Cobweb Empire

  Percy whirled around, and blinked, seeing double again, just as she had minutes ago. Because instead of three man-shapes, she saw six.

  Three men and, flanking them, their three death-shadows.

  And then, as Percy glanced around the entire clearing, she realized that not a single one of their attackers was one of the living.

  They were all undead.

  “Beware! They are not alive, My Lord! Dead! They are all dead, all of them!” she cried in the direction of the black knight, and he paused for an instant in his struggle and glanced at her.

  But Percy had turned away already, facing the grisly carved-up face of a mortally wounded dead man inches away, as he came for her with a long ugly hunting knife. Up-close, the side of his skull was split open and old clotted blood had dried like rust over his matted straw-hair. His eyes were glazed, fixed in their frozen sockets, no longer quite human.

  Before Vlau Fiomarre had an instant to react, tearing off a large branch for the closest weapon at hand and running toward them, the dead man reached for her. . . .

  Percy put her hand up in an involuntary defensive gesture. But the moment her fingertips felt the pressure of the dead man’s chest, the roiling darkness in her mind was back, with a snap—a churning winter storm. Without pausing to think, she reached for the shadow at his side, feeling its billowing ghostly shape attaining tangible resilience . . . and she pulled with her mind, fiercely, in pure furious instinct.

  The shadow of death collapsed into a vapor funnel, and was sucked into the dead man’s flesh.

  He fell instantly, fingers losing the grip on the knife. His body was an empty shell before it hit the ground.

  Percy stood above him, breathing deeply, her head ringing with the cathedral tolling of bells.

  But there was no time to stop and consider.

  There were two more men coming, and the Infanta was right behind her, defenseless. . . .

  Vlau had reached her in two strides, and he engaged the first of the attackers, feinting with the thick branch in one hand, and then striking with his fist.

  The second man was Percy’s.

  Rather, he did not know it yet. Because he lunged at her, with a dull roar of creaking bellows that was his voice. Instead of moving away, Percy took him in her embrace, and with her left hand she grabbed his shadow.

  It took less than a second. She pulled the two together, and again, the man’s entirely lifeless body collapsed at her feet.

  Breathing harshly, Percy then turned to Vlau’s attacker. And while he was distracted with the marquis, she touched the dead man from the back—lightly this time, not even requiring a close embrace—and at the same time she took his shadow of death, as though it were an obstreperous child, in one furious hand, and she jerked it into the body, shoving it inside and feeling it dissolve.

  The third man fell with a sigh of broken bellows, growing quiet and eternal.

  “Who are you?”

  Vlau Fiomarre stood at her side, looking in dark wonder.

  Percy took one side step, staggering, because in that moment she felt herself abysmally drained of all energy, and so terribly cold. “I am—” she began, then again went silent, because vertigo made the whole world spin in a carousel of winter sky and snow and black shrubbery. It occurred to her that it was such an odd thing that she could barely remain upright.

  Meanwhile, Claere Liguon was in the same spot where she had been left, motionless, observing Percy’s every move with her great stilled eyes. “No . . .” she whispered, the moment Percy’s weary gaze rested on her. “Now that I saw you do it, I don’t think I can die—just yet.”

  “Oh, good . . .” Percy heard herself speak through a curtain of rising white noise in her temples, the sound of rushing blood. “Because I don’t think I can do it yet again now, Highness . . .” she managed to utter, then inhaled several times deeply to keep herself from fainting.

  The fighting behind them in the campsite had drawn to a close. Now that they knew what they were dealing with, the Chidair soldiers had overpowered the dead, by crudely divesting them of limbs, or using netting. The few that still remained upright were tied together and questioned by the black knight.

  “Who are you? Who sent you to attack us?” he spoke, looming above them like an angel of death.

  A few of the dead men grinned back silently. Others stared with vacant frozen eyes.

  Beltain Chidair removed the helmet from the silent fallen knight and revealed a dead man with an old head wound that had damaged his face and jaw and apparently vocal chords, which explained his inability to respond during the fight. And now the dead knight merely rolled his eyes in pointless anger and made gurgling sounds from his slit throat. He was of no use.

