As I moved through the tent flap, the noise of the embattled camp crashed down like a wave. Hundreds of people were shouting, chira were roaring, and the shriek and clang of steel echoed off the blasted masonry of the Crownsway.
It towered above the camp, that ancient highway. Pillars taller than the trees, supporting even taller arches and platforms, rose over the canopy to cast a monolithic shadow under the two moons. In so places the forest grew around and even through the road, branches and creeper vines choking it as though to drag that old wonder of engineering back down into the earth.
Things were crawling down from the highway. Scuttling shapes, spider-like, inhuman. They moved through the camp, killing. Their shapes blurred through the night, shy of the torches carried by the defenders.
The Karledaler n-at-arms weren’t just lying down, though. Many hadn’t been in full kit when the attack started, so there were n and won fighting in simple shirts and trousers. A knight in full plate, probably the captain of that evening’s watch, bellowed orders even as he fended off the creatures with a tall halberd.
Outside the Empress’s tent was a clearing of sorts, an open space ringed by more tents. There were dozens of soldiers in it, and I could see them rallying.
“Defend the Queen!” A hoarse voice called out. “The Queen!”
Queen, and not Empress. These people still saw her as theirs, as the ruler of their holand. They would die to protect her.
And almost as though to test that asure, sothing strode into the center of the camp. It was vague at first, half-real, still congealing into waking reality. First an arm long as a tree, which swept out and grabbed the shouting knight easily as it might an acorn. Then a long face, just human enough to confuse, shrouded in lank green hair from which a single werelight eye peered out.
The way its jaws, almost a snout, unhinged wasn’t human at all. It lifted the struggling warrior up and dropped him into a cavernous gullet. Unpointed teeth snapped closed, and the Karlesian chevalier was gone.
The bloodied defenders stared in horror at the troll as it crouched down on its knuckles. Its lower half was still mostly miasma. Its bloated jaw worked, and it swallowed once. Smaller creatures sward around it, diminutive things with forms at once both unsettlingly human and gracefully insectile. They carried finely made weapons of wood and bone, spearheads and arrow-points of bronze glowing with witchlight.
I walked through the throng of shaken defenders until I stood between them and the giant monster. I took one slow breath, then spoke.
“The queen and the prince are alive.”
One of the soldiers near spoke in a rush. “Fucking demons. They ca out of nowhere!”
“They’re not demons,” I said, staring at the shivering swarm as it gathered at the edge of the torchlight. “They’re elves.”
Despite its towering size, the troll had thin proportions. If it were closer to human height, it would seem a scarecrow. Its head tilted as it studied . The camp defenders stared at in shock. I heard their furtive voices, catching the word Headsman among them.
I spoke again, this ti to the attackers and in elfcant. “Why do you do this, wyldefae? What trespass have we committed?”
The troll’s right hand closed into a fist and it began to raise its arm. I tensed.
The fist ca down like a thunderbolt. I waited until the last possible instant to dodge, sidestepping the blow and allowing the giant’s hand to crater the frozen ground. I swung my axe, slicing through the wrist, not severing it but coming damn close. Brackish blood reminiscent of swap water spilled out.
The troll’s only reaction was to grunt and jerk its arm back. It clutched its wounded wrist to its chest. Only a beat of skin and so tendons still connected its hand.
Excellent work, Caim. I’d expected to only deal a superficial wound.
I was already moving. Golden fire flickered along my reforged weapon as the insectoid creatures started to scurry forward. No two of them looked quite alike. So had moth wings, others looked more like beetles, and all possessed compound eyes and many sharp limbs sporting crude, yet sohow beautiful, weaponry.
Those were elves, but most of the attackers were apish things that loped on all fours, stunted, with wolfish teeth and barking, howling voices. Those were irks. Wild changelings. ℞áΝȫ𝖇ΕṤ
The first bronze-tipped spear shattered under Faen Orgis’s edge. My fist lashed out, pulping the spear-wielder’s brittle skull. There was fire on my hand too, and my strength wasn’t human.
