Crown of Three (9 page)

“Later, Limmoni will bring water so you can wash,” said the queen, with a slight sniff of distaste, “but let us at least dress you smartly. You first, Nynus. Limmoni—please escort our guest outside until it's his turn.”

Limmoni put down the tray and led Gulph back into the butchery. He flinched as he brushed against the pig carcass that hid the door; Limmoni squeezed his hand.

“Don't fear the dead,” she said. She was smiling, but the expression didn't look entirely comfortable on her face. The dim light seemed to strike her brow and cheeks at odd angles. Gulph had the peculiar sensation that he was seeing her from many directions at once.

“Here,” she said, producing an apple from the pocket of her apron. “These are wonderful.”

Gulph took the bright green fruit and bit into it. Juice ran down his chin; he'd never tasted anything so delicious.

Under her breath, Limmoni said, “They are using you.”

Gulph stopped chewing, not sure he'd heard her correctly. “Pardon?”

“The queen used you to rescue her son.”

“I know.”

“She will have need for you again. Soon. Do not trust her. Do not trust any of them.”

Gulph swallowed, nearly choking on the unchewed apple. As he coughed, he felt Limmoni slip something into his hand.

“This is yours,” she whispered. “Keep it close to you. And keep it hidden. It is your friend.” She tilted her head. Light cascaded down the strange angles of her face. “So am I.”

She began to slip away through the rows of carcasses.

“Wait!” called Gulph. “Won't they ask where you've got to?”

Limmoni looked back at him over her shoulder. “Their memory that I was here is already fading,” she said. “Be careful, Gulph.” And she was gone.

Gulph blinked in confusion. What was that supposed to mean? He turned her name over in his mind.
Limmoni
. Who was she? Why was she trying to help him?

He opened his hand to reveal a coil of gold chain, on which hung a green gemstone. The jewel was curiously shaped, smoothly faceted on one side but jagged on the other, as if it were not a whole gem, but only part of one. It was strange and beautiful, just like the young woman.

She said she was my friend.

He slipped the chain around his neck, tucking it under his acrobat's clothes to ensure it was hidden. When his turn came to change, he would do it in private. He was sure nobody would object.

He knocked on the door. As Queen Magritt called for him to come back inside, Limmoni's words echoed in his head.

Do not trust her. Do not trust any of them.

T
 
hud. Thud. Thud.

The chopping sound was sharp, repetitive, hypnotic. It penetrated Tarlan's dream, pulling him up from a deep, dark ocean filled with vague sensations of flying. And falling.

He opened his bleary eyes, and the darkness was replaced by a white glare. The light was too much, and he raised his hand to shield his eyes, but his hands wouldn't obey him. He tried again, this time feeling the coarse tug of the ropes that bound his wrists behind his back.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Gradually his eyes adjusted. White clouds filled his vision, racing on a gale through gray sky. Around him, white walls rose. A castle? Tarlan blinked and saw that the walls were made not of stone but ice, enormous sharp-edged slabs stacked one on top of another to form crude towers and bastions.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

Bunching his stomach muscles—and ignoring the pain from the wound in his shoulder—Tarlan sat up. His vision blurred and for a moment he thought he was going to faint. Then it cleared, revealing a crowd of fur-clad men and a corral filled with huge antlered creatures. To the side, large joints of meat sizzled over a blazing fire. The smell was rich and tantalizing, and Tarlan's mouth began to water.

Thud. Thud. Thud.

The elk-hunters were crowded around something Tarlan couldn't quite see: a heap of something red and silver piled in the snow. As he watched, they parted, and he saw at last where the chopping sound was coming from.

The thing piled in the snow was Seethan. The once mighty thorrod was now a bloody mass of flesh and burned feathers. One of the hunters was hacking at the corpse with a huge ax, slicing off hunks of meat and handing them to his companions, who carried them to the fire.

The meaty smell curdled in his throat. Anger came in an instant, like storm clouds rolling over a mountain.

Seethan is dead.

“Leave him alone!” he bellowed. He yanked at his bonds, but the more he tugged the tighter they became. He kicked his feet in the snow, trying to pick himself up. He shouted again, and the shout became first a sob, then an incoherent cry of rage.

The hunter who'd been cutting up Seethan's corpse strode over to Tarlan, swinging his ax. As he walked, the huge wooden antlers adorning his helmet nodded back and forth. Two men accompanied him; their helmets were bare.

“Pick him up,” said the man with the ax.

Tarlan continued to roar and wriggle, but the men were strong, and his body still ached after its fall through the trees. Worst of all was the wound in his shoulder, where the burning arrow had opened a deep gash. He remembered everything about the fight in the forest—faced with the remains of Seethan, he could hardly forget. He could only hope the other thorrods had escaped and returned to Mirith.

Mirith . . .

Is she even still alive?

When it became clear he wasn't going to escape, Tarlan forced his muscles into stillness. With more difficulty, he managed to suppress his rage. It boiled inside him, volcano hot. He savored the feeling. When the chance came to vent his anger, he'd make these men pay for what they'd done.

“The bird is dead,” said the hunter. He wiped the blood-covered head of his ax on the thick furs covering his body. He wore an iron torque around his neck, a dented metal thing that was half necklace, half breastplate. Tarlan supposed he was their leader. Very well. He would be the first to die.

“He wasn't a bird,” said Tarlan. “He was a thorrod.”

The elk-leader shrugged. “Times are hard. The king has forgotten Yalasti and its people. We must take what we can, and this
bird
will feed my men for many days.” He held out a fistful of dripping flesh. “Care for a bite?”

