Chapter Eighteen The Villainess Meets the Beast of the West
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
The Villainess Meets the Beast of the West
The dead army headed for the pass. The Ice Queen’s forces remained in hot pursuit, but the dead travelled too fast. They would flood the citadel like ice water when a glacier melted, and drown all in their path with cold.
Even the Queen’s men, riding desperately hard, knew they raced to no avail. All was lost.
Save that the Queen had left a guardian to defend her citadel. Champion of the ice raiders, a legend in his own time known as the Beast of the West.
When word came of the descending dead, the Beast announced, “All my life I waited for a great fight. This will serve.”
No youth was ever so bold, none with so many warrior braids in his mane, none with such laughing eyes.
People say the count spent his last night in prayer to his snarling gods at Blood Feud Tower, where his father died before his birth.
Then he walked whistling into the winter wind.
Some doubted Count Merac’s wisdom, his temper, and – in the last, wild years of his life – his sanity. None ever doubted his courage.
Those left behind gathered what they could carry and fled. They knew the dead would be on them soon. No living man could stand against so many ghouls. No man alone could hold the pass.
And yet.
When the Ice Queen’s army reached the pass, they found a field of slaughter. The ghouls were cut or torn to pieces, snow turned black for miles with dead blood. In the midst of the fallen, one stood alone. Frost had transformed dark hair and golden fur into a silver hood and cloak.
The edge of the Beast of the West’s sacred axe bit deep as a ghoul into the ice. His grip on the axe hilt could not be broken by all the queen’s men. Bleeding from a hundred wounds, the Beast of the West had used his weapon at the last to stand tall and hold fast.
Dead, the Beast held his post. Dead, the Beast held the pass.
His great cat Fatalis bared teeth long and sharp as swords, defending her master as he had defended his city.
Her tawny flanks were scored with long red gashes until she seemed striped with scarlet.
Only when she saw they were allies did Fatalis cease snarling, to give a small sound like a kitten hoping for milk.
She curled at her master’s feet, and died in peace.
They had to shatter the ice to carry the heroes home. The tradition of his people was to be buried beneath earth and stone, to bring to the next world all you had when laid to rest, from gold to glorious death wounds. Strangely, the Beast of the West left orders desiring to be burned.
None could deny the hero’s final wish. So he burned. Even his ancient enemies sang for him, voices rising high as the smoke from his pyre. All his gold and glory became ash. Lost to the wild wind, lost to the vast, cold sky.
Yet what is loved cannot be altogether lost.
Much later, the one who loved him best carved his name in letters six feet tall on the stone of the pass. So all who entered the citadel saw and remembered his deed and his name. Stone held his memory, as he once held the pass.
Last and greatest champion of the ice raiders. Torhell, Count Merac.
Excerpt from the Once and Forever Emperor series, now revised, ANONYMOUS
Trumpets sounded outside the great gold doors, standing open to receive the peace envoys.
Dead guards in new golden masks lined the glittering green crystal walls, ministers stood in tense blue ranks, and the Emperor and his evil queen candidate waited upon their thrones.
Rae feared the vibe they were giving off wasn’t exactly “reasonable and normal people you can trust to keep a peace treaty”.
The peace envoys from the icelands didn’t seem all that normal themselves.
The crier at the door intoned, “The Dowager Countess Merac, esteemed ambassadress and peace envoy for Tagar!”
Tagar’s ambassador, Dowager Countess Merac, sailed across the gold mosaics like a ship with every sail billowing, if every sail were black ermine.
She was a tall, powerful woman who looked to be in her early forties, and if she were a ship, she would be a fantastically successful pirate ship.
The countess was festooned with gold, from the jet and gold diadem on her stern brow to the elaborate rings on every finger.
One thick gold band at the base, then a ring at every knuckle, each connected to another by a chain and ending in golden caps for each fingertip.
Seeing this lady of the rings jogged Rae’s memory about Tagar.
Raiders were big on rings, exchanging them as pledges of loyalty for both weddings and warriors.
One of their rare songs about not dying spectacularly in battle went: “Ice cannot hold me, by no blade will I die/By my dear one and ring-giver intend I to lie…”
Rae couldn’t help but notice that the notorious Count Merac, general of the raider army, was missing.
The dowager countess’s magnificent progress halted at the base of their thrones, where she bowed deeply. “Greetings. I am Tagar’s representative. You may call me Lady Mabeth.”
