Child of Darkness-L-D-2 (24 page)

He sat up, brushed the soil from his garments, and looked around Sanctuary. Nothing had changed. And yet, everything had. There had been no sign, nothing unusual, like the appearance of Ayla’s Goddess. But the world looked new to him, and he felt a pang at the thought of leaving it.

Still, he forced himself to stand, to fix his appearance, and to walk away from the peaceful, timeless spring, back to the reality that seemed so far removed from where he stood. He found the path away from the clearing and turned back. In the trees, something moved, something that was almost a face formed in the leaves.

When Malachi blinked, it was gone.

Fifteen

T hey gathered in the throne room, transformed from individual fighters into a force that, at least on the surface, appeared organized and battle ready.

The moment had arrived. Ayla stood on the dais, looked over the Faeries who would go and fight for her, for their race. Her envious gaze sought out each bow, each blade. No matter how dire, she wished to fight with them. Always, she wished to follow her guards off to battle. It stung doubly that she recognized some of these faces from the ranks of the Assassins’ Guild. If she were not Queene, perhaps she would be a part of the fight now. Two guards brought the Elf prisoner to the throne room. He was gagged, so that he could not alert his foul kin to their presence.

Ayla stepped down from the dais, her fists clenched in the folds of her robes. The creature was frightened. He should be, she thought with wicked satisfaction. The guards had not been gentle with him. The grotesque yellow of one eye shone out beside its twin, too swollen to open. Deep red blossoms mottled the black of his skin, as if his face had been filled to bursting with pulped flesh and festering blood. Ayla looked into the face of the enemy, and she lashed out, striking him. “You will lead my men to your king’s Palace. You will show them the way to gain entrance, and warn them of any traps or guards along the path. If you do this, they will kill you. If you think to warn the others of your kind, to make yourself our downfall, you will learn exactly how long immortality can be when confined to the hands of my most skilled torturers!” Her hand smarted from the slap she’d given him, and her threat still rang from the bare walls. Her small army awaited their orders, tense in the growing anticipation of battle. Malachi stood among them, a few steps from Cedric at the front of the dais.

“We wait for your command, Your Majesty,” Cedric prompted. He stood like a toy soldier, empty and mechanical. Perhaps the loss of his Human was too much to bear, after all, and he wished to join her in death. It was not something Ayla wished to dwell on now. She went to Malachi. There was no appropriate action for this occasion, no way to tell him goodbye in front of the troops he would command. So, she raised up on the tips of her toes and kissed his cheek.

Is is the last time I will see you, she told him with her eyes, and something in his refuted her with gentle mocking. She nearly laughed at the absurdity of the moment. Goodbye could not last forever. She nodded to the drummer, the Court musician who led them not only in feasting and dance, but into battle, and he struck up a rhythm like a death tattoo accompanying prisoners to the scaffold. Still, she shouted over it with confidence and true conviction in her voice, “For the Lightworld! And for all Fae!”

They marched to the drummer’s call, out the throne-room doors, leaving her with the only guards who could be spared: a force of six who immediately surrounded her, obscuring her view of the troops, protecting her with their bodies as if attack were imminent. She pushed one aside to catch sight of Malachi; he did not look back. When the doors shut, closing her in, and the sound of the drumbeat faded, all that was left was the waiting, in her throne room that felt all too much like a burial cairn.

The passage of time was impossible to mark from Cerridwen’s place in the lightless hall. The Elves had returned, waking her after what had seemed a very short time. But their intent had not been the raucous feasting and debauchery of the night before. It was as if a new group of Elves had appeared in their place, clean and serious and ready to go about the business of their war.

They were shockingly free with the information they mumbled and shouted in front of her. Perhaps they thought she was not a threat to their campaign, caged as she was. Perhaps it was because she lay in her cage unmoving, pretending to sleep, so that they would take no notice of her. But the end result was the same: She knew now, without a doubt, that what Bauchan had said at Court was true. The Elves of the Underground held the reins of the Waterhorses, and they planned to loose them on the Lightworld.

