The Chestnut King

  When the black doors had fallen in, she hadn’t heard a thing, though the floor had shaken. Two fingerlings, one in a silver helmet, one in black, stood like statues beside the high throne. With one motion of her long arm, the witch swept the crowd against the far wall. The old man fell out of his chair.

  Mordecai and Caleb stepped through the doors beside a pale man in armor. Mordecai’s face was white and glistening with sweat. Caleb’s left shoulder was dark with blood. A mob of red-shirts rushed in after them, but the witch raised her hand. Some of the soldiers crumpled awkwardly; the rest pushed back out of the throne room. The fingerlings didn’t flinch.

  And then the queen in scarlet smiled and turned to the cages. Her hand moved, and the silence lifted. “You should hear them,” she said. “They should hear you.” The witch laughed. “Long ago, I walked into the snare of boys. Now they step into mine. What choice did they have?”

  When the attack came, she didn’t move from her seat. Caleb’s arrows were clouds of ash before they crossed the room. The windows rained glass down on the tangled courtiers, and the roof shook. Stones in the floor cracked, and more tumbled from the vaulted ceiling.

  The pale man in armor fell first, and his body spun across the floor.

  The queen laughed, and her face was flushed and full and eager. And when she finally stood, her scarlet gown quivered and flapped in Mordecai’s winds, and white light, too bright, too thin for fire, danced around her outstretched arms and crawled around the walls.

  Mordecai fell to his knees.

  Caleb rushed the throne.

  Henry paused halfway up a flight of stairs. Frank stopped beside him. Behind him, the raggant snorted and flapped its goose wings.

  “Rags, I wish I could make you stay.” He turned. “You should go to Una and Anastasia. It’s going to be awful for them.”

  “This place is …” Frank lifted up one foot and then the other, looking down at the floor. “It’s almost alive.”

  Henry nodded and started climbing again. She was close. Very close, and she knew where he was. Stone throbbed around them, crowded with stolen life and lives. The walls were ready to crawl or explode. Henry tried to breathe evenly, to keep his stomach calm, but it was hard, and fear of what he would see didn’t help.

  At the top of the stairs, they stepped into a broad corridor. A tall, arched doorway had lost its doors.

  A dozen soldiers turned and raised their weapons when they saw Henry.

  “She’ll kill you if you fight me,” Henry said. “Go. Leave. Find your families and leave.”

  Henry and Fat Frank moved forward, and the soldiers lowered their weapons. But none of them left.

  Standing there with red-shirts watching, Henry took three long, slow breaths. He shut his eyes and listened to the raggant puff. He could smell Frank. He could feel the necklace hot on his chest and the sword warm in his hand. Reaching into his pouch, he dumped a smooth black sphere out of its bag and left it loose. And then, with his eyes still shut and his soul quiet, he walked into the ruined doorway. The throne room was silent.

  “Pauper son,” the witch said. “I grew impatient.”

  Henry opened his eyes.

  The throne room was long. Men and women, mostly in black, huddled against one wall. A row of iron cages lined the other.

  Henry saw his mother and his brother. He saw his sister and his cousins and his friends. His aunt and uncle. Henrietta was standing.

  “Henry!” she yelled. “Go, Henry! Run!”

  The others of his family turned their faces toward him and began to climb to their feet.

  Henry shook his head. As his pulse beat slowly in his frozen jaw, he looked at the witch-queen, Nimiane, last in the line of Nimroth, blood daughter to the incubi. She sat on an enormous throne with a cat on her lap. She was dressed in the color of the smoke-red sun, her face was flushed, and her slender neck stretched long beneath it. She wore the emperor’s crown, and her hands, hanging over the arms of the throne, flickered with white light.

  On a smaller throne in front of her sat Henry’s father, his body rigid, his head limp. Caleb lay at her feet, stretched out on the floor. Two fingerlings lay dead behind Caleb’s body. One without a helmet, the other with a short sword rammed up the back of his.

  An old man lay on the floor as well. A younger pale man, like the man Henry had dreamed between the trees in the garden, lay crumpled beside him.

  “You bring your pets?” Nimiane smiled. “A faerie and a northern raggant. What has happened to you, little faerie? Where has your life gone? Your magic has dried?”

