There was a small noise to the left, and Percy turned in alarm to find two dead men who had emerged with otherwise uncanny silence from lord knows where, and were upon them.
The first was a burly foot soldier who had been slain in the head, for his one eye-socket was a frozen mess of spilled grey matter, but all his heavily muscled limbs were intact. And he had a musket slung to one shoulder and a sizeable sword in his hand. He must have been one of Hoarfrost’s Lethe rabble for he wore no Trovadii colors. His death shadow was a thick smokestack behind him.
The other soldier was also one of the unaffiliated of Hoarfrost’s army, and he sported a fixed villainous grin, mercenary unmarked clothing, and a thick club in one hand while in the other a long serrated knife. This one’s death shadow also billowed at his side, in an ugly parody of the human body it flanked.
Both of them headed straight for Percy and Countess Arabella with the boy Flavio.
Percy grabbed the pitchfork with both hands and she shoved with all her strength at the burly musketeer. It felt like she was trying to move a side of beef . . . and temples pounding, everything suddenly became very sharp . . . slate-grey sky, black branches, white snow.
She heard Countess Arabella’s small cry behind her, and then the grunts of the Count as he swung his sword awkwardly in an attempt to sever the arms of the attackers.
Percy saw violent movements in her peripheral vision, but did not know what was happening, was not sure. . . . She maintained an unwavering grip on the pitchfork handle with both hands, and it was still lodged in the soldier in front of her, keeping him out of arms reach, but he was pushing back, advancing upon her, relentless like a mountain of cold meat and torn armor.
God help me . . . she thought, numb and at the same time bright and reeling with the terrible inevitability of what was before her. Lord Hades, help me. Angels in Heaven help me. Anyone . . . help me . . .
And then she felt her, the dark Goddess, stirring.
Do it! the perverse thoughts slithered. Do it and test me!
At the same time, from very far away, Percy felt the distant echo of a vast grey Hall and the sweeping motion of silent cobwebs, and the voice of Lord Death, faded almost completely. Make your choice. . . .
Champion. . . .
The God and the Goddess were both speaking now, and the word rang with impossible duality.
Champion!
My Champion!
But Percy heard the little boy, Flavio San Quellenne cry out in pain and fear. And her decision was made.
Percy reached out to the two death shadows and took them desperately in the grip of her mind, and then she forced them into the two corpses, while the so familiar deep sound of cathedral bells filled her head and the expanse of forest. . . .
The dead men collapsed like pieces of wood, with Percy’s pitchfork still lodged inside one of them.
Percy turned around and glanced behind her, too terrified to imagine what awful sight to expect.
Little Flavio was crying but unharmed, and Countess Arabella held him shielded behind her, while a deep bleeding gash disfigured the sleeve over her arm. Her husband was pale but unscathed, and so were two of their servants.
Lady Leonora was watching it all with horror in her glassy eyes.
“Take me!” she said suddenly to Percy. “Nothing matters any more, do it now!”
But all hell broke loose as the clearing was suddenly filled with advancing Trovadii from one side, and from the other flew Goraque cavalry knights, including Baron Gundar Dureval, and at his side, the beloved black knight atop his monstrous black warhorse.
“Percy!” Beltain cried. “Are you all right?”
He had lifted his visor for a moment and Percy saw a flash of his lean comely face and his slate-blue eyes locked with hers in intensity, as he hurtled right at her, intercepting two enemy cavalrymen and engaging them in fierce hand combat, while the other knights mingled all through the clearing. In seconds, Beltain had disabled the nearest enemy, and he came upon Percy and the D’Arvu, reining in Jack with one easy pull of a powerful gauntlet.
“Are you unharmed?” He pointed at the Countess who was bleeding from the arm. And then he saw the two fallen dead men.
“And you, Percy?” He rode closer.
Percy nodded in relief. She saw the concern in his eyes, and for a moment she was taken out of the scene, remembering the soft look of his, the way Beltain looked at her each time with wonder—
Somewhere nearby a musket pop sounded.
