Beltain and the others, except for the Infanta, rose from their seats, clattering teacups against serving tables, and bowed or curtsied before the new King.
“Lord Beltain,” he said, addressing the black knight with no preamble. “Are you aware that your insubordinate Duke father has camped outside the city gates, together with an army of dead men? Apparently he has gathered hundreds upon hundreds of rabble from all around my Kingdom, not only Chidair. This is an outrage! And even more so, it is insupportable that it has happened on the day of Her Majesty’s passing!”
“What? My father has gone mad! I know he has been obsessed with the hunt for the Cobweb Bride, but I know of no reason for him to rise up against his liege directly!”
“Well, whatever it is that has incited him to rebellion,” said the King, “matters little. What matters is the consequence. Because now we are in a siege, in the middle of a rather brutal winter, with no preparation and no means of proper engagement, and only a meager selection of troops and militia stationed inside these walls of the city. Lord knows what prompts you northern brutes to fight during the cold months unlike other civilized men! Furthermore, even if we had a full, properly outfitted military force here in Letheburg, there is no conceivable method at our garrison’s disposal to fight or even resist the dead in such numbers!”
“There is Goraque,” Beltain began. “I bear witness to the fact that after the battle of Lake Merlait, the Red Duke had forged a truce with Chidair. But this is no longer a territorial dispute, Chidair against Goraque—this is war amongst the living and the dead, and the truce is justly nullified. As the dead continue to desert from all sides and flock to my mad father’s banner, I venture that the living, such as myself, will do a similar thing and pledge themselves to the nearest living commander, such as the Red Duke. Even now, Goraque might be counted on to rally troops still loyal to Your Majesty and to the Liguon Emperor, and come to the defense of Letheburg.”
“Goraque is an option, but not a long-term solution,” mused the King of Lethe. “What I require now is the Emperor’s significant forces at my back, and something even more effective against the dead—indeed, by all that I hear and have observed for myself, something that’s indeed proven to be effective.” He turned around and pointed at Percy with one finger. “You!”
Percy, discreetly finishing up chewing a piece of flaky tart pastry, started to choke.
“Tell me honestly, girl,” King Roland spoke, perusing Percy closely as she turned red, coughing and swallowing to clear her throat and dearly wishing she could take a gulp of tea. “How many dead men are you able to put to rest at once? How close do you need to be? Can you do a long-range propelling strike—”
“Your Majesty,” said Beltain. “As the girl herself had said to me just the other day, she is not a musket. Nor is she an artillery cannon.”
Roland Osenni raised one brow, but was not in the least bit amused. “My question is serious,” he pronounced. “This girl, this so-called ‘Death’s Champion,’ as I am told she is called in the countryside—she just might be our only means of loading the odds in our favor. We cannot carry on a normal war against men who cannot be killed—especially considering that as our own living soldier ranks dwindle, they will cross sides to increase the enemy forces the moment they are ‘slain’ in battle.”
“That is indeed a regrettable likelihood.” Beltain nodded.
“What about fire?” It was the Marquis Fiomarre speaking.
The King glanced at him with a brief frown. “What manner of advice should I consider from a traitor and murderer?”
Vlau’s dark expression flared with leashed intensity. “I might no longer have any right to speak as a Peer of the Realm, it is true. However I speak as a soldier—as someone who has served in battle. In my better days, I was briefly employed in a military capacity at the border with Balmue and my native Fiomarre lands, in Styx. We have used fire and gunpowder to great effect, and I myself have seen it burn through literally unbreachable defenses, and have grown rather skilled at packaging and doling out various intricate weapons of flames. And now I pose before Your Majesty this question: do the dead not burn?”
“You tell me!” said the King.
“To be honest, I am not sure what happens to them in fire,” Beltain interrupted. “We have not observed anything particular during the battle of Merlait—at least not in any extraordinary detail that I can recall of that hellish day.”
“Fire might be one deterrent,” King Roland continued. “But it still brings me back to you, girl—Percy, is it?”
