Chapter 18
Rosie
It is truly miraculous how much exquisite detail a mind can absorb in the space of a single heartbeat.
Seven-foot-high lurching bodies of gray flesh and bristling brown fur, for instance.
Pushed-in faces, wrinkled slit noses, and protruding, blood-streaked fangs.
Enormous triangular ears with large, bulging veins of purple spreading through semitransparent skin.
Vaguely humanoid bodies, massive shoulders, and muscular arms which end not in hands, but in bizarrely long, webbed fingers.
I would call them wings, save that creatures like this could never hope to fly.
I know what they are; the name flashes through my consciousness in the same instant I set eyes on them: votyr.
Demons of the Second Order. According to legend, their spirits are lured into this world by the glimmer of stars, for which they conceive a voracious lust. Once passed through to this realm, however, the thinness of magic in the atmosphere prevents their essence from taking physical form.
So they flit and flicker across the night as mere shadows, unable to return to their own realm, racked with unsated desire.
But on New Moon nights, when darkness falls across the world, these evil spirits may possess the bodies of men and women who have died and not yet been consecrated.
Clad once more in corporeal form, they warp their host flesh into these strange, monstrous shapes, akin to what they once were in their own hellish realm.
All this I have learned only through hearsay. Votyr cannot exist in proximity to Inamaer Forest and the fresh air of Utherlynd. I certainly have never seen one. Until now.
These thoughts flash through my head, not in words so much as feelings, instinct almost. And in that flash, the foremost of the demons lurches across the hall, bearing down on me, and I find myself staring up into the hideous face of my own sudden death.
But Valtar is already in motion.
He grabs my arm, yanking me behind him, while simultaneously whipping out one of who-knows-how-many hidden knives.
A gleam of steel in scintil light, and the blade whistles through the air straight into the eye of that bat-like monstrosity.
A rasping howl of pain bursts in my ears.
The votyr stumbles to one side, bashing into one of its brethren, and the two fall in a tangle of hideous limbs and fleshy wing flaps.
I don’t have a chance to take it in, even to catch my breath, before I’m scooped up in a pair of strong arms. A little squeak of either protest or terror escapes my lips, but I can do nothing more than cling to Valtar’s neck, staring over his shoulder at the roiling mass of monster on the floor.
He carries me as though I weigh no more than a twig, bounding to a set of nearly hidden stairs and scaling them in a few great leaps.
By the time I realize what’s happening, he’s deposited me in a chair beside an abandoned lute.
The gallery—he’s carried me to the musicians’ gallery.
Valtar tries the door in the back wall, which should, theoretically, offer an escape.
“Locked,” he snarls, teeth flashing. Down below, shouts echo to the ceiling, joining in hideous chorus with the grating screams of the votyr.
He whirls to me. Light filters through the gallery screen, dotting his face in a diamond pattern.
“Stay here,” he says. “Stay quiet. Let me deal with this.”
“Wait!” I demand, holding out my hand. “Give me one of your knives.”
He hesitates, brow tightening.
“Don’t you dare leave me up here like a sitting duck!” I beckon with my fingers. “Give me means to defend myself at least.”
Wordless, he bends and slips a dagger from his boot. Because of course he has a dagger in his boot. He probably has another in his knickers and a third tucked behind one ear. “Here,” he says, flipping it round to offer me the hilt. “Try not to cut yourself, Princess.”
I start to snarl a response, but he has already pushed aside part of the screen and leapt out from the balcony into midair.
Open-mouthed, I stare through the opening at the horrible scene below.
One of the demons has Prince Taigan pinned to the ground under its heavy hand and is just opening wide its mouth to bite his face clean off.
Valtar lands squarely on its back, wrapping his arms around its neck.
It rears back, allowing Taigan a chance to scramble free.
Another flash of steel, and I see Valtar go for the creature’s throat.
But this beast is both stronger and wilier than Prince Joro.
It twists its muscular torso viciously, wing-arms flapping, and manages to loosen Valtar’s grip.
