Crown of Three (38 page)

“No,” Elodie shouted up to him. “That's not what I mean! Fessan, tell me—what will the enemy do if we retreat?”

Fessan ran his hand down his brow, smearing it with blood and sweat. An undead warrior rushed him through a gap in the front line; he cut the screaming creature down with one swift blow.

“They will follow us,” he said wearily.

“Exactly! They'll follow us and fall right into our trap!”

“What trap? Princess Elodie, you must—”

“A trap made of ghosts!”

“Ghosts?” yelled Tarlan, leaning over the thorrod's beating wings. “Elodie, what are you talking about?”

“What did you think we were standing on?” she yelled back.

Tarlan looked startled for a moment. Then he grinned.

He understands
, Elodie thought with relief.
Of course he does!

Another wave of warriors pressed against the nearby Trident ranks. Metal clashed against metal.

“Speak your plan, Elodie,” Fessan said. “But please, you must be quick.”

“Wait,” said Elodie, her heart racing. Cupping her hands to her mouth, she shouted, “Samial! Samial!”

“Who's Samial?” Fessan asked.

“You'll see,” said Elodie, “or rather, you won't. Listen—we're standing on a bridge made of ghosts, yes?”

“I can hardly believe it, but yes,” said Fessan.

“If we retreat, the enemy will follow us onto the bridge.”

“Yes, but—”

Samial appeared, slipping between the fighting men with a strange, unsettling grace. Theeta cawed and reared up as if she could sense his presence.

“You called me, Elodie,” Samial said.

“Yes, I did,” she replied.

Fessan was furiously organizing a cordon of soldiers around them. The enemy was massing closer and tighter than ever. They were running out of time. He turned back to Elodie, bewildered. “Who are you talking to?”

“Samial. My friend. He's here.”

“Now shut up and let my sister explain,” Tarlan growled.

“Samial,” said Elodie. “We're going to retreat. The instant we're back on the solid part of the bridge, I want Sir Jaken and his fellow knights to leave.”

“Leave?” said Samial.

“Yes. If the ghost bridge gives way while the enemy's still on it, they'll fall into the chasm. Can you do it?”

“Of course,” said Samial. “When will you retreat?”

Elodie stared at the swollen ranks of the enemy.

“Now!” she said.

But before Samial could move, something bellowed nearby. A dark shadow emerged from a roiling cloud of dust. As the air cleared, Elodie found herself staring into the twisted, inhuman face of her father.

Brutan's skeleton fingers stabbed out of the mist and closed around her neck. She tried to scream, but no sound came out. Graythorn growled and lunged at Brutan's legs, but the undead king kicked him away. Filos was nowhere to be seen.

“Back, beast!” yelled Fessan, raising his sword. Brutan swatted him down as if he were no more than a fly.

Weakening, Elodie sagged in Brutan's iron grip. His face floated over her, more bone than flesh. His eyes were furnaces, scorching her with their heat, blinding her with their light. Her neck grew cold, then colder still, and an unspeakable tingling began at the base of her skull.

This is not death
, she thought in panic.
This is undeath.

She was about to join her father in the realm of the unliving.

Brutan's fingers squeezed.

Help me! Someone help me!

The world slipped away.

Something slammed into Brutan, knocking him bodily to one side. His fingers opened and Elodie slipped free. Through blurred vision she saw the snapping beak of a thorrod, a smear of gold feathers, Tarlan's angry face. Theeta thrashed her wings, driving Brutan back, until Brutan's broadsword came up and sliced clean through one of her claws. The giant thorrod reared up, shrieking with pain. Tarlan slithered down her flank but somehow managed to cling on.

Elodie was falling backward. She let herself go. Anything to get away from the monster that had once been her father. She heard a plaintive growl, saw Filos racing toward her through the throng. She steeled herself, ready for the impact as she hit the shields below her.

