Messenger in the Mist (18 page)

“You see, it’s the one thing holding back Evenspark’s army and that dreaded, disfigured queen’s foul rage.”

The hoarseness of his tone surprised Valen. “Sometimes an old enemy is a friend in disguise.”

Just like Leer. The intent of the statement he’d said out loud hit him hard and he swayed back, bracing himself against the stone wall. He realized that he did still have love for Leer. He’d sent the two people he cared about the most into the valley of the beasts. His concern weighed his features down and Commander Rile crouched beside him, kneeling at his feet.

“You’ve been at watch far longer than your shift, my prince.”

Valen rubbed his temples. “I’m not going down.”

“Forgive me, Your Highness, but you must rest some time.”

Valen dismissed him with a wave. “No. Not until this threat is gone.” He squinted, looking back over the battlements like a madman. “Not until she comes back.”

The commander looked at him, confused. “Who, Your Highness?”

Although he’d not meant to, Valen had voiced his last thought out loud. At this point, he didn’t care what gossip ran amuck within Ravencliff’s walls. He would start following his heart, whether it was the right thing to do or not.

“The messenger. She’s going to save us all.” Valen focused back on the foggy nothingness, but his thoughts returned to the last conversation he’d had with Star at the gate. He’d wanted to say so much, and yet all he could do was stand by when she left without another word. How he’d cursed his inaction in the days since. “Commander, I love her.”

Valen turned back but Commander Rile was gone. The prince looked down the length of the battlements in both directions but the commander had disappeared. In fact, eerily enough, Valen was the only one on duty.

“It can’t be. My men would not abandon their posts…”

Suddenly he felt a chill breeze on his back and his body prickled with goose bumps, the hair on his arms standing on end. In a split second, he felt a whish of air over his head. He ducked impulsively, falling onto his back. An Elyndra swooped from the mist above his head, legs grasping frantically for his body. It had missed in the initial assault, but hovered in the open air above him, boldly crossing the fortress’s walls.

Valen struggled, squirming underneath the clawed talons. He managed to get hold of his sword and swung it out of the sheath. With a clang, the metal blade hit one of the legs, but it ricocheted off the hard carapace and the beast pressed on. He wondered how the beast had stolen the commander. These days, everything happened so fast and he wasn’t prepared for any of it. His mind roamed the land of daydreams instead.

He rolled out of its grasp and ducked underneath an old cannon that hadn’t been used in years. He watched as the luminescent beast landed on the stone of the battlements, batting its silvery wings. Two large antennae explored the air around it, searching for its lost quarry. The beast was massive, its wingspan larger than two wagons put together, and Valen wondered how Star had managed to kill one all by herself, hanging from a rope, of all places.

Then he remembered Star telling him the Elyndra feared fire. Holding his breath and digging in his coat pocket, Valen found a match.

A bag of sand rested underneath the cannon. Valen emptied the bag silently and tied the sack around the tip of his sword. Meanwhile, the Elyndra jittered and ticked above him, exploring the structure of the wall. Valen struck the match and lit the sack, watching it spark with flame.

The heat of the fire alerted the Elyndra and it spun around in his direction, antennae raised. Valen thrust the sword into its wing and the flames caught and spread. It tried to fly, propelling itself into the air, but the blaze erupted on both wings. The beast tilted and fell over the side of the fortress to the ground below in a ball of fire.

Valen had a moment of triumph followed by a stinging realization of sheer terror: his side of the fortress was probably not the only one under attack. There would be more of them to come, possibly in greater numbers.

Scrambling down the length of the battlements to the main turret, Valen found the warning horn abandoned at the foot of the sentry’s station, sprinkled with drops of blood. The beasts had picked the watch tower guards off first, and then turned to the lookout guards on the parapet.

Wiping the horn on his coat, Valen watched for signs of other beasts. Taking a deep breath, he put his lips to the mouthpiece and blew into the horn. A long, wailing sound careened through the upper parapet. Although he was not a trained bugler, he had played with the horns as a child and was familiar with the particular rhythm of a battle call. The pitch and tone were rough, but the expressed sentiment was clear as ever.

