Cobweb Forest (Cobweb Bride Trilogy)

  Overhead the sky was slate and silver, and beyond the walls, a chaos of dark crawling shapes of the dead silhouetted against the falling snow.

  “Stay well back, Your Imperial Highness!” the captain cried hoarsely, walking with his long sword drawn. “Stay as far away from the outer edge of the exterior wall as you can—” And then he turned with a fierce cry and parried a strike from the mace of a burly dead soldier who had scaled the parapet right next to him.

  “Oh, my . . .” Grial shook her head as she stood just behind Claere and Vlau, watching the hell unfolding.

  “What is your name, captain?” Claere said, raising her mechanical voice above the din.

  “Brandeis, Highness!” the captain replied, having cut off the limbs of the enemy soldier, casting him back over the walls, and continuing to walk ahead of them.

  “Captain Brandeis, would you have a sword to spare, for this man here who is at my side?” And Claere nodded in the direction of Vlau who gifted her with a look of gratitude and intensity.

  In moments, a spare sword was procured, and Vlau Fiomarre was properly armed for the first time in days—indeed, for the first time since he had struck his love down with the dagger—

  No, don’t think, don’t think. . . .

  “Now, then,” Grial said, as she waved to a soot-covered soldier here, and another group of tiredly grinning musketeers there. “I think it is time to start.”

  Claere stilled for a moment, gathering her will and her thoughts and her strength. She looked out over the walls at the distant horizon of haze and snow and enemy chaos. “I am ready,” she said. “What must I do?”

  “First, the easy part, dumpling,” Grial said with a smile. “You take a nice leisurely walk all around the city, your city, and I’ll be right here beside you. As you walk, imagine that you are drawing the line of a great city-wide circle directly into the ground below. Make it take root and continue downward underneath you, many, many feet down, deep below, through the walls of stone itself. See that the line is drawn by every footstep you take and it is shaped and marked in the stone beneath your feet by the very shape that is your body, its death shadow and its once-living reflection, all moving endlessly forward. . . .”

  As Grial spoke, in a voice that was both resonant and sing-song, for a moment Claere thought she saw, in a purely strange instant of doubled vision of soot, snow, and smoke, someone else in Grial’s place—a tall statuesque woman dressed in an ancient flowing garb, with her dark hair braided in a stern regal crown, and her face impassive and beautiful in its immortality. . . .

  The vision lasted an instant only—then once again Claere was seeing Grial, and none other. And thus she started walking forward, her thin frame held tense and straight, in a balancing act to keep her dead body upright. She looked below her feet and before her, allowing herself, her mind, to soar suddenly—to transform into winter air, into in a butterfly flurry of snowflakes, and into the many gusts of ice wind all around as the world tilted and then straightened again in vertigo, for the ground was up and the sky was below, and everything, everything was hers.

  Thus did Claere Liguon, the Grand Princess and the Infanta of the Imperial Realm, together with her ethereal death-shadow, circle the city of Letheburg, making it her own.

  Like a second loyal shadow, holding a drawn sword, Vlau Fiomarre walked closely behind her.

  In their wake, Hecate silently followed.

  Snow was falling.

  It had covered the whole world it seemed, and piled tall on the parapets of Letheburg, adding white caps to the tops of the merlons and filling in the space in the crenels, which however was quickly swept away by the struggling bodies of soldiers, both living and dead, in the endless melee.

  Claere was done circling the city and was back in the same spot where she had started, in the center of a wide portion of a bulwark. It was long past noon, and torches had been employed along the length of the battlements, both for illumination and for re-igniting the fires below and keeping the dead at bay.

  The invisible circle of power stood around Letheburg, a psychic wall that she had wrought.

  It was definitely there.

  It rang.

  She could hear its crystal resonance on a strange super-human level. Had she been alive, the hairs along her flesh would have risen. . . .

