The Queen of Blood (38 page)

She knew her powers weren't strong enough to help the others fight in any significant way, but that was also a blessing: because she was weak, the spirits weren't targeting her. She had the chance to look out over the grove and see the full battle. She began to shout out directions:

“Zie, send a water spout to your left. Catch the earth spirits! Chidra, the fire! Use it against the ice spirits. Drive them down. Melt them. You!”—she pointed to another heir—“Watch the ground! Send the branches into it, make it solid with the wood.”

One of the heirs aimed a fire spirit at a tree spirit, forcing the flame-coated spirit to embrace the little body made of twigs. The tree spirit, howling, exploded into fire.
We can't kill them,
Daleina realized. Killing the spirits would destroy Aratay. “Contain them!” she shouted. “Catch them in their own traps! You, use the bark to cage them!”

Another heir guided tree spirits to enclose a large air spirit. Bark sealed around it. Earth spirits pulled fire spirits beneath the soil. Vines wrapped around smaller air spirits, pinning them. “Yes, that's it!” Daleina called. “Revi, use ice!”

Calling to an ice spirit, Revi ordered it to slice through the fire
that licked the branches that flailed like whips, freezing both the branches and the flames.

“Linna, make a wave!” Daleina yelled.

Linna drew three water spirits to them and caused a wave to rear up and crash across the grove, washing out the tiny earth spirits. Sputtering, they scrambled onto the writhing roots.

Nearby, Zie caught three fire spirits in a whirlwind and sent them in a fiery tunnel up into the air. They arched over the grove. And Daleina had a horrible thought: they couldn't kill the spirits
and
they couldn't let them leave the grove. Not without a queen. Not without the do-no-harm command in effect. They had to keep the spirits here, focused on the heirs, or it would again be like the moments after Queen Fara died.

No, it would be worse, because everyone who could defend the people was here, either within or just outside the grove. The spirits would run rampant across Aratay.

“Keep them in the grove!” Grabbing Ven's knife out of its sheath, she stabbed at a tree spirit that had latched onto her leg like a bark-coated leech. It left bark adhered to her skin as she flicked it off. As she yanked away the bark, a water spirit slammed into her. Flailing, she tried to hit it with her knife, but it dissolved into water and collapsed around her. It coalesced again, its fishtail in the mud, and Daleina leaped to the next root as it swiped at her.

The spirits were noticing her now.

She couldn't spare any more attention on the other heirs. Every bit of energy she had was spent trying to stay ahead of the spirits, to keep in motion. She ran, leaping from root to writhing root, over the earth spirits. As tree spirits woke the roots and tried to catch her ankles, she thought at the air spirits,
Fly? Play?

A winged ermine spirit—the same one, or a new one? she didn't know; there wasn't time to care—swooped low, and she leaped and grabbed its legs. It lifted her up, higher than the earth spirits, above the bulk of the fighting. Other air spirits dove for them, and the ermine twisted and turned. Branches hit against Daleina's legs as vines reached up, trying to grab her. Two air spirits landed hard on the back of the ermine, forcing it down.
She looked up and caught a glimpse of the owl woman, sinking the talons on her human hands into the ermine spirit. Dangling from ermine, Daleina reached out her legs, felt for a tree branch, and then released, as the ermine spirit was torn away and tossed against a tree. She lost sight of the owl spirit.

Crouching on a branch, Daleina caught her breath and looked down on the grove. It had felt, from within, as if they were winning. Up here, it was clear. They weren't. She felt as if her vision was swimming, and she saw Greytree again, the torn bodies of her friends and neighbors, but this time, the bodies were the heirs.

She counted: twelve left standing.

The others—torn and twisted. One was half-caught within a tree, her face frozen in a scream. Another, body blue-tinged and covered in white flowerlike ice crystals. Another, facedown in the mud.