“Yes, Your Majesty.” She curtsied, still flushed red, and with her gaze to the floor, while her mind raced. . . .
“Answer me now, Percy, how much can you do? How many dead men can you strike down?”
“I—I am not sure.” Percy realized that her travel companions were watching her silently—the knight, and the marquis, and the Infanta, all who witnessed her in action, all reluctant to give away her ability. And Grial was looking at her with her steady dark eyes.
But she could not very well lie to the King. And besides, there was something that made her want to admit it.
“I touched three, one after another,” she said. “And they were gone. Afterwards, I was very dizzy and weak.”
The King nodded in satisfaction. “Excellent! Just the thing we need to know! Now, how long did it take you to recover?”
“Majesty . . . I am not very certain, but maybe a few hours.”
“Very well. Now tell me this—does it have to involve touch? Or can you look at a man and make it happen?”
“I have only done it by touching someone. I am not sure how else to do it—because I must hold the shadow and direct it into the body, or at least it’s what it feels like, a kind of pull—”
It occurred to Percy, as she was speaking, that the pull she was describing was the same peculiar sensation she’d had for the past hour. It was as though an invisible death presence was just out of reach, powerful and plural, and it pressed upon her from every direction, no matter where she turned. Just beyond reach, she could feel it surrounding her, calling her, a billowing ocean of death shadows. . . .
It was the dead army surrounding Letheburg.
And as this realization entered her, Percy felt a snapping moment of vertigo, of being stifled on the metaphysical plane—simultaneously suffocated by a lack of air and the pressure upon her mind, and yet torn apart by the demanding need she could feel, the hungry terrible need.
The dead needed her.
The King was speaking something, saying things to her, and Percy could not hear him. She struggled to focus her awareness upon the present location and not the many leagues beyond in a perfect circle of all directions, as the dead stood beyond the walls, waiting.
Dear Lord in Heaven, were they waiting for her?
“—so that at first light tomorrow you will go and stand on the battlements and try to exercise this ability of yours remotely,” the King was saying. “You will make as many attempts as necessary to manipulate the dead, cast your full strength into the act of sending their—shadows, as you call them—into final oblivion. I want you to enact death upon as many of their men at once as possible. You will do whatever it takes to make it work.”
“Yes, Your Majesty,” she replied, knowing in those furious seconds of racing thoughts that instead she would leave tonight—she would have to, for to obey the King and attempt what he asked of her was an impossibility. Furthermore, she would not be allowed to fail, nor would she be allowed to leave.
“Very good, then, girl.” King Roland Osseni concluded in a satisfied tone. “You already served us well earlier, and will receive a worthy reward for this and future services to Lethe, in addition to our continued gratitude. I expect you to rest well and early, in case something happens overnight and you are needed—though I doubt they will attack so soon—and be ready tomorrow, for we will test your abilities. Let us hope you prove yourself as skillful as one could hope.”
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“Yes, Your Majesty.” She curtsied again, never looking up.
“And now, I too am weary and would like to rest,” said the Infanta. Her travel companions found her words curious, considering that now that she was dead, the Infanta had always underscored her lack of need for rest. She had often told them she no longer knew weariness, or pain, or any bodily discomfort.
The King turned to the seated Grand Princess with a benevolent and sympathetic look. “Of course, my dear, Your Imperial Highness will be well accommodated.” And then, as servants were dispatched on many errands, he added: “Naturally, because of the unfortunate circumstances at our door, Your Imperial Highness will have to be our guest a while longer—indeed, I would even say, indefinitely.”
The rest of the afternoon was a blur of hectic activity in the Palace, and non-stop tolling of bells all over Letheburg.
Percy was given a small but comfortable chamber suitable for a high-ranking servant, and told to “rest by orders of the King,” even though it was not even suppertime. Her room was directly adjacent to the splendid guest suite allocated to Her Imperial Highness, who had insisted she wanted Percy nearby. And for that matter the Grand Princess required that the Marquis Fiomarre and Lord Beltain Chidair were also to be housed in nearby quarters.