  All along, Vlau had been right behind her. He had had occasion to use his sword blade in her defense at least a dozen times as they walked. At one point, while four of the King’s guard appointed to the Infanta’s defense struggled to fight off a dead giant in torn chain mail who had once been a living knight—a thick-necked monster with bulging muscles and the strength of five men—Vlau stepped between the King’s soldiers. With odd elegance and spare movements he did an intricate and fiercely violent figure with his sword and then swung it like lightning. Fueled by the impossible swiftness of the stroke, Fiomarre’s blade cut through the neck muscle, sinew, and bone of the frozen corpse like butter. Soldiers paused to stare as the dead giant’s head rolled several feet and rested in the snow, its maddened eyes fixed upon them, rotating slowly in their sockets in impotent fury. The enemy’s headless torso continued to fight, but now without the head’s guidance it was mostly ineffective, so Vlau simply gave it a powerful shove in the abdomen, sending the beheaded body flying like a boulder back over the parapet.

  “Impressive,” Captain Brandeis said to Fiomarre. “Where did you learn that move?”

  Vlau’s expression was impassive and perfectly focused as he first glanced to make sure that Claere was unharmed, then turned back to the captain. “I did some fighting at the southern border of Styx,” he said vaguely, then resumed his vigilance at the Infanta’s side.

  That had been an hour ago.

  Now she glanced at him occasionally from the corner of her fixed glass eye, seeing his soot, his grime-spattered clothing, his worn features, dear and familiar to her in their relentless intensity. And always she saw his eyes, fathomless and deep as winter, as he returned her intimate look. Indeed, it seemed that whenever she turned to glance at him he was already staring at her, his gaze consuming her. . . .

  Claere forcibly made herself focus on her task and not to think of him yet again.

  “It is done . . . I can feel it,” she whispered at last, coming to a stop in the middle of the bulwark with its relative clearing, away from the thick of the battle and the pile-up of detached human limbs, endlessly twitching like snakes.

  Grial, who had been also walking behind them discreetly, a few steps behind the King’s guards, now came to a stop likewise. “Ah, the circle is there indeed, Your Imperial Highness! You did a fine job of it!”

  “I thank you, Grial, for your wisdom and all your help in this. What now?”

  As Claere spoke, at the far end of the bulwark where they stood, near the edge of the distant wall, a small keg of gunpowder exploded. The impact sent a portion of the wall boulders crashing down together with a whole merlon, and leaving a gap of several feet in the top section of the parapet. Agonized screams were heard as Letheburg soldiers struggled, died, and then “awoke” and loyally resumed fighting on the side of the city. Orange flames burst forth, and at least a dozen dead enemy soldiers started to pour over the wall and onto the battlements. Immediately, garrison soldiers responded, coming to defend the spot with all they had.

  Grial paused, silhouetted against the roaring flames, and she observed the melee taking place only fifty feet away from them. “Now, Highness, you simply stand. And you make the circle strong with your will and your heart.”

  And Grial took two lit torches from the nearest King’s guard—for they were in a semi-circle around them, the King’s guard soldiers and Captain Brandeis, standing protectively around the Infanta, while Vlau Fiomarre with his sword, immediately at her side, was the last line of defense—and she gave the torches to Claere.

  “Hold these up, Highness, and stand straight and firm. Hold the fire in your mind and think of it as what makes up the cir
cle of defense around Letheburg. It is not the fire burning in the outer moat below, but the invisible fire up here, which courses along the parapet walkway perimeter even now, in the very place where you have trod the stones around the city.”

  Claere took the torches and stood as straight as she could imagine herself able—even though the act of balancing her atrophied flesh was a great effort. Her thin arms shook slightly, but she was dead, and she felt no pain of straining muscles, only the intensity of effort.

  “That’s it . . .” Grial watched her with a soft smile. “Now, look out beyond the wall, and imagine in your mind, the entirety of Letheburg, contained within this circle of inner fire, this circle of you. Nothing can breach it.”

