The Element of Fire

  "What is it?" Thomas asked Dubell.

  "Fay, but I don't recognize what sort." He finished staunching Treville's wound and looked up at them. "With the keystone removed from the matrix for more than a few hours, the wards would begin drifting away from the outer walls of the newer sections of the palace. The creatures must have been waiting for a large enough opening."

  Thomas felt everyone's eyes on him. He had known it must be an attack, but he had assumed the enemy was human. Ignoring the cold dread creeping up his spine, he looked down at Treville. "Can you walk?"

  "Out of here I could run." The man grinned weakly.

  "Good." Thomas looked at the others. "Let's go, gentlemen."

  Dubell helped Treville to his feet, then reached back to collar the servant boy and pull him further up the stairs. "Here, boy, carry the lamp, and don't fall behind."

  The boy took the lamp in a shaking hand and whispered, "Yes, Sir."

  The air in the stairwell was growing warmer. It might mean the entrance above them was blocked, or the building overhead had caught fire, or collapsed entirely. It might have been Kade. It might have been her plan all along, Thomas was thinking. He had no idea why that thought made him so angry. She had never promised him anything.

  The final turn brought Thomas to face the wooden doorway at the top of the stairs, which still stood open as they had left it earlier. The darkened corridor was blocked by the collapse of its wood and plaster ceiling. Dim lamplight shone down from the resulting gap in the passage above.

  Thomas climbed the debris and took a cautious look through the opening in the ceiling. Above them was a passageway, its floor and one wall wood while the rest was the original stone. The source of the light was hidden around a corner further up the way. He thought about the layout of the Old Palace and decided they were near the lower kitchens and storerooms. There were many ways leading out into the rest of the structure from here; some would have to be unblocked.

  "All right," he said to the others, "this is our way."

  It took some moments to get Treville up into the passage, his wound making their efforts to help difficult and painful for him. Just as Thomas gave Dubell a hand up, Baserat signaled them hastily for silence. "Hear that?" he whispered.

  In another moment they all did. There were people further down the passageway. For a moment Thomas found it a relief that they were not the only survivors of some immense disaster, then the faint sound turned into a tumult as shouts and a woman's scream echoed down to them.

  "Save your pistols," Thomas told them. The unspoken thought was on all their faces. Because we don't know what we'll find upstairs...

  Thomas ran down the passage and burst through an archway into a large low-ceilinged storeroom. A group of men and women dressed as servants was trapped in a corner, half-surrounded by a dozen or so of the sickly emaciated fay. The servants were fighting the creatures off with torches and makeshift clubs and whatever else they had been able to find. The fay rushed their new attackers as they entered the room. The first leapt at them, waving its sword over its head, and was disemboweled by Thomas's rapier. A bronze sword swung at him from the side and he swept it away and punctured the owner's chest.

  One of the fay kicked over a lamp, sending the room into near darkness. Obviously the creatures can see in the dark, Thomas thought, parrying another thrust. Pity we can't.

  Dubell shouted something and clapped his hands. Immediately a small bright ball of pure light appeared over his head and hovered there, flooding the room with a stark white illumination.

  From behind, something grabbed Thomas's arm and swung him around. The strength was astonishing for a creature so apparently delicate. He slammed the rapier's heavy hilt into its face and it fell away from him with a shriek.

  As he turned, Thomas saw that three more fay had come at them from the door to the passageway. Hell, they must have been following us up the stairs. One had attacked the wounded Treville from behind, and he was now sprawled bleeding on the floor. Martin leapt over his wounded friend to knock the creature away from him; as it staggered back he drove his rapier through it.

  Nearby another fay was grappling with Dubell, trying to plunge its sword toward his face, but the old sorcerer was holding it off. Dubell managed to shift his weight and shove the creature up against the wall. Thomas stepped up behind Dubell, said "Pardon me, Doctor," and finished off the creature.

  All the other fay in the room were down. The spell light above Dubell's head died away as the servants relit their lamps, and the strange unwavering white light was replaced by the familiar flickering yellow.