Just as he finished a long string of notes, Valen looked up at the sky behind him. A wave of dark shapes flew through the mist over his head, and hundreds of wings blotted out the distant sun and cast threatening shadows on the flagstones below him.

His calls did not go unheard. A slew of soldiers poured out of the towers, flooding the battlements deserted only moments before. Valen watched in horror as the beasts lunged, bombing the first wave of recruits pointing their flaming arrows into the sky. Some managed to fire while others were taken away screaming into the mist.

It did not take long for chaos to erupt. Men ran back and forth, shooting arrows while stomping out flames, and others batted at the Elyndra’s clutches. One man stumbled onto the prince, his face and body littered with bleeding scratches from the sharp claws. Valen helped him reach the lower deck and shouted for a healer. Once he knew the man was in good hands, Valen sprinted ahead, flaming sword in hand. Angered by the attacks on his fortress, he ripped through a mass of wings in a single arc.

He felled three Elyndra before claws wrapped around his body and he rose above the flagstones, feet unable to touch the ground. Valen flailed his arms and legs, twisting to stab it with his sword. Three flaps later, his head jerked up and down like a rag doll. Valen watched as the ground grew farther and farther away.

Suddenly, he heard a whizzing sound and then a crunching noise as someone’s flaming arrow hit the beast’s right wing. The Elyndra swayed in the air before dropping him. He felt a moment of numb weightlessness, and then his stomach pitched and he fell hard on the stone of the battlements.

After the initial shock had faded, Valen felt a flaring pain on his left side where he’d taken the brunt of the fall. Wincing, he rolled onto his other side and clutched the sore shoulder, feeling for broken bones. To his relief, every body part seemed to be in place. If anything, a dislocated shoulder was the least of his worries, and he still had his sword arm in working condition.

Valen swerved as he regained his footing and surveyed the upper battlements. The Elyndra clearly outnumbered Ravencliff’s army. For each flying beast the soldiers brought down, two more sprang up. The continuous attacks were depleting the army.

As Valen reassessed the weakest point, he saw a sash of black and red through the crowd. “No. It can’t be him.” But another look in between searing arrows and sparkling wings revealed the king himself, lunging into battle as if he could do more good than sit on the throne.

“Father!” Valen shouted until his lungs threatened to burst, but no one could hear him over the ruckus of screams, clangs and the firing of cannons. He jumped past the archers sprawled underneath a cannon raised in the air and pushed through a congregation of healers waiting under the relative safety of the turrets. An entire battlefield sprawled between him and his father. Valen wove through the pandemonium, keeping the red-and-black target in sight. “Father!”

The king turned around, and for a brief heartbeat all Valen saw was rage in his father’s eyes. Then his features softened as he focused on his son. Valen closed the distance between them just as another beast swooped above their heads. They both ducked and several archers fired. The beast fell behind them with arrows protruding from its body like a pin cushion.

“Father, what are you doing?”

“What I should have done a long time ago, son.” The king’s eyes held so much sadness it could engulf the world.

“What do you mean?”

“Helping this fortress. Putting duty ahead of my own personal agenda, even if it means that I have to kill every single one of them.”

“But Father, there is no way you can defeat all them. You are just one man.”

The king smiled. “I want to try.”

Suddenly the sky darkened and both father and son looked up at the heavens. A new surge of beasts hovered over them, thick as a midnight quilt, flying wing to wing. It seemed as though the moment froze in time, a macabre pantomime, surreal in its clarity. For a moment, everyone stood still as if they all stared into their own deaths.

Then the fighting surged again in full force. Valen swung his sword with all his strength, his father at his back. It was the first time they’d been truly together in years, fighting at one another’s side. Valen felt a rush of pride and sympathy for his estranged father, the one man who knew him so well yet stayed so far away. He wished he’d pressed their connection, gone and visited him in the long hours when the man closed himself off in the darkness of the throne room to drink and brood the night away.

