Chapter 19
MERI
M eri had led all three of them to their deaths, and she could tell Rerek knew it. The undead veneficus stood in front of them, teeth bared in an eager smile.
Even in her bleakest thoughts she hadn’t imagined she would be responsible for Gallmau and Sinan both dying along with her before even finding the Bone Lord who had kidnapped Rixende.
Rerek had used her to drain Sinan, the only person among the three of them who knew how to kill a necromancer who was already dead.
Gallmau had fought his way out of a frozen lake and carried her and Sinan up a mountain, but his sword arm and shield were no match for death magic.
Meri was no longer half-frozen, but she hadn’t rested enough to restore her speed.
No, they didn’t have much of a chance against Rerek, but Meri had chopped the head off the death witch who had murdered her sister and countless other children once, and she’d be damned if she didn’t die trying to do it a second time.
As Rerek stepped forward, his antlered head silhouetted against an entire wall of mounted horns, Sinan didn’t hesitate.
He sent several thrusts of shadow magic at Rerek as he wielded his blade in the air.
The technique had worked well against the assassin Cliona, but the ribbon-like strikes had little effect on the veneficus.
Every hit only sparked a green flash of protection around Rerek, outlining his unnatural form in an eerie light.
Rerek ignored Sinan’s blows and advanced toward him, his eyes a pale white, devoid of any pupils, yet somehow gleaming in anticipation.
Meri fought the urge to sink into her speed, knowing her stamina was limited.
Her water blades might have more impact upon Rerek than Sinan’s weakened shadow powers, and she wanted any strike she landed to count. She might only get one chance.
Gallmau, as she should have expected, mistook her discipline in not attacking as a sign she was too injured to fight. He charged in with his short sword, and Rerek turned in his direction, the twisted smile on the dead necromancer’s face widening.
A noxious cloud of greenish smoke billowed toward the prince, and Gallmau ended up choking and gasping on his knees, as the undead Bone Lord strode forward to loom over him, a heavy bone club now in his hand.
Sinan rushed in to block the blow with his own body. Rerek slammed the club against his shadow shields, once, then a second time. Sinan’s ribbons of protection grew fainter with each hit.
Meri dropped into her speed and moved. She pushed Gallmau away from the hovering cloud of green, then stepped in and swung at Rerek’s neck as he lifted his club against Sinan a third time. Both her speed and Rerek’s distraction gave her a solid chance to land two quick blows with her blades.
It was a chance she missed.
Rerek avoided the two strikes, his toxic green barrier preventing her from striking his now-corporeal form. Meri was forced to retreat across the room before she dropped back into the normal stream of time, exhausted.
Gallmau and Sinan pulled back to a far corner, and the young necromancer talked in low, urgent tones as the prince nodded.
The two sprang into action, with Gallmau picking up his shield and charging toward Rerek as Sinan circled around the two of them, sending shadow slashes through the air in movements as precise as a ritual dance.
Rerek came to a halt, light flashing around him as Gallmau started to bash his shield against the invisible barrier around the undead death witch.
This was their hope. Even weakened, Sinan had the skill and power to land repeated blows on Rerek’s defenses, and Gallmau had more strength and stamina than any fighter she had ever seen.
If she could help them, use her speed to slip inside Rerek’s defenses and get her blades through his neck, they could end this.
Only she couldn’t.
She tried again and again, but her body, weakened by the pain of Rerek’s curse and the physical toll of escaping the storm, wouldn’t listen to her. She could only stand, cursing herself, as the momentum of the fight changed.
Rerek swung his club at Gallmau, and an explosion of green light slammed into the prince.
He was tossed across the room and against the wall of mounted antlers, his sword lying by his side and blood streaming from his head.
A scream ripped out of her, so despairing and animalistic she hardly believed it had come from her own throat.
Sinan moved in to protect Gallmau, his sword flashing, but Rerek must have been waiting for him to get within range of his other, awful power.
The cloud of poison, bright green and writhing like a nest of snakes, enveloped Sinan. He gasped, his hands going to his throat, and dropped to his knees, trying to cough out the poison and failing.
That left only Meri and Rerek standing.
It had been fated to end this way. She would pay now for what she had done to Rerek, and there were no regrets in her mind, except for the three young lives she hadn’t been able to save—and the life of the young Soissons princess who meant everything to Gallmau.
Meri waited until Rerek was only an arm’s length away to move, pretending to stand trembling and awed by his monstrous shape before she lashed out with her blades.
Her arms felt as heavy as stone, and the air she sucked in burned its way into her lungs.
She fought on, slashing again and again, but every time Rerek’s magical shield blocked her.
He waited, the smile on his face a grinning rictus of hatred, until her blows faltered, then grabbed her by the neck with both hands.
“Kill you.” His voice was a raspy remnant of the melodious speech she had heard from him so many years ago.
His resurrection had left him less human and more bestial, but no less dangerous.