Rae sucked in a breath that went down the wrong way and lapsed into a coughing fit. “Lady Macbeth!”
“Lady Mabeth,” corrected the dowager countess. “An entirely different name. I am also known as Mab of the Red Hands.”
Rae swallowed down her cough. “Thanks, that’s reassuring.”
The Emperor gestured for the duchess to rise. A certain menace lay even in his most gracious movements. Maybe he was born with it. Maybe it was the great clawed gauntlets imbued with dark magic.
“I’m Key. Since we’re being friendly and informal, you may call me Your Imperial Majesty. This is my betrothed bride, Lady Rahela Domitia. Did your general get lost on his way to my throne room? Where is Count Merac?”
He was answered by a clash of weapons and the sound of moans below.
Nearly every room in the Palace on the Edge had multiple balconies, from which to contemplate the sacred and awful dread ravine.
The balcony doors in the throne room were narrow as the high arched windows, with luminous blue stained glass as if to always open onto bright skies.
The Emperor rose from his throne, and made for one of the balconies.
He turned under the stone arch, clawed gauntlet resting on the handle of the balcony door. Light streaming through the glass caught and refracted in the folds of his dark garments, making him seem a shadow caught in a prism.
“Our peace envoy is in the courtyard…” Key’s observation ended in a snarl, “chopping up my dead!”
Rae and the dowager countess followed the Emperor, both trying to act casual and also walk extremely fast. They tumbled onto the balcony together, Rae’s voluminous red-edged skirts and the dowager countess’s bulky furs making it a tight squeeze.
In the centre of the courtyard, in a circle of brightness and blood made by gold-masked encroaching dead, stood the sun.
That was how he seemed at first, like the sun come to earth: a shining shape wielding a golden axe that shone with inner fire, moving in a sweep so fast it became a brilliant blur.
When one of the dead leaped into that gleaming arc, two dead pieces tumbled left and right to the cobblestones. His axe split the ghoul exactly in half.
“I crave your pardon, Your Imperial Majesty,” said Lady Mab. “My son is impetuous.”
The sun resolved into a young man with dark hair in a tumble of waves and braids to his shoulders, and tawny gold furs in a cascade from his shoulders to the gory cobbles.
He tipped back his face to study the watchers on the balcony.
His eyes, remarkable for brilliant directness rather than colour, fastened immediately on one among the party.
Count Torhell Merac shouted, “Fight me!”
The Emperor sent down a sinister smile like a black flower tossed from the balcony. “With pleasure.”
The young man’s face lit as bright as a beacon. “Wait there!”
He cleared a path by cutting down more ghouls, charging out of the courtyard and their sight.
Rae laid a hand on the Emperor’s arm, feeling leather, criss-crossed binding and worked metal, with nothing to suggest the man beneath.
Key sounded distracted, humming with excitement at the prospect of battle. “What’s that, my lady?”
Rae had to remind him, “We’re having peace talks.”
Pio, Rae’s unexpected ally, stood at the open glass doors. “Murdering a peace envoy will have an unfortunate effect on the peace talks.”
Key shrugged. “Fine. I’ll kill him later.”
“Perhaps my son will kill you later,” murmured Lady Mab.
The Emperor laughed like black lightning, then said, “Sorry, I assumed that was a joke.”
Rae saw Pio wince and didn’t blame him. Key had many unearthly talents. Unearthly diplomacy wasn’t among them.
The crier at the throne room entrance cleared his throat, and the prime minister pivoted urgently towards the tall golden doors.
The name “Count Merac” was never uttered.
Instead came a roar. Not the sound of a raised voice or a loud noise, but an actual animal roar.
It sent the back of Rae’s neck tingling with the terror of cave-dwelling ancestors for whom that sound meant death, and the hairs on her arms prickling with the thrill of more recent movie-watching ancestors, for whom that sound meant adventure. The doors crashed open.
“Thanks,” Count Merac told the crier. “I can announce myself.”
A tiger roared once again.
Across the throne room prowled the count and his great cat.
The count had an actual sabretooth tiger.
Its teeth were great carved bone scimitars.
Its fur gleamed as orichal steel did, as all magic did, like light on water with neither element earthly, but this enchanted illumination was gold rather than the blood-red magic of Eyam.