“Princess? Faraine, can you hear me?”
Hael’s voice echoes distantly, beyond the hideous throb-throb-throb in my temples. My whole being shudders with pain. I cannot see. The darkness is too great, too overwhelming.
All around me, I hear screams. Hundreds of voices crying out in terror, each voice battering my senses like an individual blow. I’ll soon be bludgeoned to death and all without my body bearing a single bruise.
I fumble blindly, grasping for my pendant. My hand finds it and squeezes hard. Its vibration is just enough to clear a small, narrow path of awareness through the dark, through the throb. Enough to realize I still lie on the ground with Hael crouched over me, her rough voice barking, her fear adding to the rest of the assault. Another javelin thrust straight to my brain.
But if I’m on the ground, then . . . maybe . . .
I put out my other hand, press it palm-flat against the floor. And there. I feel it. Deep down in the stone. The answering vibration of other crystals, small, but alive and responsive. I draw the vibration into me. Slowly, slowly, they drive back the pulsing power and pain of all that emotion, giving me a small space in which to stand, to exist.
I open my eyes. Hael is there, her face alarmingly close to mine. Her eyes blaze with concern. “Princess?”
I groan, grimace. We’re on the balcony still. How long have I been unconscious? It feels like hours, but it may have been mere moments. Even with the song of the crystals in my head, I can still hear those screams. So many screams—vicious, animal, shredding at the edges of my sanity. “What’s happening?” I ask. The words shudder as they fall from my lips.
“I don’t know.” Hael supports my shoulders, and I pull myself into a seated position. “You fainted. I thought you were—” She stops as a scream rends the air, this one audible to her ears. Whirling in her crouch, she springs to her feet, stares out over the balcony.
Another scream. And another.
They’re coming from the city, beyond the palace walls.
“Something’s wrong,” Hael says. Her hands grip the rail so tightly, I wouldn’t be surprised if the stone cracked. “Something’s happened.”
Shouts rise from below, sounds of pounding feet and activity. Then Hael draws back a step, her eyes widening. “Morar-juk!” she snarls. “Woggha!”
The word sounds familiar, but in that moment, I cannot place it. My head pounds too hard as darkness threatens to close in my vision. I shut my eyes, press into the stone floor under me, search for the answering stir of crystals. Whatever traces of urzul are here in my balcony, it’s not enough. I cannot clear this pain.
My eyes flash open. “Hael.”
She turns, stares down at me. Her fear jolts through my senses, and I wince, drawing back slightly. But I need her strength. Now. “Hael, take me to the gardens.”
“What?” She shakes her head, brow puckering. “What are you talking about? The gardens? You can’t mean—”
I rise. It’s an agony, and doing so means removing my hand from the stone. I kick the slippers from my feet so that I may ground myself through my soles instead. It’s enough to help me hold my balance as I face down the tall trolde captain. “At once, Captain,” I say.
She wants to protest. She wants to lock me up in this chamber, trap me inside like the prisoner we both know I am. How could I stop her? She has the brute force. I have nothing. No power, no authority. Nothing.
But I throw the full force of my spirit into direct combat with hers. It takes everything I have, gripping my pendant, bracing my feet. Hers is not a will to be trifled with.
In the end, however, she dips her eyes. “Very well,” she murmurs and steps around me, leading the way from the balcony back into the room. She’s nearly to the door when she stops, looks back. “Are you coming?”
I swallow hard. The humiliation is almost more than I can bear, but I keep my head high and my voice even. “You will have to carry me.”
She blinks. Swallows. Then, without a word, she crosses back to where I stand and scoops me up in her strong arms. She’s not gentle like Vor. She carries me like a sack of potatoes, slung over her shoulder. But she moves with easy grace, strides to the open door and out into the passage beyond. By now, screams erupt from inside the palace. Some of them are audible, but the rest crash inside my head alone. I press my fist to my forehead. Without the grounding touch of stone under my feet, I’m nearly overwhelmed by my curse of a gift.
Hael steps from the stairwell into the arched hall. The moment she does so, more screams burst nearby. She turns toward the sound, catches her breath. “What’s happening?” I manage to ask. “What do you see?”
“Nothing yet,” she replies. Her jaw is tight, her teeth grinding. With a little growl, she hastens the opposite direction. “The palace is vulnerable. So many of the house guard went with the king,” she mutters, more to herself than to me.
“Is the palace under attack?”
Rather than answer, Hael lifts her head and barks something in troldish. A cluster of women rush by, clutching their skirts, their mouths open in terrified screams. Hael shouts after them, demanding answers, but her voice cuts off in a ragged cry.
A cave devil lurches into view. Its savage mouth is open wide. Its long tongue spills out, lashing the air like a whip. Hideous, hairless gray limbs bunch with sinewy muscle as it propels itself in pursuit of its prey.
Hael takes three more running strides before she pulls herself up short, pivots, and darts into the nearest chamber. There she drops me unceremoniously on the floor before grabbing the door and slamming it shut. She hauls a nearby table screeching across the floor to bar the way.
I lie where I’ve been dropped, breathing hard. At least here on the floor, I can press my palms flat once more and search out whatever faint vibrations I can find. There aren’t many here, but I pull what I can into my body, steady myself, find a space of clarity within the storm. Pulling myself upright, I look across at Hael as she adds to her barricade. “Hael!” I shout.
She pauses, looks over her shoulder at me.
“Those women! They need your help!”
She shakes her head. “My duty is to protect you, Princess.”
I stare up at her. Even now, even with the thrum of the crystals to steady me, I feel the fear, the terror, the death outside that door. I can’t hide in here and just let it happen. Swallowing back my own agonized screams, I pull to my feet, stagger across the room. I all but fall against the table Hael has pushed in front of the door and lean heavily on it for support. Then I grip its edge. “Pull it back,” I demand. “We’re going to help them. Now.”