Smooth and educated, he had bought off or blackmailed those in power, and his crimes had been covered up by the likes of Odart of Dol.
Those who had chosen to look the other way as he preyed on children were as damned to the tortures of Hell as Rerek was.
“Slow. Yes. Very slow.” He lifted her off her feet and slammed her into the wall, and pain shot from the back of her head down her spine.
The fingers around her windpipe opened a fraction, allowing a trickle of air through.
Her death would take a long time, and then he would finish off Gallmau and take whatever was left of Sinan—if the two of them were unlucky enough to live that long.
Her vision blurred with pain, she barely recognized the small shape that scurried toward Rerek’s feet. The veneficus wore a long robe, and she realized now his feet had transformed into hooves.
A tiny tail swished, and Sinan’s ghost rat reached out to bite the undead Bone Lord.
Dazed with pain and lack of breath, Meri was possessed by an insane desire to giggle.
The little rodent grasped the edge of the fabric of Rerek’s robe and tugged at it, eyes burning with blue light.
The action was so hopeless, so pathetic, Rerek hadn’t noticed.
Instead he leaned closer, dragging a sticky tongue over the side of her face.
She felt revulsion and desire at the same time and realized the veneficus was feeding off of her.
On the floor, the ghost rat was backing up, dragging a strip of shadow from Rerek’s form.
The dark blot on the floor stretched out, and then a boy stood there, his face solemn. He had light skin and tufts of straw-colored hair under a felt hat, and wore the odd suspenders and deerskin short trousers Meri had seen in her time in Diurstic.
Her mind must be slipping into madness, because as she watched the child reached into Rerek—inside him—and pulled.
A pale arm emerged, and a second boy joined the first. His clothes were similar, and his face—Meri knew that face.
She had that visage burned into her mind and would never forget the ravaged little body she had carried out of Rerek’s obscene mansion.
His mother’s screams still rang in her ears during her nightmares, as did the woman’s prayerful thanks to Meri that she had at least a body to bury.
The other child they had found there had been dead longer, his features distorted by death and decay.
Two of Rerek’s victims stood behind the undead veneficus, and then another arm emerged from his hulking form.
A little brown arm, wrists jangling with copper bracelets.
Meri screamed, thrashing in Rerek’s hold.
He tightened his grip on her, digging his nails into the skin of her neck, and Sanura stepped out onto the floor without the veneficus even noticing.
She was a head taller than the two young boys—she had been ten when she was murdered—and dressed in her play clothes, with a head wrap pulling back her long black curls and hoop earrings that had been her pride and joy.
Meri’s dead little sister looked up at her and smiled.
She pulled out a knife and the two boys followed suit. The children encircled Rerek and began stabbing him, and Meri could only stare in shock, her mind reeling.
After the first strike, Rerek screamed in fear and rage, and his hold on Meri weakened.
She sucked in a grateful gulp of air and fell to the floor.
Her mind told her she needed to find her blades and join the fight, but her body was wracked with pain, and she could do nothing more than roll to her side and watch as the attack unfolded.
The blows came fast and sure, each delivered with a solemn expression by the three children.
His flashing shield couldn’t stop them, and his flailing arms and the cloud of green fog he spread around himself had no effect.
There was no bleeding, only gaping holes of void in his body left behind by the knife cuts.
Nothing he did—his howls of rage, curses in different tongues and accents, or towards the end, his weeping cries—stopped the relentless work of Sanura and the two boys.
Rerek fell back on the floor, sprawled out with his antlered head twisted to one side, like a slaughtered stag ready to be hung up and gutted.
Sanura knelt beside him and began to saw through his chest with her knife.
The two boys dropped their weapons and reached with their hands to pull both sides of the ribcage open.
The undead veneficus’s ribs were blackened and brittle, and they cracked into dust as the cavity was opened up.
Inside, there was a mass of squirming tissue, greenish-black and viscous.
Sanura reached inside with both arms and pulled a fourth child out of the dead Bone Lord.
He was emaciated and naked, with a hairless head that had two soft nubs on top, like a starving fawn in the forest, waiting for a predator to end his misery.
As the new child stumbled to his feet, the three ghost children stood up to face him.
The first boy came forward and engulfed him in a hug before his own body blurred and disappeared.
The second boy, whose dead body Meri had brought back to his grieving mother, also embraced the fourth child.
Within another moment, that young murder victim had faded away as well.
The boy pulled out of Rerek’s chest faced Sanura, trembling. She reached out and took both of his shaking hands in hers.
“You can go now.” Meri’s sister sounded as bright and caring as when she was alive. The boy nodded, somehow understanding her Kushian dialect, and his form blew away like fog in the wind.
Sanura turned to Meri and walked up to her, her steps light and joyful. She knelt to stroke Meri’s face, her small fingers cold as the ice swirling outside the chateau. “I did it, Meri. I saved you from him. You’re safe now.”