The black knight went very still.
Nearby, black birds screeched, rising up from the shrubbery.
Lord Beltain Chidair looked down at himself, and the front of his breastplate was pierced with a round hole, slightly to the left.
Just over his heart.
He stared at himself, and there was again wonder on his features, but wonder of a different kind.
“Percy . . .” he said. And then he exhaled for the last time.
Inside her mind, Percy heard the laughter of the dark Goddess.
Percy looked up at him, and she saw the round hole in his metal plate armor, and it was so small, just a tiny little thing. . . . There was no blood, really, nothing that could be seen. And Beltain still sat firmly in the saddle, and Jack was stirring restless underneath him, powerful haunches moving, hooves stomping the snow. . . .
And then Percy saw it, the gentle doubling of her other vision, the billowing death shadow, gathering itself out of nothing, and materializing at his side.
No.
Percy stood like stone, looking up at them both.
No.
“Percy . . .” he said again. But this time it was a strange different sound, for he was speaking on the exhale, and his voice was now not his own. “I am so sorry . . . Percy.”
“Beltain . . .” she said. “Beltain.”
There was no sound in the world. A perfect, serene silence.
Somewhere out there, there was fighting, and the cries of the wounded, and the slash of steel and the bludgeon of wood, and there were flashes of motion, and more musket fire and distant drums, while something was being perpetrated.
Something. . . .
The Count and Countess and Lady Leonora stared at them in horrified silence and little Flavio had stopped crying.
Percy slowly put her hand up to Beltain, and she touched his gauntlet. She took it off, and his hand was bared—large, capable fingers, still warm. . . . She held them, squeezing, and he did not squeeze back at first, and then there was something, a thick awkward movement of a thing flexing a wooden limb . . . the response through layers of great distance.
A few knights had noticed something had happened, and two of them approached, then a third, but he as soon had to be pulled back into the fight.
Beltain Chidair carefully moved his wooden limbs, and then he dismounted, and stood before Percy while Jack made terrified noises but stood his ground at his master’s side. Something was pooling at his feet, seeping through the armor plates, from the inside . . . so much crimson staining the snow.
Percy was a numb thing of wood. No breath, no movement. No thought.
But something was happening to her face, and she did not really know, except there was something wet pouring out of her, and she did not know what it was. . . . And she did not, did not know anything.
Beltain was looking at her, and he took off his helm completely, dropping it to the snow, and then pulled back the coif hood of chain mail from his head, and his brown hair spilled in wavy soft locks around his face, familiar and beloved.
The black knight spoke nothing, only took her face in his hands and he brought his own face down over hers . . . and the cooling lips pressed against her own, light as a feather and then hard as a dream, holding her for a few moments.
No breath between them.
His eyes were so close, stilled in serenity, and she momentarily drowned in them.
He moved away, and then he said softly, “Put us all to rest, my love. . .
.”
And Percy cried a rending scream.
She screamed in a horrible broken voice, choking on the wet stuff coming out of her, and screamed, and screamed . . . and the forest echoed, and the full, loud sounds of battle were again all around, while she put white-knuckled hands up to her face . . . and her head was tolling with the sound of her own voice, and then the voice of the dark Goddess, laughing.
“Do it now,” said the Cobweb Bride, standing right behind her.
Percy reached out with her death sense, and with all of her stupid, useless mortal being. . . .
Beltain was before her, and his eyes—oh, his eyes were gazing into hers with endless quiet love.
She reached out, and out, and out. . . .
The world around her widened. . . . It was deep and fathomless in all directions, forest and plain and somewhere beyond, the lapping sea . . . and it was all filling with roiling darkness, as though the overcast skies had fallen down into her, were being pulled into her shell of a mortal body. . . . She was pulling all of it inside, like a hungry maw, a pitch-black void.
