Daybreak (75 page)

Ulric’s face went dark. He knocked the steward aside with a spell. “I’ll get him out —”

“No. Leave him,” Crevan snapped.
 

He couldn’t have cared less about the battlemage or the whisperers. At the moment, one fear rose above everything else. He looked down at the chains on Ulric’s wrist and saw that one of them glowed red …

But the other was dull.

“Where’s the Dragongirl?”

Ulric’s face turned the color of sand when Crevan spun on him. Only when his chains burned white-hot did he finally admit with a yelp: “I don’t know! I can’t hear her — but she’s still bound, Your Majesty. I swear she’s bound!”

Crevan didn’t care. He didn’t care what Ulric’s excuse was. He’d entrusted the archmage with everything … and he’d failed.

Ulric cried out when Crevan grabbed him by his face. Red seared the edge of his vision and madness swelled inside his veins. He was going to crush Ulric between his fingers, snap his skull into pieces and grind all of the little bits of bone into the mortar beneath his feet …

“… the Dragongirl!”

A cry swam through his ears, followed by a pressure on his arm. Someone grabbed his wrist. A man’s full weight dragged him down, pulling his hand away from Ulric … stopping him, slowing the pressure …

Crevan swung out against the force that held him back and struck a steward across the face.
 

His slight body flopped onto the ground. Crevan’s blow had broken his nose, busted his lips, and must’ve knocked out at least one of his teeth: there was a large, black gap at their front. The steward’s mouth parted around his swollen lips and he moaned: “The Dragongirl …
escaped
, Your Majesty. Have to move … had to warn … coming …” Blood poured in a renewed trickled from his nose as he raised himself up. “She’s coming for … the throne room!”

The madness fled Crevan’s eyes in a blast of cold. Shouts filled the hallway, shadows scraped across the walls. Ulric lay curled upon the ground at his feet, clutching piteously at his face.

“Get up and follow me.
Now
!”

But no matter how Crevan barked, Ulric wouldn’t move. Bruises welled across his head and gashes marred his face. In his rage, Crevan had wounded him: the archmage could no longer feel the shackle’s curse above his pain. Now the madness was gone … and his sword was broken.

He feared what would happen if Ulric realized he was free.

“Seal the doors,” Crevan managed to gasp as he backed away. He kept a wary eye on Ulric while the stewards rushed to do as they were told. The moment they’d turned their backs, he bolted for the passageway.

The tunnels through Midlan were his only escape, now. There was a tapestry hanging at the back of the throne room. He ripped it aside and slid through the door behind it. Crevan stumbled for a moment, feeling along the wall until he touched a familiar track of stone.
 

He’d traveled this path so many times before that the darkness hardly slowed him. The stairs and passages twisted beneath his feet. They would carry him away from Midlan. He would escape with his life. But before he left, he had to retrieve the sword.

He couldn’t let her have it. He couldn’t let her carry it again.

I’m going to teach you, Crevan. Let me show you —

No! He shoved her voice away and clawed the stone door aside. Crevan tumbled out into a well-lit passage and staggered to his chambers. His fingers numbed against the door’s handle. When he finally managed to get it open, he fell inside.

The room beyond was dark. All of the windows had been sealed with stone and mortar; the hearth fire burned out days ago. Crevan rushed to the table beside the hearth and gasped in relief when he saw that the sword still lay upon it.

He snatched it up and had gone to turn when he noticed the scabbard was strangely … light.

An orange glow flickered from beyond the opened door — one thin beam to see by. He turned the scabbard’s mouth into the light, hands shaking. It was empty. The sword was gone.

All of the blood plummeted from his body and gathered in the bottoms of his feet. The line of orange light thinned considerably as Crevan stared down at the scabbard. He watched it shrink into a thread, a scratch … until it finally disappeared with a
click
of the closed door.

“It’s been a long while, Crevan.”