I watch him struggle to regain his hold, but the votyr wrenches to the opposite side so abruptly, his balance is completely broken.
He falls, hits the stone floor, stunned.
“Valtar!” I scream. I don’t mean to—a shock of pure terror ripples through my senses and erupts from my lips in that cry. Too late to take it back.
The demon bat, its attention caught, lifts its awful face from Valtar to me in the balcony above.
Its eyes are practically useless, but its enormous ears vibrate delicately, aware of my every movement and breath.
That awful mouth opens wide in a hungry cry as it leaps from the floor and begins to climb the wall straight up to where I stand, trapped in this small space.
I have moments in which to act.
First, I yank the screen shut once more.
It’s not much of a barrier, but it might give me an extra breath or two.
Then, still gripping Valtar’s dagger in one hand, I reach for the nearest scintil globe, a small glass orb meant to illuminate sheet music.
Ignoring the blistering heat in the palm of my hand, I catch it up, draw it back, and in the same instant the votyr rips the screen barrier away, send it hurtling, a shining missile of magicked light.
My aim is good. I always did have a strong arm.
Back at Gartsworth, I was known for my skills at the apple shy, a Harvest Feast tradition in which competitors sought to take out scarecrow targets dressed up to look like dracori warriors.
One year, my apple took a scarecrow’s head clean off, and I won myself a barrel of apple ale to carry home as a prize.
This shot is probably not as true. But it’s close. It strikes the demon square in its pushed-in, slitted nose and bursts in a shattering cascade of glass and splintering beams of light. The bat beast rears back, screaming, and nearly loses its grip on the balcony rail.
I take the opportunity to dart for the stairs.
I can’t stay here, trapped in this confined space; I’ve a better chance out among the champions.
So, gathering up armfuls of skirts, I rush for the little doorway and all but fall down the flight of stairs to the floor below before the votyr has realized I’ve gone.
Head spinning, vision blurring, I stare out across the floor to where Valtar lies, unmoving.
Oh gods, did he crack his skull open on the floor?
I fling myself across the open space, his name quavering on my lips as I drop to my knees beside him.
“Valtar! Valtar, please!” I cry, grabbing the front of his tunic.
He stirs. His eyelids flutter.
Then something heavy shudders the ground.
A gray-and-brown form looms before me, dragging my gaze up from Valtar into the leering jaws of a roaring demon.
Still scattering bits of broken glass, it bellows a rotten blast of air straight into my face, then lunges, awful teeth snapping with bloodlust. I scream and fling up my hand, which still grips the dagger, trying to put that narrow slip of blade between us.
A heavy blow thuds, and the votyr staggers to one side.
Another figure appears before my addled vision.
He grips a metal stake in both hands, a chain and a scintil globe dangling from the far end.
He must have ripped it straight from the wall!
The light from that scintil illuminates the fixed stare and rigid features of Learned Majestic Rune.
The demon lunges, and he strikes it across the face with the stake.
But though his blow lands, the demon does not stop rushing him.
Rune is obliged to drop his weapon and dart to one side.
A graceful, nimble maneuver that I don’t quite follow, and he gets behind the monster and wraps his arms around its neck in a choke hold.
The votyr screeches and flails its enormous wing-arms, struggling to shake him off, but Rune’s grip is strong.
He won’t be shaken free; he’ll strangle the beast, and—
A second demon grabs Rune in its jaws and yanks him off the back of its fellow beast. A cry of shock, of pain, bursts from Rune’s lips, then cuts off abruptly with a sickening crunch.
The votyr drops him to the floor, a limp bundle of bones, flesh, and blood. So much blood.
“No!” I cry, and try to go to him. An enormous hand closes around my back, clawed fingers pinching into my rib cage.
Were it not for the boned corset wrapping my torso, those claws would pierce straight through me.
The votyr lifts me off my feet, turning me to look at it, to stare into those blind, beady eyes.
Its mouth opens, jaw dropping far wider than I ever would have believed possible.