After a long while, their council had fallen into easy chatter. Heaps of food—the rotting meat and other disgusting fare she had seen before—were set out on the tables, and the gaming and carousing had resumed. She was forced to sit up then, and keep a watchful eye. If any of them noticed her cage was unlocked, they could reach her easily. She wished to be on her guard.

The lock still dangled ineffectively from the links of the chain holding the cage door shut. It took all of her will not to stare at it. Not that it would have mattered; they paid little attention to her. Perhaps they had taken Fenrick’s warning to heart, after all. It seemed hours passed, but Cerridwen could not be certain. She had always been impatient and easily bored; it could have been minutes that felt like hours to her. But suddenly, a hush fell over the hall, and she rose up on her knees, clutching the bars of her cage—carefully, so as not to disturb the chain—straining to see through the darkness. It was maddening, that these creatures did not need light to see. In the near total blackness, all Cerridwen could make out were the shapes of the Elves, glints of tarnished silver where their hair caught the light. She could see that each body was still, though, and all attention was focused on the other side of the hall.

Then, a voice that she remembered so clearly rang out through the space, and the flesh on her neck and arms puckered at the sound.

“Are you…enjoying yourselves?” The Elves did not respond to their leader’s question. “I do so hope you are. For this is but a taste of the celebration we shall have tomorrow, after the Faeries, those pitiful, winged insects who dare call themselves Fae, are scourged from the Underground, and we are given back our rightful place in the Lightworld.”

It could never happen, Cerridwen realized with satisfaction. The Trolls and Dragons hated them, the Pixies were allied with no one. The various other races held no quarters of their own, had no real governance or authority with which to welcome the Elves back. What game did he play against his own race, she wondered, that he would lie to them so?

The Elves cheered this, but it was controlled, as if they knew there would be more to follow.

“Tomorrow, while the sickening, indulgent Court of the Bitch Queene still lies in their slumber, we shall attack. Without mercy, as she attacked us. This so-called ‘Assassin,’ this murderer, this loathsome creature who slunk through our Darkworld territory, blindly carrying out orders on behalf of her predecessor, Mabb, the Queene of Madness! Shall we suffer her to live?”

Cries of refusal rose from the Elven horde. Cerridwen shook her head, at once disturbed by his rage and filled with pity toward him. To think that he’d harbored this anger for twentyfour years. Longer than her mother had been Queene. But the death of his brother could not have been the only thing fueling his rage. He’d hated Mabb, that much was certain, as she had cast him out of the Lightworld. Cerridwen had not paid much attention to the history lessons Governess had given her, but she had known that, at least.

“No, we shall not!” their leader continued. “We shall not allow this half-breed Queene and her mongrel race to dominate the Underground!”

Another chorus of cheers from the slavering crowd.

“We will repay her for the Elven blood the Fae have shed! In the morning, we shall march to her borders, we shall call her out of her Palace, and we shall let her see our might! We will let her watch her daughter, the slut princess who dared to seek refuge among us, die by this very blade!”

Something glittered in the torchlight, and the rest of the horde unsheathed their weapons, as well, brandishing them high.

“Until then,” the leader shouted over them, “I say, feast!”

Cerridwen shrank back into the corner of her cage, as far as it would allow. She would not die tomorrow. Her mind was made up on that score. But she had little time to plan an escape, and lacked the information she would need to carry herself safely back to the Lightworld. She touched the blade concealed under her clothing, and waited.

“They knew we were coming,” Malachi said, his mouth set in a tight line upon seeing the Strip deserted. Shops were boarded up, carts and stalls hastily fortified against trouble. Cedric nodded. “They knew. But there was no way to disguise our approach.”

“The Elves will know.”

Cedric said nothing. If the Elves did know, then the element of surprise would be lost. But he’d been a warrior far too long to rely on something so far from his control. If anyone had set out on this mission with the expectation that they would not encounter the Waterhorses, that their attack would definitely be concealed and all would go according to plan, well, they were fools.