Her voice scraped down his spine with a dagger’s edge, deepening to a growl at his name. The scabbard slipped from his hand. He stumbled in the pitch black of the room until his back struck a wall. Crevan was pinned inside the darkness, blind and helpless as her words filled the chamber with cold:

“I had a feeling I’d find you here. This is where it all began, isn’t it? This is precisely where I found you the last time we …
talked
.”

Crevan’s tongue swelled inside his mouth, drying even as a cold sweat drenched his face. “Please …” he managed to gasp.

A hum started in the darkness before him. It was the moan of a vengeful spirit, a sound that crushed his bones: the whispering of that cursed white sword.
 

“No.”

There was a hiss through the air before him and Crevan went blind against a flash of pain. His head slammed back against the wall. Warm lines of blood poured down his face, weeping from the fresh tear though his scar. Her blade split that line a second time. She’d carved him exactly where she’d carved before.

His blood spilled with such a resigning weight that it dragged him to his knees. Crevan barely heard it when she drove her fist into the bricked window beside him. He moaned and shut his eyes when she began to claw the stone aside, as the gray dawn came spilling in through the window behind it.

The madness was gone. He would’ve given anything to have it consume him, to have its red fury cover the world. But she’d taken it from him. She’d taken everything from him. Crevan had never been made to cower before she struck him. He’d never known fear. He’d never lost. But the Dragongirl stripped him of his blood, his pride.

The day she’d split his face was the day he’d first tasted death … and now, it was all happening again.

“Please, I’ll give you anything you want.”

“Can you give me the lives of my wolves, the lives of their pups?”

“The curse is broken! They’re free to go,” Crevan said. He pressed a sleeve against his wound and dragged himself to his feet. “Your wolves can leave this very —”

“Those aren’t
my
wolves, Crevan. Not anymore. You’ve taken all the life from them, destroyed their souls with your hate. Had you released them when I first asked — when I first
begged
you to — they might’ve gone on to live happy lives. But now their only happiness will be in the peace of the eternal woods.”

She ripped the last chunk of stone from the window and glared out into the coming dawn. Her eyes raged against its light. Their fires clenched his chest in a pitiless, aching cold.

“Please …”

“Do you remember the day I asked you for them?” she said quietly, her eyes distant. “Do you remember what you said to me?”

“No — I don’t,” he said when her hand curled into a fist. “I don’t remember!”

“You said …”

Her voice trailed into a groan. Red bloomed across her throat for a moment as her collar flared — and Crevan saw his chance.
 

“End yourself, beast,” he said as he sprang to his feet. Her face twisted against the pain of the blazing collar; sweat filmed her brow. “Yes, drag the blade across your throat. Do not stop. Coat the floors with your blood.”

The curved white sword rose against the shaking of her arm. It came to within a mere inch of her neck. The Dragongirl growled and her glare tightened as she clenched her fist again.

There were raw, red blisters across her fingers. She pressured them, her face paling against the pain even as her burning stare stayed locked onto Crevan. Slowly, the red began to fade from her collar.

He bolted for the door.

She caught him around the throat.

The world shook as she slammed his body against the wall. Crevan fought to stay conscious. “Don’t run from me, coward. You were always so brave, as long as you had someone else around to fight for you. Midlan, the mages, the Sovereign Five — they were only too happy to do your bidding. But they aren’t here anymore, are they? No … it’s just you and I.”

Crevan couldn’t breathe. It was happening again. It was all happening again. This room, those words, the blood pouring down his face — the unforgiving strength of the hand wrapped about his throat.

“You said you’d never understand it,” the Dragongirl whispered. “When I asked you to set my wolves free, you said you’d never understand why I would possibly waste my time on them. You said it was baffling, the idea that any man could choose to become
less
than human — and that being chained to your service was a far greater honor than they deserved.

“You said you’d never understand how so lovely a woman could possibly care about such a mindless pack of barbarians. You didn’t know my secret, then. You didn’t know that I
was
one of those barbarians.”

No, Crevan hadn’t known what she was — but he knew what would happen next. He clawed furiously at her hand, though there was no hope of breaking her grip. “Take the shapechangers, if you want them. Take the Kingdom!”

