Earl Clios flew back through the air, knocking flat one of the pallbearers and landing in a broken pile atop his own son. The coffin, unbalanced, slipped from the other bearers’ grasps and crashed to the stones amid the pieces of the door. Men and women alike screamed, and Leta realized her voice was among them. She heard the scrape of swords being drawn, heard the shouts of earls to their retainers. She saw Lady Mintha fall to her knees beside her brother’s shattered coffin.
She saw the monster emerge from the darkness of the crypt.
“Where is the king of the mortals?” it cried.
8
ETANUN AND AKILUN, HIS BROTHER, took me into their Haven. At first they did not ply me with questions, only fed me and tended my tattered wings and torn feet. They gave me sweet, clear water to drink, and I had not realized until I tasted it how parched I was. Only then, with my spirits beginning to rise, did I dare begin to tell them of my journey and why I had come.
“Cren Cru,” said Etanun, pounding fist to palm. “We have seen his work before.”
“Seen it,” Akilun agreed. “But never fought it. Never come to a demesne of his taking in time.”
“Will you go to Etalpalli, then?” I asked. “Will you go to the service of my brother, King Tlanextu?”
“We will go to your service, dear lady,” said Etanun, and though his voice was kind, his face was grim. “We will rid you of this evil.”
And he went to retrieve his sword. A fine sword, wrought of sunlight and moonlight and shining equally as bright. Halisa it was called, and even I, sequestered away in Etalpalli as I had always been, had heard tell of its might, the deeds it had performed both in the Far World and the Near.
Halisa. Fireword.
Nearly seven feet tall, with skin like rock and a face some mixture of boar and man, the monster wore armor like stone slabs chiseled into a breastplate, pauldrons, and greaves, and the weapon he carried was stone as well.
He strode out of the crypt and stood in the new light of morning, so real and so terrible that everyone around him looked like mere breathless phantoms. He planted great feet above the wreckage of the door and the coffin, and gripped his stone sword in both hands. Lady Mintha lay nearest him, unable to move, while the pallbearers fell back among their brethren, shrieking and clutching at each other.
The monster, his gaze downcast upon the remains of the dead earl, spoke: “Where is the king of the mortals?”
His words swallowed the screams of the people, leaving silence in its wake. No one spoke. The monster’s booming voice reverberated through their heads and about the stone courtyard, then died away. His lip curled, and he scraped his sword through the wooden fragments, lifting the edge of Earl Ferox’s fine robe and inspecting it thoughtfully. Then he let it drop and strode across the wreckage, caring not whether he trod upon the earl’s body. Now Lady Mintha was behind him, trying to raise herself up, frantic to get away from the gaping doorway of the crypt.
“Where is the mortal king?” the monster demanded again, still not looking at the crowd. No one answered. No one breathed.
He swung his sword, and the assembly drew back. Then shouts of command, and housecarls pressed through the crowd, falling upon the monster with battle cries. Leta hid her face but could not stop her ears to the screams and the sound of blows falling upon unprotected bodies.
“Is your king afraid to face me?” the monster bellowed, the stone sword now dripping red. “Is he afraid to stand up to Corgar of Arpiar?”
“The North Country needs no king!” shouted Earl Sondmanus. Taking a lance from one of his housecarls, he strode forward. The monster turned to him, leering down at the gray-bearded man who scarcely came up to his shoulder yet who spoke boldly. “A North Country man is king enough! We rule in our own right, and we drive out our own monsters!”
The monster growled. “Liar.”
His sword swung. Earl Sondmanus’s lance fell in two pieces, and the earl himself collapsed in a heap. With a roar of mingled pleasure and fury, the goblin swung around and fended off the blows of Sondmanus’s enraged sons, killing with each stroke. The remaining warriors withdrew, their fine mourning garments dirtied with blood, and the goblin roared.
“Whom do you think you’re protecting, people of dust? The Murderer told me all! He said if once we dared cross the borders into the Near World, the mortal king would drive us out. So answer me, maggots, where is this king? I shall spit him over my fire before I let him drive me back into Arpiar!”
He strode into the thick of the crowd; women fainted and men screamed. Blood spattered his face and armor. He was a nightmare made flesh and stone. “Shall I hack you all to the ground until I find him out?”
Leta, pressed into a throng of strangers so tightly that she could scarcely move, caught sight of her father. She saw the look in his eyes and knew what he was about to do. Earl Aiven, his sword drawn, stepped forward. His shoulders were thrown back, and his eyes flashed beneath his sandy brows.
“I am King of the North Country!” he cried. “I am whom you seek!”