Throne (30 page)

It was beautiful. No ordered fight, no ranks and squadrons, no units or tactical groups. This was an expression of chaos and idiosyncratic fighting styles. Some rode together, others strode alone, hacking and hewing whatever came their way. Muddled and mixed, foes battled until they felled their opponents, and then simply turned to find another to kill.

Her eye was drawn to Jack in Irons. The giant was in his element, roaring a continuous, delighted battle cry, his great club swinging back and forth with the regularity of a pendulum. With each sweep figures were sent flying, some to rise once more to their feet, shaking their heads and broken limbs, others to roll and lie still. None opposed Jack, none matched him in stature or ferocity. Almost this battle could be fought by him alone.

A wheeling mass of knights upon horses. Maribel gazed fondly as Seelie and Unseelie counterparts did battle. Horses spun, reared, plunged, fell. Knights in armor, lances discarded, longswords flashing. Gallant feints, cries of hatred, ancient rivalries. She wondered how much longer their adherence to Medieval trappings would last. When would they adopt motorcycles, guns? How much longer till their fascination with that brutal age would adapt, modernize?

In the sky, forms flitted and dove, screeching and crying their rage. A maelstrom of bodies and wings, beaks and talons, blades and scythes. White winged owls and swans against bats and globular eyed horrors. Slender pixies on butterfly wings, screeching and digging their needle knives into the spines of a flying serpent. The moon illuminated all of them in silver and shades of black. An undulating fabric of interwoven violence, fluctuating and rippling as creatures dove, pulled away, fell.

The Seelie were fighting ferociously. Holding their own against the superior numbers of the Unseelie Court. Their heels at the water’s edge. But this was all play, this was all a pretense. It would last only as long as she allowed. And suddenly, curious, she leapt off the top of the globe, landed on the grass, and swung her sword before her. Caladcholg. The simple act of bringing it into battle caused a flux of confidence to surge through the ranks of her beings and creatures.

A centaur broke through the ranks ahead of her, a broken sword in his great fist. Chest heaving, his flanks slashed with myriad cuts, he sighted her, paled, screamed his defiance and charged. Maribel, who had never been in a physical fight in her life, laughed, and moved to meet him.

It happened so slowly. His broad, shattered blade swung through the air toward her. Seeking to sever her head. But she was dissolution, she was entropy, she was the unseaming of the world. With casual ease, she ducked under the blade, did not even bother to raise her own. Instead she allowed him to charge pass her, reaching out only to run her hand across his muscled abdomen, tracing the ridges there with the caress of a lover. Then he was past her, screaming as his muscles began to froth, split, pull apart like snails sprinkled with salt. His blade fell from his hand, his legs gave out from under him. Momentum carried him forward, crashing into the ground, rolling, legs kicking. His stomach was open now, revealing a gleaming red interior, the skin curling back like singed parchment, his viscera coiling like furious snakes. He bellowed then, an unearthly sound of such pain and denial that it seemed to silence the battle about them. Then, with a shiver, his head fell back and he died.

Maribel had studied dance when she was younger. All part of the program to make her body beautiful, to imbue her with grace, to give her an air of delicacy and control that would appeal to the fickle camera. It came back to her now, all those mornings in the studio, bending at the bar, arm arched over her head, foot to one knee, and then spinning out and out, the music leading and commanding her. So did she move now, an invisible song coursing out from her mind. Leaping from one leg to another, she dove into the heaving throngs. Moving with the same detached calm and confidence, she joined the battle.

Three brown skinned dwarves rushed her, wielding axes in leather gloved hands. Moving forward, dancing yet, she turned at the last moment and leapt over their heads, arching up impossibly, the three passing under her. They tried to turn to face her in time, and failed. She was upon them, blade still held aside. She wanted to caress them, feel the texture of their skin, to run her fingers through their thickly braided beards. To feel their skin wattle and split and shrivel beneath her tongue. The first fell screaming as his skeleton turned fluid. The second collapsed to his knees, hands at his face where she had erased and sealed all his features and orifices. Futilely, he sought to breathe, and, kicking, he died. The last she took up. His stout body thrashed in her slender arms. Pressed her black lips against his own, and fed her tongue into his mouth. Spasming, he died, his body falling apart in her embrace. Simply disconnecting from itself, bloody gobbets and limbs littering the ground. When she released him, there was nothing whole nor recognizable to be seen on the grass.