  Fat Frank snorted.

  Shouting echoed in through the doors. Faerie voices and the clatter of weapons.

  “Pauper son,” Nimiane said. “I am afraid that I must kill them all. I have killed too few today. All these lives collected, your family assembled for a final feast—I have shown too much restraint.” She tipped back her head and inhaled slowly. The light from her hands danced around the walls. The cat’s eyes found Henry’s. “Tell me, pauper son, before I harvest the faeren, before I rouse your father to watch his seventh son die, why did you come? You have many portals. You could flee through the worlds and live a while. Why come to your death?”

  Henry shifted, clenching the grip on his sword. “You know why,” he said. “I come because of the words spoken when I received my name. I come because you are the darkness, and I am dandelion fire. You have seen me in your dreams. You know what I can do to you.”

  The witch-queen laughed, opening her eyes and leaning forward. “What you can do? You who grow weeds? A drop of my blood kills you. What can you do? Mordecai! Wake!”

  Mordecai’s head snapped up, and his eyes opened. He gasped in his chair, unable to move.

  “Here is your son,” Nimiane said. “The first of many deaths that you must witness. Let us see what it is he hopes to do.”

  Cold, rushing sharpness burst through Henry’s body, sucking at his soul. Henry’s legs gave out, and he dropped to his knees. Pain screamed in every nerve of his body. His life was emptying in a rush, flooding out his skin, his eyes, his jaw.

  Curled in a ball, Henry slipped his right hand into his pouch and wrapped his dandelion brand around the Blackstar as the world went dark.

  Henrietta yelled when Henry fell, and then she stopped. Something was happening. A wind was rushing from Henry and swirling around the queen. The stones around his knees began to burst. Fat Frank grabbed on to Henry’s back, ducking as shards rattled through the vaulted ceiling and against the walls. The raggant nosed between Henry’s legs. Dandelions bloomed like fireworks around Henry, a ring of gold. The queen rose from her throne, and the blooms began to die. Yet more burst out of the floor around Henry. The ring died as fast as it grew, the edge flickering like a thousand tongues of flame.

  Coradin backed into the throne room, and the doorway filled with faeren.

  * * *

  Coradin had felt the death of each of his brothers. The chains of his own helmet swung free from his collar and belt. They were still hot from the curse of a large, one-eyed faerie. His blade was black with their blood, but there seemed to be no end to them, appearing and disappearing as easily as they breathed.

  He had held a flight of stairs against the faerie press, and when the soldiers around him had been cut down, he held it alone. When he gave up the stairs, he held the hall, where more soldiers had joined him and been cut down.

  Battered and burned, he had backed his way through the palace, closer to the boy, closer to his blood mother.

  And now he held the door to her throne room. Fewer of the faeries disappeared, and more of them were bleeding. The big, one-eyed faerie landed a blow on the side of his helmet, and Coradin staggered back. The faeren were past him, but their leaders tumbled to the floor in a wave, stiff and gray and motionless. More pushed in, and more fell, and the big faerie was screaming in anger, raising his arm to hurl a triple mace, but his body stiffened, slipped, and fell. The faeren were falling back. Raci
ng down the stairs. They were gone.

  Turn. Kill.

  Coradin turned. The boy was on his knees, curled in a ball, with a faerie clinging to his back. Heat poured out of him in golden flowers and flame. Coradin looked up at his blood mother. She had left her throne. Her arms were raised, her face strained. Suddenly, she flickered and changed. Her beauty was gone. She was shrunken and old, skin hanging off bones beneath filthy rags. Her head was shorn and spotted with sores. She had no eyes, and her lids were raw with scratching. She was burning the boy and the faerie alive. Gasping, she lowered her arms and was again tall, again lovely, and her rags were again a gown of scarlet.

  She pointed. “Kill.”

  Coradin moved to obey, his feet crushing soft flowers. The boy and faerie were still but flickering with golden flame. He raised his sword in front of him and set the whispering tip on the back of the boy’s neck.

  “No!” It was a woman’s voice. A mother’s voice. “No!” she screamed again, and a chorus of voices joined in with hers. Coradin shut his eyes.

  Kill.