  "Captain," someone gasped at his side, and Thomas turned and saw Berham. The servant had armed himself with a crude but effective iron club. "Captain, there's fighting in the hall by the round stair. We could hear the shots. That's where we was making for."

  "Good." As an afterthought, Thomas asked, "Do you know what's happened?"

  "No, Sir, I couldn't say that." Bertram's story was like their own. He had been visiting nearby when the explosion had occurred. As a veteran of the last war, his instincts had taken over and he had gathered survivors, armed both men and women with what was available, and set off to join the organized resistance.

  Martin came up to them as Berham finished, saying bitterly, "Dr. Dubell said Treville's gone, Sir. The bastards go for the wounded like wolves."

  "Aye," Berham said softly, looking back toward the bodies of his companions who had not survived the ambush. "I noticed that."

  "Take his sword and give it to Dr. Dubell. Let Berham use the pistols. We'll come back for the bodies when we've secured the palace," Thomas told him, and thought, I sound like a bloody idiot of an optimist.

  But it was what the other two men wanted to hear. As they moved to obey, Thomas went to where Dubell was still kneeling beside Treville. Dubell looked up at Thomas and said, "I'm sorry."

  "It wasn't your fault," Thomas said automatically.

  Dubell's face was drawn. "The fay are attacking in force. This is no raid. It's another damned war, Captain."

  Another damned war, Thomas thought. But the Bisran army fought us for two decades and they never got as close as this.

  As they returned to the others, Baserat was leaning over the fay that Thomas had disemboweled, poking the entrails experimentally with the tip of his sword. "See, it looks human to me."

  "You're right. I wish I had my glasses." Dubell peered down at the creature, then said, "As I thought. The Unseelie Court, or the Host, as they are more commonly called. On their nightly rampages they seize human captives whom they will use to attack their fellows." He paused as Martin came up and handed him Treville's rapier. Dubell looked at the weapon as if he wasn't sure what it was, then said, "Yes, of course."

  "What makes men turn into that?" Thomas nudged the corpse with the toe of his boot. He couldn't believe it, though he knew Dubell must be right.

  "Prolonged exposure to the influence of the Host. Their captives become like them. Iron becomes poison to them. They gain some powers of the fay, but they lose their souls in the process."

  The room had grown silent as the others listened. The servants were watching them with white bruised faces and apprehensive eyes.

  Something bumped his elbow and Thomas looked down to see the servant boy who had somehow managed to survive so far, peering interestedly down at the fay's corpse.

  "Berham," Thomas said. "Keep this one with your lot."

  "Yes, Sir," Berham said, gesturing sharply to the boy. "Come away from there, boy, before you get in the way."

  There would be far too many people wandering about without Berhams to organize them. Unarmed retainers and servants, children who could not fend for or protect themselves, women who would not think to pick up a weapon. "We have to get moving," Thomas muttered.

  * * *

  Kade was on the stairs in the King's Bastion when the explosion shook the Old Palace. She held onto the balustrade as the walls trembled in sympathy with the adjo
ining building. A stiff breeze poured up the stairwell; the stink it carried made her wince. The shaking stopped and the beams supporting the stairs gave an uneasy creak before deciding to hold. Kade started down again, stumbling occasionally because her legs were trembling for some reason. The inexplicable wind had ceased with the reverberations of the explosion, but it had left the air smelling of mud, stale water, and death.

  It can't be the wards, Kade told herself uneasily. It can't be.

  She found the bottom of the stairway blocked by a panic-stricken crowd of palacefolk and servants and she had to go back up a flight to work her way around by back passages. She could smell smoke now, from fires that had caught when candles and lamps were knocked over.

  When she reached the long gallery that connected the bastion to the Old Palace, it was badly lit and in chaos.

  Albon knights were milling around the doors and Renier was shouting orders. Over the noise, someone was yelling, "If you don't send them to help us fight the fire, they won't have anywhere to retreat!"