A forest of anemic cobwebs filled her mind. And then she saw searing brightness, and radiant white—a flash—and it was Beltain himself, looking at her . . . only now he was the White Bridegroom, and he was dressed in Lord Death’s clothing, and he wore a smile, beckoning.
Gentle, serene love.
Percy saw him thus, his image seared into her permanently, as she held the death-shadows all around—all the infinity of them, for leagues in every direction, human, animal, insect—and she held the death shadow of the Cobweb Bride . . . and Beltain’s shadow also, his beloved own.
The dark Goddess stirred. Do not do it, foolish mortal! I have already taken what you love most! Think you not that I will take from you again?
“You cannot take anything else from me,” Percy said.
And then she took hold of the death shadow of the Cobweb Bride, sensing the physical presence of the maiden’s upright dead body from the back—for Leonora stood directly behind her, looking at her with serene, accepting eyes—and she held it long enough to show Leonora the glorious sight of the White Bridegroom with Beltain’s eyes.
And then she gently pushed the death inside the maiden.
There was nothing—no great blinding light, no trembling earth, no falling sphere of heaven.
Only a soft, serene exhalation of the soul of the world. . . .
Dissolution of will.
Gentle fading.
The wind still blew in gusts, and the white and black forest still rang with war.
And then Percy felt—knew for certain—that the Cobweb Bride was gone.
Behind her, Lady Leonora had collapsed softly, falling upon the snow at the feet of her parents.
Immediately after, Beltain’s form was suddenly void of presence. His beloved soul had gone. His eyes had never blinked, but now he was a thing malleable. And the body of the black knight fell down at Percy’s feet.
It was happening all over the forest. Soldiers were collapsing, coming down one after another, falling in droves, in columns and formations, men and horses and abandoned sharp steel.
Far in the distance on the battle plain, the sound of drums had stopped. Indeed, the clash and roar was replaced by suddenly growing pockets of silence. The winter landscape had swallowed the last of the sound in its quiet snow-padded maw, and now only the pale boundless sky streamed outward, bearing witness to the last of the dissipating motion.
“Leonora, my child!” Countess Arabella was weeping loudly, hunched over the body of her daughter.
Percy did not notice it, but she herself had come down on her knees in the snow, before Beltain. She felt her knees buckling, and there she was. . . . He lay on his back, facing the sky. She looked at him, and it was strange to see his eyes like that, open, but stilled, not looking at her.
A beautiful dead man.
No!
She wanted to touch him, to rock him in her arms, but she could not move. Her limbs. . . . They were not her own.
All she could do now was stay like this, hunched over him, and watch over him. Someone had to watch over him, as he lay in the snow. . . .
“Good God! What is happening?” Baron Dureval was one of the two knights who had ceased fighting when the black knight was shot, and stopped at their side. He now dismounted from his horse and came up to Percy, and stood over her and the fallen black knight.
A sharp screech of a bird sounded, and it made Percy suddenly aware of her limbs, her knees, as though her soul had been temporarily disembodied and now she could inhabit the mortal coat of useless flesh.
He lay before her in the snow.
And she made the incomprehensible effort with her limbs and took off her woolen shawl. She folded it, and then she gently placed her fingers underneath his head, feeling the softness of his hair, and the searing touch of snow. And she lifted his head slightly and put the shawl underneath, then lowered him again. She adjusted a few tendrils of his hair, smoothing them over his cool forehead. But she could not bring herself to close his eyes. . . .
She stood up.
Percy was light as a feather. She was lightheaded, but quite unlike what had happened to her before when she put large numbers of the dead to rest.
This time she was strong and light as a feather. Feeling nothing.
Nothing at all.
. . . at her feet in the snow . . .
“Look at them! The Trovadii are falling down all over!” Sir Marlon Wedeis who had fought at the black knight’s side, exclaimed, riding up hard. But now he dismounted and stood silently when he saw who lay on the ground.
Ebrai Fiomarre also approached and stood nearby, looking at Percy intently, glancing back and forth from her to the fallen great figure in black armor.