  “Yes,” Claere whispered. “I see it.”

  “Good. Now, stand, dear heart. Stand here for as long as you can. And you—” Grial pointed to the King’s guards and their captain—“you are now free to go. Your task is done here, for Her Imperial Highness will do the rest.”

  “But—” Captain Brandeis said. “What of my orders? Who will stand to defend Her Imperial Highness while all this is happening?”

  “I will.” Vlau Fiomarre stepped forward, and positioned himself on the outside of the Infanta, between her and the outer wall of the bulwark. “I will guard her with my body.”

  “But it is not enough!”

  “Ah, but it is!” Grial smiled and pointed to a large burning projectile that came hurtling in their direction in that very moment. It sailed over the parapet, moved about twenty feet into the air space over the bulwark, and then seemed to have met an invisible wall of something in the air. The flaming thing crashed against the invisible something, then bounced backward, and capsized close to the outer edge of the wall.

  “Nothing can get through now,” Grial said. “Nothing and no one uninvited—for as long as she stands.”

  Captain Brandeis and the guards, and indeed all the Letheburg defenders in the vicinity, looked in wonder at what had just come to pass. They witnessed sorcery, or maybe a genuine impossibility.

  The captain blinked, his eyes watering from the newest blast of rising smoke, then nodded in acquiescence. “Then I must inform His Majesty at once,” he said in a new voice of hope, signaling his convoy of guards to follow. He bowed deeply before the Infanta, gave a nod of respect to Fiomarre, then hurried away, walking back the way they had come with newfound energy, stepping over rubble and twitching body parts.

  Meanwhile, everywhere along the battlements, commanding officers were calling their men to step away from the walls, ignore the attacking dead, and retreat behind the invisible demarcation line of supernatural safety. . . . Soon, military trumpet calls came everywhere, signaling retreat and long-needed relief for the city. The bulwark and the battlements were now empty of the defenders of Letheburg, but filling with the unopposed enemy dead that massed forward but could not breach the invisible wall.

  Claere remained standing as she was, torches held aloft, straining with her gaze into the freezing-cold wind.

  “Well, my dears,” Grial said cheerfully, “I am going to head back home for a while, to do a thing or two that needs to be done, but I promise I will return in a few hours! You, dear girl, keep that chin up, keep those torches up, and keep being yourself!”

  “I will, Grial,” said Claere. “Thank you.”

  “And you, young man—” Grial turned to Vlau who stood like an unshakable post at Claere’s side—“You might consider coming along with me for a bite of dinner and some hot tea to warm you. She will be perfectly safe—”

  “I thank you, but no,” he replied, turning his dark beautiful eyes momentarily to glance at Grial. And then he turned away and continued standing next to Claere, sword in one hand, his feet planted in a deceptively casual stance.

  “As you wish,” Grial said, with a strange little smile, then adjusted her wide-brimmed winter hat and headed away along the walkway, and back down into the city.

  After she was gone, it seemed the wind had grown colder, its gusts harsher, and the snow was whirling in cruel funnel flurries. Vlau stood motionless, relentless and stoic, face turned into the wind. His exposed skin had lost all feeling and his extremities were numb, snow powdering his raven hair with sterile pallor. He was a dark, tall counterpart of Claere with her upright posture and her torches that flickered wildly but refused to go out despite the gale.

  Half an hour had passed, maybe more. It was hard to tell in the strange afternoon dusk, and the slate-grey dome of overcast heaven. Vlau had blinked and briefly closed his eyes, his lashes sprinkled with snowflakes, and it seemed an eternity of silence had passed. . . .

  After a few more silent moments of winter, of whistling wind and horrible stumbling dead, beating themselves in grotesque futility against the invisible wall of power just a few feet away from Claere, she spoke to him, without turning around to look. “Vlau . . .” she said gently. “Please go back and get some rest. I will be fine here.”

