Wasteland King (22 page)

T
he worst wasn't the shapes suggested under the rotting cheesecloth vapor-veils. It wasn't the leering sideways glances, or the way the corpsehorse underneath him swayed as if bits of muscle were peeling off as it galloped. It wasn't even the spooky skittering speed of the damn things, stuttering in and out of the visible with stomach-churning wrongness, so different from a fullblood's appearing.

It was Jeremiah's eyes, milky pale now, no iris or pupil. Just… white, without even the tinge of yellow that was a mortal sclera. Without even the faint adumbration that tinted a sidhe's.

Alastair Crenn held miserably to the smoky mane of a corpsehorse, one that kept pace with Gallow's own as the world spun and shivered around them, streaks of black oil on a greased, spinning plate. He'd been ready to die, honestly. Shattered against a graveyard wall and lifting his useless sword.

Then, Gallow dropping out of the sky like the avenging asshole he thought he was, and he told the Sluagh to back the fuck off.

Then… things got hazy. Trying to remember only brought up a white-hot image, a streaming of eggwhite goop like the foaming borders of a Marrowdowne skirler's nest, streaking for Gallow, webbing him from top to bottom. A contemptuous sidhe laugh, enough to make a fullblood proud, and Braghn Moran landing beside Crenn, his six-fingered hand closing on Alastair's bleeding shoulder and a flood of healing-chantment scorch-wracking him with different agony.

I do not serve,
Jeremiah said, the words like brass gongs. The Sluagh had swallowed him… but they had not
eaten
.

Now Alastair Crenn rode through a nightmare next to Gallow, and the only thing more uncomfortable than the corpsehorse trembling underneath his thighs was the thought that maybe, just
maybe
, he wasn't dead, and Jeremiah had done the impossible.

It would be, he told himself, just like the bastard.

The automaton wearing Gallow's face lifted the awful silver curving thing to his mouth, and the flaring of ribs under Gallow's red armor—he wasn't clothed in white steamsmoke, like the rest of them—was an awful reminder that he might still be living in there.

The Horn sounded, and Crenn bent over the corpsehorse's stinking neck, silver nails sinking through his eardrums. The sound was curiously distant, buffered perhaps by his place in the cavalcade, but it didn't help. Everything in him twisted sideways at that horrific, inhuman call, and each time a little of the mortal in him died. Or maybe was torn away, added to the smoking, appalling mass behind him.

On Gallow's other side Braghn Moran rode, pale and fey, clutching the reins of his own shattered mount just as Crenn did. It was slight comfort to know that a highborn fullblood was just as deathly afraid as a Half, for once.

They burst through a final suffocating black curtain made of screams of agony and despairing unbelief, the echoes of countless murders and betrayals, howls of inhuman rage and wails of all-too-mortal despair. Corpse-hooves thudded down against cracked concrete covered in juicy blackrotting weeds, and Crenn leaned over the side of his mount and heaved dryly. There was nothing left in his stomach, but his body still tried to rid itself of any superfluous weight. He couldn't see if Moran was feeling the same way, but that was just as well—highbloods tended to hate those who had witnessed them in any less-than-graceful state.

When he straightened, clinging to the saddle with more luck than skill, it was just in time to brace himself for the great clash. The Sluagh threaded through Unwinter's assembled force, not even deigning to glance at the Unseelie who screamed and flinched aside from their thick white grease-ropes. Unwinter's knights had already met Summer's with a jolt, elfhorses and nightmare mounts both crying aloud, and the Sluagh curved forward on either flank, ready to swallow every sidhe who had ridden to war with the Seelie.

The giants were the first to crack, howling as they fled, stamping and smashing woodwights and dryad archers alike with their heedless flight. The Red Clans melted away, dwarves deciding their alliance with Summer had not included holding fast against the ravening undead; great cracks widened in the floor of the battle as they retreated, earth swallowing them. Naiad, dryad, and selkie continued to fight, surging forward to protect the Queen, who sat upon her white palfrey and stared at the melee with a blank, avid expression.