“No, it’s too late for that.”

She dragged him to the window and pressed his face hard against the glass. From where he stood, Crevan could see the entire northwestern reach of Midlan stretched out before him. His army scattered like ants from the force that burst through the western walls: an ocean that writhed with swords carried by men of every region. They tore through his soldiers and swarmed into the keep.

To the north, monsters reigned. His beasts had broken free of their chains and now set upon the soldiers trapped beside them. A mob of animals crushed through the melted gates, led by a light that made Crevan’s eyes ache against its fury.

A man moved beneath the light, his figure turned to shadow. Weapons and armor broke beneath its power; soldiers fell helplessly before it, their bodies engulfed in flame …

“The burning sword,” Crevan moaned in disbelief. He twisted against the Dragongirl’s hold. “Please, I’ll give you anything!”

She leaned to whisper in his ear: “There’s only one thing I want from you … I want you to understand.”

“No!”

“I want you to know what it feels like to have the world ripped out from under you, what it’s like to be made to watch as everything you know and love goes flashing by — what it’s like to be utterly, and completely helpless.”

The window groaned as she pressed him tighter against it. A hairline crack webbed across the glass. Crevan’s eyes twisted to the chamber behind him.

“Ulric …
Ulric
!” he cried, but there was no answer.

Crevan begged for the door to open, begged for the Dragongirl to be stopped. But there would be no stopping her, this time. Ulric couldn’t hear him over the pain of his wounds — wounds left by Crevan’s fury. And the man who’d burst through the door nearly twenty years ago wouldn’t be able to save him again …

Crevan had ordered the beastkeeper to skin him alive the night before.

As the Dragongirl pressed him against the shrieking glass, he could do no more but stare out at the ruins beneath him. The fortress of Midlan had fallen: its walls had given way and its enemies stormed into its keep. Never mind the catapults or the archers — this army didn’t need them. All of the wards upon his tower were useless.
 

From this highest, insurmountable point, King Crevan paled against the view of a man who’d lost everything.

“I think it’s time you understand what you did to the shapechangers, to the whisperers … to me. And I can think of no better way to explain it than this.” She jerked him back and slammed his head through the glass, forcing him to look at the world below. “I’m going to teach you, Crevan. Let me show you how to fly.”

A monstrous army crushed its way across the northern courtyard.
 

Kael could hardly focus on the soldiers when he saw the horde of beasts pushing in behind them: wolves, lions, bears, and foxes — all twisted into hideous giants beneath the King’s curse. They towered above men on two legs, and hefted claws that looked capable of snapping entire cages of ribs.

No sooner had the monsters come pouring from the keep than the shapechangers arrived. Graymange howled at the sight of them, and the other shamans added their cries to his.

They tore off before Kael could stop them, weaving their way through the soldiers. Most of them were slight enough to slip between the ranks unnoticed — though the bear shaman left a considerable mess in his wake.

Kael knew he couldn’t keep up with them. So instead, he struck the soldiers hard. He fought to keep their eyes turned upon him and away from the shapechangers.
 

Daybreak roared through the air in a storm of flame and sparks. It devoured every last drop of moisture in the air above him. Against its power, the heavy flow of rain was reduced to nothing more than a thick, damp cloud.
 

The blade’s heat slid between the scales of Kael’s armor and bit his skin with all the unforgiving force of the sun. Though he could feel himself turning raw, he never once slowed his pace. Each new wave of soldiers staggered back from the white-hot blade in surprise — and the moment they were off balance, Kael melted them through their armor.

 
The monsters bellowed with fresh life when the shapechangers reached them. Though their bodies were massive, they didn’t move as one. All it took was a dog’s bite or the swipe of a badger to anger them. Kael watched a lion charge away from its companions, only to get dragged down by a horde of the strange, striped creatures who followed the fox shaman.

“Abominations!”

Kael swiped a cluster of soldiers out of his path and saw the bear shaman standing at a corner of the fray. He held the wooden medallion from his chest and it burst with a strange white light.