  “Speak, or I will start cutting off your limbs one by one,” pronounced Beltain wearily to the other prisoners. “You will spend eternity, or however much time we have left to us, as rotting stumps. Headless rotting stumps.”

  Despite her own unnatural exhaustion, Percy made her way toward them. “My Lord,” she said, raising her voice for effect. “If you like, I can simply put them all to rest.” She was on her last strength; she was bluffing, but no one else had to know.

  Beltain glanced at her, and even in her exhaustion Percy felt an alarming inner lurch of emotion upon meeting his clear-eyed gaze.

  He frowned, for a moment misunderstanding her intent, and then Vlau Fiomarre approached, and said, “Just now—Three men lie stone-dead, over there . . .”

  “What? Oh.” And Beltain understood.

  Everyone was glancing in the direction where three corpses were sprawled near the edge of the shrubbery. The Chidair soldiers knew, but their attackers had no notion of what awaited them, of what had just happened to three of their comrades.

  “You,” said Beltain to one of the undead. “You still have functional eyes, and you can turn your neck, can you not? Stop grinning, look yonder, and tell me what you see.”

  For a moment the dead man did nothing. And then he craned his head slowly.

  And he saw.

  Something terrible came over his pale lifeless face. “They are really dead? But—how?” he managed to say, his lungs creaking.

  “How? Death has a Champion, that’s how. Death himself might be a lazy bastard shirking his Duty, but apparently there is still a way for us to die in this world.” Beltain drew closer, to stare at the dead man with a gaze of blue steel. “Would you like to meet your Maker now? Make your choice, man. You can either remain in this mortal world as you are, or we send you directly to Hell. Rather, she sends you directly to Hell while I watch. Oh, but Hell can wait—first, I’ll cut off a few of your fingers and then your arms. Then, I’ll go a bit lower. So, what will it be?”

  The man spoke. He told them that the undead have been gathering from all parts and heading north, flamed by a rumor that the Duke of Chidair, known as Hoarfrost, was welcoming them all with open arms. It was good to ride under the banner of the Blue Duke, one of their own.

  “Then why did you attack us, you fools?” Beltain said. “Did you not see our colors? We are Chidair.”

  “Yes, but you are still living,” the dead soldier replied, his fixed eyes unblinking. “We no longer ride together with your kind.”

  “Why the hell not?”

  In answer, the man paused, and his jaw moved in a strange unnatural rictus, neither a grin nor a baring of the teeth. “War,” he said. “War is coming.”

  Chapter 5

  Duke Ian Chidair, called Hoarfrost, strode through the long dark hallway on an upper story of the Chidair Keep, slamming his beefy fist against the antique, blackened wooden doors that he passed, until the timbers sagged under each blow, and pulling down tapestries of his ancestors.

  “No son! No son of mine! I will . . . find him . . . and kill him!” he roared, taking ragged mechanical breaths between every few words, for his lungs were dead, and his heart had long since ceased beating and was frozen cold like a cut of meat.

  “
I have no son!” ranted Hoarfrost. “He is dead to me, and when I find his carcass, I will make him deader yet! First, I will break his neck, then dismember him for betraying me!”

  The Duke was a giant of a man—or rather, he had once been a man, and now was but a giant thing, an undead monster shaped like a man, with a barrel chest and a wildly tangled briar-thicket of frozen dark hair and beard, covered with leaves and twigs and bits of lake sludge. All this foul matter had adhered to his body when he had fallen through the ice during the battle on top of frozen Lake Merlait, right after he had received his mortal wound.

  Because it had happened on that same day when Death stopped, the Duke suffered the horror of having to die yet not die, drown yet not drown, wade underwater and then break through the ice when he reached the shore, emerging a lifeless and yet animated corpse. And the dirt and mud had since permeated him, soaked into his hair and clothing, his blood-drenched hauberk and chain mail, and the pale blue surcoat with the heraldic emblem of his house—none of which he ever removed since the day of the battle and his body’s death.