The faeries recoiled from , but I wasn’t in a rciful mood. They’d almost killed my queen, almost murdered her infant child.
I would find out why later. Until then, there would be blood.
The moon-and-torchlit camp beca a haze. I recalled the fight later in flashes. My axe struck, and struck, again and again and again, and each ti it did there was a burst of scorching aura and another dead, smoking monster. The troll tried to stamp with its foot, only to be hamstrung and crash into a cluster of tents. Rosanna’s guards killed it with pikes and halberds.
A faerie knight, looking like an emaciated beetle on its hind legs with a complex helt sporting compounded crystal eyes, gave more of a fight than the others.
But not a long one. A sword tall as a man lashed out, blue aurefla trailing its cut. I leapt back, its tip missing my foot by inches, and lashed out with an arc of my own red-gold magic. I caught the creature in its enlarged eyes, and almost as though those lenses were an organ, it screeched in a horrible, almost childlike voice and stumbled back, scrabbling at its bulbous head.
My axe’s handle cracked and grew, its length tripling in the space of a flourish, and I whipped it out. There ca a flash of light, a hiss of air, and the elf toppled as its head rolled away.
Smoke, freezing vapor, and miasmic immortal blood trailed off as I glared around the camp and realized all the imdiate threats were dead or fleeing. The surviving wyldefae were scuttling back into the woods. There hadn’t been as many as I thought.
“They’re running!” An archer shouted. “Bastards are running scared!”
A cheer went up. n had gone into the Empress’s tent, giving her more protection. There were riders on war chira tearing through the encampnt, cutting down stray faeries while captains delivered orders. Everywhere was shouting and the manic shrieks of fleeing irks echoing off the trees.
I grabbed one man-at-arms as he was moving past . “Ser Kaia. Prince Darsus. Where are they?”
“Haven’t seen them,” he said quickly. He was out of breath, and near covered in gore as . “They’re not with the dead. We’ve been looking.”
I let him go. Though my heartbeat was settling after the brief but brutal lee, I felt a creeping dread start to replace the battle rage.
A commotion at the camp’s entrance drew my attention. I caught a glimpse of Rosanna leaving her tent. She was under heavy guard, with six n-at-arms covering her with shields as she marched into the carnage. She no longer held her baby, and I guessed she’d passed the young prince off to her handmaidens.
I spared her only a glance before turning to the gathering crowd at the palisades. As I approached, a tall figure stumbled through the throng. Kaia Gorr was an impressive sight, tall as and sporting a shock of ash-colored hair. She was clad in white armor, and the black-and-white surcoat of a Silvering clan-knight, though her own mark of an iron tusk showed inside the silver sun on her heart-protector.
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She’d been wounded, and limped, and her heavy saber dripped with elf blood. She stared at through a mask of red, gave the smallest sign of recognition, then stumbled past as the Empress approached.
Seeing that she entered the camp alone and injured I acted without hestiation, placing my fingers in my lips — I didn’t care they still had blood on them — and whistled sharply. A man near flinched and threw a confused look.
“My son?” Rosanna asked her First Sword. Her voice was quiet, barely audible as the soldiers settled into silence.
“They took him.” Kaia’s voice rasped with exhaustion. “I failed you, my lady.”
Silence for a brief, tense mont. “Yes. You did.”
Kaia weathered the coldness in those words stoically. “I will find him, I swear it.”
The knight was obviously barely standing, but it wasn’t sympathy that made Rosanna shake her head in refusal. “No.”
I’d seen her cold, and cruel, and even rciless. This felt different. A storm built behind Rosanna Silvering’s green eyes.
Kaia’s face paled. “But, I must—”
“Die to appease your sha? What use is that to , Kaia?”
Rosanna turned to . I nodded and turned as Morgause cantered out of the night, drawing close enough for to grab her reins.
“Find him.” Rage, and fear, strained Rosanna’s voice.
I didn’t waste ti replying to her. I mounted my chira and we tore into the wild.