For the first half hour, left alone in a room so fine that she had no notion how to touch anything for fear of ruining the brocade or dirtying the embroidered bed coverlet, Percy stood near the amazingly fashioned, tall windows of perfectly transparent glass and watched the hive of activity in the Palace square outside. She was on an upper story, high above ground level, so the snow-covered square appeared to teem with tiny ant figures of men in deep cobalt-blue military colors of Lethe.
They were moving at times in chaotic disarray, at other times, perfect order. Pikemen infantry columns marching in tight formation were interspersed with cavalry knights in full steel-plate armor flanked by their arquebus marksmen intended to penetrate enemy armor plate. The specially trained heavy musketeers followed the lighter arquebusiers. Next came small dispatches of running long-bowmen and sword-and-buckler light infantry. They in turn were followed by supply wagons loaded with cannonballs and barrels of gunpowder from the city arsenals, and immense rolling cannons, all in the process of being carted to the city wall embattlements.
In addition, civilian carriages of every size rolled up and down the approach way to and from the metal gates of the Palace grounds. Servants scuttled about, all of them cumulatively pounding down the old snow into a dirty mixture of slush.
The longer Percy watched, the more mesmerized she became, listening to the harsh orders and the shouts, trumpet blasts, the neighing of the armored cavalry horses and the rattle of carriage wheels. And far out there, where the distant walls of Letheburg stretched all around the great perimeter, she could feel the ever-present massive pull of the dead. . . .
Another half an hour later, a young servant her own age came by with a heavily loaded supper tray, and curtsied before Percy after depositing the tray on a table.
Percy bit her lip, feeling awkward indeed. She curtsied back at the maid, exactly the same way, so that the poor servant got flustered, did not know how to respond, and simply hurried out of the room.
At first Percy did not bother to eat. She was still full from the tea and pastries (an extravagant meal which would have lasted her and her family for the entire day at home), and besides, her stomach was queasy with nerves. But then she remembered Grial’s good advice about “gobbling.”
And so she approached the food, and nibbled a bit of whatever looked most edible, carefully avoiding what appeared to be suspiciously fresh, live meat forced into a baked pastry crust and furtively drowned in cream sauce by some desperate royal cook who was hoping to disguise its undead nature.
At some point, as Percy moved a dish aside, she noticed a corner of folded parchment lying underneath. She unfolded it with a sudden excited pang in her stomach. It was a note from none other than Grial.
I know you can read this, dumpling, the note said. Eat well, rest well, sleep early, then wake by midnight and wait. Be ready to go with someone who will come for you in the witching hour. —G.
A new pang of terror mixed with relief struck her directly in the gut. Then came pins and needles and leeches of nerves. Percy stopped eating and had to bend over and hold her midriff from the sharp bolts of worry-induced pain that shot through her, tearing at her insides as though she was having indigestion.
She was terrified, and for the first time in her life she was on the verge of panic. Meeting Death in his unreal Keep seemed a mild grey dream in comparison. Percy stood up, started to pace, in an attempt to make the rending feeling dissipate. She reminded herself it was Grial who sent the note, so everything was going to turn out well, or as reasonably well as could be expected under the circumstances. . . .
“Eat,” Grial had told her, and so Percy once again turned to the tray and put foodstuff in her mouth and chewed without tasting, then drank it down with cooling tea. She took the parchment note and folded it very, very small and stuck it in her pocket.
Eventually another servant came by to remove the tray, and Percy thanked her and again forgot and curtseyed deeply as though the other were royalty. This was an older woman and did not get flustered at all. Instead, the maid smiled and said, “Would you like me to light the fireplace, Miss?”
“Oh, if it’s not too much trouble,” Percy replied, flushing. She had made a discovery that servants who served her made her very uncomfortable.