Her friends . . . she looked at the faces of the twelve. Linna, Revi, Zie . . . Where was Zie? She scanned the grove . . . There. Twisted across a root, a dozen arrowlike branches in her chest. Her eyes were open, staring sightless up at the sky. Beyond her, Evvlyn, her body sliced in half, one arm and one leg gone. “No,” Daleina whispered.

She had to tear her gaze away and force her body to climb down the tree. Tree spirits chittered at her, hurling their bodies at her, and she called to an ice spirit, who froze her arm as well as the tree spirits, and then to a fire spirit, who melted the ice and burned her arm. She then plunged Ven's knife into the fire spirit. Flames leaped onto her hand, but the spirit fled. She thrust her hand into the muddy ground, dousing the flames. “Revi! Linna!” she called. They had to fight together, stick close, defend one another.

She waded toward them, trying not to see the bodies of the fallen heirs. They
had
to win here. It had nothing to do with surviving themselves but ensuring that Aratay survived. To ensure that the spirits didn't escape, and kill and kill until the forest ran with streams of blood.

“There are too many,” Linna gasped.

“We need a plan, Daleina,” Revi said. “Give us a plan.”

“Can't let them escape. Can't let them die. Can't let us die. That's as much as I have.” Beneath her feet, Daleina felt the soil roll again, and she sent her awareness down to touch tentacles beneath the soil, afraid of what she'd find down there. Knowing exactly what it was.

The earth kraken.

A part of her had been waiting for it. It was a miracle it hadn't struck yet, but perhaps it was prevented by all the spirits above it—the earth was full of them.

“They have to choose a queen,” Linna said. The three friends shifted until they stood back to back. Controlling water spirits, Linna created a wall of water around and above them. The fire spirits couldn't penetrate it. The earth spirits were washed away. But the tree spirits walked freely through—Revi dealt with them, forcing them to turn around as soon as they crossed the water barrier.

“I can't keep this up forever,” Revi said.

They wouldn't choose, not until their prior command was fulfilled, the blood oath satisfied . . . Daleina thought of Queen Fara, drinking the owl spirit's blood. “We have to take out the owl spirit. She's the one who made the blood oath. She's their leader. Without her . . .”

“On it,” Revi said. “Part the water, Linna.”

Linna complied, and the water split apart. Revi strode through the break—and with a shriek, the air spirits dove for her. She deflected them, forcing them to spiral away, scooping earth spirits out of the ground. Running, Revi jumped onto the back of an earth spirit with a body of rocks—one twice her size. She held on to it as it clomped over the muddy ground, and she seized control of a fire spirit, forcing it to lengthen itself into a fire bolt.

“You'll need help,” Daleina called after her.

“Distract the other spirits,” Revi said, jumping from the earth spirit onto an air spirit. She held the fire bolt aloft. “I'll go for the kill.”

“On three, I'll drop the water,” Linna said. “Ready?”

Reaching with her mind into the bedrock, Daleina touched
the earth kraken. It wanted to stretch, to swallow, to eat, to kill . . . but something held it in check. “As soon as you drop the water, get off the ground. I have an idea.”

“One, two, three!” Linna released the water spirits. Daleina broke for the roots, running over earth spirits and around air spirits that battered her. As she did, she reached with her mind into the bedrock.

Stretch,
she told it.
Swallow. Eat
.

Whatever had been holding it in check dissolved. It obeyed because it wished to. Tentacles flexed, causing the trees to shudder, and the earth spirits toppled. Tree spirits lost their grip. Linna leaped onto the back of an air spirit. Daleina climbed up the trunk of the nearest tree, digging her toes and hands into the bark. A tree spirit entwined itself in her hair. She cut it away with Ven's knife. Climbing onto a branch, she twisted to see Revi, rising up on the back of an air spirit. She stood on the spirit's back, straight and proud, as it flew toward the owl spirit.

The owl spirit hovered in the air, and for a moment Daleina was certain that Revi had her—but then the owl spirit twisted, and . . . Daleina couldn't see! Fire whipped across the grove, and when it cleared, she saw Revi falling, plummeting.