That's not right
. Crenn squinted.
What the hell?

Summer looked old.

Summer had
changed
.

Unwinter, atop his charger, had not; he lifted his gauntleted hands and crimson lightning crackled from thickening clouds.

A slim cloaked figure stood before Summer, the two of them locked in a bubble of silence while the highborn fullblood on every side battled, clash of sickle and new-moon blades, their mounts screaming and rearing to fight with hoof and tooth. Trolls on either side of the conflict fled in every direction, knocking over friend and foe alike, and the dryads had almost reached Summer.

Crenn's heart almost stopped. He was tumbling from the corpsehorse's back before he realized the cloaked female before Summer was too tall to be Robin, and had a shock of pale hair besides, not ruddy gold. Only a single glint of gold caught a dart of dying sunlight in her platinum mane.

The cloaked sidhe girl lunged, and in her hand was an icy star-glimmer. Summer's palfrey reared, sharp hooves thrashing, and fell. Summer rose from the tangle of white limbs and jets of crimson and silver, and the Seelie queen opened her red, crack-cornered mouth. Leprous green spots crawled up her cheeks, but the Jewel on her forehead flashed, and as the glittering dagger plunged into her stick-withered, upraised arm, Summer's curse blasted the cloaked, pale-haired sidhe, who hopped aside.

But not nimbly enough. She crumpled, and Summer shook her arm, flinging the glittering blade free.

“
ILARA!
” Braghn Moran's anguished cry split the battle-din. Crenn landed, breath driven out of him in an inelegant huff, and a streak of redgold bolted by, nose to the ground.

Crenn ran. His own cry, with all the force of anguish behind it, pierced the noise as well, but he didn't hear it. He was blind and deaf, save for one thing—a second sidhe-slim, sidhe-graceful female form, this one clothed in black velvet, moving with quick dodges, almost dancing through the fray, bearing down on Summer as well.

“ROBIN!” he howled, jerking his twinblades from their back-sheaths. A knot of drow and selkies jolted across his path, the melee shrinking, and he flung himself into battle.

S
omeone was calling her name, but the Ragged didn't care. Besides, much care and dodging was needed to skirt the sidhe locked in death-dealing dance all around her. Seelie roused by desperation, Unwinter's forces roused by bloodlust and the scent of certain victory, neither of them mattered.

All that mattered was the wriggling paleness on ichor-soaked concrete, its once-golden hair fast knotting and turning to dishwater. The Jewel flashed over and over, a distress signal, and Robin bore down on the queen of all Seelie step by step.

Pepperbuckle darted aside, his basso growl lost in the confusion. Summer contorted, gained her feet in a lunge, almost tripped as her feet caught in her long mantle. It was absurd, a skinny slattern-hag wearing the rich robe of royalty, and Robin's mouth opened.

A long furrow tore across the pavement, almost brushing Summer's hem. The Queen whirled, darting to the other side, but the song curled on itself, a snake of deadly golden light, and flashed before her in a wall. The Jewel dimmed, its light no longer piercing-bright but mere glitters, rapidly clouding. More crimson lightning crackle-flashed among the Seelie lines, and the selkies shrieked, throwing down their arms. Defeat spread in concentric rings, naiads and dryads fleeing, pixies appearing, swarming Robin's shoulders and head, lifting over her in a spiral, semaphore-blinking almost-patterns as if she were Summer now, watching some groveling thing in her orchard as fireflies veered overhead, drunk on her glow.

Summer fell backward, her heel catching on her mantle again, and the crack of her body hitting the pavement was lost in the bloodcurdling yells of the Unseelie, realizing they had broken Summer's lines. Robin kept walking, her pace unhurried now, there was no need to dodge. Fat ropes of oily white mist threaded through the combat, and Robin finally halted, staring down as Summer writhed supine, plagued madness shining in her black, black eyes. No sparks remained in Summer's gaze; her face was simply bearing twin holes into nothingness.

“
You!
” Summer moaned. “
You
did this!”