  “No,” he said in a voice cracking from the cold. “I cannot leave you.”

  “But it will only be for a little while! And look how freezing it is getting! The wind is picking up and there is no end to this snow—”

  “Claere,” he said, and there was so much intensity in his voice that she had to turn around at last and look at him. “Claere, I will never leave you. Never. I may not, even if I could, even if I wanted to.”

  “What are you saying?” she whispered.

  “I am saying, I cannot leave, my Claere. For . . . there is no more need. Now I will never leave you again.”

  And he took one stiff, frozen step to close the small distance between them, and he touched one of her hands, even as she continued to hold up the torch.

  His fingers upon her hand were like ice.

  If she were to look closely upon them, she would see their bluish grey color, the absence of movement of blood under the skin.

  And if she were to look at him with the eyes of sight—at his elegant shape, his well-formed broad shoulders and his slim waist, his proud posture and his stilled dark eyes—if she could look thus, she would see a familiar new shadow at his side.

  A death-shadow of billowing smoke, similar to her own.

  But there was no need to look, for in her heart she already knew.

  Snow was falling.

  Chapter 7

  Lady Leonora D’Arvu had escaped everyone and now sat upon a stone bench in the garden of the villa, in the cool late afternoon approaching dusk. Vestiges of sunset still stained the western horizon with streaks of persimmon and rust, and the breeze had cooled enough to require a shawl, but Leonora did not feel the need for warmth.

  Instead she attempted to take deep perfumed breaths of evening air, and to listen to her own heartbeat. . . . It was there, surely; to hear it, all she had to do was focus on the familiar pulse in her temples, in her inner ear, the sound that had been with her for as long as she could remember, since the first self-aware moments of infancy and childhood. Indeed, it had been with her even when she first started seeing the impossible wonder of her, the infinite and eternal woman with the sky blue eyes—

  No!

  She focused on her breath. She inhaled and exhaled, and her lungs worked like mechanical bellows. But then, if she stopped thinking about it, stopped thinking about breathing, so did her breath.

  It stopped.

  There was also silence in her temples, no soft regular rush of blood to mark her time.

  Nothing.

  The fragrance of the ever-blooming acacia blossoms was overwhelming even in winter, and the trees surrounded this garden spot in a private alcove. Branches clustered with large dark green leaves hung low and spread around and above her like swaying green fingers gently reaching for her.

  From her vantage point the whole world was filling with the rich purple of approaching twilight.

  She felt sudden panic. There was a sharp moment where the trees and the blossoms and the purple air all seemed to press down on he
r, and she felt she could not breathe, and her lungs had then stopped indeed, and her chest was utterly silent, and she was clutching the stone bench beneath her with fingers that had somehow grown “thick” and senseless.

  No!

  “Lady Leonora. . . .”

  Percy Ayren stood before her, a plump peasant girl in a simple light dress. Percy’s expression was profound and very attentive, her eyes filled with murky things, like the gathering twilight, and her knotted hair, the color of shadows, framed her round plain features, lending her an otherworldly gravity.

  Leonora looked up at her with frightened eyes, and once again she had forgotten to breathe, and thus she was not breathing. . . .

  “What—what is happening to me?” Leonora said, making the effort to move the air through her mouth and shape the words.

  “I am so sorry,” Percy said. “I know this is an impossible thing, and what you are feeling is beyond anything you know. It is unimaginable and it is unfair. I am so sorry!”

  “Am I really dead?”

  “Yes. . . .”

  “And that thing—that whatever you call it, death-shadow—it is at my side?”

  “Yes. It is right here. It stands waiting.”

  Leonora glanced to the right where Percy pointed, willing herself to see, but there was nothing, only the side of the stone bench. Another surge of panic came to her, this time a numbing horror, so that she could almost feel a chill, but did not quite feel it, only vaguely sensed things around her through the remote thickness of cotton.