A great roar. Turning she saw an old man with skin of bark and an air of power to him swell up into the form of a hoary, old oak, the tree growing at a remarkable rate. From sapling to young tree to great gnarled oak it grew, the passage of centuries passing in mere moments. With a wrenching crack, it uprooted itself, roots gathering into strangely contorted legs, branches pulling down and around as it engaged Jack in Irons in battle. Jack was vast, tall, bedecked in live chains and wielding a club as long as most humans were tall, but this tree was the kind once worshipped by the followers of Thor, the kind around which pagan rituals had been danced since humans first reverenced nature. With a groaning cough, it fell upon Jack in Irons, embraced him, and began to rend him limb from limb.

Maribel threw her head back and laughed. Extending her sword she began to spin, whipping it around, sinking down into a crouch and then leaping high, faster and faster. All fell before her, friend and foe. She felt blood splatter against her, felt flesh sever like dreams dissolving as she threshed through the ranks. Cries and screams. A stampede as beings sought to distance themselves from her. On she spun, and then finally, slowed, slowed, stopped.

Was there nobody to face her? To provide challenge? No, of course not. She looked about her. Broken bodies and severed limbs. The grass beneath their feet had withered, charred, revealing cracked earth. No, there was no sport here, only death. Only the end. With a leap she took to the sky, arose. Turned her eye on the battles still being waged below her, sought out anything of interest.

The phooka, one horned. Wielding a long handled axe, its single moon blade lead hued and vicious. Antonio, chained and terrified, pulled along behind. It felled a long limbed girl, and with methodical efficiency decapitated her, and then sliced off her limbs, one by one. Turning, it paused. Another had presented himself to battle him, a tall, vulpine man, broad shoulders, his hair thick and iron gray. A rakish smile across his lips, a slender blade in his hands. They exchanged words. Maribel couldn’t hear them from here. She floated closer, and watched as the fought.

Both were cautious, seeming to know each other. They circled, the rakish man smiling slightly, as if privately amused. The phooka spun the long handled axe in its hand, the sickle blade hissing through the air, and then whipped it out and around, both hands bringing all its weight to bear. The other man swayed back, almost parallel to the ground, and then, like rubber, returned to his position and sought to bury his blade in the phooka’s guts.

They fought, each showing such skill that no others sought to disturb their duel. Blades whispering off each other, both prone to separate and consider their opponent between each intense bout. An even battle, skill and dexterity to be had in both. Or might have been, had Maribel not wielded Caladcholg, had the Unseelie not had the upper hand in all matters that counted that night. With a slight push, she knew that she could pour her power into the phooka, and change the tide of battle.

But she refrained. A memory of the phooka’s knowing smile, how he had led her, stumbling and ignorant, through the depths of the city in search of Kubu. Gazing down at his hirsute form, a memory came to her. Isabel. She had not thought of the psychic since taking up the sword. For a moment, she shivered, felt the touch of her cool hand on her brow, those words murmured to comfort her as she lay, insensate, in her own apartment. Her face when the phooka had transfixed her with his horn, and then reached up to tear her off it.

No. Let the phooka battle alone. She narrowed her eyes, heart beating faster than it had yet, vibrating like a small bird in her chest. The memories of Isobel had discomforted her. Anger arose within her, at being made to feel these old emotions.

The gray haired stranger recovered from a near blow and swung a vicious riposte. Moved to the side, and caught sight of Maribel where she hung in the air. She saw his face pale, and then the phooka glanced up, and vicious pleasure suffused his goatish features. He raised his axe, seeking her blessing, and then, when it didn’t come, frowned and threw himself aside just in time to avoid the next blow.

Their battle grew furious, and Maribel circled around it, watching, frowning, her presence keeping all others away. The phooka fought with desperation now, knowing that he had been judged, that Caladcholg’s power and her ascendancy would aid him not. In this fight, and this fight alone, Seelie and Unseelie fought with their own native talents.