The impact didn't come. As Elodie's vision cleared, she saw a sea of shocked faces—ghost faces, Samial's among them—rise past her. Except they weren't rising; she'd fallen over the edge of the spectral bridge, and was falling still, through thin air and cold cloud and into waiting darkness.

Falling into the chasm.

The cloud enveloped her and her world turned white. She felt weightless and free. It was gone, all of it: Tarlan, Samial, Fessan, the battle, her destiny. Now, at the end, it was just her, alone, falling.

How many breaths until I hit the bottom? One . . . two . . . three . . .

Fingers closed around her wrist. She cried out, thinking it was Brutan. But these fingers were warm. They tugged, yanking her arm around with sudden, welcome pain.

“Climb up!” It was Tarlan, shouting through a storm of feathers.

Twisting her body, Elodie tried to grab hold. But Tarlan's fingers were slipping, and she was already beginning to fall again.

“For your life, try!” Tarlan yelled.

Elodie plunged her hand into the mass of feathers below Theeta's pounding wings and grabbed hold. The thorrod extended her claws—one of which was just a bleeding stump—and Elodie used them to climb, just as she might have stepped up into a carriage back at Castle Vicerin. Finding new purchase on her upper arm, Tarlan hauled her the rest of the way to safety.

“Thank you, Tarlan!” she gasped as she collapsed onto Theeta's back. From the bird's labored breathing and the erratic rhythm of her wings, she could tell Theeta was in great pain. “And thank you, Theeta.”

The injured thorrod cawed in return.

“She says, ‘You're welcome,'” said Tarlan.

Theeta climbed steadily out of the chasm, finally breaking through the clouds to give them a heart-stopping view of the battle on the bridge.

The Trident forces were in full retreat. Most had now reached the relative safety of the finger of rock jutting from the Isurian side of the chasm. The undead army was in close pursuit but, even as they surged across the deck of shields, the ghosts broke away, tumbling them into the abyss. They plunged into the mist, shrieking. As the last men of Trident regained solid ground, the ghosts followed them. The spectral bridge was completely dissolved.

It worked
, thought Elodie, exhausted.

On the Idilliam side, at the very edge of his domain, Brutan stood roaring in triumph. Surrounding him, extending behind him all the way back to the city wall, was his army of undead warriors. Thousands of eyes flamed red; thousands of voices raised their screeches to the sky.

Brutan, the tyrant king, ruled Toronia once more.

“Time to go,” said Tarlan, tugging gently on Theeta's feathers. The giant thorrod circled away from Idilliam and back toward the forest of Isur.

Elodie had no hesitation turning her back on the undead, but seeing Trident so badly defeated was a bitter blow. Was this the end result of their great march through the forest? Was this all their dreams had amounted to?

“We'll come back!” she said. “Our brother is there, Tarlan. We'll come back for him. He's ours, and we're going to take him back. But that's not all.”

“It isn't?” said Tarlan.

The wind blew through Elodie's battle-slashed hair. It tangled briefly with her brother's, making a single, streaming red-gold pennant.

“No. We're going to take back the crown as well.”

G
ulph felt his brother's body grow slack in his arms. Nynus's pale face turned gray and his eyes closed. A thin gasp left his lips.

“Nynus?” said Gulph.

Despite all the cruelties enacted by the young king, Gulph pitied him. And loved him too. The gold mask lay abandoned in the dust; only the boy remained. With a father like Brutan and a mother like Magritt, was it any wonder he'd lost his way?

His eyes flicked briefly to the crown that still rested on Nynus's head.

Or was it being king that finally brought you down?
he thought with a tremor.

In the end, it didn't matter. Gulph simply didn't want him to die.

A tremor passed through Nynus's body. His eyes flickered, fixing on Gulph's face.

“B-brother?” he croaked.

Gulph's heart lifted. Was he rallying? Would he live?

But the pool of blood in which Nynus lay was widening with every shallow breath he took, and the wound in his chest gaped and pulsed as he fought to keep a grip on his life.