  Kade ducked into the crowd, slipping past a mailed arm before it could stop her. She emerged onto the wide balcony of the great spiral staircase that led down into the main hall of the Old Palace.

  It was a pitched battle.

  The main hall was on two levels and the wide sweep of steps leading down to the lower portion of it was where the battle line had been drawn. Furniture, boxes, and other debris had been piled up at the top as cover for the defenders. Queen's guards and a few Albon knights and Cisternans were manning the barricades along with disheveled courtiers, retainers, and servants who had either taken up weapons or were crouching back behind the defenders and reloading pistols. The lower half of the hall was walled away by a palpable unnatural darkness. Missiles flew out of that darkness, bronze-tipped bolts of a deadly effectiveness demonstrated by the number of corpses sprawled on the floor.

  Kade started down the staircase, one hand on its wide banister. The zoomorphs carved on the stair's central column leered out of the shadows as they were briefly illuminated by torches, adding to the nightmare quality of the scene. Refugees struggled past her, palacefolk and wounded guards.

  As she fought her way closer, she began to see past the curtain of shadow in a way the others defending the barricade below could not. There was movement in that darkness, mangled faces, shifting forms, distorted or partly human. The wards must be gone, at least over the Old Palace and the Gallery Wing; that's how this mess got in, Kade thought, and forced herself to keep moving down the stairs toward that chaotic darkness stretched across the hall. But what drove them here? It was the Unseelie Court, the rulers of the dark fay and the other creatures who fed on blood and terror, who rode the night in the form of the Host, preying on humans and destroying every living thing in their path. They traveled the sky on dark windy nights accompanied, the church priests claimed, by the souls of the dead and wreaking havoc wherever they went.

  At the bottom of the stair, Kade started toward the barricade, dodging running forms, ignoring startled glances of recognition. As she reached the hastily erected wall of broken furniture and tried to peer through it, she heard, "If it isn't the Queen of Air and Darkness."

  The voice was sibilant and soft and came to her quite clearly over the noise. She looked down slowly and saw the face through a gap in the barricade. It was Evadne, one of the princes of the Unseelie Court. His narrow features might have been called handsome by someone less picky about character, even if his skin was powder blue. But though his expression was that of a wistful fay child, his eyes were gloating and entirely adult. Kade said, "Your eyesight is as bad as your sense of humor." She had never truly accepted her mother's title, which Evadne must know.

  He grinned up at her, revealing pointed teeth. "Why don't you join us, my sister? What has the Seelie Court ever given you that you should risk your life to side with them and battle us?"

  Kade ignored the growing knot of coldness in her stomach and laughed at him. The Seelie Court was the highest court of the Otherworld. Titania and Oberon ruled it, but spent little time in governing the fay who swore allegiance to them, and occupied most of their days in fetes, rades, contests, or other unreal pastimes of Fayre. The fay loosely attached to the Seelie Court loved daylight and music but were often dangerous to humans, either through acts of mischief or simple lack of concern over human frailties.

  The Queen of Air and Darkness was not truly a member of either court, and Kade did not like to think about what would happen to the balances of power in the Otherworld, which she only vaguely understood herself, if this were to change. Evadne must be very confident to risk making that offer. She said, "The Seelie Court has given me nothing, which is far better than the trouble you've given me. What makes you think I'd throw my fortune in with either of you?"

  His features drew into a pinched sneer. "The Host grows in power by the moment. The mortals' pitiful protections are scattered and you can't stop us. I'll destroy you myself."

  "Promises, promises. Who's your master? Is it Urbain Grandier?"

  The eyes hardened. "We have no master."

  "I'll tell him you said that when I meet him."

  Evadne stepped back, fading away into a darkness even Kade's sight couldn't penetrate. "I expect," he whispered, "that you will..."

  Kade dropped to the floor and used the hem of her dress to wipe a clear spot. Evadne had given her an idea. Those were powerful wards; they couldn't simply dissolve. They must be about somewhere. If she could find one...