Once I was out of the camp, I opened the largest of my packs and heaved Vicar out of it. The pelt was huge, and heavy even without bones and organs. The skulless head hung limp to one side for a mont, seemingly dead, before light flickered in the eye.
“The encampnt was attacked by wild faeries,” I said without preamble. “The Empress’s son was captured.”
Vicar’s burning eyelight drifted to my face. “Unfortunate.”
“Can you find them?”
The devil considered a mont. “A scent would help.”
I hesitated, knowing I had nothing like that and no ti to go back and find one of the boy’s combs or sothing. Not a single second could be wasted.
“He’ll be the only human out in the woods. This is important, Vicar. Please.”
Would he make beg? Or make another bargain?
The devil must have sensed my desperation. He let out a weary sigh and said, “I will try. Place on your shoulder.”
I did, swallowing my disgust. Though he looked like a simple animal skin, the devil still moved in a disturbingly liquid manner. He started to sniff the air next to my face while I tilted my head away and tried to ignore how close his sharp teeth were. He stank of sulfur and animal musk.
“I think I sll him.”
Hope flooded through . “How far? Is he alive?
Sotis wild fae will take their kills with them, to use their corpses in rituals or simply to eat them. If Darsus was alive…
“Hurry,” I urged.
“He is not far, but moving fast.” Vicar sniffed several more tis. “Still alive, I think. That way.”
His lupine snout turned, pointing deeper into the forest. Without hesitation, I urged Morgause into the night.
I moved fast. Recklessly fast. Morgause was a nocturnal creature, so the darkness didn’t impede her ruby eyes. But scadumares were adapted to barren wastes and windswept moors, not dense forests.
I didn’t care. Every second might an the worst. I will not be too late. I refuse it.
I cannot fail again. Not this ti, not for this.
Why now? Why try to kill the Empress, why take her son?
Who attacked us? Those weren’t Woed. I would have sensed the corruption.
Vicar was saying sothing. I had to drag myself out of my own tumbling thoughts as he repeated himself. “You must slow down, or you will lose her!”
There was still so snow on the woodland floor. It crunched beneath Morgause’s sharp hooves. A branch sliced across my cheek, drawing blood. The forest seed to be growing denser, closing in, turning almost cavernous. Creeper vines and dips threatened the chira with every step. She let out a hiss as more sharp twigs snapped at us both.
“Alken!” Vicar’s teeth snapped by my ear. “Do you want to save the boy or not!?”
Spitting out a violent curse, I jerked on Morgause’s reins and brought her to a stop. The faux-horse heaved, scraps of moonlight catching on her fogging breaths. Very little of the two moons showed through the forest canopy, so thick it almost ford a ceiling. The trees grew close together at strange angles, their trunks dotted with hollows like pitted eyes or mouths. I sensed things watching from within those holes.
“An irkwood,” Vicar noted. “You let them lure you into their nest. Leaving again won’t be easy.”
I let out a breath and forced calm over myself. “It’s fine. At least the way isn’t closed.”
The forest converged into sothing very like a tunnel ahead. I dismounted and patted Morgause on the neck. She hissed and snapped at , baring her needle teeth. She hadn’t liked being driven through the woods so recklessly.
“Sorry about that,” I told her in a low voice. “Lost my head. Can’t take you in, your ladyship, or you’ll be eaten. Wait for here.”
With Vicar still hung over my shoulders, I left my chira behind and started walking deeper into the dark forest. As I went forward, the feeling of strangeness intensified. The trees took on surreal colors and abstracted shapes. The sense of being watched went from suspicion to dreadful certainty. Light blood in the wood’s depths, like stars forming and dying in an alien sky.
It would have been too dark for human eyes, but my own golden ones cut through the uncanny space. I could see things in the branches above my head. Giant spiders, like those in the Fane, and stranger forms still.
I walked into a clearing, almost a pit, surrounded by giant roots and clouds of luminescent vapor. The hollow was lit in the center, but the light seed to co from nowhere, the top of the space shrouded in a darkness like I stared up into a bottomless well. Across the way, stone steps andered up a shallow hill.