“I'm here,” Gulph replied.

Nynus raised a trembling hand and touched Gulph's chin. “Triplet?”

Gulph nodded. “Yes.”

Nynus tried to move his head, failed, and let out a shuddering groan.

“I should have . . . seen it. I always thought . . . fate brought you, Gulph. To Idilliam. To me. Fate . . . had brought me a friend.”

“I was your friend.” Gulph's tears flowed down his face and onto Nynus's fingers. “But I am your brother, too.”

Nynus smiled. His mouth was full of blood. “In the Vault . . . in the Black Cell . . . I used to wish for a brother.”

“Wishes can come true, Nynus.”

Nynus's eyes closed again. His body grew very still. But when Gulph held his cheek near to his brother's lips, he felt the faintest of breaths.

“We cannot stay here,” said Ossilius.

He picked himself up from where he'd been slumped against the tower wall and staggered over to Gulph. His uniform torn and splattered with blood, his lined face caked in white stone powder, the former captain of the King's Legion looked as if he'd aged twenty years. He pointed toward the Idilliam Bridge.

“Whatever battle was fought there is over,” he went on. “Soon Brutan will turn his attention back this way. We must find a place of safety, if we do not wish to join the ranks of the undead.”

Through the swirling clouds of dust, Gulph saw the creature that had once been his father striding to and fro among his corpse-warriors. His sword was raised above his head; his roars of triumph echoed off the towering city walls.

A small group of legionnaires stumbled past, headed for a nearby gate that would lead them back into the city. Several of them were wounded; all looked grim and battle weary. Elsewhere, the last straggling remains of Nynus's army were fleeing into the shadows.

Brutan had won.

“You're right,” said Gulph. “But I'm bringing Nynus with me.”

Ossilius frowned, clearly unhappy with the idea. “All right,” he said. “But you have to let me carry him. You hardly look able to carry yourself.”

“You're not exactly in good shape,” said Gulph. “And I'm stronger than I look. Besides, he's my brother.”

Between them, they lifted Nynus off the ground, and Ossilius helped settle him into Gulph's arms. The young king's body was limp, but seemed to weigh almost nothing.

“Where are we going?” said Gulph.

“The postern gate,” said Ossilius. “There are secret ways under the city known only to the King's Legion. If we can get to them before—”

“PUT MY SON DOWN!”

The cry was so shrill and sudden that Gulph almost dropped his precious cargo. Through his tears, he saw a figure in white descending the stairs that circled the outside of the stone tower. At first he thought it was a phantom; then his vision cleared and he saw it was Dowager Queen Magritt. Having fled up the tower to escape the battle, she was returning once more. Her face was contorted in agony, or anger, or both. But what held Gulph's attention were her eyes.

They were the eyes of someone insane with rage.

“PUT HIM DOWN!”

Reaching the ground, Magritt flung herself toward Gulph. Her fingers were claws. Her white dress fluttered around her like the wings of a gigantic insect. Her every breath was a scream.

Wrong-footed, Gulph took several stumbling steps backward. Then Magritt was upon him, trying to reach over Nynus's unmoving body to scratch at Gulph's face.

“PUT HIM DOWN!” she screeched. “OH, PUT HIM DOWN!”

“I'm trying to help him,” said Gulph. “He's my brother.”

Magritt's arms dropped to her sides. One by one, she drove her fingernails into her palms. Beneath each tiny dagger a spot of blood bloomed.

“Brother?” she said with quiet menace.

“Yes!” Gulph felt strength returning to his exhausted body. He took a step forward, driving Magritt back. “He's my brother. Do you know what that means, you evil hag? It means I'm one of the three. And I've been under your nose all this time. The prophecy said King Brutan would be killed by one of the triplets and so he was. By me. And you're the one who made me do it, Magritt! You're the one who brought me here. You brought all of us here, to this place, right here, right now. Even Nynus. Even your son!”