  He raised his right hand to hammer the hilt down. He had done it before. He knew what it would feel like.

  And he was in his house, surrounded by flames, by burning, surrounded by the death of all he loved.

  “No,” he said.

  A mind ripped into his. Pain, more pain, too much pain. Smoke and fire in the back of his skull. He opened his eyes. His sword arm shaking, he reached up and tore off his helmet, and it bounced and rattled in the dandelions, silver on gold.

  The faerie was stirring beneath him. The boy moved his head. His little blood brother was still alive.

  Henrietta saw the witch shrivel, struggling against the dandelions. She saw the shape she had first seen in Kansas, the husk of undying evil. She saw the wave of faeries die in the doorway and flee. She saw the fingerling straddle Henry and set his sword on her cousin’s neck. She heard her aunt Hyacinth yell, and she yelled with her. She watched the fingerling hesitate and the witch scream. She watched the helmet bounce, then she looked into the big man’s face. Three notches stood out in the top of his ear, and tears glistened on his cheeks. While the witch shook with anger, the fingerling stepped toward her. He raised his sword to the knot of hair on the back his head. With his jaw clenched, he jerked the blade up, slicing himself free. His body crumpled forward. His blade clattered to the floor.

  Henry opened his eyes and straightened. A weight slid off his back. He was surrounded by dandelions, and the witch, tall and furious, stood below her throne. Her cat sat by her feet.

  Coradin lay on his face in front of Henry, his sword beside one hand and a finger, half-hidden in a tangle of hair, beside the blade.

  “You cannot drink me,” Henry said to the witch. Fat Frank groaned beneath him. Henry picked up his sword and rose to his feet. He drew his right hand from his pouch and held up the Blackstar.

  The witch smiled, and her face wore surprise and relief. “I have drunk nations. You are just a boy with weeds in your blood. But why should I drink you, when you bring me a great gift, the seed of our people? Bring it to me, and I will make you like Nimroth, undying. Together, you and I will rule the worlds.”

  Henry shook his head. His mind was quiet. His soul was quiet. Strength and weariness raced through him. His jaw tightened against the cold, he walked toward the witch. Fat Frank limped beside him.

  Nimiane took a step backward, her white light crackling through the room, drawing the strength she had stored in the stones. She became a storm, a devouring hole, and the storm turned on Henry.

  Henry felt the pain and the cold, but his legs did not buckle, and his eyes did not close. Henry’s breath stopped, but he didn’t need to breathe. He sent his soul’s roots into the stone and the sky and the seas, and they burdened him with strength. Finally, he had stuck his bucket in the waterfall. He had opened his body to Niagara, but his body had grown. It had strengthened. His grandmother had reinforced it. He had the strength of his fathers’, he wore the necklace of the Chestnut King, and his hand gripped the prison of a thousand incubi. He had a soul of green life and gold fire. He had a name.

  The witch drew his flooding strength out, but still more poured in. His hand tightened on the cold Blackstar, and his heat closed in around it. The strange, cool prison in his palm was a still anchor in the madness.

  Henry pulled his strength back from the witch. He sealed his roaring flood behind a wall built on the Black-star. The thick gray rope between his face and the witch became a strand and then a string. It shrunk to a spiderweb. And still the witch pulled, straining, fear and confusion on her face, and still Henry’s roots grew. Life, the roaring, spinning, rushing life of the world, passed through him, and he dammed it up. It built a reservoir of pressure inside him. He felt his bones quiver and his tendons writhe. He was going to fly apart, shatter like glass. He could not hold himself back a moment longer, and yet he did.

  Henry shut his eyes. He was a farmer with a scythe. He would leap into the beast’s mouth, and he would take the world with him.

  Henry exhaled and threw himself open to the witch. His body shook, and his jaw split, erupting life. The gray thread burst into a raging river. The river went gold. Henry’s sword shattered, and he just managed to cup the crackling Blackstar in both of his hands. The star was alive, no longer cold. It was raging, thirsting, pulling at the witch with the strength of ages, long quiet but now awake inside the golden roar, yearning to imprison and destroy. Henry’s mouth spread open, and his yell was swallowed up. With the last of his racing strength, he lifted his leg, his arm came around, and he pitched into the whirlwind.

