The Dark Ball
T he skeleton decorations that hung above twitched and rattled on their strings.
They were not, however, as she remembered, the small wooden representations of human skeletons.
No, these were the real skeletons of rodents and birds and bats, and other small creatures with bits of feather and dried sinew clinging to their bones.
Cobwebs fluttered from chandeliers. Remnants of food moldered on the refreshment tables. Everything was cast in murky gray light. On the floor around her lay clumps of rumpled fabric.
This is all wrong, she thought. It’s all wrong.
Discordant music began, played by musicians hidden in the shadows. Candles in the chandeliers magically flared with light, then subsided to a feeble, cold glow, leaving much obscured in deep gloom.
The piles of fabric rose, rose into emaciated figures in ragged gowns and longcoats.
Their dance moves were not elegant or smooth, but jerky, grotesque.
She attempted to crawl out of the way, but she was too weak to move.
They trampled and kicked her as they promenaded about the ballroom floor.
She threw her arms over her head to protect it.
Armor still shielded some of her body, but not all, and it was continuing to deteriorate with painful shocks and jolts to her body. It was a nightmare.
Home, I want to go home.
The dancers leered down at her, unblinking with rictus grins plastered on their gaunt faces.
They were caricatures of the harvest ball.
The tempo of the shrieking music picked up and boney hands reached for her.
They dragged her to her feet. She was pushed and jostled and thrown from one dancer to the next.
She grew lightheaded and was unable to resist.
They avoided, she noticed, touching her armor.
The music died, and the dancers mobbed her and pushed and dragged her to the center of the ballroom. Her vision darkened as consciousness fled.
“Let me go,” she said. “Let me go.”
· · ·
There were no stars; she’d not been whisked off through the heavens. She awakened disoriented, and sweat slipped down her face. A familiar jolt of pain shot through her body.
Fainted. I fainted.
She lay prone on the ballroom floor. It was silent. The dancers were gone, but it was not home. The animal skeletons hung above as before. The atmosphere remained dull, gray.
She gasped at stabbing agony that ran up and down her leg as the other greave disintegrated.
“Is it unpleasant as your armor dies?” someone whispered. “Like the peeling off of your own skin?”
Startled, she looked up. Seated on a thronelike chair was a figure draped in gray, his face hidden in the shadows of his hood.
“Who—?” she began, gritting her teeth against another wave of pain.
“Did you not enjoy my ball? No? A pity. It was for the occasion your people call Feast of Vendane. As I understand, there are two aspects to that particular celebration, and you can see which one I chose.”
Famine. It was sickening.
“It would seem,” he whispered, “you are no longer the runaway schoolgirl. You’ve changed, grown, taken on some intriguing roles. Avatar to a god, no less.”
“Who are you?” she asked.
He stood, walked around her, his boots sounding out a slow, rhythmic tap. “I’m afraid I am the one who broke the pretty glass dome in your castle.”
The gray entity. But who or what was the gray entity?
“You’ve rescued a queen-to-be, traveled deep into Black veil Forest and survived. You’ve visited past and future, survived brutal torture and battle. No, not your average schoolgirl.”
She tried to rise but had not the strength. “Who the hells are you? What do you want?”
“Have you not figured it out? It is not our first meeting, and not even our second.” The sound of footsteps faded, and he knelt before her, his face still hidden in the depths of his hood.
“I thought you might have figured it out by now, but you are not yourself quite yet, are you? Half-avatar, half-Galadheon.”
He reached toward her, and his sleeve fell away from his hand to reveal it was...It was like glass that had been shattered and reassembled into a mosaic. Each fragment hung in the air unbound yet held the shape of his hand. He touched the feather of the winter owl in her hair, and recoiled.
He gave a breathy laugh. “And you have taken up with Eletians. Very unusual their king has adopted you.”
Another surge of energy crackled through her remaining armor making her cry out.
“Who are you?” she demanded again, panting. “What do you want?”
“Ah, yes, I recall you do not like games. You are stubborn and would prefer a stalemate to an acceptable win. You are the unexpected player.”
A dawning dread began to overcome her. “It can’t be. It’s impossible.”
“Is it?” He drew back his hood. Like his hand, his face was a mosaic that skewed his features, but she knew the azure eyes, the gold hair.
Shawdell. The Gray One. The breaker of the D’Yer Wall who had worked with old Lord Mirwell and Prince Amilton to stage a coup and murder Zachary.
But Shawdell had wanted more. He had wanted all the etherea of Blackveil Forest, tainted or not, to flow into the larger world.
She thought he’d gone forever when she defeated him. Dead. Shattered.
“Yes,” he said. “I would have thought the ball gave it away. We danced well together once, you and I.”
“How? How are you here?”
“Did you think me so easy to kill? I am, however, somewhat...changed. You did this to me.”
“I’d do it again,” she said, “and finish the job.”
He grabbed her chin and the sharp edges of his fingers cut into her skin. “Such bold words from one who is weakening by the moment. Soon that armor the gods clad you in will die and you will be in my power. Completely. I will have what you would not give me before, and more.”
“Why would you—” She tried to jerk her head away, but it only caused his fingers to cut deeper into her flesh.
The avatar’s blade would not come to hand for the same reason her armor was dying, but she still had Telagioth’s sheathed at her side. Shawdell, however, seemed to know her thoughts and seized the sword before she could. He gazed at it long and hard.
“Fine Eletian make,” he said. “Forged probably five thousand years ago. It is marked by Arhodil, its maker.” He showed her a rune on the blade beneath the guard. “One of the best, an old lord of Avrath, just as the sword’s owner is. Telagioth, yes?”
She did not answer, her mind a maelstrom of revelation that mired her ability to plan an escape. She was so weak. She—
He lowered the tip of the blade to her eyepatch and lifted it, revealing her mirror eye and causing dagger pain to stab into it.
“Ah,” Shawdell said. “This is why my sire and grandsire were so eager to adopt you. Perhaps I should cut it out and make it mine, but whether it would survive and remain useful without its host? Uncertain. So I will not carve it out. Yet. Besides, I will have you as I wished during our fateful game of Intrigue.”
A flash of memory came to her, of them caught in the white world, or the Blanding as some called it, a transitional place outside the plane of reality, a table before them bearing a game of Intrigue. She’d been thrust into the role of Triad, the unexpected player.
“Do you even know what it is you bear in your eye?” he asked her.
“I’ve an idea.” She jerked her head out of his grip, slicing more skin, but the eyepatch snapped into its usual place.
One of her gauntlets crackled and arced, and disintegrated off her hand. It felt like a thousand bees stinging her. Her consciousness ebbed again.
“A matter of time,” Shawdell said, “and the armor will die completely, and you will be all mine. A matter of—”
A surge of power exploded through the armor and gushed from the rent steel. It carried her into the stars, and the last thing she heard was Shawdell wailing, “Nooo!”