  It was whispered all through the Keep that the Duke was mad. None but a madman would rise up against his liege the Queen of Lethe, and ultimately the Liguon Emperor of the Realm, and take it upon himself to terrorize the countryside. He and his equally dead soldiers, fallen in the battle, rode on endless day-and-night patrols. They were out hunting all the young women who were obeying the Royal Decree of the land and traveling north in search of Death’s Keep to become Cobweb Brides.

  The captured girls and women of all ranks were led—and in some cases dragged—through the snow and brought back to the Chidair Keep and the surrounding town, and imprisoned all over the place. And rumor had it, they were eventually all going to end up very badly.

  Those men of Chidair who were not dead, cowered in fear, and tried to keep away from direct contact with their dead Duke as much as possible, for they actively feared for their lives. They too patrolled the northern forestlands reluctantly, for they had no choice but to obey. But more and more of them secretly took up their families and households and left the Keep and the town quietly.

  Even the Duke’s own son, Lord Beltain Chidair, known in the countryside as the terrifying black knight, had deserted his father, riding off with a small detachment of soldiers on patrol and never returning. Apparently, when Beltain did not come home the first night after his patrol duty, it was assumed that he was simply occupied or lost, but soon enough the various scouts came back with strong rumors that he and his fellow deserters were seen on the road heading south into Goraque territory.

  At first, Hoarfrost did not believe it. The first man who came to report this news, suffered a blow to the head, and was killed immediately, then picked himself and his leaking brains up from the floor, and stumbled his way out of his liege’s chamber.

  The next two men to confirm this in Hoarfrost’s presence, were both dead already. They had elected to go in together, and even they shrank away in terror at the thunderous voice of their liege lord upraised in curses and periodically broken by breath being drawn like creaking bellows, followed by crashing metal and breaking furniture.

  The only thing that seemed to have a mellowing effect on the Duke’s rage was a young lady, one of the few captured high aristocrats from the Silver Court, who was cool and impassive and who was also a self-admitted spy on behalf of the Domain.

  Lady Ignacia Chitain of Balmue, had been captured by Hoarfrost himself on one of his patrols, together with two of her aristocratic companions, and she immediately revealed to Hoarfrost her connection to the clandestine intrigue that he had been a part of for many days now. A number of weeks ago, Duke Chidair had received hand-delivered messages from couriers directly from the Sovereign of the Domain, offering him an alliance, and telling him to expect a visit from a secret agent of the Domain. At first he had taken it for foolery, but then, certain events vaguely hinted at by the missives had come to pass, and it all started to make sense. The last message, just before Lady Ignacia’s “capture,” was a promise of “an Alliance and Eternity.” And with death’s cessation Hoarfrost finally knew that his time on this earth, and his continued physical existence now depended on such an alliance.

  Armed with this certainty, Hoarfrost reluctantly decided to listen to the young lady. She was immediately treated with honor, housed in fine quarters, and separated from her two former friends who were given much less pleasing accommodations under lock and key. The latter—Lady Amaryllis Roulle and Lord Nathan Woult—had been the most brilliant young members of the scandalous set at Court, and—together with Ignacia—the three had called themselves the League of Folly. Now, the League was broken, Ignacia revealed as a foreign spy and traitor to the Realm, and her friends were locked in a cold, crudely-furnished country chamber not worthy of Imperial serving staff, much less nobles of the Silver Court.

  At present, as Hoarfrost had to somehow ingest the news of his son’s betrayal, and before he destroyed the entire Keep with his fury, Lady Ignacia had taken it upon herself to pacify him.

  Thus, as Hoarfrost strode through his unfortunate corridor and wrecked everything around him, a voluptuous well-dressed lady in a sage green dress, with a tiny cinched waist, with an abundance of auburn hair that was presently confined and pinned up into an artful sculptured hairdo, followed quietly in his footsteps, just a length of corridor out of sight, waiting for the best opportunity to approach him.