  "Hey, come away from there." She looked up to see a man in a Cisternan officer's colors, who started back when he recognized her.

  Kade said, "I need chalk, wax, and some burnt coal." At his expression she shouted furiously, "Do you want help or not?"

  * * *

  An unblocked corridor leading out from the storerooms led Thomas and the others into the main hall.

  Wounded guards and refugees were climbing the huge spiral stair up into the King's Bastion and a thick white pall of smoke from pistols and muskets hung in the air. Out of the confusion, Thomas spotted the Cisternan Commander Vivan. He stepped forward and caught the other man's arm. "What did we lose?"

  Vivan ran a hand through his dark hair and didn't seem to notice when it came away bloody. He said, "They're in the Gallery Wing, and probably all of the east side."

  Thomas kept the shock off his face. "What about the King's Bastion?"

  "Secure. Everything inside the inner wall is secure, They didn't come through there."

  "The wards," said Galen Dubell, who was suddenly standing beside them. "They have drifted away from the newer structures of the palace, but the foundations in the older sections act as keystones themselves and are holding the wards in place there."

  Thomas nodded. "Good, it'll give us breathing room." What he wanted to do most was slam Vivan up against a wall and demand to know where Ravenna and Falaise were, but there was no time, and no sense in it. He knew Lucas and Gideon were on duty and for now he would just have to trust that they had gotten both Queens to safety. He said to Vivan, "You're trying to push them back so you can close the siege doors at the top of the stairs?"

  "Yes, If we fall back now, they'll push forward and we'll all go, but the sorceress said--"

  Thomas stared. "Who?"

  "The sorceress said if we gave her some time she could keep them back long enough to let us retreat."

  "Where is she?"

  "At the barricade." As Thomas started away, Vivan called after him, "Thomas! They're throwing elf-shot."

  That explained the ominously still forms that bore no visible wounds.

  Thomas spotted Kade's tattered form crouching near the center of the barricade between two Cisternan guards firing muskets. He began to make his way over to her.

  She had drawn some kind of design on the floor and was dripping wax from a lighted candle onto it. She was muttering continuously at it and Thomas thought she was saying a spell until he was close enough and realized s
he was cursing.

  He crouched beside her and said, "How much longer?"

  She tossed her head to get the hair out of her face and said, "Hours, days, weeks, how should I know?"

  A bronze crossbow bolt shot through the barricade and clattered off the stone floor between them. They both hunched their shoulders instinctively and Kade said, "Close," in a conversational tone. She tossed her hair back again.

  Thomas reached over and tucked her hair into the back of her smock for her.

  She muttered, "Thank you," without looking at him, a slow flush spreading up her cheeks.

  He said again, "How much longer?"

  "Not long. I'm almost done. Listen, what I'm doing is calling a ward." She stopped, grimacing as the barricade shuddered under another onslaught. "Impatient bastards."

  "Calling a ward?" he prompted.

  "Yes. Its name is Ableon-Indis and it's supposed to be over the St. Anne's Gate but it's lying across the top of the King's Bastion now. I don't know why."

  "Someone's taken the keystone."

  "Damn. That would be the reason, then. The newer wards float away from their places without the keystone in the etheric structure, but the King's Bastion has the strongest warding spells in the old parts of the palace. It's drawing the drifting wards over to it. Not that it's helping much." Her expression was grim. "Anyway, when I finish this the ward should fall toward us here. If I'm lucky it will come to ground right here along the barricade. When we leave, the Host will surge forward, run into it, and get an unpleasant surprise. But Ableon-Indis will start moving upward again almost immediately. What I'm doing here isn't as strong as the warding spells still drawing it to the King's Bastion."

  Thomas nodded. "So we'll have only a few moments at best?"

  "Yes."

  "It'll be enough."

  She looked up quickly and grinned.

  Berham made it over to them and knelt beside the barricade. "Albons are holding the doors in the bastion, Sir," he reported.

  "Which officers are up there?"