Crown of Three (32 page)

“What happened?” Ossilius said.

“They killed her.”

Saying it aloud made it real. A lump rose in Gulph's throat. It was over. Limmoni was gone.

On the mausoleum roof, something moved.

Despite the horror of everything he'd seen, Gulph felt himself grinning. Gripped by a ferocious excitement, he watched as a figure clambered out of the ashes. She was alive! Somehow—through some magic he couldn't comprehend—Limmoni had cheated death.

But the figure was not Limmoni.

“What passes?” said Ossilius. He repeated the phrase over and over again. It filled Gulph's head. “What passes? What passes?”

The figure rising from the ashes was tall and broad: a man. Its body was skewed sideways, as if the bones in its back were not properly aligned. Its head was misshapen. Light showed through holes in its chest. Its flesh—clearly visible through tattered rags that had once been clothes—was rotten and squirming with maggots.

Its eyes were empty sockets.

Slowly, with stiff, shuddering movements, the figure raised its arms to the sky. Half the fingers on its twitching hands were naked bones. As it turned its head, the exposed tendons in its neck stretched like bowstrings.

“What passes?” whispered Ossilius.

“It is Brutan,” said Gulph, saying the words but not believing them.
My father.

On the mausoleum roof, the animated corpse opened its mouth and emitted a long, keening cry that was devoid of all humanity.

King Brutan of Toronia was risen from the dead.

CT THREE

W
hat's happening?” said Elodie. “It looks like the end of the world.”

She tapped her heels against Discus's flank, urging him forward to the front of the Trident line, where Fessan was consulting with his lieutenants. Two of the three men seemed no older than Fessan; the third had a thin white beard and a weather-beaten face, and looked as if he'd seen action in every battle of the Thousand Year War. They all wore light helms and breastplates; they all looked uniformly grim.

As the view opened up further, Elodie gasped. Idilliam rose before them, a gigantic city built from gray stone and partly veiled by a rising cloud of dust and smoke. Surrounding it, festooned with turrets, was a sloping defensive wall. Behind the wall rose a dizzying sprawl of buildings, some of them many stories high. Castle Vicerin would have fit inside it a hundred times over.

No
, thought Elodie.
A thousand.

Though she couldn't see the streets themselves, it was clear from the pattern of the roofs that they all radiated out from a central point. It was just as clear what occupied that center: Castle Tor.

The castle dominated the skyline, a brooding mass of stone ramparts and fierce battlements. Crimson flags shuddered in the wind. A thousand windows stared back at Elodie like brooding black eyes. It was a hulking, alien place, and it filled her with dread.

So why does it feel like coming home?

Outside the city wall, perched on the edge of the chasm, stood siege engines, though they were oddly configured; their battering rams appeared to be pointed at the ground. Nearby was a circular building. Its domed roof was cracked and slumped, as if a giant had trodden on it. This was the source of the smoke.

There was movement around the building, but it was too far away for Elodie to make out the detail; they might as well have been ants as people. Nor was there any way to get nearer. Idilliam lay on the opposite side of a vast chasm, and the only way across was a natural bridge of rock spanning the abyss from one side to the other. That was no surprise to Elodie; everyone in Ritherlee—perhaps even everyone in Toronia—had heard of the Idilliam Bridge.

What surprised her was something nobody could have anticipated.

The bridge was broken.

Something echoed behind Elodie, like the memory of hoofbeats. She glanced back to see Samial, who'd shadowed her on the final leg of the journey to Idilliam, riding up on his ghostly steed.

“There has been a battle,” said Samial. His horse champed restlessly at the bit. Behind him, the ghost army seemed to swell as, one by one, the phantom knights gathered at the edge of the chasm, forming ranks beside the Trident troops.

There was a rumble like distant thunder. At the far side of the broken bridge, part of the mausoleum wall collapsed into the chasm, raising fresh clouds of dust.

“It's still going on,” Elodie murmured to him. She turned around. “Fessan, what's . . . ?”

She stopped, puzzled, as Fessan raised something to his eye: It looked like a square of leather rolled into a tube. Wrapped into the leather at each end was a glass disk.

“Fessan—what are you doing?”

“Hush, please, Princess. I am counting.”

“Counting what?”

Fessan stared into the strange device for a moment longer, his lips moving silently. At last he sighed and handed the leather tube to Elodie.

“Counting our enemy. Here. Perhaps you will see something I do not.”

Fessan turned away to consult with his lieutenants while Elodie put the tube cautiously to her eye. She found herself looking into a long, dark tunnel. At the far end was a tiny scene: Idilliam and Castle Tor reproduced in perfect miniature. It looked incredibly far away.

“I don't see what . . .” she began.

“Turn it around,” said Samial.