From elsewhere, Linna screamed.

Catch her!
Daleina called out. She saw the ermine spirit twist in the air, flying beneath Revi. She landed soft on the ermine's back, and the ermine angled past where Daleina perched.

Revi's throat was torn.

And the owl spirit spoke. “See what you have wrought, murderer? See what your cleverness has done? Can you see, or do you lie amongst the dead already? Soon, you will. Soon, you will all die, and then we will rid these forests of the human pestilence once and for all. The world will be as it was meant to be.”

“You were meant to choose a queen!” Daleina shouted. “The world was meant to be balanced. We're meant to have peace!”

“I will be all the queen that my kind needs,” the owl spirit said. “You have lost, humans. And now . . . you will all lose your lives.” She turned to face the few other remaining heirs, scattered around the grove, blood-covered but still fighting. Still losing.

Daleina felt her own body crumple on the branch, her muscles refusing to listen to her brain. Revi. Zie. Iondra. Eyes filling, she saw the grove. She felt the spirits. So few left against so many. But she couldn't let the owl spirit win. Her friends' deaths would not be for nothing.

As the ermine spirit sailed past her, Daleina rolled off the branch and onto the ermine's back. Eyes burning with tears, she pushed Revi's body off and heard it hit the ground, soft in the muck.
Play,
she told the spirit.
Trick
. She lay in the same position as Revi had, strewn across the blood-coated white fur. With one hand, she smeared blood on her throat and tried to block out thoughts of whose blood it was. She couldn't afford to think or feel. So few left. She breathed shallow, let her eyes unfocus, forced her muscles to lay limp.
Play with her
.

She felt the ermine twist in the air. It trilled as it flew, and she lay limp, unseeing, reaching with her mind for the feel of the owl spirit . . . One hand she kept tucked in the fur, fingers clenched around the hilt of Ven's knife.

Closer.

Closer.

And . . .

Now!

Twisting, she shoved herself up and threw the knife, straight toward where she had sensed the owl spirit. It flew true and fast.

Straight into the owl woman's throat.

The knife embedded up to the hilt. For a moment, the owl woman only stared at Daleina. Her hands touched the knife, and then her wings hung limp. She spiraled down.

Reaching for the earth kraken, Daleina said,
Eat
.

Eagerly, it stretched its tentacle skyward. Grabbing the falling body, it pulled the owl woman down toward the writhing earth. Between the roots, the earth convulsed, and dirt sprayed up as more tentacles pierced the surface. They surrounded her, almost tenderly—until they began pulling her apart. Her feathers were plucked, her arms torn from her body. Dirt flowed into her open mouth, and her owl eyes stared upward, sightless, frozen in a look of surprise, until she was pulled beneath the earth.

Swallowed by the kraken.

The earth convulsed once more, as all the tentacles retreated.

With her disappearance came quiet, as silence then spread through the grove beneath her. It was as if their leader's death had robbed the spirits of their voices. Daleina heard only the flap of the ermine spirit's wings as it spiraled down. But the reprieve was only temporary. She felt the earth spirit stretch again, deep beneath. The spirit hadn't satiated its hunger in the slightest. It would swallow them, the roots, the trees, the grove—it would swallow Aratay, if it could, if she let it.

The problem was, she didn't think she could possibly stop it.

Someone had to take control, now, before another rose to take the owl spirit's place. They craved a leader. They needed . . . a queen. Landing, Daleina looked for Linna or any of the other heirs . . .

Stillness.

Silence.

Death.

No one spoke. No one moved. No one breathed. Except the spirits. Hundreds of spirits, hungry, leaderless.

She wanted to cry. She wanted to scream. But she knew those weren't options for her, no more than she had the option to go home to her village. She was an heir, and that duty didn't come with choice. At least not for her. For the spirits, though . . .

“Choose me,” Daleina whispered.

There was no one else.

Choose me
.

And the spirits did.