His father was an impressive man, big and burly with arms the size of a horse’s hind leg and a chest that rose round and firm above other’s heads. He took down several beasts with one swing and little effort. Valen caught a glimpse of the king that had ridden into battle and charmed the hearts of the Ravencliff townspeople before he had a son.

The battle reached a lull and the endless tide of beasts dwindled. The soldiers cheered, thrusting their swords in the air as others lugged strewn sandbags to rebuild the wall. Valen’s father appeared like a great war hero on the highest parapet, his cape fluttering in the wind. The crowd roared at his feet, chanting the king’s name.

His father held up both hands and Valen saw a rare glimmer of happiness shine in his eyes. For a moment, Valen felt that everything would turn out all right and he’d have his father back the way he was before the accident. Wrapped up in the moment, Valen hollered with his fellow soldiers.

Just as the crowd’s roar died down to hear his father speak, a great Elyndra, larger than the others, rose up from the mist beyond the wall and dove at the king. Valen watched as his father thrust his sword at its carapace. The beast spiraled in the air, avoiding the lunge and circled around for another plunge. The king gripped his sword with both hands and braced himself for another attack.

“Someone help him!” a soldier called out from the battlements, but Valen knew the king was too far up the parapet for anyone to reach him before the next attack. He stood in mute shock as the Elyndra swooped down, its massive wings batting the air.

The king lunged into the assault and his sword stuck in the beast’s belly, but the force of its dive knocked him to the ground. The beast writhed on top of the king, who struggled to avoid its sharp talons.

“Father!” Valen leaped three steps at a time to the parapet. When he surfaced, the beast lay on his father, unmoving.

Valen grabbed one of the Elyndra’s spindly legs and heaved the insect-like body off of his father, who lay on his back. The king dropped his sword and it clanged with finality on the stone. Valen crouched beside him. He could see a deep red blossoming out from underneath the red-and-black tunic, and he knew that a sharp talon had met its mark in the king’s chest.

“Father.” Valen watched as the older man’s breathing grew more labored. He grabbed a soldier by the arm, jerking him away from his duties. “Find a healer! The king is down.”

The soldier’s eyes widened as he saw his king lying at his feet. “Yes, sir.” He ran, signaling to other soldiers, and Valen knew the healers would come.

Valen looked into his father’s eyes. “Don’t worry, I’ve sent for help. You’ll be all right.” He felt as though he uttered a slim hope and nothing else.

The king coughed up droplets of red. The wound must have run deep because blood seeped out onto his belly. “Son, now you will be king.”

“Don’t talk like that. You will live.”

But it seemed his father was not in the mood for daydreams. “Tell Bellanina that I love her, and give her mother my love also.”

Valen felt his eyes filling with tears. “I will, but they know you love them.”

His father rose out of his position to meet Valen eye to eye. Valen pressed him back down but could not keep him from speaking. “But you do not.”

“That’s not true, Father. I’ve known all along that you love me.”

“The most.” His father’s gaze wandered. “The most of all.”

“Father.” Valen shook him, bringing him back to the present. He could no longer hold back his tears. They fell like raindrops on his father’s bloodstained clothes.

“Valen, you must promise me something.”

“Anything, Father, anything you ask.”

“Promise me you will not make the same mistakes I did.” His father took one last breath. “Promise me you will be a good king.”

Valen swallowed hard. That was the one request he did not expect. It was not an easy task asked of him, but he knew the correct path to take and what he would have to give up.

His father’s eyes grew blank and resolution took hold of Valen, a strong force that came from within. He brought his face close enough to lay a kiss on the man’s cheek. “I promise.”

The Forgotten Ones

When Star emerged from the cave, she could see Leer’s torch shining through the mist as he rode toward the sea of cocoons. He had a significant head start on her and she knew in the bottom of her churning stomach there was no way she could catch up.

Cursing under her breath, she kicked her heels into Windracer’s sides, spurring the horse into action. Every hoofbeat down the slope, the fire spread like a rampant disease and the valley glowed with orange light. Leer had reached the bottom and spread ripples of flame throughout the mass of sleeping Elyndra. As she rode closer, she could see the men in brown robes race forward to stop him, leaving their posts vacant to save the burning cocoons.