Mist & Whispers (27 page)

‘It’s never done this to anyone,’ someone uttered aside of her.

‘But what is
this
, what is happening?’ The second voice sounded almost as outraged as she felt enraged. Almost.

An urge coursed through her new, darkened body, and she allowed herself to move with it. Whatever this was, it gave her wicked speed and helped her find the strength that others suspected she had. She lifted the chair with such ferocity, the table in front flew off the dais and down onto the staring men. She swung the chair toward the second voice, sending the man whose name was escaping her but she knew to be her enemy, crashing straight into the wall, and a moment of silent shock froze the room.

Then the men turned on her.

T
HE POWER OF
hatred was incredible. Pure, unadulterated hatred, driven by mind-consuming whispers, saw every man that came at her harmed, maimed or knocked out within an inch of their seedy life. Right now, there was nothing else. Only enemies and vengeance, and the raw, savage feelings they coaxed from her. They stoked the fire that was raging through her blood and escaping through her fists. Who needed magic or weapons when hatred cut so deep? 

A sweaty, balding man with morsels of food flecking his thin beard came at her, sword in hand, poised and ready to strike. He danced around her, strangely agile for someone so square and clumsy looking. He lunged at her from the left but she was ready. She dodged the blade and span back toward him, her dress twinkling like snow under the candlelight of carol singers. Mid spin, she swung her right arm into the back of the man’s neck, propelling him forward. He expelled a gruff hurl, but it was cut short by another man’s blade.

She turned, ready to attack the next person who got in her way, the invidious effects of the Dark Blood making her want to destroy them all. As for why she wanted them dead, that part was hazy. Reason was no longer a part of her; it was her puppeteer, and she did as the strings commanded, no questions, no answers. Only action and death would do.

A force wrapped itself around her body and she was held, suspended above the ground. She’d felt this before, she knew she had, only she couldn’t place when. This hold felt weaker than the last, as if the wielder of the magic had less experience, and yet – if it were possible – it felt far more sinister.

Whether by the fragility of the magic or by her new found strength, she found herself able to fight the hold. Able to move, albeit slowly.

She turned to face the wielder; a woman, hands stretched out towards her, fingers bent like jagged claws and her expression betraying the amount of effort it was taking to keep the hold over her.

‘You’re letting her beat you
–
she wants you dead
–
you’re too weak
–
she deserves to die next
–
her eyes. Gouge out her evil eyes!’
The whispers grew louder, poking her like sharp nails, one after the other, over lapping words of spite and rancour that she couldn’t shake. They were trapped inside her head just as she was trapped in this room, trapped in her enemy’s possession.

A few paces away, a man dressed like an egocentric King was getting back up on his feet, spitting blood from his mouth. This must have been who she’d hit with the chair. She’d burst his lip. ‘HOLD HER STILL!’ His voice was distant and obscure, like the voices of a nightmare. 

‘I’m trying!’ the woman holding her cried back, and she really was. The power she was using was buckling her body. Like this, she was too much for the woman alone.

‘Any minute now, she’ll let go – don’t let her hold you again – she will be weak – you can take her out
–
’ more relentless whispers.

‘Don’t just stand there,’ the King turned to his subjects. ‘Seize her!’

From behind, hands latched on to her neck, stopping the air from reaching her lungs. She fought harder against the magical hold, desperately trying to raise her hands to fight the ones at her throat, but she was slow, too slow. The dizzying heights of those first few sips of Dark Blood were returning, her vision whitening with every squeeze harder the man strangling her made.

‘Fight it – kill them – you’re letting them kill you – you coward – you can’t beat them, you’re too small – TINY – WEAKLING!’

Blackout.

She was still conscious and still fighting, but now the hall was in complete darkness. For a few seconds, the startled crowd of diners shot spooked cries around the room, and then, a drum began to beat.

It was a tiny rumble at first, low and rhythmic. It had everyone on edge, all the while building and building, until the thumping and the bounding were deafening.