  The Duke raged his way up another flight of well-worn circling stairs into a turret of old crumbling stone in the oldest portion of the Keep. And the lady followed, always keeping to one flight below, stepping lightly and soundlessly, and glancing with distaste at the crumbling antique ruin around her that was not merely this sorry wing but indeed could have been said of the majority of Chidair Keep. At some point, as she carefully stepped over a torn length of ancestral tapestry that possibly cost a fortune and had just been ripped off its hanger—the venerable antique depicting faded stars, fleur-de-lis, and curling vines on a verdigris and night sky background—she felt the icy gusts of winter wind above her. And thus she knew the Duke had reached the top.

  She emerged behind him carefully but relentlessly, and stepped into deep virgin snow. The battlements here were deserted, and she saw only a few deep footprints sunken in the snowdrifts, before her gaze encountered the great shape of Hoarfrost. He stood just a few steps away, near the crenellated parapet wall, leaning into the wind that was whipping his hair and the tatters of his damaged surcoat.

  Ignacia looked up, shivering, pulling her skirts closer about her, and regretted not bringing a shawl. But then, it would have covered the splendid cleavage that she had meant to use to its fullest advantage—all that cream-and-lilies rosy flesh bursting from the courtly neckline of her velvet dress. . . .

  Overhead was a white winter sky with a faint blue haze, a scrolling dream. A faint mass of darker clouds rode low on the horizon to one side—she was unsure if she was facing north or east—and the bleak sun was just past zenith. Beyond the walls were short thatched snow-laden roofs of an impoverished town, scattered haphazardly, and farther yet, among the whiteness, the dark trees of the northern forest, surrounding them on all sides, all along the haze of the horizon.

  Where Hoarfrost stood, just a few paces away, the wall rose even higher, and there was a spot where a pole was fashioned, and upon it rode an old weathered banner, snapping in the gusts and rimed with snow. It had once been pale blue, with the heraldic symbol of Chidair and an Imperial strip of black and silver, with a gold and red fringe of Allegiance to the Realm. Now the colors had faded into whiteness, and only the shape of the embroidery remained to mark the insignias, sprinkled by snow. The Imperial fringe too was no longer true gilt and red but a washed out yellow and rust, while the black and silver strip had faded to muddled grey. No one had bothered to replace it, not in decades, for the remotely situated Chidair with their crude warring ways and their godforsaken wilderness were indeed little bette
r than savages. . . .

  Lady Igancia took another step in the snow, placing her tiny foot in the already existing massive footprint made by the giant man before her. She straightened and called out to the Duke.

  “Your Grace! May I join you?”

  Hoarfrost turned around slowly, swiveling his barrel torso. And his tangle-haired, dirty, dead face was a garish mask of horrors, starting with the round glassy eyes, permanently open wide in a glare. “What the devil?” he hissed in unrepressed fury, then immediately stilled. “Oh it’s you, little ladybird. . . . Come to watch the damned father curse his thrice-damned whelp of a son, are you? What the hell do you want now?” He ended on a far calmer note however, and his fixed eye-marbles were trained upon her, taking in the sight of her.

  Ignacia smiled and gave him a deep lingering curtsy, leaning forward intentionally far more than courtly protocol dictated, so that her chest fairly strove against the velvet neckline. What a sly little thing she was, and how differently she acted now that the tedious pretence enacted for the Silver Court was over. There she had played the bland ninny and the ingénue, playing second fiddle to Amaryllis, her raven-haired beautiful “friend,” and always fading into the background, making herself insipid and idiotic for the sake of her assignment, and patiently biding her true nature and her time.

  But here, she was no longer constrained, and instead was engaging her main role and skilled function as adept seductress.

  And as seductress, her gaze was direct, full of brilliance, and her eyes bore into whomever she addressed with a force of many suns.

  “I want to know, Your Grace, if you have received any more new messages from the Sovereign.”

  “I might have, had I bothered to know about the damned things!” His voice exploded in a sudden acceleration of gears turning a great rusted piece of machinery. “My mind has been on other matters, such as a certain runt from my own litter—” and he bashed his right fist against the top of the nearest snow-capped wall—“who has gone off and left his father and abandoned his filial duty—may he be cursed for eternity—”