They trooped across the Strip, held a moment while Cedric conferred with the prisoner. Before what had happened to Dika and her people, before he had seen the carnage there, he had pitied the creature Malachi had brought back from the Darkworld. Now, he cared far less for the vile thing, simply for its association with the Elven race. Two guards held his bonds, a rope looped around his neck, another around his wrists at his back. His ankles were tethered with a loop left slack between, so that his every step was shuffling. Cedric reached for the gag in the Elf’s mouth and tore it free. “Which tunnel?”

He waited a moment to let the creature speak, to recover the ability after being so long stifled. But he said nothing, rolling his eyes toward the ceiling of the Strip. It took only the connection of Cedric’s fist to bring the creature to his knees. A handful of silver-white hair hauled him back up.

“Which tunnel?” Cedric asked again in the same, calm tone, though his anger roiled like a boiling cauldron inside of him.

“To the west,” the creature sputtered, a bubble of dark red blood coming to his lips. “The west, by the stall with the tavern marker above it.”

“Gag him,” Cedric ordered the two guards, then motioned to the troops behind him. “Carry on,” he ordered, turning to lead them.

A yelp alerted him, and he turned in time to see the Elf struggle free from the guards. Still bound, he did not go far. But he screamed and flailed, his gaze fixed on a point somewhere ahead. A dark shape broke from the shadow of a merchant’s cart, and raced toward the Darkworld tunnels.

“A runner,” Malachi called, stepping aside from the group. “I need an archer.”

“Archer,” a Faery responded, jogging forward from the center of the group. Her bow was already drawn, and she disappeared down the tunnel after the Elf. The guards had subdued the prisoner, and Cedric faced him now. “Do you not recall what my Queene warned you of?” His shout echoed through the eerie quiet of the Strip. “Did she not warn you that the consequence of such an action would be great pain?”

The Elf stared coldly back, his yellow eyes looking not at Cedric, but through him. His rage got the better of him. Before he could calm it, his hands were around the creature’s throat, grasping the knotted rope that wound around his neck. He steered the creature to the nearest object—a sturdy-looking stall constructed of cinderblock, where a painted wooden sign proclaimed the various prices and kinds of breads available within—and slammed the Elf’s head forward once, twice and a third time, until he dropped limp to the ground. When he stepped back, he felt the combined stare of all the Guild members and guards behind him. He did not look up, but pretended to adjust the strap of his scabbard as he returned to his place at the head of the column.

“That was foolish,” Malachi said, no real reproach in his tone. “Now, we’ll have to carry him.”

“And hope he wakes before we need him again,” Cedric agreed with dismay. How could he have been so stupid, to let his temper best him so?

The image of Dika, floating blue and cold in the flood, great scarlet gashes marring her skin, flashed through his memory. That was how. And it was not stupid of him.

“I need a runner,” he called out, and when one presented himself, he instructed, “Catch up with the archer. If she has not already killed the Elf that has gone ahead of us, catch up with him. See where he goes, and kill him when you believe his path has sufficiently indicated his destination.”

The runner embarked on his mission with haste; Faeries could all be unusually fast if they put their minds to it, but runners in the guard were especially so. They barely saw him leave.

“In case the other doesn’t wake,” Cedric explained to Malachi with an apologetic shrug. Malachi did not respond. He raised his hand and made a fist to signal to the drummer to silence his beat. “Forward, in silence,” he commanded.

And with a few steps, the Faery army entered the Darkworld.

News of the attack had spread through the Court, as they had planned that it might. Ayla had been prepared for this, but she had not been prepared for the effects of it. Within an hour of the soldiers departing for the Darkworld, the Palace was inundated with the Faeries who had not fled for the surface.

When they had discussed it, Ayla, Cedric and Malachi had been certain that news of impending war with the Elves would send more Faeries fleeing for the promise of safety in the Upworld. But it seemed they felt safer instead in the walls of the Palace. They were not, Ayla recognized with some dismay. With only six guards left behind, there was no way to secure them all within the sprawling Palace compound. She sent two guards to the gates to organize the refugees, many of whom had brought all of their meager possessions with them in packs and bundles. They crowded into the Great Hall, and the noise of their presence emanated through the corridors of the Palace, all the way to Ayla’s throne room. It was both a comfort and a terror.