Tarlan hawked back saliva and spat in his face. One of the men holding him cuffed his head, hard, twice. Laughing, the elk-leader lifted his ax and pressed the blade against Tarlan's throat. Tarlan flinched, not at the touch of the cold metal, but at the unspeakable sensation of Seethan's blood running down his neck.

“If you're friends with the thorrods,” the elk-leader said, “you're no friend to me. I don't like witch boys. I was going to keep you, but now . . . I've changed my mind.”

He gave a curt nod to his companions, who braced themselves against Tarlan, ensuring there was no chance of escape. The elk-leader drew back his ax. The blade flashed white, reflecting the racing clouds, the blank ice walls. Tarlan set his face in a snarl; he wasn't going to let this brute see he was scared.

The ax reached the end of its arc. The elk-leader paused, grinned, and swung it toward Tarlan's exposed throat.

As he prepared to die, Tarlan could think of only one thing.

I'm sorry, Mirith. I've failed you.

There was a sudden gust of cold wind, and a shadow passed over them.

The ax flew past Tarlan, missing his neck completely and spinning erratically through the air to land in a distant mound of snow. The elk-leader's hand was still gripping the wooden haft; the rest of his arm went with the weapon too, torn off at the root.

The elk-leader grunted and raised his remaining hand to the red pulp of his shoulder. Blood jetted in a fountain, staining the snow crimson. The shadow came again, and the wind, and this time Tarlan saw what had caused it: a great gold bird, flying fast and low, almost too fast to be seen.

“Theeta!” he cried.

The thorrod's beak snapped shut on the elk-leader's waist, slicing him in two. Beating her enormous wings, Theeta pulled out of her dive and tossed the top half of his body out and over the walls of ice. The man's legs crumpled to the ground.

One of Tarlan's captors released his grip. Tarlan shoulder-charged the other; free at last, he started running through the snow toward the fallen ax.

Theeta's shadow returned, along with another. Tarlan looked up to see Nasheen wheeling down from the sky. With her white breast, she was almost invisible against the clouds. Her beak was wide open, ready to attack. The long feathers on her outstretched wings rippled like liquid gold. Like Theeta, she made no sound whatsoever.

If the thorrods were attacking in silence, on the ground all was noise and motion. Men and women scattered, shouting instructions, banging weapons against shields. In the corral, the elks reared up, hooting their distress.

The shadows of the thorrods swept over the crowd, back and forth in an endless round. Long talons slashed down, biting deep into the hunters' bodies as the birds snatched them up, one after the other, and flung them against the walls of the ice fort. Shouts became screams, and simple confusion became utter chaos.

Through it all, the giant thorrods were silent.

Reaching the ax, Tarlan dropped to his knees in the snow. Ignoring the gory mess of the elk-leader's severed arm, he tried to twist his body, intending to use the blade to cut through his bonds. But the ax head was buried, and the pain in his right arm was very bad; try as he might, he couldn't wrestle it free.

“Let me.”

With a soft
plump
, Theeta landed in the snow beside him. Wings spread protectively over him, she lowered her cruel beak to his wrists and snipped through the rope with gentle care.

“There!” One of the hunters had spotted them. Unslinging a bow from her back, a woman rushed toward Tarlan, nocking an arrow on the string as she ran.

Before Tarlan could move, Nasheen was there, diving vertically at astonishing speed to pound the bow woman into the snow, then lifting off again, her talons dripping blood.

“Come,” said Theeta, nudging Tarlan with her beak.

“Hold on!”

Tarlan went to the woman's crushed remains and snatched up her bow, along with a quiver of arrows. A man appeared from a swirl of snowflakes, shrieking and brandishing a long sword. Without thinking, Tarlan fished an arrow from the quiver, drew the bow, and shot him through the throat.

“Come!” said Theeta again.

Tarlan needed no further encouragement. More hunters were hurrying through the snow toward him, led by a veritable giant wearing a helmet no less impressive than that of their former leader.

Grabbing a handful of Theeta's feathers, he scrambled onto her back. Pain stabbed his body in a dozen different places.

“Fly, Theeta!” he said. “Let's get out of here.”

Theeta was airborne before the words had left his mouth. On the far side of the fort, Nasheen was attacking a line of hunters who'd climbed with bows and arrows to the top of the ice wall, clearly hoping to down the thorrods by firing on them from above. Nasheen flew the entire length of the battlements, raking her claws through their ranks. By the time she reached the far end, they all lay dead in the snow.

Theeta flew one final circle over the fort. White snow and ice ran red with the blood of the elk-hunters; worse by far was the sight of poor Seethan's butchered body. As she passed for the last time above the elder thorrod's remains, Theeta let out a keening cry.

“We'll mourn him later,” said Tarlan, tugging at the feathers on her neck. “Right now, we've got to get back to Mirith, or this will all have been for nothing.”

As they sped from the fort on its lonely, snow-covered hilltop, Nasheen dropped in front of Theeta, calming the air with her slipstream. They flew swiftly, passing back over the icebound villages of Yalasti toward Mirith's mountain retreat.

Soon the terrain grew rockier, and the mountain rose before them, its peak shrouded in fog. Tarlan was about to urge even greater speed when a dark shape emerged from the low cloud.

“Kitheen!” he shouted. “I told you to stay with Mirith!”

Kitheen said nothing, simply puffed out his black breast and took the lead, hurrying them up the mountain to a narrow canyon near the entrance to Mirith's cave.

A figure lay in the snow at the canyon entrance.

Mirith!

Tarlan leaped from Theeta's back even before the giant thorrod had touched down. He landed hard in the snow, picked himself up, and stumbled to Mirith's side. Cradling her head in his lap, he wiped snow from her eyes and lips; cold as their surroundings were, her skin felt as hot as a furnace.

“What were you thinking?” he said. “Why didn't you stay in the cave?”