But the maid smiled again, adjusted her lace-trimmed bonnet (which Percy noted was fancier than any of her mother’s old lace in her dowry treasure trunk at home), and soon had a fire burning golden-orange in the hearth. The crackling radiance brought instant cheer, and when the maid took the tray and left, Percy felt a powerful feeling of peace come over her.
She sat down in a tall-backed wing chair, forgetting that her grimy old burlap and wool dress might stain the fancy upholstery, and stared at the moving firelight, her eyelids grown heavy, with her back to the window. Beyond it, the sounds of preparation for war and the tolling of the bells were still audible, even through the closed window-glass. Soon, the window turned indigo with twilight, and the fireplace stood out even more with its aura of warmth.
Somewhere the Palace clocks struck seven.
Percy came to, stiff and groggy, and forced herself to rise and get into bed. She took off her soggy footwear and old socks, and her outer dress, setting it all out to dry, and remained in her old cotton shift that she had on underneath for warmth, day and night. Oh, what a soft marvel the bed was! It smelled of a perfumed garden on a warm day, a whole field of flowers put together, and it was impossible to tell which flower scents combined to make the bouquet.
The pillow was like a cloud, thought Percy, and closed her eyes. Everything all around her was ethereal cloud softness. . . . No twisted death, no war—no dead pulling at her mind from leagues all around—nothing of the sort. There were no other thoughts to plague her; she shut them all out with a lingering vision of dancing orange firelight standing up before her eyelids to overpower all with its warm serenity, letting in only the softness and the delicate scent of those unknown mixed flowers. . . . And then she sank into warm peace and slept.
The next time she awoke was to near darkness and clocks striking the midnight hour all around the Palace. Awareness of the present moment came to her with the sickening pang of immediacy, and Percy sat up sharply. Her movement sent lurching shadows dancing against the walls in the low illumination of the fireplace that had burned down to a few last sparks and golden embers, leaving only glowing deep red coals to cast a demonic faint glow in the room.
The witching hour!
Percy was out of bed like a coiled spring and then looked under the bed for a chamberpot. She answered the call of nature, washed her sleep-puffed face from the pitcher and basin in the corner, and set about pulling on her socks and other clothi
ng that had had time to dry before the fire.
Any moment now, someone was coming! And then they would run!
Percy was dressed and done with tying her laces at her neck and sleeves and round her socks and thick woven winter shoes, in a few breathless instants. She then grabbed her woolen shawl and clutched it in a bundle in her arms. She was ready.
The midnight clocks had stopped striking several long minutes ago, and in the profound silence she sat, listening to her own heartbeat and waiting.
At last there was a soft knock on her door.
She had heard no footfalls, so whomever Grial had sent must have been silent in their approach. Percy went to the door, opening it carefully, and peeked outside into the dark Palace hallway.
Whoever stood there suddenly took her hand above the wrist in a light grip of a much larger hand. Percy stifled an exclamation and then saw a tall black shape of a man, which in a moment resolved itself when the glow from her fireplace cast its last illumination upon his face. It was Lord Beltain Chidair.
He remained in the hallway, put his other hand up with a finger raised to his lips. His eyes glittered black and liquid in the near-darkness.
Percy had time to notice he was fully dressed, covered in a long midnight cloak, and underneath it, wearing most of his black armor, missing only a few plates and the helm. And belted at his waist was his long sword which she did not remember seeing him bring into the Palace, as it was inappropriate for anyone but Royal guards to bear arms indoors before the King. When and how did he procure his sword?
“Come . . . quietly.” He barely mouthed the words. Feeling her heartbeat lurching, Percy nodded and stepped forth into the hallway, shutting the door behind her.
He continued holding her arm above the wrist, pulling her—or better said, maneuvering her—after him, and he walked with amazing swiftness yet without making any sound. Percy realized he had strategically placed pieces of cloth between the largest armor plates so that there was no clanging of metal, and his fine mesh of chain mail was worn over a soft additional undershirt in a silencing layer.