“You are surrounded,” Vicar whispered into my ear.
“I know.”
Several bodies dropped down behind . I stopped mid step the sa instant Vicar’s pointed ears lifted.
A trap. They want to turn around.
Instead, I lifted my axe — the handle was still elongated, making it more a halberd — and planted it on the ground. Gilded fire curled its way up the weapon, and within seconds it beca like a torch. Vicar flinched, but I made sure the magic didn’t touch him, keeping it on the axe only.
The creatures moving to surround had a similar reaction. The hollow filled with rattling snarls and serpentine hisses, half a hundred disparate and uniquely inhuman voices shattering the quiet.
My voice echoed with aura, giving my words a supernatural volu. “I am Alken Hewer. You all know , and who I answer to. The Sidhe have taken what does not belong to them. I am here to demand Prince Darsus’s return.”
I glared around at the monstrous shapes swarming at the hollow’s edges. A whole nagerie of immortals stared back at . So were tall, others diminutive, so fair and others grotesque. There were hobgoblins, trolls, cant spiders, nymphs, satyrs, wraiths, clouds of Wil-O’ Wisps that giggled in eerie, half-real voices. There were irks too. Though the halfbreeds were just as varied in form, the way they cringed from the true elves and scurried about on all fours like dogs gave them away.
More besides, a loremaster’s catalogue of immortals. They almost seed taken aback by my pronouncent. The hollow filled twisting whispers from dozens of inhuman throats, a sound that tugged out an instinctive, human terror in .
I did not allow my inner nervousness to show outward, though. These were predators. I could not flinch.
“I don’t know why you attacked, or why you took the prince, but I am formally demanding his return. Who leads you? What oradyn would be so foolish as to attack a leader of the Accorded Realms and risk war between man and elf?”
“Who would be so foolish as to risk your wrath, Alder Knight?”
I looked to the top of the stairs at the far side of the clearing. A bare, shining foot stepped down, supporting the lithe form of a she-elf. This one was a more classical faerie, almost human save for her uncanny beauty, pointed ears, and pale skin tinted very slightly blue-green. Her raven-black hair was pulled back into a braid so long it dragged along the stone, revealing a serrated hairline and a pretty face.
She wore a white gossar dress made of spider silk, and sported two huge dragonfly wings that fluttered as she took the steps three at a ti. She alighted daintily on the forest floor, giving a theatrical curtsy as her wings flicked out to reveal violet patterns that looked unsettlingly like lidless eyes.
Her smiling face lifted, revealing mismatched irises. One was such a deep blue it looked black, and the other shone a bright, tallic gold.
“Lady Tzanith.” Despite the circumstances, I dipped into a bow of my own. I knew this elf. We’d t in Caelfall two years back.
The elf giggled girlishly. “You recognize , Ser Knight? I am flattered.”
“You are not an easy face to forget, Balesdotter. Is your father here?”
Was Oradyn Irn Bale behind this? Why would the old trickster do this? What did he have to gain?
Tzanith shook her head, causing her slim braid to swish. She folded her wings and pressed her fingertips together, showing dark green fingernails. “He is not. He has retreated into the Roads That Wend, in protest, along with many of our elders.”
In protest? Tzanith must have seen my confusion, because her smile softened.
“Many clans have joined together in a harmony not seen since your peoples first ca to these shores. You wish to speak to our leader? I have been sent to escort you.”
I risked glancing around the hollow again, trying to see if there were any other elves I recognized. Sothing felt off. An energy hung in the air, sothing like a half-rembered scent or a song whose tune fast reawakened in the back of my mind.
I did know so of these. I knew them by the aura they exuded, by the quality of the living light that clung to them. So were wyldefae, but not all. Not even most.
“Hewer…” Vicar whispered to , his tone warning.
“I know.”
He’d realized the sa thing I did. These were not wild faeries.
They were Seydii.
I addressed Tzanith in my most formal voice. “I would be honored to accept Princess Maerlys’s invitation.”
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