‘It’s the girl!’ someone in the crowd shouted.

‘Witch!’ another yelled.

‘Morcades, is this you? Are you doing this?’ the King spat above the din.

‘No,’ a ghoulish man called back from where he was sat across the dais, most un-urgently. He seemed far more bothered about the fruit he was trying to eat. The longer he held it, the more rotten it became and the more his upper lip crinkled with distaste. ‘I was quite enjoying the scuffle; why cut it short when things were getting good?’ He threw the piece of fruit down on the plate in front of him in frustration.

She could feel herself slipping away, nearing oblivion, the hands getting tighter and tighter as the intensity of the moment increased.

Then the drumming stopped, and silence diffused the echoes in the wake of the lost beats.

CHK.

PHFFFFFT.

‘Urgt.’

THUD.

The fingers around her neck went limp and she felt the man behind her fall to the floor.

‘LIGHTS,’ the King announced, and the flames in the levitating bowls rose back from nothing, illuminating the Grand Hall once again with their cold, white light.

A gasp swept the room, and through the disorientation of asphyxiation, and the hellish mist clouding her soul, she felt a great presence had joined them.

H
E REMEMBERED IT
well, the last time he saw the Grand Hall. The castle had been buzzing for days with the influx of gifts for the new baby, due to make her appearance into the world in a matter of weeks. The moirai-roses hanging from the balcony of the Queen’s chamber had bloomed, five days before, in the sweetest blush of pink, and yet gifts of blue still arrived for the Hail’s. Blue woollen blankets, made from the coats of the azure sheep, had arrived in their hundreds. A wonderful gesture of admiration for the Royal family, but ultimately they were gifts that would go unused once the baby came. No mother, Royal or otherwise, liked putting their newborn in the
wrong
colour for its sex; a mystery to Theone, but a true observation nonetheless. What did colour really matter, so long as the baby had its health?

‘Kalae,’ the King addressed the Queen’s Lady-in-Waiting in the courtyard, outside the Grand Hall. ‘Have Eri and Rachel bundle all the boy blankets so they can be taken with us on the procession. We shall give them to the mothers of the Kingdom, better than to waste them.’

‘I shall see to it now, Sire.’

‘Blessings, Kalae.’ The King nodded and made his way into the Hall.

The Grand Hall was possibly Theone’s favourite room in the entire castle and had been since his grandfather was on the throne. Not just because it was in this room that all his favourite childhood foods were served – stuffed pears, pheasant pie and cheese and redberry bread – but because the room demanded a craning of the neck as you entered it.

Even as he grew older and taller, that vastness remained and it was a sight impossible to tire of. The walls were gold and honeycombed with octagonal segments. Each segment housed a different Royal impression, hand-painted by artists long dead but remembered via the stone floor tiles where their names were engraved. The domed ceiling which, like the spires and the roofs of the castle, had taken on the same shade of blue as Theone’s wings since the day his father died and the rule of the Kingdom had befallen him.

He was the youngest King in more than a thousand years, crowned at just thirty-nine years of age, a factor that only made the day more sombre.

Theone took his place on the Throne of Hands – a throne sculpted from marble in the shape of eight hands as a symbol of the God’s divine selection for monarch. A smile was all the subjects need wait for before tucking into the humble dishes laid out before them. The position of royalty was one to be grateful of, and they paid respect to the Gods by eating as honest men.

With their meal in their bellies and light chatter on their tongues, the King stood to address his court. Before he spoke, he gazed down at his wife.

Lynessa was radiant, as she always had been, even before her small bump had grown. She had the sort of beauty that a King could only dream of; ardent and enrapturing. She was a strong woman who made the duties of a Queen appear effortless.

He smiled softly. Whenever he looked into her eyes there would be a moment where he would forget the crown, and the Kingdom, and the wealth of treasures and obedient servants that filled their lives. It was just him, a simple heart, and her, the pulse that lifted it to beat. 