Elodie obeyed, and was startled to find the castle looming over her, impossibly huge. Crying out, she shrank back in the saddle, waving her free hand to fend off the huge stone battlements that appeared to be surging toward her.

“It is a spyglass,” Samial explained. “It brings the world closer.”

Elodie experimented with the tube, bringing it down from her eye, then replacing it. Finally understanding its purpose, she used it to scan the scene of devastation on the far side of the chasm.

The movement she'd detected was that of hundreds of people—perhaps thousands—retreating in panic from the circular building. At the same time, soldiers were pouring out from gates in the city wall and forcing their way through the crowds. Within the chaos, groups of men stood unmoving. Elodie wondered why they weren't running like the rest. Then she saw their legs were in chains.

“What's happened here?” Elodie said, returning the spyglass to Fessan.

“We're not sure,” Fessan replied, “but it gives us an advantage. The enemy is in disarray, their backs are turned. This is the perfect time to strike.”

“Strike?” said Elodie. “I don't see how we can.”

“She's right,” said the youngest of Fessan's lieutenants, a tall youth with a mane of black hair and a wild look in his eye. “The plan's in tatters, Fessan. You said we'd be able to just ride straight in, but there's no bridge. So much for the surprise attack.”

“Plans are flexible, Ghast,” said Fessan briskly. “Bridge or not, we must press our advantage home. Timon—do you agree?”

“I do,” said the man to his left, whose barrel chest was so big he wore a pair of overlapping breastplates instead of just one. “But how are we going to get across?”

“Siege engines,” said the older man, stroking his white beard.

Fessan nodded. “My thoughts exactly, Dorian.”

Ghast frowned. “I don't understand.”

“The advance party,” Fessan explained. “They have been here for two days now, felling trees and constructing trebuchets. We will adapt their engines and use them to bridge the gap.”

Elodie had been listening eagerly to the exchange. “Trebuchets?” she whispered to Samial. “What are they?”

“Giant catapults,” Samial replied. “Simple machines of tree trunks and ropes. They will hurl rocks at the city wall. I saw many during the War of Blood.”

“Hurl rocks? How does that help us build a bridge?”

Samial shook his head. “That I do not know.”

The debate between Fessan and his lieutenants was growing more heated.

“Even if it works, it will take days to cross the chasm,” said Ghast, echoing Elodie's doubts. “And you still say you want to surprise them?”

“It won't take that long,” insisted Fessan.

“Assuming we do get across, what happens when we get to the other side?” said Timon.

“Whatever destroyed that building wasn't natural,” said Ghast. “There's evil in that city, you mark my words.”

Dorian stroked his beard again. “I say we act now. But before we advance, we must scout ahead,” he said.

“And how long will that take?” said Ghast.

Elodie could hold back no longer.

“Dorian's right!” she said. They turned to her in surprise. “We're just wasting time. My brother's in that city, remember. No matter what evil is there, we have to find him. And if we stand around all day arguing, it'll be too late.”

Fessan's eyes gleamed. “A voice of reason at last,” he said. “Thank you, Princess Elodie. How do you suggest we proceed?”

All four men were staring at her expectantly. Could these experienced soldiers really want her advice? And was this the right moment to tell them about the ghost army that stood alongside Trident?
Wherever you lead, we can follow
, Samial had said. But what if she promised Trident allies, only to learn the ghosts couldn't fight in this battle? Would she lose their support? They could declare her mad after all and not worth fighting for. She wished she had told Tarlan about the ghosts and asked what he thought she should do.

Nonetheless, ghosts or not, Elodie found that she did have a plan.

“Have the siege engines brought out of the woods,” she said. “While that's happening, send out the scouts. By the time the engines are set up, we should have all the information we need.”

Samial smiled at her and Fessan looked impressed. “A sound strategy, Princess,” he said.

Elodie felt her cheeks tinge. She imagined Palenie's surprise; Elodie might not have taken to her friend's swordfighting lessons, but she wasn't hopeless in a battle. She stared across the chasm and frowned. “I just don't know how the scouts are going to get across.”

“They will fly!”

The voice was accompanied by a great gust of air as Tarlan brought his thorrod mount over the cluster of Trident soldiers. Discus reared; Elodie held tight to the reins as her hair blew wildly in Theeta's wake.

Elodie's stomach turned into a bundle of knots. She could still hardly believe that her brother had dropped out of the sky and into her life. The idea of losing him again after just a few days was unbearable.

“No!” she cried up to her brother. “It's too dangerous.”

“I'm from Yalasti,” Tarlan replied. “I'm used to danger, Elodie.” He gestured to Idilliam. “Besides, we need to get Gulph out of there.”

She knew what the set of Tarlan's jaw meant; after all, she'd seen it reflected back at her in a mirror enough times. He'd made up his mind.

“Then be careful!”

“Don't worry,” Tarlan told her. “I'm coming back. I promise.”