Firebrand Page 7

  Karigan looked down at her scored, bleeding hand. She’d barely noticed it before, but now it stung like the five hells.

  “Here.” The girl came forward hesitantly, as if warring with her own timidity, but when Karigan held her hand out for her, she bound it with assurance.

  When she was done, Karigan flexed her fingers. “Thank you.” The melting creature beside her appeared to be dousing the burning carpet. She stamped on singed fibers just to make sure.

  “Anna, I need to reach the king. Do you—”

  She was cut off by a new burst of wind as another creature appeared at the far end of the corridor. Anna looked like she might faint, and Karigan grabbed her arm and dragged her as fast as she could into the main hall. She paused to ensure they would not rush headlong into another whirlwind.

  When she saw the way was clear, she said, “Ready to run, Anna?”

  Anna nodded, her face pale.

  “Good. Follow me and keep up best as you can.”

  The unnatural wind picked up as the creature skimmed its way toward them from the side corridor. It then paused, possibly to investigate the slushy remains of its comrade.

  Karigan and Anna sprinted down the main hall past dozens of ice statues. Karigan glanced over her shoulder, and noting that Anna struggled to keep up, she moderated her pace. When she saw a whirlwind ahead coming down the main hall, she seized Anna’s arm again and hauled her down another side corridor. They pressed their backs against the wall, their breaths ragged. Across from them was a frozen soldier, his arms thrown up defensively, his expression one of agony. Anna whimpered.

  “It’ll be all right,” Karigan whispered. It had better be. Always in the back of her mind was her concern for her family and King Zachary.

  “Anna,” she whispered, “I have a certain ability—I can make us fade out so maybe that creature can’t see us.” Anna looked at her in bewilderment, but let Karigan take her hand. Karigan called on her fading ability, and her vision went gray as was usual. Anna gasped beside her.

  The whirlwind passed by their corridor. She counted to ten and then dragged Anna out into the main hall once again. “Don’t look back,” Karigan admonished her. The first whirlwind still followed them, and the second was beginning to reverse its direction to also follow. It was clear they could sense her and Anna even when faded out, so she dropped the fading as they ran. Keeping it up was pointless and would only exhaust her.

  They ran, passing beneath a chandelier, and once more she hauled Anna aside, this time stopping at the winch that hoisted and lowered the chandelier.

  “They’re getting close!” Anna cried. “And there are more coming!” She turned and hid her face as if this would make them vanish.

  Anna was right—there were more, about a dozen appearing out of nothing, joining the others, and all rapidly advancing. Karigan removed the pin that secured the chandelier at its present position at the ceiling. The winch’s hand crank started spinning, spinning out of control, letting out chain and lowering the chandelier. She made no attempt to control it even as it gained momentum. The flames of burning whale oil in their glass chimneys flared as the whole apparatus descended at an alarming rate. She did not wait to witness it crashing to the floor, to see if it crushed the whirlwinds, or if the splash of flaming oil melted them. She took Anna’s hand and led her away at a run, just hoping she didn’t burn down the castle.

  AUREAS SLEE

  They continued on into the west wing, where the royal apartments lay, finding more ice statues or their shattered remains along the way. To Karigan’s dismay, she saw some of her fellow Riders frozen in various positions of fighting. Scorch marks on the wall, and singed tapestries, indicated Mara’s handiwork.

  They paused at the bottom of the stairs. There appeared to be no whirlwinds nearby, but there was more evidence of their passage, more frozen Riders and at least one Weapon. The distant din of fighting broke the eerie silence. She slicked sweat from her brow with her bloody, bandaged hand.

  When she caught her breath, she asked Anna, “Are you all right?”

  Anna looked to be in a perpetual state of shock, but nodded.

  “Good,” Karigan said. “You are doing well. We are going up these stairs to the wing that houses the royal apartments. I don’t know what we’ll find. Do you think you can stay with me?”

  Anna nodded again, and Karigan gave her a reassuring smile. At least, she hoped it was reassuring.