‘Tomorrow,’ he announced, turning his attention back on his subjects. ‘The Journey of Well-Wishes will begin. We shall be out of the castle for almost two weeks, visiting villages such as Castor’s Glenn and Pauncefoot, right on down to Port Elliot and Silver Forest. When we return, the Queen assures me she will still be wandering around the castle and taking part in her usual duties.’ Lynessa gave him a mock-contemptuous smile, her eyebrow pointing in that subtle way that he knew meant he’d be in for a playful telling-off later when they turned in to their private chambers for the night. ‘I would ask of you all to help me see to her rest and relaxation, the Gods know she won’t get much of it after our daughter arrives.’

The faces of his court in that moment, their shared joy in Theone and Lynessa’s new blessing, were images he would never forget, and images that came flooding back to him as he entered the Grand Hall now, under Eleazar’s rule.

In a secret passage of Theone’s own commission, beneath the stone tile marked for the artist
Elias Mardone
, the Stragglers, sans Harrion and Briar, were huddled, drums in hand and ready to action Theone’s plan on cue.

Theone wanted, and indeed needed, to see what his brother had become for himself. He needed to see the truth with his own eyes before he could fully believe it.

As he made his way into the grave mutation of the room he’d so adored, he was stricken with a grief that could match a thousand broken hearts.

It was all true.

There was Eleazar, sitting on what could only be described as a gruesome display of his derangement, Anya at his side and his sister – his poor sister – being subject to that sunken-grey fiend, Morcades.

Theone remembered Morcades from before his days as a dark God. He was a repellent man who’d grown up with him, Eleazar and Abeytu in the castle. His father was a tragic case; a pantler and a drunkard. As children, Morcades didn’t appear bothered about his father’s drinking habit, nor about the fact his mother was always slinking off to the tavern to entertain the soldiers whilst they were off duty. In return for their absence, both physical and emotional, they gave him everything he ever wanted and allowed their son to do as he pleased.

Morcades always boasted that he could stay out later than his friends and seemed happy about the unspoken arrangement he had with his parents, but every night, when the time came for sleep, Theone always thought of him. He wondered, as his mother read him a bed time story, who was there to read Morcades one?

They were teenagers when Morcades’ desires developed past material things and on to girls. One girl in particular; Theone’s sister, Princess Abeytu.

When Abeytu was born, the moirai-roses made her path in life clear. They bloomed white. She was a special child, a gift from the Gods, the people said. It took a long time for Theone to understand what that meant. It was just something the adults would say around him when the subject of his sister arose. In time, he learned that when the moirai-roses bloomed white, it meant that the child would be a symbol of purity for the people. She was promised to the sisters of the House, and when she came of age, her role would be with them, leading them to great new understandings of the Gods.

It also meant that she would never have a husband, or bear her own children. Not that this stopped the boys and the men pestering her to stray from her fated path. There were proposals and elaborate plans to run away to live in other Kingdoms, if only she would agree to it. But she never did.

Morcades’ advances – Theone learned the year after Abeytu began to live with the sisters – went far beyond those of any other man. The others had all given up hope after the dedication service on her eighteenth birthday, but Morcades would rap at her chamber door every night, two horses outside, waiting for the day she would agree to run away with him.

Theone remembered seeing his sister and Morcades arguing on so many occasions, he even went to his old friend and told him it was about time he stopped and looked for a nice wife in a different part of the castle.

He seemed to leave her alone after that, although, from what Theone had heard, Morcades never did find a wife. They drifted apart, the Royal children and the son of the pantler.

How different he was now. Anya had briefly explained how he’d come to be in the shoes of a God, but it was a hard story to believe. For so long, the people of the camp had lost their faith in the Gods – Theone included. Could it be true that the Gods really
did
exist?

He supposed the graver question was what had the Virtfirthians done that made the Gods abandon them in their time of need?