Robin shook her head. Four in, four out, the song boiled under her conscious thoughts, ready. If she unleashed it on this plague-stricken skeleton, she might even break Danu's Jewel.

It had to be said, though. “You made the plague, Summer.” The sparks flew from her lips, momentarily stinging, pixies darting to catch them, their glow-globes flashing bright blue in the gathering dusk. “Now you may die of it.”

“
No!
” Summer screamed as she contorted. Black boils rose on her pasty skin now, great streaks of green threading down her breast, her legs turned to thrashing sticks flaying the mantle from the inside. “
I will kill you first, you treacherous Half slut!
”

You already have. But I came back.

The Jewel… cracked. It was only a hairline fissure at the top of its roundness, but the sound drilled through Robin's head and halted the screaming chaos around her.

Except for that voice, still calling Robin's name. Pepperbuckle loped to Robin's side, his nose flaring as he caught scent of Summer. His lip lifted and he growled, a steady dangerous thrum.

“You… You made…” Summer's black eyes widened, and Robin nodded. No use in denying it, and Pepperbuckle was a well-made cur, indeed.

I should strike her down. I should
. She should let the song loose, and cleanse the world of this sweet-rotting filth. For Daisy, for Sean, for all those Summer had killed, for the half-dozen mortal children who had died on her flint knife only a day ago.

Was it only a day? It felt like a lifetime.

Her decision surprised her. Robin's lips parted.

“You're not worth killing.” A wondering tone, as if she had just realized it. Robin's hand dropped to Pepperbuckle's fur. He stopped growling, but his comforting warmth never faltered.

A
cracking, a groan, and Braghn Moran's bright blade severed the life from the flapping curse. He dropped the hilt, metal chiming musical on frost-cracked concrete, and fell to his knees, gathering up the thin, shivering pale-haired sidhe woman. “Ilara,” he said, softly. “Hush. Hush, my love. All will be well.”

The Feathersalt arched, wracked by poison and plague, the single golden bead in her hair tugging as it sensed the nearness of its kindred. “I… the Ragged… she poisoned…” She choked, and Bragh Moran cradled her closer.

“Do not speak. I never swore my troth to another, though I was hard pressed to.” The words tumbled out of him, each one a promise. The glamour-ash fell from his hair, and bright golden dwarf-wrought starflowers bloomed among the dark strands. “We shall ride to the Dreaming Sea, my love, and—”

Her right hand, curled into a fist, glittered as she drove
Glaoseacht
into her knight's belly. He stiffened in shock, and black-laced blood dripped from the corners of Ilara's mouth.

“You… see,” she choked. “I… can be… treacherous too… my
love
.”

Braghn Moran's hand curled around hers. Tightened, with bruising force, as the final spasms wracked Ilara's body. A jet of noisome wet tar burbled up her throat, out her mouth, and cracks spread through her now green-tinted skin. Dust raced, she convulsed again, and her flesh liquified, turning to sludge and rotting her cobweb-cloak and the dress underneath. Her free hand turned to dry sand, uncurling to drop a small, lost glimmer—a dwarven-wrought promise ring, landing in the flood of muck she had become. Such things were favors often given, knight to lady, lady to knight, and kept to the end of the affair.

Or beyond.

Braghn Moran, erstwhile favorite of Summer, found himself clasping the knife buried in his gut. He jerked it free, his arms empty at last, and flung back his head. His keening cry ribboned through a great silence falling over the battlefield, a private agony in the midst of catastrophe. The golden flowers in his hair blurred and ran together, shriveling, each a star of molten pain.

He rose, his armor shedding plague-rot and shining like a hurtful star, and left his blade next to the bubbling caustic mass that had been his lady.
Glaoseacht
dripped in his left fist, and as he cast about the battlefield, his gaze lighted on a redgold head atop black velvet.

Braghn Moran took a step, staggering as the pain struck him, and regained his balance. His dark eyes lit with ferocious pale sparks, the very color of Ilara's hair, and he took another.