The Dark Throne (75 page)

Then the ground trembled beneath our feet, and the air grew tight with power. The Sword rattled in its sheath and its white fire roared in my chest, filling my bones.

This day is your destiny,
whispered a voice in my head, a voice that could have been the Sword or Gwyneth or my own thoughts. The last Bearer’s pendant heated against my throat. I clung to the sensation. My hands ached as a panel in the air shimmered and solidified, a frosted slice of glass foretelling the portal. Vell thrust her ivory staff into the gleaming air, and we drew our swords. The ice-breaking sound of the opening portal blended with the hiss of unsheathed blades, and then the first ranks of the chosen fighters leapt through the gateway, Seelie and Unseelie shoulder to shoulder. The portal widened. My hands shook. The Sword’s power surged and steadied me. Luca and Robin stood to either side of me. I couldn’t see Liam. Kianryk and Beryk bounded past us. Everything happened in still frames, small moments between my breath and my heartbeat. We strode forward, and then we were running. The portal loomed, coldness engulfed us, and we skidded into a moss-slick dark courtyard thick with the sounds of battle.

I instinctively threw up an orb of light against the thick shadows; it flared overhead to join a few other
taebramh
-conjured lights illuminating an already-grisly scene. Blood spattered the stones beneath my feet—blood from our warriors and blood from Dark creatures, darkening the stones. Blades flashed and
taebramh
blazed. I heard the snap of bone and the screams of the dying. But Robin and Luca were still by my side, and we fought our way across the courtyard, toward a massive set of metal-bound doors. As I fought, sliding my blade through one Dark creature and then the next, I slowly realized that the shadows magnified the screams and the blood, and a few of our fighters had gone down but it was not the massacre that I’d first feared. Behind us, I heard the despairing shrieks of misshapen creatures as the queens unleashed their power on Malravenar’s creations. The stones of the fortress about us groaned with the weight of night and day and the wildness of the northern mountains.

I didn’t know how long the battle in the courtyard lasted. Each moment weighed heavily on our limbs. Every breath felt like an hour, every heartbeat a long and booming toll in our ears. I glimpsed Kianryk, his muzzle dark and wetly gleaming as he tore his way through a throng of twisted creatures. I lost sight of the tawny wolf as two
garrelnost
converged on him. Beryk leapt past me, his sable fur matted with gore. Mab fought with grim intent, her dark eyes alight with the Fae spark as her blade flashed. Finnead and the Vaelanseld fought by her side, whirling about her like comets caught in her orbit. Robin fought next to me, his hair gleaming scarlet in the light of my
taebramh.
I fought with the blade bearing the names of our dead, the Sword still sheathed on my back, but the Caedbranr’s power roared down my arm and into my weapon. My muscles burned and sweat ran down my face—I still had to swing the blade, but any creature it touched fell away shrieking as white flames engulfed their misshapen bodies. Along with my burning-white power, I saw sparks of cobalt and gold and scarlet, erupting like deadly fireworks as the queens incinerated other creatures.

Luca knifed through the tumult as though he were wading through water, throwing creatures aside bodily, unleashing formidable kicks when both his broad blades were occupied. For a moment when I glimpsed him, I thought it was Kavoryk. There were too many creatures to kill for me to feel sadness at the mistake—the thought just appeared in my mind, and then it was gone, brushed away before the onslaught of a troll. In the whirling chaos, I saw my brother a few times, always within arm’s reach of his teammates, the four of them a deadly unit, shifting their formation fluidly. At one point, I beheaded a fanged toad that leapt at Quinn while his blade was buried in an ogre; he grinned at me in thanks and we both spun away to the next foe. The tide seemed neverending, and I thought that maybe we’d be here forever, eternally battling this ocean of twisted creatures. My lungs burned. I slipped in a pool of blood and fell, managing to keep my sword clear; a blur of mottled fur and claws hurtled into me, pinning me to the slick stones of the courtyard. I felt its hot breath on the back of my neck, but even as I steeled myself for the feel of its jaws piercing my skin, another form crashed into it, tearing it off me. One of the creature’s claws raked my back just below my neck, right at the edge of my armor; I gasped at the bright, hot pain but I lunged to my feet, sword held before me. Chael spared half a moment to clasp my shoulder encouragingly, turning from the disemboweled corpse of the creature. Rialla sprang over its dead bulk, a lithe silver streak in the shadows.

My awareness compressed into purely physical sensation, my mind empty of all thoughts. My body became the conduit for the Caedbranr, an instrument slicing through the waves of twisted beasts. For a time my arms and legs felt as though they were engulfed in flames, my muscles burning with exquisite pain as we continued to fight. Then I passed beyond tiredness into a kind of trance. It felt almost like a ritual: gore pooled blackly on the stones and blades flashed as warriors pivoted and danced, still graceful even in exhaustion. We pressed toward the great doors at the far side of the courtyard, every step forward hard-won. The beasts possessed no spark of intelligence; they hurled themselves at us one after the other, no sense of purpose or strategy uniting them. Their single-minded lust for blood was what saved us—finally, after what felt like hours of unswerving combat, every moment occupied by the fight for survival, the tide slackened. My war-markings blazed again as I spitted a skin-wraith and Robin beheaded it. My blade swung through empty air, no creature before its sharp edge. We panted and stared into the shadows, still half-crouched in our fighting stances. A few of the beasts skittered away into hidden passages. I straightened slowly and looked at Robin. He blinked a few times, swept the area around us with his gaze, and then gave me a tired grin.

One of the wolves howled, a long, loud proclamation of triumph and defiance. A few of the
vyldgard
warriors added their voices to the eerie sound. Goosebumps prickled across my sweaty skin. Some of the
taebramh
lights had flickered out during the battle, so I wove a large ball of light and launched it overhead, wincing as the cut on my back flashed suddenly with bright, hot pain.

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.