps echoed, each loud as the strike of a hammer. Every step took more effort than the last. Gwyneth’s pendant began to glow like a live ember at my throat, the rubies pulsing with the beat of my heart. I emptied my mind of everything except placing one foot in front of the other, until I stood alone before the dais of the Dark Throne.
My hand again found the hilt of the Caedbranr, and when my skin touched the Sword, the shadows suddenly parted before my eyes. The Sword leapt eagerly beneath my touch, its power whirling up to meet mine, crashing like an ocean wave in my chest. I looked up at Malravenar sitting upon his Dark Throne and drew the Sword from its sheath. When I released my hold on the Caedbranr’s power, the blazing blade sent a shock wave of blinding light into the darkest reaches of the cavern.
Malravenar stood langorously, his hands caressing the skulls set into the dark glittering stone of his throne. Though the power of the Sword cut through the shadows, my vision still blurred when I tried to focus on him. He was taller than Luca, broad and muscular; or he might have been shorter than me, slim as a boy. One instant he wore gleaming dark armor, made of the same shimmering dark substance as his throne; and the next he was dressed in a simple white shirt and dark pants, walking barefoot down the many steps of the dais. My head began to ache, but I gritted my teeth.
Malravenar stopped part of the way down the long straight stairs to his throne. He spread his arms, his face flickering first handsome and boyish, and then stately and aged. “I welcome you to the Dark Keep.” His voice was smooth and mellifluous, a sinuous darkness lurking beneath the beauty. He smiled, a sight terrifying and dazzling and savage all at once. “My honored guests, how I have longed for this day.”
The shadows coalesced around us again, beat back by the radiance of the Sword and the Queens, but behind us I heard our warriors gasping, fighting to draw breath.
“You have brought fine brave warriors with you into the heart of my domain.” Malravenar smiled again, and my eyes watered. I fought the urge to drop my blades and cover my ears to block out that silky, slithering voice. “Yet as much as I have enjoyed our games of war, you had only but to ask, beautiful maidens, and I would have opened my gates to you.”
“Opened your gates in exchange for our blood,” said Vell. Her voice sounded harsh and ugly after the perfect beauty of Malravenar’s words, like the croaking of a crow after a nightengale’s song.
“A small token of your allegiance,” acknowledged Malravenar with a graceful nod, descending the steps again. The shadows swirled around him like fog. I thought dreamily that he looked sleek as a panther prowling toward his prey…elegant and dark. “And after opening my gates to you, I will open another Gate.”
We stared up at him, transfixed—all of us, the Queens and me, as our warriors struggled for breath behind us. In a haze I thought that it would be easier if they would lie down quietly—what use was there in fighting this magnificent Dark being?
The Caedbranr flared, and its power bit me, or slapped me, I wasn’t sure which, hard enough to make me stumble to one side. I almost fell, but I dropped my plain blade with a crash and put out a hand, and there was a warm tawny body beneath my palm. The sudden movement sent a sharp lance of pain across my back. I dragged in a ragged gasp and straightened, my left hand still wrapped in Kianryk’s pelt. It hurt not to give in to the glamour about Malravenar: every breath felt like I drew in a mouthful of icy water, thick and stinging; my eyes ached and I tasted blood on my tongue. But I anchored myself with the feel of the great wolf beneath my hand, the blaze of the Sword, and the pain radiating hotly across my back.
“We have come to destroy you,” I rasped, my lips dry and cracked from the aching cold. I heard one of the queens stir behind me. With a monumental effort, I raised my chin and forced one of my legs forward. Kianryk moved with me, his great head bowed as though he walked into a mighty wind.
Malravenar looked at me and laughed, the sound shaking the distant vault overhead. I screamed as his voice sent daggers of pain lancing through my head, but I couldn’t hear myself over the great thunder of his laughter. A few of our company went to their knees and then fell, and didn’t move. My war-markings blazed so intensely that curls of smoke rose from my shirtsleeve, and the pendant at my throat seemed to melt into my skin. The Caedbranr strained forward, toward Malravenar, dragging three more steps from my frozen feet. A slim figure breezed past me, passing so quickly that I thought I’d imagined it, a shadow; something stung my arm, and then Malravenar stood at the bottom of the steps. The rolling echoes of his laughter faded. My hands ached and a single thought floated through my dumbstruck mind: We were wrong to think we could match his strength.
At that thought, the Sword dug a tendril of power into the cut on the back of my neck. Force him to focus on you, the ancient weapon commanded.
Break his hold on the Queens! cried Gwyneth and the Bearers in the back of my mind. He has your blood, and his servant goes to take theirs!
And so I let go of Kianryk, and I stepped forward again. I raised the Sword, and I said hoarsely, “You are not so powerful, when a mere mortal girl still stands before you.” My throat felt like it was on fire, but I smiled mockingly, feeling my lips crack. My limbs ached as I spread my arms in sardonic imitation of his earlier gesture. “I have said I come to destroy you, and yet here I am.”