Hael meets my eye. “I have only one duty here,” she says, but her face is agonized.
“Yes,” I reply. “To serve me. And I am giving you an order, Captain.”
Mine is not the voice of a prisoner. In that moment, I am her queen. It doesn’t matter if it’s true. It doesn’t matter if my marriage was consummated, if I am Vor’s wife in name or deed or only in my dreams. In that moment, I am what I must be.
“Open this door.”
Her lips pulled back in a snarl, Hael grabs the table and hauls it back. Pushing the door wide, she steps into the hall, draws her sword. I stagger after her and grip the doorway for support. The screams of the women have not progressed far. The cave devil was right on their heels after all.
Hael looks back at me. “Stay here.”
“Save them!” I reply.
Then she’s off, sprinting hard. I follow after, despite her demand, staggering along like a drunkard. My head pounds with the dissonance of terror. Death surrounds me. It slashes across my senses, sudden, ripping, horrific. I fall to my knees, pick myself up again, push on until I come to the end of the hall and turn the corner.
I arrive just in time to see Hael plunge her blade into the back of the cave devil’s head. She’s too late. There’s already so much carnage. Blood and death and broken bodies. Three women, whose faces I cannot see, but whose emotions I’d felt so vividly in their last, dreadful moments. Hael was quick, but not quick enough.
She steps away from the monster’s body and hastens to a fourth woman, who has curled herself into a trembling ball. I dare not draw any nearer. Her feelings are powerful enough to stab me through the gut. So, I hold back, and find my gaze inexorably drawn to the broken body of the cave devil.
It twitches. Stirs.
Moans.
It’s still alive! Barely, but I feel the energy in it, the lifeforce clinging with all the strength of those hideous, curved claws. There’s something else there as well, something beyond the instinct for survival. A feeling I’ve sensed before. That roiling darkness, full of heat, full of . . . full of . . . poison.
Hardly knowing what I do, I draw nearer and drop to my knees beside the devil. Its head jerks slightly, as though aware of me. Pulse after pulse of feeling ripples out from it. That same darkness, that same living despair, like demonic possession. This creature’s very existence is suffering.
I reach out. My hand hovers over the plated head of the beast. I know this darkness. I felt it once before, churning within Vor’s soul. It didn’t belong to him anymore than it belongs to this poor monster. Its mind has been savagely used and broken. But maybe I can—
With a sickening crack, Hael’s booted foot connects with the beast’s head. Something snaps—the last lingering thread of life. The cave devil crumples in a heap of flesh and bones, and Hael stands over me, scowling. “I told you to stay where you were!”
I blink blearily up at her. “It seemed safer close to you.”
She grunts. Then she bends and picks me up again. “You’re mad, little Princess. What were you doing touching a woggha? Even mostly dead, it could still bite your hand off!”
I cannot answer. I haven’t the strength. “The gardens, Hael,” I say softly. “Now.”
She shakes her head but strides off again with purpose. I cast a last glance back over her shoulder. “Where is the woman?” I ask, struggling to get the words out. “The survivor?”
“I told her to find a safe place and block all entrances,” Hael replied. “Which is what we ought to be doing right now.”
I don’t reply. What would be the point? I have neither the breath nor the strength to explain myself. Hael carries me through passages I vaguely recognize. The stone walls ring with the sounds of battle and the savage snarls and shrieks of the woggha. I grip my crystal hard, try to block out some of it. There’s so much, too much! If I don’t find help, it’s going to kill me.
We turn a corner. Hael curses bitterly. Lifting my head from her shoulder, I see a crowd before us, blocking the way. Screams issue from the far side, and the pulse of all that terror is enough to make me cry out, “Back, Hael! Back, I beg you!”
She doesn’t question me. She retreats down the passage and darts into another chamber, a small sitting room. “I’m sorry, Princess,” she says, breathing hard from her efforts. “I can’t get you to the gardens. This is the best I can do. We must make our stand here.”
When I don’t protest, she sets me down on a chair then secures the door, checks the windows, searches for places of weakness where a devil might gain entry. Screams and the sound of pounding feet flow by on the other side of the door. I don’t know if they’re even now being torn apart by monsters or tearing each other apart in their need to escape. I want to order Hael to open the door again, to let at least a few of those poor souls join us here, under her protection. I cannot find the words. I can only sit where she’s dropped me, gripping my crystal.
This must be the peril Vor set out to face. But the monsters are here. In the city. In the palace. Which means . . . which means . . . Vor . . .
Suddenly, I feel it. The pull. I turn sharply, draw a short breath. It was so strong, so unmistakable. Rising from the chair, I stagger across the little room to the nearest window. To my surprise, it overlooks the garden. We are situated above one of the paths, the window’s ledge maybe ten feet up. From here, if I crane my head, I can see the circle of seven tall crystals on their high promontory.
They reach out to me. Call me to them. A pulse. A pull. A need.
The screams of the dead and dying echo in my ears, batter my gods-gift. Vor would give anything to save these people. Perhaps he has already given everything. How can I do any less?
I swallow. The idea forming in my head isn’t much, scarcely more than a glimmer of a thought. But it’s there. And the pull of those stones is strong, stronger even than the pain rippling through my body. I can do this. I don’t know how. But I can. I will.
Hands fumbling, I find the latch, push the window open.
“Princess!”
I look back, one leg already swung over the windowsill. Hael lunges toward me, her hand outstretched. “Princess, what are you doing?”
“It’s the only way, Hael,” I say.
Then I pull my other leg out, grip the sill, dangle as low as I can. And drop.