  They ran up the stairs, and Karigan was dismayed to find Mara sprawled on the top landing. She was not turned to ice. On the contrary, when Karigan knelt beside her she felt waves of heat rippling off her body. Her face was flushed and glistened with beads of sweat. She had used her ability to full capacity. The magical abilities of Riders exacted a price for their use, and Mara’s was fever. Karigan had never heard of a Rider dying because of overuse of an ability, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t happen. Mara seemed to be breathing normally and Karigan prayed she’d be all right, but she could not linger to aid her friend, for there was fighting ahead.

  Soon enough, she, with Anna shadowing her, came upon her fellow Riders, about a third of the complement they’d started out with, battling the ice creatures. There were a couple of guards in black and silver also fighting. Riders with torches swiped at their attackers, but the wild wind the creatures emanated blew the flames backward and snuffed some out.

  Steel rose and fell, and the fury of the wind raised by the creatures ripped tapestries and paintings off the walls. Karigan ducked as a portrait of Queen Isen barreled toward her, the heavy wooden frame splintering when it hit the floor. The temperature was numbing.

  “Stay close,” Karigan told Anna.

  She added her sword to the fight, trying to batter her way through the whirlwinds so she might reach Estora’s rooms. She had started the day tired, and though her body felt the exertion of so much sword work, it was exhilarating to have an enemy to demolish, a clear-cut problem to solve. No traveling through time, no mirror eyes, no loss of memory, just creatures of ice to crush.

  She went for the legs of the skeletal creatures to topple them, and left them for someone else to finish off. She booted skulls aside and into the wall. She helped others stab into the whirlwinds to eliminate the veil of churning ice, and then helped to chop apart the bones within. All the while, Anna managed to remain with her, not getting in the way, and not getting picked off by an errant sword or being frozen into an ice statue.

  It surprised Karigan when she finally reached Estora’s door. Turned to ice was Rory, caught in what looked like a shout of alarm to warn others of the attack. She ran inside, Anna on her heels, and when she reached Estora’s sitting room, she found three Weapons at work attempting to dispatch several of the creatures. The king wielded a poker and bashed it into the skull of the nearest one. Estora was off her sofa with her back pressed against the wall beside the great hearth.

  The fire was dying. “Anna,” Karigan said, “you must build up the fire to help keep the queen safe. I will get you there.”

  Fighting the creatures became a mindless chore. Now well-versed in what to do to destroy them, her technique became methodical. She began to wonder, however, if more would simply reappear and fight until they all collapsed from exhaustion.

  The Weapons, Fastion, Donal, and Ellen, were dervishes themselves, twisting and turning with blinding sword work to demolish one creature after the other in an explosion of ice. King Zachary was no less agile with his poker.

  Finding a gap in the action, Karigan led Anna along the wall toward the fireplace, ducking as an ice skeleton cleaved its sword at her. She hacked off its sword arm, then its leg, and it clattered to the floor in a heap.

  They maneuvered around furniture, Karigan keeping Anna between herself and the wall. The Weapons seemed to be keeping the creatures occupied, so they reached the hearth quickly.

  “You concentrate on the
fire,” Karigan told Anna. “Make it too hot for the creatures to get near the queen. I’ll make sure nothing bothers you.”

  Anna nodded and started selecting sticks of wood stashed in a niche next to the hearth.

  “Karigan!” Estora cried. She’d gone white around the lips, her face showing strain, and her hand on her belly.

  “Stay near the fire,” Karigan told her, dodging an ice sword that swiped by her head. She returned her focus to the fight before her. The creatures were now taller than she was, and getting harder to kill. She dispatched one, and another was there to replace it. Where were they all coming from?

  When she was on her third, she began to feel the heat of the fire against her back. Her opponent backed away. Good. The fire should help keep Anna and Estora safe and prevent the creatures from attacking from behind.