“Percy . . . Percy Ayren,” Fiomarre said gently. “I am so sorry . . . for your loss.”
But Percy said nothing. She continued standing like a pillar, looking down at him who lay at her feet.
“Well, I’ll be damned,” said Baron Dureval. “The Black Knight is down. . . .” And he took off his helm in respect.
“Not just Trovadii falling, but all the dead are going down!” cried another knight, approaching their group on horseback. “All our boys too. What in blazes is going on now? They are all dead! Really dead!”
“So, you think death is back in business again?” Baron Dureval said, wiping his clammy forehead with the back of his gauntlet. And then he pointed to Beltain’s body and he said gruffly to Percy, “Is he gone, for certain? Maybe we ought to check? Take those plates off, look at the wound. . . . Though, no, I can tell, the poor fellow’s got the open-eyed stare, he’s gone for sure—”
“Be silent.” Percy slowly turned her face around, and the look on it was hard, terrifying, dead. So much power there was in her gaze that the baron did not question the fact that a peasant girl was speaking to him in such a manner.
She looked around her then, seeing the D’Arvu family gathered around Leonora’s body, and she saw Ebrai Fiomarre, behind her.
“You,” said Percy Ayren, looking at him with a vacant stare. “You, who are Lord Fiomarre, Vlau’s brother. I can feel her presence inside me even now, even after what has come to pass. She just will not go away—the one who is the Sovereign. . . . The one who is the Goddess. You said before you wanted to try—to take me to her.”
“What do you mean, girl?”
“I mean, let’s go. Take me to her now. I know exactly where she is, but I would like you to come along—and do what you had planned to do.”
“But if she is immortal,” Ebrai said, “and she cannot be killed—”
“Let’s go.”
And then Percy turned around and she said to Count D’Arvu, “My Lord, please watch over Beltain, for he lies in the snow. . . . For—I must go and do something. I must do something. But—someone must watch over him, as he lies in the snow. . . .”
Chapter 17
Percy rode with Ebrai Fi
omarre, awkwardly seated in the saddle before him, as they moved through the forest filled with fallen dead and loudly energetic living. Some of the folk were rejoicing, and the mixed groups of peasants and townspeople cheered the nearby infantrymen and cavalry knights as they rode over piles of fallen dead bodies. A few more feet of forest and they had reached the wide clearing before the plain upon which three cities stood next to each other.
The plain was a sea of pomegranate-red, silent fallen men, all Three Armies of the Trovadii. But the battle had not ended, and indeed the war was far from over, because the living soldiers of Solemnis of the Domain were present and they still had their orders, and they now engaged the Goraque soldiers of the Realm.
However the odds were now mortal, human—at least here on this battlefield. Those who were mortally wounded, fell and did not rise again. And for some strange reason, it served to invigorate both sides, so that now the battle raged fiercely in the field and around Letheburg. And this time, the garrison soldiers of the Silver Court and Sapphire Court joined the battle. Fresh formations in Imperial colors joined the fray, while on the other side, the Domain garrison came out in a lesser force.
Ebrai Fiomarre rode carefully and swiftly, not engaging in any skirmishes. And because the distance was short, they had remained lucky enough to approach within a hundred feet of Letheburg’s open gates that has been damaged by a battering ram, together with the adjacent section of wall that had come down in coarse granite boulders and lay in pieces on the snowy ground.
“I do hope you know what you’re doing,” Ebrai said to her through gritted teeth, as he had to draw his sword and ready his shield arm for military contact. “I understand the tragic loss you’ve had, Percy, and it might have affected you somewhat—”
“Get me into the city, My Lord,” she said in a dead voice. “Get me through the gates.”
“And then what?”
In Percy’s mind the dark Goddess laughed.
Come to me, my Champion, and watch me make another Cobweb Bride! I will stop the cycle of death yet again, for it is as easy as your next breath!