Malravenar stood before me, an arm’s length away, no longer flickering between one guise and the next. He was about my own height, his features fine and delicate, a long straight nose and full lips that would not have been out of place on a beautiful woman’s face. The whites of his eyes were very white, his pupils very black, and the irises a red ring around them, dark as dried blood. His skin was the bluish gray of the dead, his lips tinged blue like those of a drowned corpse. He smelled sharply of hot metal—the scent reminded me of something that I couldn’t quite grasp.
The Sword blazed, but he stepped past it as I stared, frozen once again, and he reached up with one long-fingered hand to touch my face. I tried to scream but his eyes engulfed me, and the feel of his hand burning against my cheek faded. He reached into me and scooped out my spirit with his other hand, delicately; my Walker-form tried to writhe away, but he held me firm.
“This hurts less if you stop struggling,” he said in a voice that could have even been gentle, and now his words were only for me. I couldn’t have called them silent, because his voice enveloped me, but vaguely I sensed Vell and Titania and Mab stirring, then beginning to move even as my awareness of them faded. The great vaulted room dropped away. Malravenar and I stood opposite each other in an ordinary room, a fire flickering in the hearth. I realized with a jolt that the room wasn’t ordinary—every object within it, the table and two chairs, the cups on the table, the floor and walls, they were all composed of the same dark matter as the Dark Throne.
The Sword was no longer in my hand. Gwyneth’s pendant no longer pulsed at my throat. I faced Malravenar in a room of his own making, stripped of my weapons. I swallowed and turned to face him.
“Shall we sit?” he asked courteously.
“Bite me,” I snapped, crossing my arms.
Malravenar tilted his head and smiled. “I had forgotten the amusing tendency of mortals to show bravado in the face of an unwinnable enterprise.” His face darkened. “I could make you sit, if it pleased me.”
“If it pleased you,” I repeated mockingly, finding it easier to think when I was hurling epithets. “I doubt anything pleases you, you overbearing asshole.”
“Sit, and stop being rude,” Malravenar said mildly. I blinked. I was sitting in the chair before the fire, my legs crossed demurely, a cup of tea held delicately in my hand. Malravenar sat in the other chair, stirring his own tea with a gleaming little spoon. A thrill of fear coursed through me. “This is a much quieter place to discuss important matters.”
In my Walker-form, I didn’t have my heartbeat thundering in my ears, or the comforting sound of my own breath. I felt my own taebramh faintly, like the twinkle of a faraway star. There was only the hollow snap and crackle of the sparkling dark flames.
“Now,” said the Dark Lord, as if we were merely discussing the weather over a friendly cup of tea. “Tell me, Lady Bearer, do you truly wish to die?” When he pronounced my title, he made it sound as though he was humoring a child, a gently forbearing tone that both kindled a little spark of anger and deepened the fear rushing through my chest. The hand that held my teacup shook slightly. Malravenar continued without waiting for an answer. “I suppose that is a rhetorical question. I have not met many who wish to die, though your dark-haired knight reeks of his own self-loathing and is as close to it as I’ve seen.” He sipped at his cup contemplatively. I glanced down into the cup I still held dumbly in my hand—I couldn’t seem to put it down—and saw that it held not tea, but an inky liquid that gleamed with an oily darkness. It could have been blood, or it could have been shadow itself.
“If I must die, then I will,” I said. My hand shook so badly that the liquid in the cup sloshed over the side and onto my leg. Malravenar tsk-ed softly and took the cup from my hand, setting it on the table again. Here his skin was not the color of death, just incredibly pale—like Mab or any of her Unseelie knights. The spilled liquid spread in a warm dark stain over my thigh.
“There are few times when anyone must die,” said Malravenar. His eyes were still the color of dried blood, I noticed. “And I would find it distasteful to kill you.” He reached out and tucked a stray strand of hair behind my ear. “In a way, you remind me of my own daughter. Willful, and sometimes disobedient.” He looked at me consideringly. “And your own father is dead.”
“You could never replace my father,” I said between clenched teeth.
“Oh, but I could,” he replied, and the air shimmered. Suddenly I wasn’t sitting in a darkly glimmering room but in the kitchen of my childhood home, and sitting across the table from me was my father. A strange and painful recognition surged through me, so intense that I had to blink away tears.
“This isn’t real,” I gritted out, clenching my jaw.
Malravenar, wearing my father’s face, smiled gently at me. Smiled my father’s smile, the one that didn’t show any teeth, the one that he only used when he spoke to Liam or me. I’d almost forgotten that smile, because photos hadn’t captured it; it lived in the recesses of my childhood memories, slightly foggy, the recollection fading with time.