  A trio of blurs leaped into the fray, and Karigan wondered what new threat these were until she realized they were Eletians. Lhean had returned! They made even the Weapons seem sluggish in comparison as their swords smashed through the creatures with ease. One by one, in quick succession, they destroyed the enemy until there were no more left to fight. Shards of ice bones lay melting on the floor. Karigan, like the others, leaned on her sword breathing hard.

  King Zachary saluted the Eletians with his poker. “Thank you for your timely arrival.”

  Lhean nodded. “After we left the city, we sensed the unnatural weather gathering around your castle.” He and Idris were protected by the strange pearlescent armor of the Eletians, prepared for battle. Curiously, Enver was not similarly armored. He wore only the travel clothing she’d seen him in before.

  “We must ascertain if there are more of the creatures out—” King Zachary was cut off by a rending howl and a blast of wind so powerful that it forced Karigan back toward the hearth. She felt her limbs tightening, beginning to freeze, but the fire behind her kept her from turning to ice. The others in the chamber, even the Eletians, struggled to move.

  “Sir Karigan!” a forgotten Anna cried, and Estora shrieked.

  A towering figure of ice and snow loomed over Estora. It gave off a haze of frost so thick that it was impossible to make out its features. It reached for Estora. Neither the Weapons nor the king seemed able to move. Karigan, too, was numb, but not frozen. She leaped past the hearth, onto the sofa, and hacked off the thing’s arm. It howled, and she was thrown to the floor by the force of the wind, a blizzard of snow and ice.

  And then it receded. She sat up blinking as flurries alighted on her. Everyone in the room remained in a momentary stupor. King Zachary was the first to recover, and he helped his shocked wife to her sofa. He murmured softly to her and draped a blanket around her shoulders.

  “Is everyone all right?” the king asked.

  “Fine here, sire,” Fastion said, and Ellen and Donal chorused they were fine, too, as they flexed their limbs.

  “Karigan?” the king asked. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes . . . Yes, Your Majesty, I think so.” She rose to her feet and realized Daro’s saber had shattered. Only the hilt remained with a small jagged fragment beyond the guard. The rest lay in pieces on the floor. So much for her promise of returning it in good condition. Lhean strode over to her and examined it. The king and his Weapons also came over to look.

  “Do you know what happened here?” the king asked Lhean. “What attacked us?”

  “Aureas slee,” Lhean replied softly. “A major elemental of the north.”

  “An elemental?”

  “Yes, Firebrand. A manifestation of nature. It would not have likely attacked on its own, however. It was probably summoned.”

  The king paced back to where Estora reclined on her sofa and placed his hand on her shoulder and gazed down at her. “We will try to understand this attack later, but now we must attend to our wounded. Can those who were frozen be thawed?”

  “It is best,” Lhean said, “to let them thaw naturally. To interfere with elemental magic may do more harm than good.”

  The king nodded. “We must figure out how we may protect ourselves from another attack. It came for the queen. If not for Sir Karigan . . .”

  Karigan saw the gratitude in his eyes, and she glanced away.

  “Elemental spirits are often attracted to beauty and power,” Lhean said, nodding toward Estora. “When etherea was more powerful in the world, those such as the aureas slee were more present and delighted in the stealing of human and Eletian children alike to raise as their own, to make their own. They would find your queen and the young she bears irresistible.”

  FOLLOWING SIR KARIGAN

  Anna tried to remain as inconspicuous as possible beside the hearth, but she was getting too hot. She took a few steps away, hoping no one noticed her. Never in her life would she have ever imagined tending a fire in the queen’s sitting room, much less being there with not only the queen, but the king, Weapons, Eletians, and, of course, Sir Karigan. Why, there were special household staff who attended the king and queen and looked after their fires. Down in the servants quarters, they’d never believe what she’d seen and done today. Of course, she did not know if her fellow servants had survived the attack.

  The Weapons moved out of the room, out toward the corridor, followed by the Eletians. Anna had never seen Elt so close up. One time, a bunch of them had camped outside the castle gates, and like so many city dwellers, she’d gone down to gaze upon their colorful tents billowing in the breeze. Up close, the Eletians seemed to shimmer with enchantment. When they left the room, the light dimmed, the world grew more mundane.