Well. Gods or no Gods, he was his own man now, and his faith was reserved for himself and the Marked One.

He took a seat at one of the tables, positioning himself as close to Mardone’s stone as possible without standing out too far from the other men in Eleazar’s court. The magic he had cloaked himself in was complex, and though his appearance was strong enough for most men to be fooled by, he had no idea of the power Morcades could have now as a God and whether or not he’d be able to see through Theone’s shifted skin.

So far, so good, but Theone had learned in the hardest of ways that you mustn’t let your guard down in the face of your enemy, regardless of upper-hand possession.

Beside him, the man he recognised as his old Chamberlain, tore a leg from the cooked bird plated in front of them and placed it on his plate. Like the women, he was grey and sunken looking too, but his eyes were not distant like theirs. Mind and body, he was there in that hall and maddeningly so. Theone could see a resemblance of Morcades in him, and when he looked around the room again, he realised he could say the same of every man in the castle. Perhaps it was the God of the Damned himself that provoked this spark of wrath behind the eyes of people he once knew to be wholesome citizens?

Eleazar took Anya’s hand as she tried for her drink and sat, making circles in her palm as he spoke to her. It may have helped being able to hear what Eleazar had to say but in a way, Theone was glad he couldn’t. The way his brother was over the girl, he knew what Eleazar was planning to do to her – there was no mistaking that kind of grossly indecent body language. The fact that Anya was not even of age made it all the more monstrous.

He looked away, riddled with shame. Both he and Eleazar had come into this world in exactly the same way, born to the same parents, raised in the same castle around the same people. They’d played the same games as children, been schooled at the same school and ate everyday in the same hall, morning, noontide and night. What was it that turned Eleazar from that quiet and simple child to this lewd, villainous beast?

When Theone finally forced himself to look up at his brother once again, Eleazar had his hand inside his jacket. He pulled out a phial and immediately Theone’s heart began to race.

That was Dark Blood – he was sure of it – and if he were giving it to her now, did that mean he knew she hadn’t really imbibed it back in the forest? He compared Anya to the other people in the castle. Yes, she looked pale, and her eyes were still a little pink but she was not grey and Eleazar was no fool. The last eighteen years had proved that.

Harrion?

Yes?

Have you secured the tavern?

Not quite. We ran into a little, bump. We are almost there.

Harrion, I need you to do it now.

I need a few minutes, we’re nowhere near close enough.

I don’t think she has a few minutes.

What? What’s happening?

It was already too late. As soon as the phial was under her nose, it was in her hands and she was drinking.

Stuck, Theone tried to think. The Crown Guard would still be a while yet and they were grossly outnumbered, even with Harrion locking most of Eleazar’s troops in the Tavern. Despite the lack of soldiers in the Hall, there were still enough men in there to slaughter his Stragglers, along with Michael and Tim. Tim was still too weak to fight and, though he had heart, he still had much to learn before he could seriously take on any of these nobles in a fight. They’d all been taught to use a sword at some point in their youth – it was a part of a Virtfirthian education, a part which many chose to keep in good practice.

At least with Anya having drunk the Dark Blood, she would be easier to influence. She wouldn’t argue with him when the time came to run, something she otherwise had too much valour for. It was a noble trait, but one that would surely get her killed.

He watched as she dropped the empty phial on the table and sunk back into her chair. For a few moments she looked content, but that look soon spiralled. A maraud of mist rose from the ground and took her, turning her body grey and debilitating her completely. It was done, and for now, there was nothing he could do but wait for the Crown Guard.

Father? What’s happening?

Just focus on taking those soldiers out of the equation, then head for the passage. She’ll be ok, if Lorcan can keep that dragon at bay the Crown Guard will be here to help soon.

‘I must bid you good night, my dear subjects,’ Eleazar announced, and he rose from his
throne
. He tapped Anya on the shoulder and began shuffling her toward the end of the dais, but stopped when she became shaky.