S
he felt as if a wave were crashing into her. She'd been reaching out to sense the spirits, but now she felt as if she'd been plunged into them, as if she were inside their bodies, thousands of bodies, and then torn apart and split like an ax hitting a piece of wood. She splintered, and a thousand voices cried into her head.

Daleina felt herself scream but couldn't hear it. She could hear nothing but the roaring of wind, the rush of the fire, the crackle of the ice, the cry of a tree bursting through the soil . . . And in that moment, she was the air, the fire, the ice, the life within the trees, the warmth within the earth. Water was her blood. Soil was her skin. Fire was her heart. Power flooded into her, filling her, then hollowing her.

She felt a sudden, sharp pain in her wrist.

Teeth.

The soft-hard head of a wolf bumped against her, and she was back in her own body. Bayn! The wolf had jolted her back.
Do no harm
. She forced the thought out as fast and far as she could, into every bit of water, of fire, of life.
You will do no harm
.

She felt their will shift, bending to her words, as her command sunk into every spirit she touched. She was strong—so very, very strong now. Her hand still on the wolf, she buried her fingers deeper into his fur, letting the feel and smell of the wolf ground
her back in her body. She was herself again, but more. She felt the spirits all around her.

And she forced herself to look around her, at the grove. It took a moment, but her eyes at last told her mind what they saw. Spirits, dead, many of them. And the other forty-nine heirs, all of them, strewn over the roots and rocks, lying in the wet earth.

“No,” she whispered.

She stumbled forward, toward where Zie lay, her eyes open, her body twisted at an impossible angle. “No,” Daleina whispered again. Standing, she ran from one to the next to the next. Evvlyn, her hands clutched to her torn chest. Revi, her body slashed, red streaking her white gown. Linna, on the root, hands still clinging, mouth open as if she were about to speak, eyes sightless. Iondra. Heirs she'd recently met, Chidra and Berra. Others, whose names she didn't know. All of them.

All of them.

In the center of the grove, Queen Daleina fell to her knees in the blood of her friends as the spirits wove a crown of wood and flowers and placed it gently, reverently, on her head.

Not a crown,
she thought.
A wreath, to memorialize this grave
.

O
UTSIDE THE GROVE
, V
EN WAITED
. H
E HATED WAITING
. S
TUPID
tradition, that the champions weren't allowed to accompany their heirs. It was a private ceremony, Fara had explained once, a beautiful moment of harmony and joy that belonged only to spirits and heirs. He should have been there, though. Whether Daleina saw it or not, she was meant to be queen. She had to be. Fara couldn't have died merely to be succeeded by someone who was inferior. Only Daleina had the strength of character . . .

The trees of the grove shifted, their roots moving aside as if they were a curtain parting, and the wolf Bayn charged through. No one else moved. They waited, at a polite distance, ready to proclaim the new queen. It felt as if they were all holding their breaths at once, as still as the air around them.

The wind, slowly, began to blow.

He heard whispers before he saw her. A ripple of words too indistinct for him to decipher. He felt Hamon grip his arm, tight.

The wolf trotted first, his muzzle red, his fur matted. Behind him, Daleina in blood-spattered white walked forward.

Blood? There was never blood at a coronation.

One of the other champions—Piriandra—rushed past Ven. Without slowing, the champion ran past the new queen and into the grove. Daleina halted, not moving, her expression as unreadable as Fara's had been.

“They're dead,” Hamon gasped beside him. A guess, but he said it with certainty.

The words did not make sense inside Ven's head. This wasn't how it happened. For hundreds of years . . . this was not how it happened! The heirs walked into the grove and then walked out again, one of them crowned queen. It was a peaceful, beautiful, gentle ceremony. All the songs about it—they sang of its majesty and beauty, the most solemn and sacred moment, when all of the spirits united together to reclaim their power . . .

The other champion, Champion Piriandra, walked slowly out of the grove. Her cheeks pale, her eyes haunted. Ven saw the blood on her boots before he heard her words:

“All hail Queen Daleina! Long live the queen!”