  “Young lady?” the queen said.

  Anna looked over her shoulder, searching for the young lady.

  Sir Karigan nudged her. “She means you.”

  Me? Anna quailed. Sir Karigan propelled her toward the queen on her sofa. Anna could not meet her gaze.

  “Curtsy,” Sir Karigan whispered.

  Anna obeyed, hardly breathing.

  “What is your name?” the queen asked.

  Anna was aware of the king standing behind the sofa, a large and forbidding presence. She lived and worked in the castle, but rarely saw the king and queen, and always at a distance and surrounded by Weapons, courtiers, and aides. Anna found she could not speak and just stood there slack-jawed.

  “This is Anna,” Sir Karigan said. “She takes care of the hearths and stoves in the Rider wing, as well as other parts of the castle, I imagine.”

  “You are very brave,” the queen said, “and build a fine fire. It held those creatures at bay.”

  “Yes,” the king added in a grave voice. “You helped protect the queen. We are very grateful.”

  Anna blushed furiously and could not believe she was the object of their words. They were expressing their gratitude to her, a nobody! The king continued to speak, but this time to Sir Karigan.

  “And yet again you have prevented disaster,” he was saying. “Where would we be if you hadn’t come when you did?”

  “Uh . . . ?” Sir Karigan shifted on her feet. So, it wasn’t only Anna who got nervous under the attention of the king and queen. She had not expected it of Sir Karigan.

  “You may refuse to give yourself credit,” the queen said, “but we know better.”

  “I believe I need to have a look outside,” King Zachary said, “to see the state of things. Fastion?” he called. “Would you please come stay with the queen?”

  The Weapon returned and said, “Those who were frozen are thawing out, Your Majesty. There are some, however, who have not made it.”

  The king left them, and Sir Karigan bowed to the queen. “With your leave, I would like to help where I can, and check on my family. And I think Anna might be needed to help warm up the castle again.”

  “Of course, Karigan, and thank you.”

  It did not pass Anna’s attention that the king and queen spoke to Sir Karigan
familiarly, without title. Anna bobbed a curtsy once more to the queen, who smiled at her. Color had returned to her cheeks, but her face still looked drawn.

  Sir Karigan tapped Anna on the shoulder and beckoned her to follow. In the outer corridor, Weapons, soldiers, and Riders were stirring. They had been statues of ice, but now after the battle, the ice was all gone. Those who had been frozen were soggy and stiff, but they were coming around. Sir Karigan paused to help her Chief Rider sit up. She was still flushed beneath her burn scars, but conscious.

  “Leave me be,” Mara Brennyn said, slapping Sir Karigan’s hands away. “I’m fine, I’m fine. Go check on the others. I’ll find the captain.”

  Sir Karigan led Anna on, checking on people as she went. At one point, she abruptly blocked Anna’s view by stepping in front of her. “You don’t want to see this.” She walked so that Anna’s gaze remained blocked, though she could still see blood on the floor filling the cracks between flagstones. Sir Karigan did this more than once to spare her the sight of the people who had fallen and shattered, their remains now thawing. She was grateful, for she did not wish to see the carnage.

  Smoke filled the area where Sir Karigan had dropped the chandelier, but others had put out the fire it had caused. Still, she looked chagrined. As they continued along, people clamored for answers. Sir Karigan told them the castle had been attacked, but all was well now and there would probably be more of an explanation later. Many people had been injured with bites from the creatures, and some also with stab wounds, but menders were beginning to emerge from the mending wing to provide aid.

  When they reached the Rider wing at long last, Sir Karigan took a deep breath before they entered, seeming to steel herself, but everyone they found within appeared to be up and about, and greeted her with cheery voices. A Rider hopped down the corridor on one foot, a blood-stained bandage tied around the thigh of the leg she favored.

  “Daro!” Sir Karigan said, relief in her voice. “You’re all right.”