The phooka backed away, defending itself with panicked skill, and the stranger’s blade finally scored its hide once, twice, drawing black blood. With a bleat of terror, the phooka swung its axe almost too fast to see. Intuition, not skill, guided the stranger’s blade now. Blind luck as much as anything else. He gave back, throwing himself aside into rolls, dropping to the ground, leaping up. The phooka’s axe was everywhere, whistling and weaving a fatal tapestry.

They both froze. The stranger’s sword was buried deep between the phooka’s shoulder and neck. A good six inches down, having cracked through the clavicle, down through the upper ribs, into the lungs. The phooka fell to his knees. The phooka let out a soft bleat and looked up, searching for Maribel one last time. She met his gaze, remembered her terror when she first had seen him, approaching her, delicately, through the impossible woods, and then darkness rushed down and clouded his eyes, and he died.

The stranger stood panting, and, with a heave, drew his blade clear. Maribel lowered herself until she hovered but a few feet above the ground and turned to face him, Caladcholg held out to one side.

“Queen,” said the man, eyes glittering, tone courteous.

“Your name?” she asked. “I would know it before I kill you.”

“Guillaume,” he said, and sketched a mocking bow, a dangerous smile on his face. “That shall suffice.”

“You have pleased me, in your own way,” she said, and began to whip her sword before her as a cat might its tail, “And for that, I shall make your death a clean one.”

Guillaume raised his blade, touched the it to the point between his eyes, and then fell into a battle stance. “Come, then, Queen of the Unseelie. Let us see for how long I can dance.”

A harsh screech shattered the very fabric of the air, and Maribel turned just as a massive beast collided with her, swooping down from the dark vaults of the heavens above, all feathers and broad shoulders, huge eagle beak puncturing down to bury itself in her side. Blood, her own, gouted out. Hurtling back, propelled by the griffin’s great wing beats, Maribel laughed again. Pain, incredible and bright and fascinating, blossomed through her body. Her face buried in the griffin’s shoulder, deep in its bronze plumage. A ragged cry crossed the battlefield as all eyes turned toward them. How little they knew.

The griffin’s great wings flared out, arresting its progress, but momentum carried her on, disengaged her from the griffin’s body. Just as quickly, the griffin launched itself forward again, lion claws raking out to rend and sever her, but this time she chose to defend herself. Caladcholg, still held lightly in her hand, wafted out, so slowly that it seemed to drift of its own volition. A great paw disconnected from the front leg, tumbled away into the darkness, trailing blood.

The feathers against which she had pressed her body were singed, falling out. The muscles there were cramping, petrifying. Screeching defiance and pain, the griffin surged forward, pecking and snapping at her with its beak. Maribel laughed and turned from side to side, allowing the beak to clack emptily where she had been moments before. Then she rolled past it, along its flank, and, with Caladcholg, cut its left wing clear from its body.

Down it fell to bounce and roll on the carpet of grass. Blood still flowed from her punctured side, and, for a long moment, she simply dwelt on the pain. Tried to understand it in a way she never had before. Less something to shy away from, to be avoided, and more an experience in itself, more visceral and immediate and demanding than any other sensation. Pain. From it all others fled. But not her. She wasn’t weakened by the wound, was now beyond such things, but rather, intrigued by it. Closing her eyes, shuddering in ecstasy, she floated, allowing her blood to rain down on those below.

Who changed. Who were altered by its touch. Wherever her blood fell, bodies and minds warped. Seelie suddenly were seized by a frenzy that dissolved the difference between friend and foe, such that all became targets. Unseelie were energized, felt invincible, and, for fleeting moments, actually were. Turning their open mouths to the sky, they sought to drink of her life source. No matter that her blood seared their throats, caused them to lose an arm, grow a claw from the center of the change. Caused their eyes to melt and run down their cheeks. It was an ecstasy of dissolution that none shied from.

Opening her eyes, she gazed upon the great tree.
Old Man Oak
, said a voice, a part of her from outside of time. It had Jack in Irons down on his knees, had enmeshed him with roots and branches, had bent him back like a huge and hoary bow, his spine creaking, about to snap. Like a thought she flew forward. Down from the sky, and, with Caladcholg, she carved a thin line across Jack in Iron’s body. A slender gleam of red, and then his upper half slid in a truly awful fountain of gore from his lower section. Like two slicked glass shards they came apart in the tree’s grip, and Jack in Irons died.