  The Blackstar flew, ringed with angry light, trailing fire. It flew with Henry’s strength into the devouring storm. It flew blink-fast, and it flew straight. Lightning cracked. The star was buried in the witch-queen’s chest. Thunder shook the walls, and splintering stones fell from the vaulted ceiling. The Blackstar exploded, rippling reality like still water, tearing a white hole in the world’s seams. For a single moment, one thousand evils roared in freedom, and then the explosion folded in, devouring itself, devouring the roar, devouring the witch’s gray.

  The hole healed. The ripples smoothed. The world went dark.

  The city of Dumarre quaked. Walls shifted and cracked. Great bells fell from their towers, splitting in the streets with their final peals. The eastern sea rose above the wharf and climbed out of the canals. The western sea threw up great waves, and the seawall fell beneath them. Foam washed the streets.

  The walls of the palace and the streets and the courtyards around it were mortared with dandelions, and the tower roofs bloomed with gold.

  Inside the throne room, Henrietta blinked and shook her head. She was on top of Zeke, and they were piled against a wall. She sneezed. The air was sweet. And heavy.

  Sliding off Zeke, she sat up. The bars of their cage were bent and split. She couldn’t see anything else—the room was too bright. It was made of yellow fire.

  “Wake up, Zeke.” She slapped his leg and squeezed her eyes tight and opened them again. Again she sneezed. And again. The room was all dandelions—up the enormous walls and across the beamed ceiling.

  She stood up. Where was Henry? Had the witch killed him? She’d seen him shake and pretty much explode. And he’d thrown something. Where was the witch?

  Henrietta pushed out of the cage, still blinking. Her uncle Mordecai was dropping to his knees beside a body, and Fat Frank and the raggant were with him. Frank was sniffing loudly and sobbing. Henry, his arms spread, lay facedown in the dandelions.

  There was pain.

  There was sorrow and emptiness and loss. There was fury.

  There was a single, twisting dandelion.

  Take it away.

  No.

  Weed.

  Yes.

  You’ve died. You killed yourself like the finger-fool. You gave yourself to me. Me, me. I drank the world. Drink. Drank. Little fool. Little green fool. I want the marble. Bring
it back. We don’t die. Can’t die. Bring it back.

  The dandelion grew, and others grew beside it. The darkness faded, and the voice was lost.

  Henry opened his eyes, and he pulled in a long breath, a breath that slowed and surged but wouldn’t stop until his ribs creaked and his chest was bursting.

  Lips touched his forehead. His mother’s lips.

  Hyacinth was smiling at him. He tried to sit up.

  “Don’t,” she said. Her fingers were on his jaw.

  Fat Frank’s face loomed into view, pale and bloodless. “It’s not over,” he said. “Let him up. The witch scrambled.”

  Henry was pulled to his feet.

  “Can you stand?” Mordecai asked. Henry nodded and looked around. Dotty was beaming beside him. Uncle Frank had a wide grin, and he and Penelope were propping up Monmouth between them.

  James, with a huge purple stripe across his throat, stood beside his father.

  “Little brother,” he said. “You and I are nothing alike.”

  Caleb and Zeke were both sitting, pale but smiling, with their backs against the lower throne. Beo’s head was on Caleb’s lap. The fair man was slowly peeling off his armor beside them. Henrietta and Isa both glowed behind filthy faces.

  “I know you don’t like us to hug you, Henry,” Isa said. “But this isn’t about you.” She threw her arms around him. “Can I squeeze, or will you break?”

  “A little,” he said, and then he groaned with the pressure.

  Henrietta grabbed his head and kissed his cheek. “Even though you cut my hair.”

  “How did you get here?” Henry asked.

  “Later,” Fat Frank said. “Later. Henry, where did she go?”

  “Where’s Richard?” Henry looked around. “Could someone find Richard? He was with the faeries in the courtyard, but that’s the last I saw. And Anastasia and Una are with the Faerie Queene. I felt sick leaving them, but I thought we were all going to die.”

  “Now, now,” Fat Frank said, pulling Henry’s arm. His fingertips were white. “That was a marvel, truly and for sure, but the witch ain’t dead.”